if6was9......

A few years ago Neil Randall started quietly making surfboards in Devon. Handcrafted fish & logs with an eye for detail and an appreciation of glide, glassed beautifully. if6was9 was born.

Fast forward a couple of years & Randall parlayed his cottage industry experience in the UK into a plum job shaping for respected Noosa longboard label Classic Malibu while wandering through Australia.

Randall now firmly has ex-pat status and along with fellow Devonian Jake Bowrey and a few other like minded souls, including Dane Peterson, has resurrected the frankly brilliant name if6was9 as a clothing label.

There are some great designs in their first offering and the tees should start filtering over the water and into select shops here next year.

Check out what's up here

happy faces

There's something special about the first day of a new swell. A palpable excitement in the air, the carpark filled with happy faces and anticipation. Often it means seeing people for the first time in a couple of weeks, especially in winter. The air is filled with the sounds of van doors closing, wax being rubbed onto boards and friendly banter as everyone gears up to hit the water, sure of fun waves in good company.

For me it's even more special if it's early on a crisp autumn morning like this day, a rare morning when the only people at the beach were the regulars and a few early risers walking their dogs.

Although we moan about the number of people in the water, in reality, i'm sure surfing in solitude the whole time would be pretty boring. I have no doubt that the interaction between the regular faces "sharing the stoke" to use a hackneyed phrase, and the sense of community that each beach has, really adds something to the surfing experience for me.

Our beach is long enough to get a good peak to yourself if you are prepared to hike far enough yet most of us rarely bother unless the crowd numbers are past ridiculous. Happy to sacrifice a few waves a session to others for the pleasure of shared experiences

In case you were wondering, chest high & reeling, keel fish & big smiles!

a sense of balance

It's been with a certain sense of mild amusement that i've watched the gentrification of Watergate Bay over the last few years. It's gone from being a slightly overlooked end of Newquay to a kind of middle class yuppie enclave where the London set come to take the waters without having to be bothered by the great unwashed masses that clog up the town beaches. Where the farmers market is Jamie Oliver branded and the flats & holiday lets are well out of most peoples price range.

A lot of it is down to the forward thinking son of the family that owned the watergate bay hotel returning home from years in london with some clever ideas to turn the family business around and you have to have a certain amount of respect for his achievements.

Whether it's a good thing or not i can't comment, i don't spend enough time there but it certainly serves as an antidote to the chavtastic chaos that often prevails around Newquay proper.

On a side note, i realise it's completely pointless turning the camera sideways to take a pic when it's a square format exposure, but it was pretty early when i took the shot & the sleepy fuzz obviously hadn't quite cleared, now it spoils the shot for me a little.

Go Jools!

So not my pic but stolen in a good cause. (i think it's from wavedreamer but i'm not sure) Some of you will already have heard me bang on about the quality of Gulfstream's boards, well now it is official, shaper Jools Matthews was voted best fish shaper in the UK in Carve Magazine's shaper's poll. Votes were cast by 35 different UK shapers and by a couple of thousand people online.
So congrats to Jools, it's well deserved and anyone in the market for a new fish (or log or anything else) would do well to give him a call!

support your local shaper!

anticipation

another burner.....

I love taking pictures at sunset. This is from my digital hero3 wrist camera, a little fuzzy as it struggles with the nonexistent light but just an amazing sky. No "post production" on the shot either by the way. We live in a beautiful place, sometimes easy to forget amongst the hustle & bustle of the day to day.

The British Surfing Museum

This fine splitscreen panel van (it's a very tasteful maroon colour if you're wondering) belongs to Pete Robinson, relatively recently moved here from Brighton. Pete is the man behind the British Surfing Museum which has previously existed as a travelling exhibit but is now well on it's way to a permenant home in Braunton.

This is a GOOD THING!

I have a huge amount of respect for Pete and his efforts to preserve our surfing heritage and you should do too. For updates on how the project is progressing, or to offer him your time & support check here or search the museum out on facebook.

bargain!

one day in woolacombe

I can guess what you are thinking....."nice wetsuit"

Well bright is coming back, or so we're told by the people who decide these things! Thats a shot of the very talented James Parry, at the north end of Woolacombe while filming for One Day

Richard Gregory aka wavedreamer has been working on his "One Day" concept for the last couple of years. It's finally taken the form of a series of short films, all shot over a twentyfour hour period at a single location, set to a soundtrack that was recorded in twenty four hours too. Not like he wants to put himself under any pressure then!
Intended to be a celebration of surfing in this country, the first film was shot on a lovely sunny day, a few of weeks ago and will be out on dvd this winter. We were blessed with a small clean swell and plenty of people made the effort to be there in front of the cameras. There was some great surfing going on & given Rich's perfectionism & eye for a good shot, i have no doubt the finished product will be a really great piece of surf cinema

Check the trailer below





I recently interviewed Rich for Drift and it should be up on their site a little closer to the release date so keep your eyes open for that.

Stay up to date with what's happening in one day world here
awesome water shot taken two thirds of the way through THE day courtesy of the legend that is Jamie Bott

yum yum.....

my wife's baking rocks!!

moments before the green flash...

Another distinctly lomo style digital hero shot. Still unsure if it's possible to call a shot taken on a low quality digital camera "lo-fi" or whether the fact that it's a digital media to start with makes that a misnomer. Whatever, it sure was another fun sunset session.

a certain ratio

It struck me today how little time i actually spend surfing. By that i mean, sure i spend large parts of my life thinking (obsessing if you ask my wife) about riding different waves or different boards. I spend hours checking online forecasts, webcams, swell models, wind models, tide times, discussion boards, blogs.

I put miles on the clock driving to beaches, sometimes at leisure, sometimes stressing to squeeze a quick shot of stoke into a boring work day. There's plenty of time spent shooting the breeze with fellow locals - who scored where, who's ripping, who's riding what. The minutes hurriedly shivering in and out of wetsuits or leisurely changing in the sun, depending on the season, mount up as the months pass by.

Sometimes it's a ten minute walk to the waters edge, sometimes a ten minute paddle out, dodging cold mountains of churning whitewater to finally make it out to the lineup. Then waiting, waiting for the set, waiting for your turn (honestly!) jockeying for position.

But if you think about how much time you spend actually stood up riding waves, it's not very long at all. It's almost a depressingly short length of time, if you think about it too much. There can't be many pastimes where that is the case. I mean the footballer spends ninety minutes playing a game and the swimmer doesn't just spend time floating in the deep end (though there are always ladies of a certain age cluttering up any pool for whom talking & floating seems to qualify as excercise!)

Yet perhaps that is part of the draw, the reason surfing grabs you and i by the very core of our being and wont let go. Forces us to plan, sacrifice, risk career and relationship for just one more fix, one more perfect wave, one more glimpse of the ecstasy.

I'm confident that not one of you reading this would say it wasn't worth it, that the stoke doesn't measure up to the commitment. Yet we all know people who don't get it, who would find it amusing that you might try and surf more than once a day, or even every day. Those for whom the joy of trim holds no attraction, have no interest in finding their limits and pushing them further.

We can stay smug in our secret, knowing we are part of the "us", feel sympathy for "them" for they are missing out.