Realwatersports.com is our retail partner, and it's also where you can browse and fantasize

about your next surfboard purchase. They have a 1,500 board inventory, including a lot of boards

that today's guest, Michael Sierra Mella, has reviewed. JS's, the Hayden Shapes, Paisels,

and then a lot of small batch collaboration boards with the likes of Roger Hines, Maurice Cole,

Chris Christensen, and they actually do their own surfboard reviews that are excellent.

The guys in the videos may not surf as well as Mikey surfs, but they are very

informative. They're a great single stop on the internet to gather a bunch of information about

a bunch of different surfboards. Their staff is really mainly interested in getting you

on the right board for your ability level and your local waves. So contact them, peruse realwatersports.com. Of course, they're located

in North Carolina, but they can ship surfboards to you anywhere in the world for one low, flat

fee. So realwatersports.com for your next board and all your surf accessory needs. Enjoy.

Welcome back to the show. I hope that you're enjoying this pipe event. We have a couple of phenomenal days behind us, and it looks like we have even more incredible days ahead for both the

men and the women. It really is shaping up to be a historic event. But until we get there, in the meantime, we are bringing you a conversation with someone who actually just got back from Hawaii,

Stab Magazine's resident surfboard reviewer, writer, content wrangler, Michael Sierra Mella.

Michael and I rarely ever communicate, but we surf together at Surf Ranch back in 2017.

I don't think we've actually spoken since nor seen one another, but I track all of his work.

I watch his surfboard reviews. He and I both have podcasts. But there was something that he posted

on Instagram recently that prompted me to invite him on this show.

He posted a clip of himself surfing Yamea Bay.

And he had previously posted a clip of himself snagging a gem at Pipeline.

And with each of these posts, in the caption he wrote a little description about the

fear and the feelings surrounding those sessions. And I thought that they offered the perspective of, you know, where I sit, having not surfed those waves,

...