a place to play

One from California, one is visiting in a couple of months....................

Tumbling.....

Tickets for the second ever Somersault festival at Castle Hill in North Devon are well and truly out. It's a cracking line up this year and should be a whole heap of fun if last year is anything to go by. It really feels like they have built on last years success and this year they have, amongst others, Laura Marling, Passenger, Bombay Bicycle lub and Crystal Fighters as well as legends Jimmy Cliff and Norman Jay.

It should be good!

In the meantime, feast your eyars on Laura Marling's first album. It's a really beautiful record. Top pop fact is that her band at this time contained some of Mumford and Sons before they "made it"

handmade

Gulfstream have some exciting new shapes in the pipeline, it's all too secret squirrel to reveal here yet but it's looking exciting!

no waiting

Big scary birthday today......remember, age is just a number.........

planing

Jools hard at work in his shaping cave.

It's hard to explain just how difficult it is to cut a decent shape with a planer (for a newbie like me anyway) The foam is so fragile and the planer so aggressive that the tiniest change in angle or speed is reflected by creating a bumo or worse still a gouge....

The best comparison i can make would be trying to carve sonmething out of florists oasis with a dremel tool! Steady hands and a good eye are the bare minimum.

Hope everyone got some fun fathers day waves over the weekend. There certainly were a lot of people in the water. In the end a bit of patience was rewarded with a slightly smaller but quieter session. I rode my pointy squire log which hasn't been in the water for a while. It's pretty different to a proper log and a nice alternative to a three fin longboard in bigger waves. Despite having the wide point back of center, the roll in the bottom and the flexy fin give it an almost hully feel to the bottom turn. Especially if you get low and crank it over. There's a nice pivoty drive to it's cutbacks and the 17 nose really makes you work for your tip time. It's an unusual but satisfying board to surf.

Monday was a beautifully fun logging wave, small glassy and perfect for the if6was9 log i've been favoring recently. Boots off too!

The rain may be back today but it's my birthday and i'm going surfing!!!!

waypost...

There's sunshine for now outside the window but the eyeball surf reports are not promising. Hopefully the push will whip up a loggable ripple. I'm amping to get wet after a day spent drydocked in classroom and traffic jam yesterday.

In other news, i finally convinced Jools from Gulfstream to borrow and ride my TW bar of soap. It will be interesting to see how he feels about it coming from a 3 fin shortboard background. His current every day board is a 5'5 epoxy shortboard so even at 5'2 the soap is going to feel like a lot of foam!

long way home

 

So this is one of those photos i'm secretly pretty pleased with. Working with such low budget cameras you are never entirely sure what you are gong to get back when you open the film envelope and sometimes pictures that you think will be great are disappointing and others you almost forgot you'd taken and just shot from the hip as it were sometimes turn out fantastic. This is one that came out exactly as my eye imagined it and i think it's not bad.

 

Looking at it, it's the view from the coast path behind middle beach woolacombe, it makes you realise how fantastic an area this is to live. I shot it on my way past on one of my regular mtb loops, a kind of eco friendly way to check the surf before heading back, showering the mud off and meeting the rising swell on the rising tide.

 

We are nlessed with beautiful beaches and waves to explore, amazing moorland riding almost on the doorstep, quiet country lanes and friendly relaxed people. Once the hook is set, i dont think you could ever leave...

there in black and white

A slightly more illuminating picture of the bing mini-sim. Shows the fin template well which is a normal Geppy fish keel rather than a more classic simmons half moon shape. These are set canting inwards towards the stringer by a few degrees though i'm pretty sure thats builder error and not how they are supposed to be. Legendary californian build quality not always spot on then!

 Going to have to give it back soon....

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!

a solitary pursuit

alone in a crowded place...

Hopefully everyone had a few fun waves over the weekend. Once the fog cleared up here there were some beautiful glassy chest high waves on sunday and some small clean loggable peelers on Monday. Perfect conditions to show off our beaches to my visiting Californian friends, Jake (who works at the excellent Almond shop) and his girlfriend Anna

I think they had a good time, i certainly got loads of pleasure from showing them around. Seeing it through their eyes reinforced how beautiful and relatively unspoilt our coastline is and how much fun our waves are when it's good. I think Devon exceeded their expectations. They're in Spain now, hopefully getting fun waves there too.

Anna has a cool little blog thats worth checking out here.

doho

Both trips to California, i've spent a fair amount of time surfing at Doheny, mostly because it's convenient for a quick session before family duties.  It's a measure of how many quality waves there are on this stretch of coast that a spot like this is relegated to also ran status. Yeah for sure it's not killer Dana and it is a bit mushy, the preserve of longboarders and the butt of surfer magazine jokes. The truth is that with some sunshine, a little south swell and a log it's a really fun wave with a mellow friendly local crew who are happy to share a few sets with a traveller.

If you own the extras disc for one california day, it's the wave where tyler warren is surfing his 11 footer., take a look and you'll see what i mean. I'd trade our average local conditions for consistent waves like that!

skomer landing

A classic holga happy accident but i kinda like the light leak on this one

a moment of singular joy

There's nothing quite like the moment you round the final bend to see glassy lines rolling in and no one in the water. Of course it doesn't happen often in todays crowded line ups but when a little effort yields this kind of result it's a moment to savour!

the bing's the thing

chasing the dragon

On present evidence we seem to have had much of our summer sometime in April, it certainly was a better month for sun and swell than june so far. I spent a week of it on the pembrokeshire coast, a little surfing snuck in on a family break with my parents and sister.

 Most of my childhood holidays were in this part of wales. I rode my first wave on a polystyrene bodyboard at saundersfoot (quite how it got even knee high waves in summer i'm not sure!) first became aware of people actually surfing and it's really here that my love affair with the beach got started. Ironically i've only properly surfed up here a couple of times and i can honestly say it's the first time i've ever seen Newgale without blustery 4 foot onshore slop. This time i lucked into some quiet logging waves and light winds, both there and at Whitesands. It's a beautiful part of our coastline and it was fun to revisit, fun to go somewhere different than the well worn track down the A39

from little acorns......

 

big oak trees grow.

Happy Fathers Day to my Dad and fathers everywhere.

To my little bean, i'm proud to be your Dad,  i hope i've been a good enough one this year.

You light me up.

type 3

super cool vintage surf mobile!

friends....

a ghost in the machine

Happy New Year Everyone!

I was looking back at my new year post from last year and remembered that the surfer forums had a "best 3 boards of 09" thread running. Although a year has passed, two of my top three haven't changed!

I'm still in love with my 5'8 larry mabile keel fish, i've still yet to have a bad surf on it. In fact on the day the waiting" post picture was taken i think i had my best two shortboard turns ever, on the same righthander on this board.

Longboard wise, the 9'6 jai lee is still the board to beat, just like last year, and it's the log i've ridden most often. Honorable mentions go to the Dano i brought back from Ca and the bing NR2 i've acquired. Both have given some great trips to the tip on their day

The third board does change though....... Having been gifted a 5'8 mini simmons a few months ago, it's been in heavy rotation ever since. So much fun in junk, such a smooth feeling racing down the line. I think it's responsible for more surf related smiles than anything else over the last few months. Although they are very fashionable right now, if you can live with some lateral speed in your surfing instead of vertical ripping i'd wholeheartedly recomend getting on the program!

swoop..

Jack (i think) looking to punish the whitewater.