Deeper: Brock Launders Meets The Right For The First Time

Filming by Scott Bauer and Chris White, editing by Hannah Anderson.

“It’s definitely different to watching it.”

18-year-old Brock Launders seems a calm sort of human. It’s actually a pretty common trait among surfers from south-west WA — they don’t rattle easily, which is just as well considering the places their surfing can take them. Brock grew up an avid competitor, winning a bunch of age group contests in his home State, but the pro tour dream wasn’t for him. Now he works as a refrigeration mechanic and waits for days like this one at The Right — mid-winter, cold and thick, where with the towing help of mentor Dan Ryan, he rode this ultra-sketchy place for the first time. “I don't know if (Dan) really thought I was being serious, and then I met up with him and told him I was keen, and he was like, Yeah, alright, we'll get you down there,” he tells us in this amazingly chill yet slightly horrifying clip.

“When I first got there, I was a bit intimidated by it, it was pretty big and probably some of the biggest waves I've seen. It's a bit more chill when you get out the back, ‘cause you can't see how big the waves really are. It feels like it's only 10 feet or something.”

But it isn’t, as Brock quickly found out. “I definitely remember it pretty clearly, getting smoked, and it's a pretty long hold down. I come up to the top and Dan was right there to pick me up and we go to grab the board and it was getting sucked into those rocks and I went to go jump and he's like, Nah, nah, nah, I've been on those rocks before. Don't do it. It's full of barnacles like that big.

“It's a totally different feeling to watching it than to actually doing it for sure. Like, you don’t realise how big it actually is till you're on the wave, and how fast you're going.”
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