Australia's premier surfing website, Coastalwatch, recently ran an extract from Chapter 9 of Deep Water (Whitecaps & Windsocks) as a travel feature. The extract charts an excursion to Iceland, driven by that obsessive wave-hunter, legendary surf photographer Ted Grambeau. Ted passed through his old home state of Victoria a few weeks back, catching the biggest swell in recent memory and witnessing his Old Navy Blues cop a good old-fashioned shellacking at the hands of Adelaide in the final round of the AFL home-and-away season (Ted was a teenage football star for the Wonthaggi Blues before a knee injury ended his career). Ted and I passed like ships in the night. On Thursday, August 27, while he disappeared down the coast with Maurice Cole, Tony Ray, Ross Clarke-Jones & co, I managed to snag a couple of bombs at Bells Beach. It was big and cold and grey, and I was under-gunned and outclassed by a man with no fins (Derek Hynd) and another riding a surfboard his Dad shaped back in the 70s (Kye Fitzgerald on the same board that Hawaii's Bobby Owens rode at Bells Beach in 1981).
And then winter ended.
