The full moon hung fat and silver over San Clemente as veteran surfer and writer Sam George pulled into the Trestles trailhead just before midnight. He’d come chasing the oldest dream in surfing—an empty lineup at one of California’s most crowded waves. What he found instead was a lesson every surfer eventually learns: the tribe thinks alike, even in the dark.
The parking lot told the story before he ever touched sand. Cars. Too many cars. And down on the berm, three teenagers sat watching the moonlit walls peel through, their silhouettes proof that the secret was already out.
Why Night Surfing Calls to Us
There’s a particular magic that pulls surfers toward the water after dark. It’s not just about dodging crowds—though that’s always part of the calculus. It’s something deeper, more primal. The ocean at night becomes a different creature entirely.
Without daylight’s familiar reference points, everything changes. Peripheral vision collapses. The wave rushing toward you seems faster, more urgent. Your focus sharpens to a laser point because survival demands it. The sensory deprivation paradoxically heightens every sensation—the hiss of water across fiberglass, the cold shock of spray, the sudden lift as the wave takes you.
George knows this feeling intimately. His night-surfing resume reads like a bucket list: Queens in Waikiki back in 1972, the streetlights of Kalakaua Avenue painting the empty lineup gold at 10 p.m. Rincon during a bioluminescence event, where every turn threw glowing green sparks into the darkness. Sandy Lane in Barbados under nothing but starlight. Scorpion Bay’s Third Point with a full moon illuminating those perfect Mexican walls. Playa Vernao in Panama, where the bioluminescent bloom was so thick the whitewater looked radioactive.
Each session carried its own particular beauty. Each promised—and delivered—the solitude that daytime surfing at popular breaks rarely offers. Lower Trestles, George figured, would be no different.
He figured wrong.
The Midnight Session at Lower Trestles
Lower Trestles isn’t just another California beach break. It’s an apex predator of a wave—a world-class cobblestone point that has hosted championship events and produced career-defining footage. It’s also a geographical bottleneck, a peak where takeoff zones compress tightly and surfers stack like rush-hour commuters waiting for the same train.
During daylight hours, the lineup regularly swells past thirty bodies. Elite competitors jostle with weekend warriors. Clean, makeable waves become obstacle courses. Even top-tier surfers struggle to complete unobstructed maneuvers when every shoulder hosts someone dropping in.
George had surfed Trestles countless times during his years living in San Clemente. He understood the dynamics. The midnight session was supposed to be the antidote—a full moon, favorable conditions, and presumably empty water.
But when he crested the berm and looked out at the peak, approximately fifteen surfers were already clustered on the takeoff zone. Fifteen. At midnight.
The math was brutal. These weren’t lost tourists or confused beginners. These were locals, competitors, dedicated wave-hunters who’d all made the same calculation George had made. Escape the daylight chaos. Surf under the moon. Score empty perfection.
Instead, they’d simply transported the chaos into darkness.
A set appeared on the horizon, black lines stacking against the silver-lit sky. The pack immediately began jockeying. Paddles dug. Boards swung for position. And then someone shouted what every surfer shouts when claiming a wave:
“Got it!”
What followed was chaos distilled. Multiple surfers dropped in simultaneously from both sides of the peak. From George’s position on the shoulder, it was impossible to determine who actually had priority. The darkness swallowed the usual visual cues—hand signals, eye contact, the subtle body language that governs lineup etiquette in daylight.
Someone got snaked. Maybe multiple someones. In the dark, accountability vanishes. Frustration has nowhere to land.
George watched one more set arrive, one more scramble unfold, then turned his board toward shore.
Crowds Find the Dark Too
The uncomfortable truth is that surfers are predictable creatures. We share the same apps, the same forecasts, the same mental playbooks. When swell fills in and conditions align, we converge like migrating birds on the same handful of premium breaks.
Night surfing was supposed to be the loophole. The dedication filter. Surely most people wouldn’t bother with the hassle—the trail walk in darkness, the heightened risk, the logistical complications of surfing when you can barely see.
But “most people” still leaves plenty of diehards. And at a wave like Lower Trestles, diehards are the default population. These are surfers who will do whatever it takes to score. If that means midnight sessions under a full moon, so be it.
The irony cuts deep. Night surfing’s appeal lies in escape from crowds, but as more surfers discover that appeal, the escape disappears. The solution becomes the problem.
Worse, the normal social mechanisms that regulate crowded lineups break down in darkness. Eye contact doesn’t work when you can’t see eyes. Right-of-way becomes guesswork. The shouted “Got it!” carries little authority when the shouter is just another shadow among shadows.
When Night Surfing Works—and When It Doesn’t
None of this means night surfing is a lost cause. George’s decades of after-dark sessions prove it can work beautifully under the right circumstances. The key variables are location and obscurity.
Night sessions at Queens in Waikiki worked because few tourists thought to paddle out at 10 p.m., even with streetlights making it safe. Bioluminescence sessions at Rincon worked because the phenomenon is rare enough that crowds don’t anticipate it. Remote breaks like Playa Vernao worked because they’re already lightly surfed in daylight—after dark, they’re practically private.
Lower Trestles, though? Its quality is too well-known. Its accessibility too convenient. Its regular crowd too committed. The full moon that makes night surfing possible there also makes it obvious. Every experienced local in San Clemente and San Diego looked at the same forecast, saw the same lunar cycle, and made the same decision.
Night-Surf Considerations:
Know your break intimately. Hazards invisible in daylight become lethal in darkness. Rocks, reefs, currents—you need mental maps, not visual ones.
Bring a buddy. Emergencies become exponentially more dangerous when no one can see you.
Understand local rules. Some beaches prohibit night access. Getting cited ruins any session.
Accept the etiquette ambiguity. If a crowd does show, recognize that normal priority systems may not function. Patience becomes paramount.
Choose obscurity over quality. That secondary peak the crowds ignore during the day? That’s your night-surf spot. The wave everyone wants stays crowded around the clock.
The Bridge of Sighs
George returned to his truck that night with salt in his hair and resignation in his gut. The tape deck was playing Robin Trower’s Bridge of Sighs, and the title track’s mournful lyrics caught something true:
“The sun don’t shine / The moon don’t move the tides / To wash me clean…”
The moon had moved the tides. It just hadn’t moved the crowd.
The next morning, George was back at Lower Trestles. Daylight this time. The usual chaos, the usual jockeying, the usual compromise between wave quality and wave availability. He paddled out anyway because that’s what surfers do. We return. We adapt. We accept the imperfect conditions because the alternative—not surfing—is unthinkable.
Maybe the real lesson isn’t that night surfing fails, but that certain waves have transcended the old rules entirely. Lower Trestles operates at a different density now, a popularity level that no scheduling trick can defeat. The crowd isn’t avoiding your session. The crowd is your session, whatever hour you choose.
For true solitude, you’ll need to look elsewhere. Lesser-known breaks. Imperfect conditions. Waves that require more sacrifice than a midnight alarm.
The empty lineup still exists. You just won’t find it at an apex peak, no matter how dark it gets.
The morning fog hangs low over the Santa Barbara harbor as Conner Coffin guides his 26-foot vessel through the channel, the hull cutting quietly through water that holds decades of local fishing history. The boat, originally built in 1988 for the Pettersen family, has been brought back to life under Coffin’s hands—re-powered, restored, and ready to write new stories. It’s a far cry from the frenetic energy of the Championship Tour, where every heat was a battle and every wave carried the weight of ranking points and sponsorship obligations.
But don’t get it twisted: Conner Coffin is not retired.
He’s simply chosen a different path—one that trades the relentless grind of full-time competition for the rhythms of freesurfing, fatherhood, and a life rooted in the community that raised him.
Why He Stepped Away From Full-Time Competition
The decision to leave the World Surf League tour wasn’t born from defeat or disillusionment. Coffin walked away while still at the height of his abilities, which made the choice both courageous and complex.
“I felt more drawn towards being a freesurfer and having time to do more than just compete at that point in my life,” Coffin explained. “I have always loved surfing and being in and around the ocean through fishing, diving, and traveling. I also have a lot of passions outside of surfing so I was excited to be able to embrace those more.”
The timing aligned with profound personal shifts. Marriage was on the horizon, and with it, the desire to build a family on his own terms.
“I was also getting married and my wife and I wanted to start having kids,” he said. “As much as doing the tour with a kid seemed like it could be awesome, I really wanted to be able to be fully present for my son’s birth and the first years of his life.”
That presence—being there for first steps, first words, the mundane magic of morning routines—held more weight than another contest result ever could. The hardest part wasn’t the transition itself, but the psychological untangling from a competitive identity he’d worn for years.
“The hardest part for me was just feeling like I was walking away from something that I was good at and that I thought I could still succeed at,” Coffin admitted. “I think we get a bit attached to the rush, the adrenaline, and the chase of living that lifestyle as well.”
The Boat, The History, and a Film Taking Shape
In July, Coffin completed the restoration of a 26-foot fishing boat that had spent decades working the waters off Santa Barbara under the Pettersen family’s care. The project was more than a mechanical undertaking—it was an act of preservation, connecting him to a lineage of local watermen who understood the ocean not just as playground, but as provider.
The restoration demanded everything: sanding down years of salt and wear, re-powering the engine, and honoring the vessel’s original character while preparing it for new adventures. Coffin documented the process meticulously, capturing not just the technical work but the stories embedded in the boat’s bones.
Now, that documentation is evolving into a film project. Working alongside collaborators Jeff Hull, Eddie Anderson, and Clint Malone, Coffin is producing a feature that chronicles the boat’s history and the family who worked it for years. It’s a story about craftsmanship, continuity, and the way objects can carry memory across generations.
The project represents a creative freedom that competition schedules never allowed—the ability to pursue a vision from inception to completion without the pressure of the next event looming.
Rod and Reel: Commercial Fishing and Community Roots
Since completing the restoration, Coffin has put the boat to work in ways that connect him directly to Santa Barbara’s culinary ecosystem. He’s been running rod-and-reel commercial trips, supplying local restaurants with fresh-caught seabass and halibut.
There’s something profoundly grounding about the work. The predawn departures, the patience required to read conditions and currents, the physical labor of hauling in a catch—it’s a different kind of performance than competitive surfing, but it demands similar attunement to the ocean’s moods.
The fish he lands end up on plates at restaurants throughout Santa Barbara, creating a direct line between his effort and his community’s tables. It’s local in the truest sense: caught by a local waterman, prepared by local chefs, consumed by neighbors and visitors who may never know the hands that pulled their dinner from the Pacific.
This integration of surfing life with fishing life reflects Coffin’s broader philosophy—that the ocean offers multiple ways to engage, and that a professional surfer’s skills are transferable to other maritime pursuits.
Cold Beer Surf Club and the Media Pivot
Coffin’s post-Tour life also includes a significant media presence through Cold Beer Surf Club, a podcast he co-hosts in partnership with 805 and the WSL. The show operates without strict format constraints, allowing for the kind of meandering, authentic conversations that reveal character and perspective.
The format suits Coffin’s personality—warm, curious, unburdened by the need to perform competitive intensity. Guests range across the surf world and beyond, and the discussions often venture into territory that traditional sports media rarely explores.
He’s also maintained relationships with board sponsors, appearing in content like the JS Industries episode “Conner’s Dream Quiver for California & Beyond,” where he walks through his equipment choices with the enthusiasm of someone who genuinely loves the craft of board selection.
These media engagements aren’t afterthoughts—they’re central to how Coffin has constructed a professional surfing career that doesn’t depend on competition results.
Mentorship, Music, and the Long View
Perhaps the most significant shift in Coffin’s post-Tour identity is his orientation toward mentorship. Having navigated the complexities of professional surfing—the sponsor relationships, the travel logistics, the mental demands—he’s positioned to guide younger surfers chasing similar dreams.
“I feel so fortunate to have learned and lived a ton through my experience as a pro surfer,” he reflected, “and I think it would be really cool to find a way to share some of the knowledge with younger kids who are interested in chasing a similar dream.”
His advice carries the weight of experience: treat your surfing career like a small business. Communicate professionally with sponsors. Show up prepared for signings and photo shoots. Build your own brand rather than waiting for others to define it.
Beyond surfing, Coffin has leaned into music as a complementary creative outlet. He draws parallels between the two pursuits: “Music is so similar to surfing… The feeling of getting locked into a good jam with friends is so similar to riding a wave but I love that the guitar is always there to pick up and noodle on.”
It’s this integration—surfing, fishing, music, family, media—that defines his current chapter. The question of “what comes after the Tour” has been answered not with a single pivot but with a portfolio of passions.
Quick Tips for Young Surfers From Conner Coffin
Treat it like your own business: Take ownership of your career trajectory from the start.
Communicate professionally: Stay in regular contact with sponsors; respond promptly to opportunities.
Show up prepared: Whether it’s a photo shoot, a signing, or a contest, professionalism matters.
Build transferable skills: The lessons learned through surfing—discipline, self-promotion, relationship management—apply to life beyond competition.
Surfing Until the Wheels Fall Off
What emerges from Coffin’s story is a vision of professional surfing as something more expansive than the competitive circuit typically suggests. The Tour is one chapter, not the entire book.
“I feel free to go out and surf more creatively all of the time, ride what I want to ride, and not have to be focused on preparing for the next event,” Coffin said. “I think I love surfing more than ever now.”
That renewed love—unburdened by rankings, heat strategies, and the pressure of televised performances—has reconnected him to why he started surfing in the first place. It’s a reminder that for many professionals, the sport itself can get lost in the business of competition.
“Surfing for me and I think a lot of people is a life-long endeavor,” Coffin explained. “I hope I’m surfing until the wheels fall off and whether I’m able to make a living doing it or not, it’s always something I will do and enjoy.”
As the Santa Barbara fog lifts and the morning light catches the restored hull of his fishing boat, Conner Coffin represents something increasingly rare in professional sports: an athlete who understood when to redefine success on his own terms. The waves will always be there. The fish will run with the seasons. His son will grow up watching his father navigate both.
That’s not retirement. That’s just a different kind of life, lived fully.
The frame opens on an empty lineup. No crowds jostling for position, no jetskis buzzing the channel—just a clean peak rolling toward a stretch of coastline so untouched it looks almost prehistoric. Wind rips across the dunes behind, bending coastal scrub sideways, and somewhere off-camera, someone is laughing. This is South Africa as most surfers dream of it but few ever see.
Where the Air is Thick With Glory, a newly released 17-minute surf film, doesn’t try to reinvent the genre. It does something harder: it strips surfing back to why any of us paddled out in the first place.
Setting the Coast
The film traces an ambitious route along the African seaboard, beginning in the tropical warmth of Mozambique and ending in the cold, howling waters off Cape Town. It’s a journey of stark contrasts—palm-fringed points give way to wind-scoured headlands, turquoise shallows darken into brooding Atlantic swells.
What emerges isn’t a highlight reel of the “best” waves but something more honest: a portrait of a coastline in all its moods. The filmmakers from the Skunk Aversion YouTube channel let shots linger on rugged mountains plunging into the sea, on long stretches of sand where tire tracks are the only evidence of human presence. The light shifts from the honeyed glow of subtropical mornings to the grey, dramatic skies that blanket the Western Cape in winter.
For viewers unfamiliar with South Africa’s surf potential, the film serves as a quiet revelation. This is a country with thousands of kilometers of largely unexplored coastline, world-class setups hidden behind difficult access and fickle conditions. The Armstrong brothers and their crew aren’t conquering it—they’re wandering through it, witnesses rather than conquerors.
The Brothers and the Band of Friends
At the heart of the film is a relationship as old as surfing itself: siblings who share a stoke. Dave and Murray Armstrong anchor the narrative, their bond evident in small moments—trading waves, ribbing each other on the beach, moving through campsites with the ease of people who’ve done this their whole lives.
But the brothers don’t hog the spotlight. The film expands to include a tight circle of friends, and it’s in this dynamic that Where the Air is Thick With Glory finds its emotional center.
“Good waves with anyone is sick, but to do it with those closest to you is extremely special.”
— Dave Armstrong
That quote, delivered without fanfare somewhere in the film’s middle section, encapsulates everything the project is reaching for. Surfing, at its core, has always been a social act—even when we paddle out alone, we carry the people who taught us, who traveled with us, who stayed up late talking about that one session years ago.
The film doesn’t manufacture drama between its subjects or engineer conflict for narrative tension. Instead, it trusts that watching friends simply be together—cooking meals, packing vehicles, studying forecasts, sharing waves—is compelling enough. And it is.
Waves, Weather, and Landscape
Mozambique arrives warm and forgiving. The waves are playful, the sessions long. You can almost feel the humidity through the screen, the kind of tropical surf trip where wetsuits stay buried at the bottom of board bags and sunscreen becomes a full-time job.
Then the journey moves south, and everything changes.
Cape Town’s coastline is a different beast entirely. The water drops twenty degrees. The wind that shapes the famous dunes also turns many sessions into survival exercises. The crew dons thick rubber, and the mood shifts from languid exploration to something more determined.
This temperature and terrain whiplash gives the film its visual rhythm. Warm tones bleed into cool ones. The editing doesn’t rush the transition but lets viewers sit in each climate, each landscape, until they feel the journey’s physical toll and reward.
The surf itself spans the full spectrum—hollow beach breaks, long point waves, wedging reef setups. The cinematography avoids the telephoto compression that makes so many surf films feel samey. Wide shots establish scale: small figures against massive dunes, lone surfers on peaks that seem to stretch forever. You understand, viscerally, just how much coastline this continent offers.
Why the Film Resonates
We’re living through a curious moment in surf media. The industry’s commercial engine still churns out high-octane competition edits and aspirational content designed to sell products. But alongside that machinery, a quieter movement has been building—films that prioritize feeling over spectacle, friendship over athleticism, place over performance.
Where the Air is Thick With Glory slots perfectly into this counter-narrative. At 17 minutes and 42 seconds, it’s long enough to develop atmosphere but short enough for a lunch-break watch. It doesn’t require viewers to care about heat scores or sponsor obligations. It asks only that you remember what drew you to surfing—or, if you’ve never surfed, that you understand why someone might build a life around chasing waves with people they love.
South Africa remains one of the planet’s most underrated surf destinations in mainstream consciousness. J-Bay gets its due during the Championship Tour, but the country’s broader potential—the diversity of breaks, the rawness of the landscape, the adventure still available to those willing to seek it—often gets overlooked. This film, modestly but effectively, makes the case for paying closer attention.
The Takeaway
In an era of infinite content competing for shrinking attention spans, Where the Air is Thick With Glory makes a quiet argument for slowness, for intimacy, for the kind of trip that doesn’t need to prove anything to anyone. Dave and Murray Armstrong, along with their friends and the team at Skunk Aversion, have crafted something that feels less like a film and more like an invitation.
Watch it with someone you’ve shared waves with. Or watch it alone and think about who you’d want beside you on that empty South African peak.
Either way, watch it.
A surfer drops into a heaving wall of whitewater, disappears behind the curtain, and somehow threads the needle out the other side. That’s just the first thirty seconds.
January 12, 2026. Ocean Beach, San Francisco. The kind of day that reminds you why NorCal’s most notorious beach break has earned every ounce of its reputation.
DG Films captured the chaos—and the glory—in a seven-minute highlight reel that’s already making the rounds. Northwest swell energy stacked into the bay, conditions aligned, and OB turned on.
But who can argue that waves like this aren’t 100 percent worth it all?
Here’s what the clips don’t show you: the conveyor belt. OB’s lineup is relentless. You’re not sitting out there waiting for waves. You’re grinding. Paddling. Getting worked. Sometimes you’re rewarded with one ride every half hour. Your shoulders are screaming before you even catch your first barrel.
The surfers in this edit make it look effortless—wrapping around peaks, threading pits, outrunning closeouts that would swallow most of us whole. Behind every three-second clip is an hour of punishment in a fullsuit, fighting currents and duck-diving endless walls of Pacific whitewater.
That’s the tax. This footage is the payoff.
Watch the full DG Films edit above. Seven minutes of heavy NorCal beach break at its finest—raw, unforgiving, and absolutely worth every frozen, exhausted minute in the water.
The lip pitches. Mason Ho disappears. For a moment, there’s nothing but whitewater detonating over a shallow Caribbean reef.
Then he exits clean, grinning like a man who just got away with something.
Weird Waves, Perfect Partners
When Ho needs a guide to Puerto Rico’s gnarliest corners, there’s only one call to make. Dylan Graves grew up on these islands—raised by two surfing parents, one of whom ran a legendary surf shop in the ’80s. He knows every reef, every takeoff zone, every slab that most maps don’t bother naming.
From weird to wonderful. Photo: Mason Ho // YouTube
The footage, posted to Ho’s BarrelKilla channel, captures the duo threading tropical tubes that look more like Tahitian mutants than anything you’d expect in the Caribbean. Ho’s signature style—part controlled chaos, part jazz improvisation—is on full display as he backdoors sections that seem to offer zero margin for error.
The Mason Ho Effect
This is what Ho does. While most pros chase point breaks and competition circuits, he hunts the freaks—the wedges, the slabs, the waves that don’t make sense on paper but deliver absolute magic on film.
Puerto Rico clearly delivered.
Watch the full session on Ho & Pringle Productions and try not to plan a trip south immediately.
Guests were given merch and beer to leave, then came back and broke the gate, according to Jamie O’Brien and long-time custodian Kaimana Henry.
A group of ejected partygoers returned to the iconic Volcom House on Oahu’s North Shore and kicked down the property’s gate after being asked to leave, according to an account shared on a recent episode of “The Jamie O & Mason Ho Show.”
Photo: Jamie O’Brien // YouTube
Key Facts
Location: The Volcom House, a three-story property situated directly in front of Pipeline
Source: Podcast episode featuring Kaimana Henry, the property’s custodian for roughly two decades
Incident: Guests ejected after a party returned and destroyed the gate
Peace offering: Staff attempted to disperse guests with merchandise and cases of beer before the damage occurred
The Incident
During the podcast segment titled “THE TRUTH ABOUT THE VOLCOM HOUSE – KAIMANA HENRY,” O’Brien and co-host Mason Ho sat down with Henry to discuss life at the legendary surf property. The conversation turned to the wilder side of hosting events at one of surfing’s most famous addresses.
O’Brien described the chaotic scene that unfolded when parties wound down at the house.
“I remember there’d be like crazy parties and we would be like, ‘All right, party’s over. Party’s over,’ and people would get all bummed and just sit out there and hang out inside the fence,” O’Brien recalled. “They get super mad that they can’t get in the Volcom house.”
The situation escalated quickly once certain guests refused to leave the fenced perimeter.
“Then they would run up and just kick the freaking Volcom gate. Boom,” O’Brien continued. “Volcom gate freaking blows out. And then they just turn on the path and they just start running.”
O’Brien expressed disbelief at the reaction: “We were like, ‘Wait, what?’ Like are you just bummed cause we kicked you out of the party? Like go home, bro.”
Attempted Peace Offering
Henry, who has managed the property for approximately twenty years, revealed that staff had actually tried to appease the disgruntled guests before the destruction occurred.
“People were so bummed, we just started giving them cases of beer, just to leave,” Henry explained. “We were just like, ‘Bro, please, here’s a donation. Just please get out of here.’ And they came back and kicked the door down.”
The Volcom House has long served as a hub for professional surfers competing at Pipeline and has been the site of numerous gatherings over the years. Its location directly in front of one of surfing’s most famous waves makes it prime real estate—and apparently, a tough place to get kicked out of.
It remains unclear whether any police reports were filed or if formal property damage charges were pursued following the incident.
Moundir Kamil, 56, was sentenced this week to three years and eight months in federal prison for his role in a Southern California theft ring that used surf forecasts to time break-ins and drained nearly $1 million from victims’ bank accounts, authorities said.
The scheme exploited a common but risky habit among surfers: hiding car keys in wheel wells. The crime ring monitored Surfline ratings and tide charts to identify optimal windows when lineups would be crowded and parking lots full of unattended vehicles. They operated across a sprawling stretch of coastline from Malibu to San Diego, photographing hundreds of credit and debit cards and rapidly draining accounts while victims were in the water.
A Victim’s Investigation Breaks the Case
The prosecution owes a debt to Logan “Chucky” Dulien, a surf filmmaker who lost $150,000 in a single afternoon. Dulien had paddled out for a grief-management session at the River Jetties before a meeting to plan his mother’s cremation. While he surfed, someone watched him stash his keys, then systematically broke into his house, car, phone, and finally his bank accounts.
Rather than wait for authorities, Dulien launched his own investigation. Surveillance footage, social media posts, and messages from other targeted surfers revealed a pattern law enforcement hadn’t previously connected. His persistence kept pressure on investigators and helped identify suspects.
The story was first reported by Stab and later picked up by CNN, which broadcast surveillance footage of the thefts in action. Investigators compared the common practice of hiding keys in wheel hubs to leaving a wallet on a car bonnet with a note saying “please don’t.”
A Repeat Offender
Kamil is no stranger to federal prison. According to The Coast News, he previously “duped an East West Bank in Cerritos into believing he was 78-year-old billionaire Donald Bren and stole a tax-refund check for more than $1 million in 2011.” Before that, he served 30 months for a string of Orange County bank robberies that earned him the nickname “Give Me More Bandit.”
At sentencing, Kamil expressed remorse and cited family circumstances. He is expected to be deported to Morocco after completing his sentence.
Cards compromised: Hundreds photographed and misused
Geographic scope: Malibu to San Diego
Sentence: 3 years, 8 months federal prison; deportation likely
Victim remediation: Insurers will begin reimbursing victims following prosecutions
Advisory for Surfers
Law enforcement urges surfers and beachgoers to abandon the wheel-well key stash. Consider waterproof key pouches worn on your person, lockboxes secured to your vehicle’s frame, or simply leaving valuables at home. Enable real-time banking alerts—those few hours in the water are all a thief needs to empty your accounts.
The waves will always be there. Your life savings shouldn’t have to be the price of admission.
Bobby Oldsman, 72, dies after wipeout at Tres Palmas
RINCON — Bobby Oldsman, a 72-year-old seasonal resident from Massachusetts who spent winters in Rincón for roughly 15 years, died following a wipeout at Tres Palmas on October 22, 2025, local witnesses and photographer Darren Muschett confirmed.
According to accounts from surfers on the scene and photos posted by Muschett, Oldsman lost consciousness after an impact — either with his board or the reef during a session in heavy swell. Fellow surfers pulled him from the water and he was taken to a hospital, where his death was later confirmed.
A photo of Oldsman in the Tres Palmas line-up was posted by local surf photographer Darren Muschett.
Oldsman was described in local accounts as a long-time winter resident who owned a home in the area and surfed Tres Palmas regularly during recent seasons. Local photographers and surfers were the primary sources for early information.
No further details about next of kin, an official cause of death, or an autopsy have been released publicly. Steepline News will update this report as more official information becomes available.
Surf Abu Dhabi Longboard Classic 2025 — The KSWC Wave, New Finals Format and a Tour in Flux
Dates: 24–26 October 2025 | Stop No. 3, WSL Longboard Tour
Surf Abu Dhabi returns as one of the most consequential stops on the 2025 WSL Longboard Tour. The combination of Kelly Slater Wave Company (KSWC) technology and a tweaked Finals format has turned the event into a high-stakes chess match where style, strategy and repeatable perfection matter as much as raw nose-time.
Why Abu Dhabi matters this year
– The event is confirmed as Stop No. 3 on the 2025 WSL Longboard Tour calendar (24–26 Oct). The facility’s KSWC wave delivers long, reproducible 500‑metre faces that favour classic longboard maneuvers sustained noserides, long trims and multiple scoring sections. – The Department of Culture & Tourism of Abu Dhabi is a confirmed event partner, increasing the event’s profile and the city’s cultural programming around the stop. – The 2025 Finals format has a confirmed change: seed No. 1 receives a priority advantage, a tweak WSL announced that rewards top seeding and reshapes end‑of‑tour strategy.
The field: new leaders, seasoned kings and the women to watch
Kai Ellice‑Flint (AUS) arrives with a major win at Huntington Beach 2025 and is one of the form surfers on tour.
Max Weston (AUS) is riding momentum after a win at Bells Beach 2025 and sits near the top of the rankings.
Taylor Jensen remains the yardstick in longboarding, a four‑time WSL longboard world champion (2018, 2019, 2022, 2023) whose contest craft and traditional style are still benchmark references.
Steven Sawyer (RSA) is the 2024 men’s winner at Surf Abu Dhabi and a former world champion (2018).
Alice Lemoigne (FRA) won the women’s event in 2024 and will be a rider to beat on the KSWC face.
Among the other decorated names on tour, Soleil Errico is a three‑time longboard world champion Rachael Tilly is a two‑time world champion — both are important figures in the women’s division and alter the competitive landscape whenever they’re on the start list.
For full, up‑to‑date rankings and the official athlete list, consult the WSL Longboard Tour page.
The Kelly Slater Wave Company’s engineered face at Surf Abu Dhabi delivers long, reliable walls and sections that can be dialled in heat after heat. That affects longboard competition in clear ways:
Repeatability: Riders can game multiple approaches to the same sections (nose, trim, cross‑step combos) across heats — a contrast with ocean variability.
Section count: A 500‑metre face creates multiple scoring opportunities per wave; strategic line choice becomes a scoreboard weapon.
Training transfer: Surfers who train on long, predictable faces — focusing on nose time and flowing combos — gain a measurable advantage in consistency.
See official facility visuals and behind‑the‑scenes on the wave tech below.
Kelly Slater Wave Co — technology overview (video):
New Finals format: why seed #1 now matters more
WSL confirmed a modification to the Finals format for 2025 that gives an in‑heat priority advantage to the No. 1 seed. The practical implications:
– Tour strategy: Securing top seed heading into Finals is now tactically more valuable — riders will chase heat wins and high placings earlier in the season to lock that edge. – Heat management: The priority advantage should reduce variance in single‑heat Finals, favouring surfers who can earn and keep clean, high‑scoring waves.
Expect changes in how athletes pace themselves through the tour calendar, especially with Abu Dhabi’s reproducible waves offering targeted point hauls.
The qualification picture: El Salvador and the Top 8 battle
The Surf City El Salvador Longboard Championships window (5–9 November 2025) is the next confirmed stop where the Top 8 qualification picture will sharpen. With only a few stops left after Abu Dhabi, positions — especially places 3–10 — are likely to be hotly contested. Every heat in Abu Dhabi will carry qualification significance.
Surf City El Salvador Longboard Championships — window: 5–9 November 2025 (confirmed)
Turning Beach Trash into Fins — a practical update on Ryan Harris’ plastic-to-gear project
A small-but-growing movement in surf circles is turning beach-collected plastic into surfboard fins. The idea isn’t new — groups like Precious Plastic have been open-sourcing the techniques and machines for years — but a wave of surfers and makers now want to close the loop between cleanup and gear. One of the people pushing that idea publicly is Ryan Harris; his Instagram is among the places sharing process footage and project updates.
Plastic in the lineup is a problem beyond aesthetics: microplastics and debris harm marine life and the spots we love. See Ocean Conservancy for recent data on plastics in the ocean.
Turning collected plastic into durable gear gives cleanups an immediate, tangible payoff: a fin forged from the same rubbish pulled off the sand.
How it works (the practical, proven bits)
The workflow being used by projects like this follows established, documented steps used by Precious Plastic and similar initiatives:
1. Collection: coordinated beach cleanups or community drives bring in mixed plastics.
2. Sorting & washing: plastics are separated by resin type and cleaned.
3. Shredding/grinding: a shredder reduces pieces to flakes for consistent melting.
4. Melting & forming: the plastic is melted and either compression- or injection-molded into fin blanks, then trimmed and finished.
Precious Plastic (the organisation) provides open-source machine designs and guides for shredders and small-scale injectors — see preciousplastic.com and their YouTube demonstrations for the techniques.
Real-world precedents
Commercial projects have already proven the basic concept: Bureo (recycled fishing nets into skateboard decks and other goods) and many other brands have incorporated ocean plastic into accessories.
What remains to be proven (and what to watch for)
– Performance parity: recycled fins need testing in the water against conventional blanks. Expect surfers and shapers to focus on flex, hold and longevity before widespread adoption. – Material consistency: mixed beach plastic varies — reliable resin sourcing and sorting are crucial to make reproducible fins. – Metrics & footprint: precise figures (for example, kilograms of plastic per fin or a product-level carbon comparison) are not yet published by this project and should be requested from the team. – Funding & timeline: a crowdfunding push is mentioned in community posts, but any specific launch date or campaign goal should be confirmed on the official campaign page before publishing as fact.
How you can we help right now
Join a cleanup locally and ask organisers how collected plastics will be handled.
Follow Precious Plastic to understand small-scale recycling workflows and to see machine demo.
Track the project lead’s updates for launch/crowdfunding announcements and test results.
Insider tips for surfers curious about recycled fins
– Ask for material specs and test data (flex/durometer, expected lifespan). – Look for transparency: brands that publish kg-of-plastic-per-product and an LCA (life-cycle analysis) are more credible. – If you’re a shaper or tech-minded surfer, study the Precious Plastic injection/compression guides before promising scale.
What followed was chaos distilled. Multiple surfers dropped in simultaneously from both sides of the peak. From George’s position on the shoulder, it was impossible to determine who actually had priority. The darkness swallowed the usual visual cues—hand signals, eye contact, the subtle body language that governs lineup etiquette in daylight.
Someone got snaked. Maybe multiple someones. In the dark, accountability vanishes. Frustration has nowhere to land.
George watched one more set arrive, one more scramble unfold, then turned his board toward shore.
January 12, 2026. Ocean Beach, San Francisco. The kind of day that reminds you why NorCal’s most notorious beach break has earned every ounce of its reputation.
DG Films captured the chaos—and the glory—in a seven-minute highlight reel that’s already making the rounds. Northwest swell energy stacked into the bay, conditions aligned, and OB turned on.
But who can argue that waves like this aren’t 100 percent worth it all?
Here’s what the clips don’t show you: the conveyor belt. OB’s lineup is relentless. You’re not sitting out there waiting for waves. You’re grinding. Paddling. Getting worked. Sometimes you’re rewarded with one ride every half hour. Your shoulders are screaming before you even catch your first barrel.
The surfers in this edit make it look effortless—wrapping around peaks, threading pits, outrunning closeouts that would swallow most of us whole. Behind every three-second clip is an hour of punishment in a fullsuit, fighting currents and duck-diving endless walls of Pacific whitewater.
That’s the tax. This footage is the payoff.
Watch the full DG Films edit above. Seven minutes of heavy NorCal beach break at its finest—raw, unforgiving, and absolutely worth every frozen, exhausted minute in the water. 
From weird to wonderful. Photo: Mason Ho // YouTube
The footage, posted to Ho’s 
Photo: Jamie O’Brien // YouTube
