With all the forecasts pointing to a dropping swell and swamped out early tides, I decided to go against all warnings of bad surf and go check out Imperial Beach early this morning. I was very happy to see one of those rare winter sights of 4-6 foot faces with plumes of mist shooting off the back of the waves from the offshore Santa Ana winds.

As I was slipping on my wet wetsuit, I spotted two halves of a ‘Safety Orange’ Rusty on the other side of the truck next to me. I struck up a conversation with the breaker of the board, his name was Wes. As it turns out, Wes was on the wave right behind the one above, and got clipped by the lip as he turned back up on his bottom turn. I saw him get clipped, but didn’t see his board break.

Well Wes, I know you loved your Rusty. But now you’re famous on the internet. That won’t buy you a new board. But you can claim some mad dog cred for shredding so hard, you broke your stick!

With the Billabong Pro at Teahupoo scheduling a lay day in order to score the cranking South Pac monster swell headed their way later in the week, I’ve been doing some itchy internet surfing for pictures to share with you here.

I found this great project put together by Christopher Anderson, who is chronicling his progress of collecting of 1000 broken surfboards to create the real thing of the above sketch at Garie Beach in New South Wales.

The intent is to bring awareness of the thousands of boards that are disposed of and put in landfills each year. I can totally get behind that. Christopher also blogs about ways to re-use those broken boards you have. Definitely check out his site, and throw him some cash so he can build his collection. He’s at 100 now. Check out his pile…