approached the resort next door hopeful of scoring a boat. “There is only room for five of ya and it’s 80 Tala (40 Aussie) per head,” we were informed. We flagged the offer and went back to drinking in our fales. Oh well, our intentions were good.

By our final days in Samoa things couldn’t appear to get much worse. It did indeed seem like the Devil had cursed us for allowing Hippo one good wave. But Samoa is full of surprises, and all the boys kept their eye on the Black Knight Awards prize. “It could be worse,” Craig’ Anderson explained to the group one night while a few of us prayed to the Samoan god for waves. “The island’s beautiful and life’s pretty damn chilled over here.” As the BKII crew debated the pros and cons of Samoa, I slipped out of the fale and walked to the edge of the lagoon. Picking up the nearest coconut I pegged it into the water and prayed we’d get a session to make this first BKII feature worthy of printing in a mag...

Halle-fuckin-lujah! I dunno if that Samoan god was tired of eavesdropping in on all our gay whimpering or my constant coconut-throwing prayers got through, but he delivered in on our final 72 hours. I mean, it wasn’t epic, but a damn-sight better than we’d seen over the past week. About five kays west of Coconuts we discovered a twofoot righthand rip-bowl with unlimited potential when the wind, swell and tide all aligned. The bigger built Goldy boys (Hippo and Hazza) and the lone goofy (Craig) were, to be frank, struggling. But where they failed the other boys reigned supreme.

Ricardo was at home in the lacklustre conditions as was Woody, Walshy and Brenno. The boys wet their rails and boosted to the sky every