Jimmy Buffett and Kelly Slater are old friends. They’re an odd couple, but Kelly has mates in all sorts of strange and rarefied places. I once met Buffett at a surf contest in France. He turned up to watch Kelly surf. No entourage, just Jimmy. We talked. He shared some swashbuckling stories from some hard drinking days. The man credited with creating the genre of pirate rock indeed seemed a bit of a pirate himself.
Buffett has a famous track called Pirate Looks at 40. The song is about a guy Buffett met in the Full Moon Saloon in Key West – a guy named Phil Clark – who in a previous life, amongst adventures had smuggled dope through the Caribbean. The track is Clark’s lament about turning 40. He dreams of being a real pirate, instead of a less salty, modern-day in-carnation. Clark marks his birthday by getting shitfaced for two weeks. He feels his days of living – like, really living – are over. After 40 he was just marking time.
Kelly Slater recently turned 50 and marked the occasion by winning at Pipeline, beating a surfer less than half his age. There was no lament from Kelly. No two-week rock-bottom binge. He just paddled out at Pipe and won a contest he’d first won as a 20-year-old. He won on instinct and muscle memory, but there was also a touch of the old gamesmanship. In his semi, Kelly’s opponent took off at Pipe, only to find Kelly already on his feet, surfing toward him, going right.
The fact that Kelly won at Pipeline wasn’t remarkable. Not for Kelly, anyway. Even at 50, there are only a handful of surfers alive who can go with him out there. No, the more remarkable thing – you’d reckon – was that he didn’t walk away from the tour, right then. A more perfect moment to go out on top will never present itself. But to think Kelly would actually consider retiring at 50 would be to fundamentally misunderstand what makes Kelly tick. He’s not done. He’ll never be done. The old Ellroy maxim comes to mind. Closure is bullshit. Kelly will surf forever.
The signs of what Kelly would become were there early. That first Pipeline win, 30 years ago, was Kelly’s first year on tour and the dinosaurs were watching the asteroid shoot across the sky. Suddenly here was this kid who not only didn’t drink but could bend himself backwards and walk around like a spider. Kelly looked after his body, but also his state of mind. After winning a sixth world title he walked away from the tour for three years. He came back even better.
Kelly tells a great story about inviting Andy Irons over to watch him make his own almond milk. Their rivalry had cooled by this stage, but of course Andy didn’t show. By this stage Andy was on a different program that didn’t involve almond milk. Kelly was genuinely confused though why he didn’t turn up. This was important knowledge. In his prime, Andy had challenged Kelly like no other, but in time, as the genuine challengers fell away, Kelly began to compete against himself.
And then he started competing against time.
As Kelly’s life has played out, he’s increasingly devoted himself to surfing. Afforded the time and resources, he’s been free to see where this can go. Chase swells to Cloudbreak. Live on the beach at Pipe. Build a wavepool. Everything in his life has been calibrated toward surfing better, longer. In recent years the tour has simply become a validation of this, a measure of how he’s going.
Such obsession comes at a cost. It’s hard to live a balanced life when surfing counterweights so heavily. Kelly openly talks about the sacrifices he’s made to dedicate himself this fully to surfing. Other parts of his life have suffered, and as unimpeachable as he’s been in the water, he’s been fallible out of it. Kelly is in Australia right now, but not before making the front pages, dangling the prospect that he wasn’t vaccinated against Covid and that he knew “more about being healthy than 99 per cent of doctors”. He turned up late to Bells after contracting the virus back in the States.
When Kelly’s surfing legacy is weighed up however, this stuff will just blow away. Kelly’s real surfing legacy will also go far beyond the numbers; the wins and world titles. It’ll go beyond the big shifts with his fingerprints on them; the wavepools and the Olympics.
No, cast your eyes around any busy lineup, anywhere in the world on any day of the week, and you’ll see Kelly’s real legacy. There are more 50-year-olds in the water today than 15-year-olds. The shift is societal – we’re living better, longer – but all of those 50-year-olds have at some point marvelled at Kelly surfing and seen themselves vicariously in there, if only for a brief second. They feel hope. They can’t see a day when they won’t be surfing. Kelly has kept the flame burning for them.
Phil Clark died mysteriously. His body washed up on a beach north of San Francisco and his ashes sit on the cash register at the Full Moon Saloon. At this point it remains unclear whether Kelly plans on ever dying. He certainly doesn’t plan on giving up surfing.
So at 50 there are no laments from Kelly. He’s already lived a pirate’s life on the high seas, fuelled on almond milk instead of rum, free to plunder surf from one horizon to the other. And he’s far from done. If he’s winning Pipe at 50, what’s 60 look like? I’m sure he’s already thinking about it. – SEAN DOHERTY
