Harry Bryant Cracks the Vault, Toys With Firing Cloudbreak and a Secret River Mouth

I just had 11 screws and a plate and a plate taken out,” Harry Bryant tells me as he recuperates in his New South Wales home. “I snapped my leg doing an air about three years ago, and all that hardware and metal has been playing up my leg for a while. I’ve been surfing in pain for a few years now. So I felt like the time was right to get it out, and I’m excited to finally surf pain-free. I’m stoked to take that crap out of my leg.”  

It sounds hard to believe, considering the outlandish surfing Harry has produced since the metal was screwed into his frame, but it’s the truth. The scruffy 29-year-old committed to second-reef Pipeline roll-ins, colossal slabs in South Australia and Ireland, and produced one of the best parts in Logan Dulien’s recently released mic drop, Snapt5: The Final Cut. 

In filming for his section, Harry included gems from a stint at reeling overhead Cloudbreak. But he found many more Fijian tunnels that didn’t make the cut and are more than deserving of their own shelf life. Which is what brings our attention to the video below. Although “Roasted” is partly made of Snapt5 “b-clips,” it features the ingredients that make Harry such a cinema-friendly surfer: distinct lines and uncompromising hacks in consequential surf. 

One cannot mention Harry’s body of work over the last half-decade without noting the man behind the camera. Among other notable surf projects, Dave Fox served as chief cinematographer and director of Motel Hell. But Dave is much more than a filmer with an eye for aesthetics and creative angles. He’s a mad-scientist adventurer whose forecasting skills Harry trusts completely. 

Related: Harry Bryant Escapes Pubs, Scores Irish Slabs With Barely Legal Rental Car

“He’s a real wizard,” Harry said. “He’s like a meteorologist, he sits at home looking at maps, low-pressure systems and forecasts. He just knows where it’s going to be pumping. Over the last few years, he’s been really focused on going to remote destinations, like places not many people have surfed, which is obviously a gamble.

“But he really thinks outside the box,” Harry continued. “For me being a professional freesurfer, traveling around with cameras and boards, you want to try for destinations that aren’t crowded, but at the same time you don’t want to blow out people’s local breaks. So we’re sort of aiming for destinations that aren’t super known for surfing. He’s willing to go off the beaten path, document them in a tasteful way. Dave and I have built up a great relationship over the years. We’ve lapped the world multiple times over. He’s gotten me into some of the best waves of my life. I owe a lot to his work ethic and him taking me under his wing.”

Getting to and from the far corners of the world isn’t always glamorous. Everyone has a style, and Dave’s unorthodox approach somehow works out in the end. “It’s just chaos,” Harry said. “He’s so disorganized. He’s got this big suitcase that he got at a thrift store filled with lenses without lens caps. And he’s so crafty. He’ll crack the port of his water housing, then he’ll be up all night tinkering and fixing it. One time, he got a drill out and was drilling into the water housing of his multi-thousand-dollar camera to make it lighter. It’s chaos, but he pulls it off every time.”

Despite the issues, the duo’s results speak for themselves, particularly in the second half of “Roasted.” It was Dave who eyed a typhoon rolling over an island somewhere in Southeast Asia, who studied the charts, and who convinced Harry to roll the dice on fickle river mouth that “probably hadn’t broken for 6 or 7 years,” Harry said.

The same typhoon that brought the swell also caused delays to local air travel. “We flew through this storm, and we were landing in random airports where I didn’t even know what country we were in,” Harry said. “But we made it to this little island, and there were perfect waves there.”

The long right did more than come to life. It stretched and reared out of its slumber. It was surfable only for a single day, as Dave predicted, and Harry properly thrashed the thing. His weapon of choice: a custom 7’1” Josh Keogh quad that he nearly retired as a wall hanger. But when he knew there were long sections on offer, there was no doubt in his mind. His approach to driving, stalling and holding through his turns (all on his backhand, mind you), on a freakish wall is a treat to behold. 

With the metal finally out of his system, Harry expects a little over a month of rehab for his leg before a return to action. From there, “It’s liftoff, brother.”

Related: Watch: 35 Minutes of Unhinged “Motel Hell” Surf Stories From Harry Bryant