March means Noosa Festival. No school, sunny days and long peeling waves. From the opening ceremony (featuring our own Barry Magoo) and paddleout through to the afternoons’ entertainment it was nine days of pure stoke.
At the start of the Festival there was good size southerly swell that wrapped around the points. It looked like there would again be solid waves as many predicted rises. As the surf slowly shrunk, the noseriders, logs and old mals were brought out and the free surfing displays at Johnsons and tea tree were spectacular.
While some people chose to ride logs in the competition, most of them were quickly eliminated as the waves were messy and fat with not much wave area for those inclined for a noseride. Josh Constable combo-ed his whole semi final and ended with his fourth Noosa Festival win (which may or may not be because he surfs there every day). The finless pro was amazing to watch with all kinds of strange finless boards being ridden with alais, sea glass and 20ft toothpicks all being ridden with skill.
On Friday night central coaster Mike McCarthy played before the premier of Stoked and Broke. An amazing movie featuring Cyrus and his mate Ryan who trek from one side of San Diago to the other with limited money (which at one stage drops down to 24cents) to show that money isn’t needed to be stoked on surfing. Riding logs, broken guns, twin fins, shortboards and random pieces of foam it is a great movie. After the premier bleeding knees club and dolphins played while Dane Peterson had an art and photography exhibition.
Although the waves weren’t great by the end and the comp area had to move, the GSI Noosa Festival of surfing 2011 was another great time.
(this was a piece I wrote for my Mal club's newsletter)
Photos by Mike Brown
