Joel Parkinson

THE TRIPLE CROWN

Just a quick note to let you all know I won’t be surfing in all three events of the Triple Crown in Hawaii this year. While I’ll definitely be surfing the Pipe Masters, and I might even surf the Sunset event, I definitely won’t be at Haleiwa which means I probably won’t be any chance of winning the Triple Crown this year.

I just plan to relax a little more in Hawaii this year, and for a couple of weeks anyway just focus on my freesurfing, my family and friends. I’m planning on taking my family across to Kauai to spend some time with Lyndie and Andy Jr. Of all the Hawaiian seasons I’ve done, I’ve never gone and been able to hang out to much on the other islands and with my friends over there for any long period of time, and I’m really looking forward to a week or two over on Kauai then coming back to Oahu and just freesurfing to focus on Pipe.

I’d love to win at Pipeline – every surfer would – and I reckon I’m giving myself the best chance this year by not doing the whole Triple Crown. The last few Hawaiian seasons – and the last few months in general – have been pretty intense, so I just felt it was a good time to take a couple of weeks to pull back a little and keep my surfing fun and fresh.

To win three Triple Crowns is such an honour and something I could never have even dreamed of as a kid, and I’ll be giving everything I’ve got to win another one next year. I’ll be watching on with interest this year and it’d be great if the Triple Crown went into Pipe with half a dozen guys all duking it out to take it.

Mahalo.

Joel

DISCO INFERNO

I should have been on tour in ’91. It looked like a whole lot more fun.

FINAL DAY, SAN FRAN

ROUND THREE, SAN FRAN

SHARKY POLASKY

Early morning puntage.

My heat this morning was okay. I didn’t win but I found a couple of really wide ones. I rode the wrong board – I needed to be on a bigger board – and I got dropped in on by some guy on one of my waves. He turned around and was going, “Yeah Parko!” and I was like, “Thanks mate, but any chance you can get off me wave?” But the beach here is one of those places where you do a lot of work and you never know if you’re going to get rewarded for it. Sometimes you get three good waves in 10 minutes, then next thing you’re paddling for the next hour. It’s a fishing expedition. It’s pot luck. Theres a lot of taking off and hoping. You can be 10 feet from the peak all day. It’s a real unknown out there. It’s actually really good fun to freesurf because you have time, but as you soon as you put a time constraint on it and you’re waiting 10 minutes for a wave you’re in trouble. It reminds me a little bit of Johanna down in Victoria. It has a wild open beachbreak feel because there’s so much water moving. Because the bay here sucks so much water in and out and drags it up and down the beach the waves are really powerful. The current gets real strong.

Does this look like a man who's just seen a dolphin?

The shark was another thing. Dusty looked rattled. There were half a dozen surfers in the competitors in the area when he came in and they looked as rattled as he was. He reckoned it was the biggest thing he’d ever seen. I saw a seal out in my heat and he went, “That was no seal, that was something that eats seals.” You’re always looking for waves out there but now I’m looking for fins. Its going to be in the back of my mind, for sure. There’ve been two shark attacks here in a week. It just feels sharky. Back home we get reefies and whalers and hammerheads, up here they’ve just one shark… and it’s the big one.

Luckily in my next heat I was paddling so much that I completely forgot about any shark. My heat this afternoon was a shocker. The tide had come in and the wind had swung onshore and you couldn’t buy a wave out there. I rode a wave for half a mile and got a three. I got to the end of it and looked how far I’d gone and thought are you kidding me? I’ve gone that far and got a three? It was so depressing. And then when I finally got a wave and got the lead back I was just waiting for Perillo to get the three or four or whatever it was he needed to win. But luckily for me it was as bad for him as it was for me and I was just lucky to get through it.