Dylan Graves and Dusty Payne rode their pirate kayak to victory during the Kiddieland contest at the Nixon High Tide Hold'em Photo: Ghiglia.

After a flurry of frenzied activities in the final days of the Nixon High Tide Hold’em, Dylan Graves walked away with this years trophy (an engraved Kava Bowl), two Apple MacBooks, a free ticket to next year’s event, and one giant hangover. While it didn’t really require any focus, training, or endurance, so prevalent in other sporting contests, Dylan’s victory is not without merit. He placed well in numerous events throughout the week and had the most fun out of everyone on an island full of people hell-bent on having fun.
Here’s how Dylan got there:

SURFING
Although the surf wasn’t all time by Tavarua’s standards, Dylan lit it up every time he took a boat out to cloudbreak. A jury of his peers voted and decided that Dylan’s performances were slightly better than Claire Bevilacqua’s who logged more hours than anyone.

KIDDIELAND CONTEST
Dylan and Dusty Payne also won the Kiddieland contest thanks to their pirate ship kayak, fully equipped with a cooler of beers and coconut canon balls. The pair were awarded a 10-point score from the panel of esteemed judges, after they chugged beers from the moment they took off on the wave until the pirate kayak ran aground in front of the hotel. Other notables in the Kiddieland contest were Travis Rice’s warrior mooning and Cheyne Magnusson’s nausea inducing display’s of nudity

PING PONG
Dylan’s overall victory hinged on him beating karaoke Champion, Travis Rice in the semi final of the ping pong tournament. Both, dressed in their pirate garb for the events final blow-out, played a great game despite being significantly intoxicated. Dylan took the tight match and was promptly showered with beer and other beverages.

Final Results:
Fishing: Michel Murciano
Spear Fishing: Jason Napolitano
Poker: Keao Dechape
Surfing: Dylan Graves
Ping Pong: Tani Vula
Karaoke: Travis Rice
Kiddieland: Dylan Graves and Dusty Payne.

For more from this awesome week, grab an upcoming issue of SURFER.

What the High Tide Hold'em has become known for. Photo: Ghiglia

By the time the third round of cards had been dealt, it was clear that I would not become the 2009 Nixon High Tide Hold’em poker champion. I, along with Dusty Payne, exited the tournament way earlier than we would have hoped. However, already there were some likely candidates for the final table.
Dylan Graves, Lyn-z Adams and a few of the Fuel TV crew emerged as front runners, as did Keao TKTK, the general manager at Tavarua. Brandon Lillard and Etienne TKT, a Nixon rep from Canada, emerged as a serious dark horse from the get-go

Some bad choices were made, and eventually, well after the midnight hour had passed, there were only two: Lyn-z and Keao.

I would like to say the game was a light-hearted affair, but with such serious stakes on the line (a trip for two to Las Vegas) the tension was palpable. Eventually it was Keao who went all in and bankrupted Lynd-z.

For a guy who spends four months at a time on the Island, a trip to Vegas (read: civilization) is always going to warrant a fair bit of excitement. Needless to say, those who were already asleep in the boatmen’s Bure, didn’t stay that way.

Still to come: A winner must be crowned.

Dusty Payne and Blair Marlin serenading each other. Photo Ghiglia

The jury was out on who was leading the Karaoke rankings until Travis Rice, who sometimes moonlights as a ridiculously good snowboarder, grabbed the microphone.

His performance dwarfed Dusty Payne’s moving rendition of a country classic, and eclipsed Dylan Graves’ crooning which, incidentally, lasted well into the night.

This is something you just have to see.



Still to come: Poker Night, Fiji Night, and the ever-intimidating, Pirate Party. Arrg.

Andy Irons, a familiar claim, a different setting. Photo: Ghiglia

To add to the sense of do-whatever-you-want-ness that the Nixon High Tide Hold’em is so well-known for, Andy Irons and his wife Lyndie decided to jump out of a helicopter and parachuted onto Tavarua–something that has never been done before until this week.

The opportunity arose when Mike Escamilla, Brandon Lillard, and skydive extraordinaire, Travis Fienhage, began doing jumps and filming for an upcoming webisode on Hurley.com.

“When I woke up this morning, I didn’t think I would have jumped out of a helicopter over Tavarua,” AI said later that day, still visibly boiling from the adrenaline rush. Andy hadn’t even considered the jump an option until ten minutes before take-off. Suddenly, Andy went from sitting and reading a magazine to being strapped to a harness and boarding a helicopter destined to go straight up. Somewhat predictably, Andy described the whole ordeal as “so scary.”



For some of the more seasoned jumpers, such as Travis Feinhage, the numerous jumps he did yesterday were among the most beautiful of his life. But Travis was not up there to enjoy the view, he had the staff on Tavarua hooting and screaming in disbelief with his high-velocity antics.

The rest of the Nixon crew took a more tempered approach and they spent the rest of the day, circling up to 14,000 feet and bailing out.
Its tough here, really tough.

Need more proof? Check out these photos.

Tomorrow: Poker Tournament Highlights, More Island Fun, and maybe even some surf?

Danny Way didn't land the fish, but at least he was able to hold onto his pole.

“I love surfing more than anything,” says professional skateboarder, Danny Way, “but I absolutely have to go fishing. I guess its some sort of self redemption thing.” Danny was referring to the two hour fight he had with a gargantuan fish that he ultimately failed to land.
“I got out of bed so slowly this morning,” he said the next morning, motioning that his arms weren’t working as well as they were designed to.

Sure, you could consider this just another fisherman’s tall tale, but according to SURFER photographer, Tom Servais, who was on board when Danny hooked the fish it was the real deal. “He fought it for almost two hours. He was cramping so bad we had to pour water on him to keep him cool.”

Had he landed the beast, Danny would have certainly shot into the lead on the Nixon High Tide Hold’em fishing tournament. But, alas, it was not to be.

On the other end of the manliness scale, Hawaiian ripper, Dusty Payne, has been taking some heat for an incident that occurred on a boat late on Tuesday afternoon. According to sources that could barely contain their laughter while telling the story, Dusty grabbed a fishing pole after it became clear that something very large was on the other end. But before he could even begin reeling it in, the fish ripped the pole clear out of his hands. “It shot 10 feet in the air,” said Dusty sheepishly before adding, “the boatman was so angry…he said he hasn’t ever seen that happen in 15 years of working here. Now I’m banned from fishing for the rest of the trip.”

With that in mind, Dusty has headed off to the mainland for a round of golf with Dylan Graves, hoping that his absence will allow enough time for people to forget about the incident entirely. Fat chance.

You should have seen Cloudbreak...

The place is all kinds of awesome. I know I said I wouldn’t brag, but how could I not? Just look at this place!
This afternoon, I surfed Cloudbreak with two other people out¬–both work here on Tavarua.
For some weird reason, everyone had other things going on. Andy and Cheyne messed around in knee high surf Restaurants, while I was out at Cloudbreak on what the seasoned visitors would call a “very average day.” Trust me, it was far from average. Having your pick of overhead, reeling sets registers “well above average” on my scale.

Afterwards, suffering from third-degree sunburn (if that’s possible) I staggered–beer in hand–onto the tennis court, where an impromptu tournament got underway.
All in a day’s work, I’m afraid.

They say, tomorrow is supposed to be a surfing day. I’m not sure what that means because I haven’t stopped surfing since I got here.