After a surfboard drive led by California-based foundation Positive Vibe Warriors, the future of Jamaican surfing is looking brighter than ever.
Ivah Wilmot’s sun-bleached dreadlocks dangle over a pile of surfboards as the 19-year-old bends down to pick up a groveler with a green, gold, and red stomp pad. It’s a wide-nosed Sharp Eye—probably no bigger than a 5'6", by the look of it under his taut, chiseled arm. The deck is covered with craters and the rails have a few patched dings, but by Jamaican standards, the board is mint.
“An American surfer named Tyrone gave this to me when he was visiting,” Ivah tells me, holding the board out in front of him for us both to examine. He’s shirtless with an oversized shark-tooth pendant hanging from his neck. “He noticed I didn’t have a fresh board, and he was like, ‘Oh, mon, you rip. Take this.’”
Looking for relief from the sweltering Jamaican sun, I had asked Ivah to show me his quiver in Jamnesia Surf Camp’s boardroom. Jamnesia was started along the south coast of the island by Ivah’s father, Jamaican surfing legend and prominent reggae musician Billy “Mystic” Wilmot. Ivah and his four older siblings learned to surf the wave-speckled shores outside Kingston and quickly became the island’s top talent, winning both domestic and international competitions in their respective age groups. Ivah is part of Jamaica’s new generation of rippers, with a style that pays homage to the knock-kneed, light-footed comportment of Craig Anderson or Rob Machado.
Inside Jamnesia’s boardroom, the sun seeps in through shuttered windows, silhouetting a library of aging boards scattered throughout the room. A beige Channel Islands short board with weather-beaten full traction leans against the wall, pummeled with pressure dings and patched back together in two different places. Yellowed single-fins and heavily rockered ’90s chips hang from the ceiling alongside a few stubby twin-fins with wide tails thick with resin from repair jobs.
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Esta historia es de la edición November 2016 de Surfer.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
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60 Years Ahead
We had a whole plan for this year. Funny, right? Surfer's 60 year anniversary volume was going to be filled with stories nodding to SURFER’s past, with cover concepts paying homage to the magazine’s most iconic imagery. Our new Page One depicts something that’s never happened in surfing before, let alone on a prior SURFER cover. And our table of contents was completely scrapped and replaced as we reacted to the fizzing, sparking, roiling world around us. In other words, 2020 happened to SURFER, just like it happened to you.
A Few Things We Got Horribly Wrong
You don’t make 60 years of magazines without dropping some balls. Here are a few
THE LGBTQ+ WAVE
Surf culture has a long history of marginalizing the LGBTQ+ community, but a new generation of queer surfers is working to change that
For Generations to Come
Rockaway’s Lou Harris is spreading the stoke to Black youth and leading surfers in paddling out for racial justice
Christina Koch, 41
Texas surfer, NASA astronaut, record holder for the longest continuous spaceflight by a woman
END TIMES FOR PRO SURFING
By the time the pandemic is done reshaping the world, will the World Tour still have a place in it?
CHANGING OF THE GUARD
After decades of exclusive access to Hollister Ranch, the most coveted stretch of California coast is finally going public
What They Don't Tell You
How does becoming a mother affect your surfing life?
Four Things to Make You Feel A Little Less Shitty About Everything
Helpful reminders for the quarantine era
The Art of Being Seen
How a group of black women are finding creative ways to make diversity in surfing more visible