There’s a pervasive idea in professional sports that young players should be ready and willing to play long minutes. Call it a case of fresh blood, quicker recovery or youthful ignorance. In surfing, the ability to log more time in the water could be attributed to those factors. Or it could just be pure froth.
That’s what Ned Hart felt during and after his best session at the most mutated of waves, The Right, last week. After a four-hour drive, the West Australian arrived at the hallowed peak on May 27, the first time it’s broken properly in several years. With the forecasted wind mercifully holding off, Ned got after it with typical teenage stamina and spent seven hours in the water bagging waves with just a handful of crew on it.
Photo: Matt MacDonald
“You make one of these waves, and you just sit there in the channel,” Ned said. “That was the best wave of my life. It’s hard to explain. It’s so rattling.”
They start ‘em young in West Oz. At just 17 years old, Ned tackled The Right for his fourth time ever. Yet the Dunsborough native has poise and skill beyond his years in waves that will keep you brutally honest about both traits. Photographer Matt MacDonald was on scene to provide evidence of his monster marathon at a monster wave.
When Ned wasn’t packing pits, he whipped his tow partner Zac Haynes and even swam in the channel with his GoPro. It was a full day, and getting spat out on a 5’10” thruster from Pyzel multiple times would exhaust anybody, youth be damned.
“I had so much adrenaline,” Ned said. “I couldn’t sleep that night. The next day I was so downed. Not bummed, but just in the shock.”
It wasn’t the biggest and best The Right has produced, but the imagery is captivating nonetheless. The distance a surfer must come from behind the peak is staggering. Nobody copped a real flogging last week, Ned said. But it seems fitting that the wave with such a unique aesthetic has equally bizarre bathymetry below the surface.
Photo: Matt MacDonald
“I’ve had a wipeout there where I fell right on the peak,” Ned said. “It was crazy because I got super flogged for a second, then it went calm. I remember I got pinned to the reef. I pulled the canister, then I got lifted up the bottom, then rolled across the slab and then went down. It was like an underwater waterfall. It’s so weird. There’s so much water coming off that slab into deeper water.”
One of Australia’s finest slab aficionados, Ryan Hipwood, nearly died after getting pinned on the reef for two waves in 2012. He called the Right “the most dangerous wave in the world.” In a world where most heavy-water enthusiasts opt to push paddling limits, the Right remains the last bastion of a tow-only order.