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Mortification
The Archy Profile
By Chris Mauro

“I should have stayed in school,” Matt Archbold says bluntly from the couch in my office. “You just don’t know what you’re missing when you’re a kid.” His confession comes on the heels of Matt and I visiting some of his old haunts in Newport and San Clemente. For the past two days we’ve been catching up on old friends, old stories, the wives and kids. I should probably mention here that the two of us have known each other since we were 10. But this interview is my first good look under Matt’s hood in more than a decade. “Don’t get me wrong,” he adds, “I had great times with all those guys—my heroes—but I was missing out on my childhood, which is why I’d always try to make up for it whenever I got home. That’s probably why I ended up with two DUIs by the time I was 18.”

The Perfect Wave
It Plays A Central Role In Surfing Mythology, But Does The Wave Of Our Dreams Really Exist?
By Sam George

I got a call not so long ago from a Brazilian surf magazine. Very courteous, heavily accented.
“Por favor,” the editor said. “We are doing an article about perfect waves, and we would like your list of the 10 most perfect waves in the world.”
I just love questions like this.
“Perfect?” I asked. “What, exactly, do you mean by perfect?”
“Well, you know, perfect,” my Brazilian counterpart said. “Like the Perfect Wave.”
“Okay,” I said. “Top of the list would have to be Canoes in Waikiki.”
“Excuse me?” Again, the Portuguese accent.
“Canoes in Waikiki…the most perfect wave for beginners in the world. Absolutely perfect.”
“Oh no,” he explained. “We mean perfect…like Teahupoo.”
“Teahupoo?” I said. “Are you kidding? Teahupoo is the world’s worst tandem wave. Terrible for tandem surfers. Now Makaha, that’s a perfect wave for tandem. Then there’s Malibu, the most perfect wave in the world for traditional longboarding. And Pipeline, the perfect place to hold a surf contest.”
“Excuse, please,” my Brazilian friend said, a bit flustered. “But we mean perfect. Like Mentawai.”

The Short Beards Of Aotearoa
For Maz and Jay Quinn, Nothing Beats a Quick Run Home
By Luke Sullivan

The first moments were frustrating and it stained my upbeat mood. I’m easy come, easy go, but her customs badge was like a migraine. “We’ll have to bleach your wetsuits,” she said while squeezing a leg on my fullsuit, unsatisfied at the dampness within. A disastrous abalone disease in the eastern states of Australia had to be contained, and my wetsuits were seen as a potential carrier that could transfer it to local shores.

When I explained my business as a writer for SURFER, as a potential agent of increased tourism for New Zealand, she changed her tone. She became sympathetic and I was soon welcomed into the country with a warm smile, setting me bleach free.

Autofocus
A Photo Feature

You travel the world for a living. Nine months out of the year you’re on the road with only the ambiguous directive to surf well, look good, and come back as the subject in photographs. Nearly every place you go for work, you go with a professional photographer who is sent to capture images of you looking fabulous and surfing in a way few people on the planet can. You’ve become aware of how to work with a photographer. You know all about light and focal depth and how to help the photographer get the shot so that you’re doing your job. Such is your life as a wanderlust pro surfer these days.

That’s only one part of the equation, however. The other reality is loads of downtime. In airports and hotels. On boats and airplanes. So it’s only natural that you speak up to the photographer and ask him about the cameras he carries around the world—how they work, how he works with them. And it’s only natural that if you’re curious enough, you learn to do it yourself