Inspiration
Meet the people who weave life into the fabric of surfing. We profile interesting characters with an amazing story and an obsession with the ocean. Read about up and coming surfers and crusty old locals who smell like billy goats and ride single fins. If they have a story to tell, you’ll find them in here. Come and be inspired by artists, business gurus and thought leaders in our well of inspiration.
Bringing a new wetsuit brand into New Zealand was never going to be easy, but that didn’t deter Simon Clowes and Cian Sullivan – the duo behind C-Skins here in New Zealand. Simon jokes that he and Cian could be father and son. While there is a 25-year gap between......
When Torren Martyn and Aiyana Powell borrowed the 35ft sailing boat ‘Calypte’ and departed from the east coast of Thailand in early 2022, they had a combined sailing experience of only a few days. Ishka Folkwell documented that journey. The one requirement of their charter was to eventually deliver the......
New Zealand’s Oscar Hetherington has won the world’s most prestigious surf photography contest, when it was announced that he had won the Follow The Light Surf Photography Grant award a few days ago at Laguna Beach, California. The awards are held each year to honour the late Larry “Flame Moore,......
Isolated beaches with no one in sight. Dreamy barrels curving onto a perfectly shaped volcanic reef. Amazing food for the price of next to nothing. And now Jack McLeod is being precariously lifted onto a wooden tuk-tuk boat with his left arm painfully protruding from its socket, muscles throbbing in......
One of New Zealand’s finest collections of classic Kiwi surfboards and surfing memorabilia – held in a private collection – is being offered for sale. The collection, stored in a hangar at Tauranga Airport, centres on more than 130 surfboards, both longboards and short boards, most in excellent condition. It......
“More and more I find myself talking to the sea,” admits poet Terry Fitzgibbon, whose latest work, Salt, Coastal Connections is a 160-page love letter to the sea. Mark “Curly” Thomas gets his hands on a preview copy of this impressive body of work. As surfers, we are drawn to......
While the surf industry seems to be in a slump, Backdoor’s Geoff Hutchison remains cautiously optimistic as he opens his 25th and biggest store in Dunedin. We caught up with the 60-year-old ripper and surf business guru to learn a bit about what’s going on in the surf industry right......
The Backdoor Team of Billy Stairmand, Paul Moretti, Jay Piper-Healion, Caleb Cutmore, Taylor Hutchison and Darren Celliers immerse themselves in southern waves … and marathon sessions. Filmmaker Isaac Chadwick and photographer Derek Morrison are on hand to capture the antics, fin blows and air revs … and they hardly miss......
Kehu Butler and Billy Stairmand bow out of the 2023 Challenger Series with narrow Round of 64 exits at the final stop of the tour, the Saquarema Pro held in Brazil. More and more the Challenger Series is looking way closer to the Championship Tour than it is to any......
A self-described “Average Joe”, Leigh Sullivan, shares his journey from Burleigh Heads to Mount Maunganui as a pre-teen, and his exacting discovery of surfing, which led him around the world and eventually to the Mentawais 45 years later. I was 11 years old when we moved from Burleigh Heads in......