Childhood Dreams and Diarrhoea in Surf City
Team Canada and the 2023 World Longboard Championships in El Salvador
“Re: ISA World Longboard - Decision Required ASAP”
I stared at the email in my inbox for a moment. It was from Dom Domic, the president of Surf Canada at the time.
After a 4th place finish in Longboarding at the 2023 CANAM Contest in Tofino, I was preparing to head back to Nova Scotia for the summer season.
The top two men and women in the Longboard division would be eligible to represent Team Canada in El Salvador for the World Longboard Championships. Unbeknownst to me, of the three guys that finished ahead of me, two absolute rippers Jeffrey Spencer and Micheal Darling had prior commitments and couldn’t make it to El Salvador.
“Thank you for your email - that’s incredible. I’m 100% in.” Sent. I jumped and screamed and ran around the room. I cry-laughed and thumped the table with clenched fists.
A Copper medal at 2023 CANAM nationals in Tofino was my key to El Salvador. Photo: Marie Egert
The Team
Team Canada at El Sunzal. From left, David Schiaffino, Liv Stokes, Claire Parsons and myself
Liv Stokes, from California but with Canadian roots, is a super-talented surfer and fierce competitor who has represented Canada during the 2019 Championships in Biarittz and numerous other international events. With her quiet, laser focus, she has consistently proven herself as one of Team Canada's most experienced and accomplished competitors.
Check out one of her heats here at 6:05:00
Liv Stoked showing poise with 5 dogs over the nose.
Claire Parsons is a true Nova Scotian local who has perfected her noseriding skills at the famed Lawrencetown Point. Also a natural and experienced competitor, Claire takes a good-humoured yet no-BS approach to her surfing and contest strategy.
Check out her heat here at 2:43:00
Claire Parsons walking the walk at El Sunzal. Photo: Jersson Barboza
David Schiaffinno is a Peruvian-born Canadian who embodies passion. Surfing against him in the CANAMs, he was in a league of his own throughout. As a teammate, he was an epic role model. He lives in Ucluelet with his family, making surfboards and delicious poke bowls at West Coast Shapes at the Highway 4 junction.
Watch him here at 9:20:00
David Schiaffino perched and proud
Known for his passion for longboarding, Dom Domic, longtime CSA president, was our faithful team manager, and Dominique Stokes came in clutch as the team mom!
Dom (left) lead Surf Canada for years, focussing on running the Nationals in Tofino every year, accompanying Team Canada to international events and achieving Olympic pathway goals.
The Wave
Playa El Tunco, a.k.a Surf City, El Salvador, is a perfect surfing amphitheatre. A steep, volcanic headland forms the point of El Sunzal: a long, righthand break that runs into the black sand beach due south, where it detonates in a thumping wall onto the sand. Just to the south, La Bocana is another world-class wave, and the abundance of good surf seems to continue beyond that, too.
Video by @humanocine
On a good wave at El Sunzal, you can ride about 200 yards from the outside peak to shore, with perfect noseride sections, cutting back to the inside reform, where you wait for a bonus section for more turns and noserides. Then comes the death closeout, which could offer a dramatic end-section crowd-pleaser or a board-snapping implosion onto dry sand. Choose wisely.
Rodrigo Sphaier of Brazil outruns the shorebreak guillotine. Photo: Jersson Barboza
The team arrived a few days before the contest so that we could practice on the wave. The morning routine looked like this:
5 am - Wake up before first light, coffee, warm-up and get ready to walk out to El Sunzal from our accom in the town of El Tunco.
5.30 am - get in the water for an early session.
7.30 am - Breakfast, review any footage or photos from the photographers and videographers and plan for a later session to keep the practice going. The goal was to prepare for the comp and get familiar with the wave, but not burn ourselves out before it all started.
El Sunzal offered sheet-glass surface conditions and perfect sixc-foot surf each morning. As we paddled out, so did many other teams, and the line-up was some 30-strong by 6 am. Fortunately, there always seemed to be loads of waves coming through.
The solid surf in which CANAMs were held at Cox Bay Beach proved to be good preparation for the power of El Sunzal. Nonetheless, I took off on a wave on my first session and was caught too deep by a breaking section. The lip landed on me, sending me straight into the trough. During the wipeout, the wave force hyperextended my 9ft leash into a 12ft leash.
When faced with a set wave at El Sunzal, the turtle roll was ineffective in penetrating through such powerful water. I learned to catapult my board over the top of the waves, by forcing it down under the water and releasing it so that it shot up and into the air, while I simultaneously dove underneath to escape the roaring foamball. When timed well, you would surface next to your board, having dodged the wave entirely.
Julian Schweizer demonstrating the catapult! Photo: Jersson Barboza
Over the following ten days, the little cove inside of the point would become a graveyard of longboards, floating in pieces to the beach like broken tombstones. Photo: Jersson Barboza
Atalanta Bautista of Brazil on a classic El Sunzal wall. Photo: Jersson Barboza
During those warm-up sessions, the outside peak became the scene of the most filthy noseriding I have ever witnessed. Perched, 10-toes over the nose atop 8ft sections, rippers like Carlos Bahia, Eduaord Del Pero, Chloe Calmon and many others displayed surfing forever seared in my cerebral cortex.
Dorian Quesada of Costa Rica in a stunning capture by Pablo Jimenez
The Contest
From the 8th - 13th of May, the tournament ran classic 4-person, 20-minute-long heats, with the top 2 scoring surfers advancing from each heat. The ISA runs a “Repechage” format, giving all competitors a second chance to escape elimination. With 64 competitors in each division, surfers must advance through 5 main rounds or 8 repechage rounds to reach the Finals.
I would be going up against some of the best longboarders in the world, many of whom have professional support teams and years of experience. My goal was to surf to the best of my ability and learn as much as I could from the process.
Game Faces On.
Checking the team rosters and heat draws, I saw names of surfers I’d idolized and watched for years.
You can catch all the replay action here,
Check out my first heat at around the 2:00:00 mark of Day 1, where I placed 3rd behind Brazil and Costa Rica. Though this meant that I would go on to compete in the Repechage round I was happy to get some connected rides with multiple maneuvers.
Check out my Repechage 1 heat at the 3:30:00 Mark on day 2, where I snuck the first wave from underneath local ripper Amado Alvarado, and used my priority positioning as a strategy at the end of the heat to secure my 2nd place spot into Repechage round 2.
I was stoked to get a few clean noserides during my heats. Photo: Jerrson Barboza
By now, we had been in El Salvador for over a week, and my stomach was gurgling… it must have been the squid tacos.
On Day 4 of the contest, in the Repechage 2 heat (check the 5:00:00 mark) I was ultimately eliminated in the Repechage 2 round, losing out to Jomarie Ebueza of the Philipines and Surfiel Gil of Argentina and inching ahead of Abdel Sahal of Ireland, who got caught in a gnarly situation, ending up needing a jet-ski assist when the longshore current swept him way down the beach, trapping him in a section where the waves broke as ten-foot walls.
On my first wave, I connected all the way into the death closeout section, kicking out safely before it detonated, only to see another bigger 8ft closeout rearing up in front of me. Out of frame, I scratched towards it, hoping to escape the guillotine force of the lip. Too late.
The wave lurched up and engulfed me, throwing me back, upside down, clutching my board, straight into the black sand. Throttled. Board and body somehow intact, I regained myself and sprint-paddled back out, watching to my right as Jomaire locked into a statuesque hang-ten on the inside section, with Surfiel following suit on the wave right after him.
It was at this point that I realized I was screwed: these guys were world-class, and it would be nothing short of a miracle to beat them. I readjusted my expectations to focus on building my score, using “safe” surfing to solidify my 3rd place position.
It was at this point that Abdel of Team Ireland caught a wave through to the inside section and was sucked in a current towards a rocky outcrop near La Bocana. The shore break wave there was potentially life-threatening. Though unhurt, Abdel needed a swift Jet-ski rescue from the water safety team.
Holding on to 3rd place, I would bow out this round, securing an equal 33rd place out of 62 competitors. I came in on my last wave as the buzzer sounded. I trembled and smiled. My shoulders dropped as I took a deep breath into my belly.
Judges rewarded you for riding your waves all the way from the outside peak to the inside shorebreak sections. Photo: Pablo Jimenez
With the pressure off my own performance, I supported the remaining teammates by cheering them on and being a board caddy as they battled through their heats.
Caddying involves paddling out during my teammates’ heat on a backup board, to a buoy in the channel just outside of the surf break. If they broke or lost their board in the heaving surf, I would be waiting in the channel with their backup, much closer than a swim into shore. This would save vital seconds, as the clock does not stop for surfers who have lost their equipment.
After a full day of running in and out of the water to support David and Liv as they charged their way through the Day 5 rounds, I sat out in the channel, and my guts were stirring.
When I realized this next bowel movement wouldn’t wait, I made sure the Jet-Ski safety patrol was out of sight. I then jumped off my board and dropped my shorts, unleashing hell into the warm Pacific waters. Thank god that the drones flying over the contest site for the live stream didn't pan out at that moment.
By finals day, the rest of the team had been eliminated, and my gastrointestinal turmoil had somewhat subsided. We could all relax and treat ourselves to a spectacle of the world’s best longboarders performing at the world’s best longboard wave.
Benoit Clemente of Peru giving us a show. Photo: Pablo Jimenez
Alice Lemoigne of France, with poise and control. Photo: Jerrson Barboza
Reflections and Thanks
I have dreamt of competing on the international stage for my entire life. First, it was skateboarding when I dreamed of competing in the Xgames as a child. As a teenager, I started climbing and entered numerous contests, aiming for the national junior contest but not quite getting there.
The same competitive hunger took hold when I started surfing at 19. I was well behind much of the competition and spent most of my twenties getting dusted by groms. But where I had given up and not pushed through my plateaus in Skateboarding and Climbing, I took what I had learned and persisted in Surfing. Dreams come true, but it won't pan out how you expect it to.
Everyone poured their heart into this event. Carlos Bahia from Brazil was an inspiring one to watch. Photo: Jerrson Barboza
This year, our efforts in El Salvador brought Team Canada to 11th Place, the best Longboard results in our country’s history. All this with a mostly unfunded team, with only two weeks’ notice to train and prepare.
Thank you to my teammates, who are all role models to me. And to Dom, thank you for running the show at Surf Canada for so many years.
Thank you to KT Surfing for supporting me in the Canadian Nationals and Worlds by setting me up with an awesome surfboard, the KT Yardstick.
Thank you to grom Juniper Balch for starting a gofundme campaign on my behalf, and to everyone who donated.
Thank you to Sport Nova Scotia for funding Claire Parsons and me, and thank you to Toby at Surf Nova Scotia for helping facilitate that.
Finally, thank you to everyone who sent messages of love and support. You have no idea how much of a difference it made to me and still to this day when I reflect on that glorious adventure.
