Matuse Family Member Flynn Novak Wins ASP WQS 1-Star Macy’s E-Series
Flynn Novak takes down an impressive field of riders on his way to a victory at Ala Moana Bowls on the South Shore of Oahu. The waves were going off in what many are claiming the best ever contest held on the south side of the island. When every heat has riders dropping 9’s and 10’s you know the waves are good. Flynn stated “It’s really nice when it’s more about the riding rather than who catches the one wave of the heat”. Flynn has been traveling the globe on the WQS and his experience seems to be paying off. It’s a great win for Flynn. We’ll see if this momentum will help at the US Open of Surfing this week in Huntington Beach. For the full story visit the ASP World Tour’s website. Click Here.
Other notable for the contest was Matuse Family Member Daniel Jones. DJ finished Equal 7th with Kekoa Cazimero. Making the semi finals and collecting a cool $500 was a good showing for the local goofy footer. Daniel will also be headed to the US Open of Surfing at Huntington Beach.
VIDEO PREMIER: If you want to come hang with Flynn Novak and Daniel Jones be at the Huntington Beach Brewery on Main St., July 26 at 9pm. Marley Time Productions will be premiering their new surf film which includes Flynn Novak and Daniel Jones. Flynn will also be a guest bar tender serving his favorite concoctions throughout the night. It’ll be a fun filled night sure to add to your memory box.
For Jamie Sterling chasing huge waves around the globe is second nature. He studies the Internet and pinpoints when and where the biggest waves in the southern hemisphere will be, while the northern hemisphere is asleep for the summer. There are a lot of logistics to chasing big swells, and since many of the waves Jamie aspires to surf require the assistance of a Jet Ski he has to make sure there is always one available when he shows up. Jamie stated “Last year I arrived at Mavericks on the biggest day of the year and had arranged a jet ski thru a friend and he failed to deliver the ski. It was a very frustrating day for me and my tow partner, Troy Alotis, to sit and watch my dream scenario unfold without being able to surf. I’m over relying on other people…I figured out in LIFE it’s always best to be self sufficient. I never want to be on someone else’s time or agenda when the waves are giant.” Since then he has made it his mission to make sure that the same scenario does not happen again.
To be able to reach all the big wave spots along Americas west coast, Sterls and his partner Troy came up with a plan which will allow them to access every spot from Alaska to Mainland Mexico. Jamie stated “We bought a ‘93 Ford conversion van with a fold down bed in the back and comfortable enough seating for six passengers. Behind the van we are towing a double axle enclosed trailer that can hold a jet ski, tons of boards, and what ever else we want”. From their home in Hawaii Sterls and Troy will be able to leave at the drop of a hat to chase the biggest swells the Pacific Ocean produces. These swells more often than not end up being the biggest on the West coast of America. Jamie 
stated “I plan on surfing anywhere the conditions and swell will favor. I’m looking forward to exploring new spots that I have not yet surfed, ranging from northern Baja all the way up to the frigid waters of Alaska”. While Jamie and Troy’s idea is to keep the van based in central California, the first objective was to take the set up on a serious maiden voyage. Half of this voyage involved driving across a major portion of the U.S. and deep down into Mainland Mexico, ultimately arriving at Puerto Escondido. The plan for the summer is to leave the “Magnum Mobile Wave Chaser” in Puerto until November, when Jamie plans to drive it back up the coast and station it in Central California.
Jamie has been visiting Puerto since he was 16 and has made it his summertime home base. “It’s a lot like Hawaii” Jamie says. “It’s big and barreling, and every so often it gets too big to paddle into”. Back in 2006 Jamie had the opportunity to sample some truly giant Puerto. With the help of friend and fellow Red Bull athlete Coco Nogales, Jamie was towed into waves that up to that point were arguably the largest ever ridden at the infamous beach break. It’s been two years now and Jamie has been anticipating the next huge swell. Jamie stated “I’m going to be ready. At the end of this trip my ski will be there with all my gear, and when the waves come, Ill be on it!”. On this maiden voyage Sterls invited “Cabo” Charlie Stevens, a 20 year old who grew up in Cabo San Lucas and now resides in Carlsbad, and my self, a freelance videographer/photographer/surfer from the Big Island of Hawaii. Here is how the trip has unfolded so far….
The handy man that worked at that particular motel came over while we were looking at the engine and offered to help us fix it. This was the weirdest little town ever and we were real skeptical of this guy “Johnny” who offered to help us. We didn’t have many options since there was only one mechanic in the whole town and it was Saturday eve and EVERYTHING was closed on Sundays. After some serious deliberation we decided to trust Johnny and took the van over to his house. This was the most classic and memorable part of the trip. Johnny’s house was composed of a small cluster of Adobe shacks, which his elderly father whom we befriended had lived in his entire life. While Johnny wrenched on the van we spent hours talking story with Pops about all kinds of things and had our first opportunity to practice our Spanish. In the late afternoon this huge storm came rolling down the mountains, across the plains, and right onto us. It started as a huge wall of dust like you would see in old movies, dark brown and probably a thousand feet tall, being pushed by a super strong wind, similar to hurricane force winds in Hawaii. After everything including us was covered in dust it started raining super hard and it started flooding all around the house. Johnny and his dad weren’t fazed at all, but we were all tripping, agreeing that it was the strangest weather any of us had experienced. We stayed there in Lordsburg until the evening of the next day and hit the road again, driving across the majority of Texas and ultimately arriving in Corpus Christie.
The city of Corpus Christie is in the southern most part of Texas, right on the water in the gulf. Upon arriving we realized the Oil leak was happening again, and Jamie decided to take the van into the Ford dealership to get it fixed correctly. Luckily we had a friend in Corpus and she put us up at her place while the van was being worked on. It ended up taking the Ford place 5 days to finish the van so we had days and days of cruising in the hottest place ever! It actually ended up being a lot of fun staying there because the pad we were staying in was a 5 bedroom, 3 story house with central A/C and was situated right on a canal with its own private boat dock. 
We put the Red Bull jet ski that we were hauling into the water and had it docked in front of the house the whole time. We did a bunch of fun stuff with the ski, wake boarding, towing with regular surfboards, whipping each other around on an inner-tube, and I also got to learn how to drive a jet ski for the first time. We also got to surf some real Texan waves, only 2 foot but surfable, and real fun for the standup paddleboard Jamie had also packed into the trailer. After some good ol times in Texas, and with the van in tip top shape, we were ready for the next part of our journey.
Once we hit the road and crossed the boarder in Brownsville, a constant feeling of anxiety kicked in for all of us. We had been hearing all kinds of crazy stories about traveling through Mexico so we were all on our toes the whole time. We instantly ran into some problems at the boarder with paper work stuff but once we got through that it was just a bunch of reading maps, asking people for directions and trying to figure out what roads to take. The roads in Mexico varied from the worst one lane roads filled with deep potholes I have ever seen, to the smoothest, wide, freshly paved roads (these were the toll roads, or Cuotas, some of which cost us as much as $40 to travel on). The toll roads were a savior because they would stretch for many miles without having to go through all the little towns, which had these tedious speed bumps they call Tope’s. Since we were towing a fairly large double axle trailer behind us which was hauling around 3000 pounds, we would have to slow down to literally 1 mph and let each set of wheels slowly go over the Topes one at a time. Each town had anywhere from one to ten or twelve tope’s, and they would appear out of nowhere, so there was a lot of hard braking going on last minute style!
We stayed in one large city along the way called Vera Cruz, which reminded me of a Mexican version of Honolulu. Vera Cruz is a major tourist destination for all the local Mexicans, and pretty much everyone there was on vacation. It was a very unique city with a real festive atmosphere along its oceanfront. The outskirts of the city were paved with cell like housing for the poor. These barrios were the largest I’ve ever seen, rolling on for miles and miles out away from the city. Thousands and thousands of people living in these tiny concrete structures that were all crammed together side by side and were virtually identical. Seeing that made me so, so, so, grateful to be from where I’m from, and to live where I live!
Just outside of Vera Cruz we encountered an awesome toll road that was straight and fast, and on this road we were able to make way better time than we had expected. We left Vera Cruz at about 8 am, which was on the Gulf side of Mexico, and made it to Salina Cruz, on the Pacific side, by mid afternoon. At that point we realized that we were only about 6 hours away from our final destination, Puerto Escondido, and we collectively decided to push into the night and keep driving. We arrived at Puerto at about 11:00 p.m., after 15 hours plus of driving. We went straight to a late night taco stand for dinner, and then out to a nightclub called Cabo Blanco, which rages on Monday nights, and coincidentally it was Monday night. We hung out until closing, and then Jamie had a few friends come over to our new pad and we finally got to unpack the “MMWC”(Magnum Mobile Wave Chaser).
After days and days on the road it felt so good to be able to spread out all our gear, and start to organize all the great stuff we had brought along with us. The trailer had safely transported a jet ski, beach trailer, nearly 40 surfboards, a stand up paddle board, fiberglass and resin for the local shapers, a barbecue, various food items, chairs, an umbrella, Jamie’s Kettle Bells he uses for training, all my camera gear and a bunch of other random accessories.
We have all felt very at home here in Puerto, with such spacious accommodations and good friends around. “The quality of life in Puerto Escondido is top notch,” says Jamie. “One of my favorite things about this place is going uptown to the local outdoor marketplace”. The market has a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, and all kinds of things you don’t find in the states. Our daily diet here in Mex consists of fruit smoothies every morning, fresh salsa, beans, rice, tortillas, ect. It has been a real treat to have our own kitchen and to be able to cook our own meals at home with all the fresh ingredients the market has to offer.
It is now July 16th and we are all psyching on the new approaching swell. Early this morning Sterls and I ran way up the beach and Jamie surfed his own private reeling left sandbar barrel. It was like a quarter of the length of desert point, but all sand. Sterls got some of the longest 3-4 foot sandbar tubes he’s gotten all year.
Dear fellow watermen and women of the world,
Matuse Family Member, Flynn Novak, reflects on WQS happenings in Brazil
By John V. Campbell
Matuse team rider Chris Del Moro joins Dave Rastavich and crew in Chile to promote the wellbeing of marine mammals globally. Visit the official website to follow what’s been going on.
May 2008
“As a surf photographer and surfer dedicated to shooting in the colder reaches of the surfing world, I’ve tried almost every single wetsuit out there to find one that would work well and keep me warm in those cold but epic days. I have been wearing Matuse suits for the last year ( a 5/4/3 for those extemely cold days and a 4/3/2 for everything else) and since the first time I put one on, I have refused to wear anything else. The reason is simple: they work and feel amazing!