The Biennial International Convention of Surfers (ICS), meeting in Oahu, Hawaii, has finally resolved the long-raging controversy about the perfect wave. For decades surfers have contested the concept, with the question being: can a wave be perfect without being surfed on? Now the convention has ruled definitively that perfection does indeed go hand-in-hand with a rider on the wave. 'Without the surfer, a wave cannot qualify for perfection,' is the official communiqué, agreed after days of laid-back discussions and liberal quantities of good weed. 'Over the centuries there have been trillions of waves, maybe even more than the number of grains of sand on all the beaches in the world,' says Pete Schleck of Redondo Beach. 'Hawaiians, West Africans and Papua New Guineans were up there long before the current generation of surfers, so they were able to endorse wave perfection. But they still had to be there for perfection to exist. What good's a wave if nobody's on it?' As with the vexed philosophical issues about the sound of one hand clapping and a tree falling in the forest, surfers have long agonised over this issue. At least the surfing community has now decided to confront the Zen essence of the question and answer it, once and for all. 'It's more than just philosophy, dude,' says Ian Falliono of San Diego. 'It's about the essence of surfing. You go out there every day to commune with that wave. You need the wave but the wave also needs you. If the surfer hasn't cranked, peaked, accelerated, torqued or hot-dogged, the wave hasn't really existed and it's like so far from being perfect. Even an ordinary surfed wave is closer to perfection than a stunning unsurfed wave.' The argument has reached new levels in recent years as more and more surfspots have been captured in the lenses of surfer magazines and videos. This has raised an even more refined issue: can a surfer make the perfect wave alone or must he/she be witnessed either by another surfer or through a camera lens? This discussion will only be addressed at the 2018 Biennial ICS scheduled for Jefferies Bay, South Africa. And coming on to the agenda for 2020? Can one perfect wave be more perfect than another?Friday, 23 December 2016
A wave needs a surfer just as much as a surfer needs a wave
The Biennial International Convention of Surfers (ICS), meeting in Oahu, Hawaii, has finally resolved the long-raging controversy about the perfect wave. For decades surfers have contested the concept, with the question being: can a wave be perfect without being surfed on? Now the convention has ruled definitively that perfection does indeed go hand-in-hand with a rider on the wave. 'Without the surfer, a wave cannot qualify for perfection,' is the official communiqué, agreed after days of laid-back discussions and liberal quantities of good weed. 'Over the centuries there have been trillions of waves, maybe even more than the number of grains of sand on all the beaches in the world,' says Pete Schleck of Redondo Beach. 'Hawaiians, West Africans and Papua New Guineans were up there long before the current generation of surfers, so they were able to endorse wave perfection. But they still had to be there for perfection to exist. What good's a wave if nobody's on it?' As with the vexed philosophical issues about the sound of one hand clapping and a tree falling in the forest, surfers have long agonised over this issue. At least the surfing community has now decided to confront the Zen essence of the question and answer it, once and for all. 'It's more than just philosophy, dude,' says Ian Falliono of San Diego. 'It's about the essence of surfing. You go out there every day to commune with that wave. You need the wave but the wave also needs you. If the surfer hasn't cranked, peaked, accelerated, torqued or hot-dogged, the wave hasn't really existed and it's like so far from being perfect. Even an ordinary surfed wave is closer to perfection than a stunning unsurfed wave.' The argument has reached new levels in recent years as more and more surfspots have been captured in the lenses of surfer magazines and videos. This has raised an even more refined issue: can a surfer make the perfect wave alone or must he/she be witnessed either by another surfer or through a camera lens? This discussion will only be addressed at the 2018 Biennial ICS scheduled for Jefferies Bay, South Africa. And coming on to the agenda for 2020? Can one perfect wave be more perfect than another?
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