Stoked! - Chris Bertish (Paperback)

Stoked! is an inspiring true story about courage, determination and the power of dreams. Chris Bertish was a skinny little kid from Cape Town when he started surfing with his brothers. Fiercely driven and constantly pushing his boundaries, Chris was not content with conquering 'ordinary' big waves. He wanted more: bigger waves, bigger swells, more adrenaline. What began as a personal quest to prove to himself that he was one of the best in the 'big-wave brotherhood' culminated a decade later with Chris being crowned South Africa's first Mavericks BigWave Champion. Competitors in the 2010 event were faced with the biggest and heaviest waves ever recorded in the history of the sport and Chris, on his own budget, on the back of a 40-hour plane journey and on borrowed equipment, outsmarted and outperformed the world's best-paid professional surfers.

How did Chris achieve this feat? 'Nothing is impossible, unless you believe it to be' is just one of the philosophies he lives by. Out of his passion for big-wave surfing has grown a profound wisdom and an appreciation of a few simple truths, which he shares in Stoked!. With his infectious enthusiasm, Chris tells how he pulled off death-defying antics time and again, overcame overwhelming obstacles and fears, and parried every blow that fate dealt him, all without ever losing faith or focus on his dreams.