Dawn Patrol:

It’s been a pretty busy week for the local surfing community, starting with the Annual Newport Classic contest held last weekend at 56th Street and hosted by the Newport Harbor High Surf Team.

The conditions were pretty good throughout — smooth surface with decent-size waves, chest to shoulder high on the sets. The tide was a little fat early and the interval between good sets was fairly long so that the competitors only saw two or maybe three of them per heat, and the best waves seemed to hit a little south of the contest area. But all things considered the waves were better than average. It got kind of wind textured for the open division and high school finals Sunday, but it never turned into dishwater.

The high school final was the last heat of the event and it was a good one. Seniors Cannon Call, Jared Cassidy, Erik Heimstaedt and Bobby Okvist, sophomore Blake Davis and freshman Colin Moran battled it out as the waves became increasingly inconsistent. It looked like Moran and Heimstaedt were getting most of the rides, but with time running out Davis pulled off the ride of the heat when he scratched hard to get into position for a set wave then snapped a reverse and landed it, drawing cheers from the crowd. It wasn’t quite enough to catch Moran, who took first place, with Davis a close second.

“Bobby O” (Okvist) was the “Iron Man,” winning the bodyboarding event, as well as placing third and fourth in the high school and open finals respectively. As I heard the announcer say off the mic, “That’s a lot of heats. I don’t care who you are, you’re going to get tired.”

Victor Done won the open event. Shelby Detmers edged Kaleigh Gilchrist in the women’s final. Matt Cervantes was longboard champ and Tyler Gunter won both juniors and groms. Todd Miller won the masters division with Mike Estrada taking second. Mike also competed in the inaugural Hovie SUP Festival race Saturday. I missed it, but Brian Hovnanian told me it was a big success with 180 competitors.

The Newport team was honored at an event held Tuesday night by the Newport-Mesa Unified School District in recognition of the squad’s first Interscholastic Surfing Federation state championship won earlier this month in Oceanside.

The place to be Wednesday night was the Lido Theater for the world premier of “Living It Forever.” Both showings were sold out for Rick and Ann Chatillon’s documentary on the Newport Beach surf scene during the 50s and 60s. I’ll simply say it was a triumph.

It’s compelling even if you don’t know anything about surfing and have never heard of Newport Beach.

Isn’t that the mark of a good documentary?

JOHN BURTON’S surf column appears Fridays. He may be reached by e-mail at hot_dogger@mac.com.