santa cruz

 

Santa Cruz is rad. It deserves the hype as a surf town with something for everyone and i really enjoyed the couple of days we spent there. I think i've had a soft spot for it ever since i visited with a skateboard in pre-surfer days twenty odd years ago. Reading Dan Duanes "caught inside, a surfers year on the coast" further ingrained it's appeal in my conciousness. For me it encapsulates a lot of what i like about california. It's a little more "real", quieter and less plastic than some areas further south. The people are friendly, it has a wealth of right hand point breaks. The surrounding coast and countryside are greener and a little more rugged than SoCal, and there are more breaks in the urban continuum along the coast. It feels like an "outdoors" kind of place in the same way that the lake district does over here.

I'd love to go back soon, i could definately live there

inspirational

This is James, saunton local and a pretty inspirational surfer. He's just as surf stoked as any of the younger crew and probably logs more days in the water than many of them. I can only hope that i'm as active in 30 years time!

castles in the sand

fall into the sea, eventually!

a fresh perspective

Amazing how a few steps in a different direction can give a fresh perspective on stuff that is there all the time......

les conches

Gotta love french beach break!

keeping it old school

bonne anniversaire

Happy Birthday to my little bean!

checkpoint charlie

Massive congratulations to Tim and Louise who got married on Saturday. Hope you enjoyed your day as much as everyone else did!

Probably a good thing that Mr Heyland only got to dress you for your stag, not the actual day eh?!;-)

In other news, Gulfstream just sent their first epoxy prototype shortboard to morrocco with Nigel Cross who's loving it apparently. Stay tuned for their upcoming epoxy high performance thruster range. Jools is, as ever, fully stoked on making custom surfboards and has plans for a few new shapes to add to their range over the summer.

Meanwhile in California, plumber about town and lovable drunk Cotty was quite frankly robbed by the Billabong XXL commitee and missed out on taking the prize for biggest wave. He did get the satisfaction of having towed Garret McNamara into the portugese beast that won and some beer money as a result. Well done mate! Incidentally, if you don't read his blog it's well worth a click and a few minutes while the kettle boils!

highs and lows.................

I mentioned before how interesting it was to see our coast through fresh eyes when i posted about my visiting californian friends a few weeks ago. As well as being slightly freaked out by driving in our narrow country lanes, they couldn't believe how big our tides were and were literally gobsmacked to realise that our biggest tides were pretty much ten times the size of theirs!

Most of our surf spots are tide dependent to some degree. Plenty don't even exist at certain tides, others vary in quality as the tide moves over the banks so having a handle on what the tide is doing can make the difference between scoring or not. Most tide clocks or watches are not really that accurate and most people will have one of the classic yellow tide books stuffed in a corner of the bookshelf or glovebox. A timeless classic perhaps but a bit boring which is why my friend Germi created "Highs and Lows" a slightly more surf-centric tide table.

At the moment it's only for the North Devon coast but next year there's going to be a cornish edition too. The tide times are clearly set out as you'd expect but it's bookended with nice pictures of our people, waves and coast. Useful and nice to look at!

So If you want to look like a local when you're checking the surf here, or just support a little homegrown cottage surf industry, keep your eye out for the highs and lows tide book in our local shops or get it online from www.eyeballhq.tv or www.citysurfessentials.com

the last time.....

for a while that the beach will look this empty...

Living in an area that's a tourist destination, it's always interesting to see the change in the local population and it's density as the seasons cycle through. Even in the current days of webcams, internet forecasting and thicker wetsuits, it's not that hard to roll up to the beach to a view like this. Leastways over the colder months.  Yet as soon as Easter rolls around it's like someone, somewhere throws the people switch and there are people everywhere. No matter how bleak and grey and windswept, there's hardy british holidaymakers hunkered down behind their windbreaks. The village is filled with stressed, damp mothers ushering their bedraggled offspring from shop to shop looking for an alternative to the mud of their campsite.

In a weird way i've always liked it, it gives the place some life after the cold of winter. There's an air of anticipation of sun and fun to come. Spring is in the air... 

timmy's trust........

Longtime readers on here will have heard my appreciative comments about Tim Mason's surfboards. Tim is a real craftsman and one of the nicest men you could possibly hope to meet. Tim probably knows more than anyone else in Europe about hull style boards and makes beautiful displacement hulls as well as some lovely casper inspired mini simmons.

What lots of you wont know is that Tim is a real family man and at the end of the last year lost his 7 year old son Timmy after a long battle with cancer. It's such a sad thing that you feel even more keenly when you have your own children.

Tim and his wife Kate have set up The Timmy Mason Trust to help families in a similar situation in the future and to keep Timmy's memory alive.  Their first goal is to raise £5000 to achieve UK charitable status which will really mean they can move the trust forward. They would gladly recieve any donations of course.

To help raise funds, Tim is intending to auction off one of his beautiful boards every month. First up is the lovely Lis inspired fish in the pictures. It's 6'4 and like all of Tim's boards it's a thing of beauty and sure to be a joy in the water. Search my earlier posts to find out how much i rate Tim's shaping!

If you are interested in this board or to see what's available next month check here.