A weekend full of almost more crowd surfing than surfing. 

Jam packed with playful A-frame peaks, a whole program of film premiere’s, a (responsible) amount of Pacifico’s, 1 am Waffle Houses, and sheltering from a hurricane holding our Florida friends close. 

Back for it’s 6 year, it’s no stroke of luck that Ashton Goggan’s dubbed the Loggerhead Classic “The Best Longboard Comp in the World” in a recent Surfer Magazine article. Founding father Justin Quintal shot for the stars this year and landed in a galaxy full of logs and live music, expanding the competition to a three day endeavor, each day with an afterparty event bigger than the last.

In order to not only accurately recap everything that unfolded for this blog’s sake, but my personal memory, here’s a breakdown of our boots on the ground each day. 

Day 1 of competition was met with some classic Jacksonville waves, fun and glassy waist high runners breaking off the pier. Although we were already all sunburnt by 9am, it was a perfect first day of competition and great to reunite with all the familiar faces from last year. Luckily only a couple heats suffered from mid-day onshore surges and left the last remaining heats of the day with some offshore breezes before the later rain.

As Friday wrapped, people started to recuperate and head towards the first event of this year's festival, a night full of film premieres at VooSwar. 

A completely packed house on opening night, with five different films being shown. Starting off with a classic Malibu episode of Saxon Wilson, presented by Katin, following by a vibey edit by James Palazarro, which erupted into Luca Aza’s Indo scorcher "Twin Skin" filled with big blue barrels, bintangs, and bike accidents, proceeded by a dramatic, 16mm film feature of "WANTED", with Cormac O’Brien’s displaying some of today’s quickest and most entertaining logging (created by yours truly), and of course LogRap’s Ryan Cannon closing out the night with a banger of an edit recapping last years Loggerhead, late summer Southern California swells, and what the hell happened with Hawaiian Airlines and Joel Tudor.

The night ended in a healthy amount of head bobbing to Airtight, an incredible local band who brought the house down.

Similar conditions as the first morning with a handful of clouds, Jacksonville provided and left competitors surfed out by the end of the day, clearing through a majority of the heat draw.

Day 2’s afterparty was at Ink Factory Brewing, including a full scene of live music, vendors, and a vintage surfboard swap. Vibes were at an all time high as stories and beers were shared over some more incredible live music from a variety of bands. 

Those who had persevered to finals day, chose to call it an early night, while those who had unfortunately (or fortunately) got knocked out, ended up at Waffle House. Except Luca, he might have even slept at Waffle House.

More classic conditions in the morning quickly turned to chaos as the hurricane loomed over the area. Seizing the opportunity, a great amount of fun was had on our inflatable couch and there was some incredible surfing to be had in between the pockets of sunshine. 

The day ended with all of the surviving spectators and competitors huddled under the judges tents, watching the final go down amidst the absolutely pouring rain. As Saxon Wilson best said, shoulder to shoulder amongst something mile per hour winds, “Man I love everyone under this tent, y’all are my brothers!!”. We ran through the rain feeling like we’d lived through a historical moment and witnessed a whole lot of great surfing in the final.

I toss and turn at night thinking about Casa Marina.

After an already bender of a weekend, we returned to last year’s venue, this time with a hearty amount crowd surfing and moshing amongst the ballroom floor. 

Emotions were high as hometown hero Ryan Conklin took out the Men’s Division, Jasmine Dean knocked out the women, and the people’s champ Saxon Wilson blasted his way through the 60’s division. Each walked away with almost double of last year's earnings, which I heard Saxon immediately put into an ATM (which he owns), Ryan funneled straight into a flight to Europe, and I think locked Jasmine Dean into a full year contract with Bolo.

Jasmine surfed her way into first on her trusty 4A!!

And just like that it’s a wrap. We’d love to extend our biggest thanks and congratulations to Justin Quintal, Tyler Watts, and all of our friends in Florida for making the 2025 Loggerhead, the best one yet.

Until next year Florida.