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This water-angle photo of me hitting the lip was taken by one of my best friends and my co-creator of Rare Breed Magazine, Joe Marzullo. This was at Lawrencetown Point in Nova Scotia in early September of 1997'. Air high 70's low 80's, water temp around 62F. By the 3rd full day of wave after wave in razor-perfect, chest to overhead surf I was in the zone and had what I feel was one of the top few personal sessions of my life in regards to performance. I had the perfect board for my size and style for those waves. It was a 6'4" Spectrum Rocket Fish of which I'd do anything to have a carbon copy made of it today.
The highlight moment for me was the one session going wave-for-wave with Brian Hewittson from FL, and at one point he came down the line and set up perfectly to crack the lip in just the right spot to slap me directly in the face with his fan of spray ... so as I was paddling out laughing going "Oh yeah?!?!", sure enough as a set came in I spun around got a few pumps from the take off to get speed and the looked down the line and sure enough there he was paddling back out from his wave and right in the perfect spot for me to lean as hard as I could in to a square, compressed bottom turn and hurl myself at the lip with everything I had and blasted the back off the wave and right over him. Take that! Redemption! hahaa ... Years later at one of the Belmar Pro's I approached him and we had a laugh about it (and he coincidentally won it that year), but in that moment at L-Town in 96', as far as I was concerned, it was I who won that imaginary "heat"! ;-)
