ceepers

 

Looks like the Sea Pea buzz is going from strength to strength. ive seen a fair few bobbing around lately. Always gives me a small smile of satisfaction to see someone stoked on surfing it. 

Gulfstream just got this sent in from a happy customer........

Sea pea WTF…
Hi Will and Julian
Holy mother of Poseidon!!!,having had 2 surfs on the sea pea,one at low tide coombesgate which was somewhat ragged in the wind and just now surfing the ‘a’ frame peaks of gwithian towans I thought I’d drop a line to you.Having had the supreme pleasure of riding your 6’0 speed dialler and 5’10 keel fin fish I didn’t think it would be physically possible to travel much faster on a stick!,wrong,wrong and wrong.Along came Mr Sea Pea.Personally Jools I feel a nomination for the Nobel peace prize should be heading your way after this creation!, the sea pea is such an unbelievable ride,fast,smooth and drawn out ‘buttery’ like turns abound with a wicked little snap sensation during hard turns on steeper sections.Talking of speed this thing generates it in the most challenging conditions and cruises around sections with as much,if not a little more ease than the speed dialler.I can’t wait to surf it in slightly bigger and cleaner conditions and the thought of riding the sea pea at Saunton on a clean 3 foot or so is just too exciting.I have one minor issue though,it’s not doing my marriage any favours as it’s proudly on display in the front room to be admired for the thing of beauty that it is!,much to the wife’s annoyance!!.Massive thanks for this board,you deserve to sell bucket loads of them.
Cheers for now

If you're not on the mini simmons program yet for average UK conditions, get with it, they're so much fun!!

 

launching

 

CP Milking the high tide left,  pic  Rob Martin.

So last weekend saw the opening of the new Finisterre and Gulf stream joint venture in Braunton. It's in the original GS shop but the space is now shared so you can lust after Finisterre's high quality clothes as well as Jools finely tuned surfcraft. It looks fantastic and i think there is a real confluence between where the two brands are coming from. Hopefully its going to be really mutually beneficial.

Opening night was a real fun evening hanging out with some local friends and meeting the finisterre guys. Most of you will already be aware of their clothes but if you arent they are really worth checking out! Clothes designed for surfers by surfers and ethically made. 

I've always thought of them as a kind of British Patagonia and like the american brand, they are moving into the wetsuit game next year. They have been prototyping some winter suits designed to be warm, durable and dry quickly at a reasonable price. All things that we need for cold water surfing that overseas brands dont always appreciate. They look great from what ive seen so far.

sunset sands....

Not sure I ever posted this before since it predates this blog. Filmed by Ben Haworths dad in 20 minutes as the sun went down in Woolacombe, I think in 2007 ish. The board is one of the original few Gulfstream Saunton Foils and was my favourite board for quite a few years!

the way we were...

Sweet little clip from a sunny summers afternoon at my local from Pete Hill. Makes you realise that the logging standard here ain't bad for a surfing minnow like Devon. Even I managed to sneak a couple of waves in at the 0.50 - 1.12 mark!

I'd love to roll down to the beach in the sun right now but the recent storms have left it looking like a different place with cliff falls and the demolition of Jules's Beach hut Office. How the massive sand movement affects our high tide wave remains to be seen. We are all hoping the zippy left into the corner has survived!

slouch five

Proving that even at a slack wave like saunton, 17.25 inches of nosewidth is plenty for noseriding as long as you stuff the tail in the right part of the wave!

CP by ZG

Hopefully my being away from the coast is bringing the rest of you some nice waves like this. With any luck i'm surfing waves of fluffy snow as you read this on a shiny new snowboard.

I've got a new Lib Tech attack banana to try out which felt pretty good on the bounce around the garden test. It's got rocker between the bindings but an elliptical camber from bindings to tips so hopefully should still have the float and forgiveness of my old skate banana but give a little more confidence and edge hold at speed. I'll let you know.

The board is through my friend James Stentiford, peerless UK freeride legend and all around top chap. After qualifying as a proper mountain guide last year, this winter he has launched his own guiding company Stentiford snowboarding offering free riding and splitboarding courses in the Chamonix valley. If you find yourself in that area of the alps and want an inspirational day of snowboarding, especially if you fancy earning those turns then look no further!

merry christmas

To everyone that's made their way to this little corner of the internet over the past year. Hope you had it good! Charge your glasses ladies and gentlemen!

Photo of CP by Zac Gibson at Saunton a few weeks ago

p.o.v

So, first film through the lomo lc-a came out, making it an utter ebay bargain at a tenner when they regularly go second hand for £60 plus. Slightly weird having to factor batteries into the equation when taking it on a trip and it didn't like the cold that much. I lost out on a couple of beautiful landscapes because the minus temps killed the battery. Not a problem with the mechanical holga or diana. That said, i'm really happy with the results!


The thing that struck me this year, and it's obviously a personal thing, is how devoid of stress snowboarding is, how much  pure enjoyment without baggage. My days of scaring myself over big kickers are gone and given the confines of family snowtrips, the chances of getting to stray too far out of bounds and into harm's way are slim. I'm proficient enough to take most things easily accessible from a small resort in my stride and experienced enough to slot back into the groove after a long break fairly quickly.It's instant gratification with little effort.


I've snowboarded a lot longer than i've surfed and i've seen snowboarding grow from the fringe, frowned upon, poorly equipped pastime it once was into the corporate run bona fide sport it now is. Many things have changed over that time (17 years, kinda depressing when you type it!) but one thing hasn't and that's the pure fun of riding powder.

For th un-initiated it's like taking the essence of swooping around on a perfect rippable wave and adding the ability to repeat as desired without the effort of paddling or relying on so many fickle elements falling into place. It's effortless weightless floating, swooping, slashing, playing out your every curren/slater fantasy on snowbanks. Racing friends through trees like speeder bikes in "return of the jedi". Cold shots of snow in the face making you feel alive as you power through the flakes still in the air from your turn before. It's the quiet that the woods and the poor visibility the heavy snow brings, the resort empty as fairweather types stay inside, your board swishing along, no louder than your breath steams out. It's big smiles..........................

CL13 out now!

The latest paper issue of Corduroy Lines magazine is available to order now. It's a limited numbers, no advert issue and features, amongst other things, some of my ramblings.

Go on, treat yourself and support non-mainstream, grass roots surf media.

Click here to get hold of it!

the dirk of doom

 

Absolutely not a death dagger.........9'4 x 16 x 22.5 x 14.75 x 2 7/8 by the Squire

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, i ordered a surfboard from a wandering minstrel. I didn't get quite what i asked for. I'm not going to rehash the whole story here, the tale was posted previously and you can read it here. I felt somewhat let down and nervous of re-entering the kingdom of kegel again.

As luck would have it, the Squire who hosted the wanderer did feel that something should be done. After measuring the original in great detail he ordered his workers at seabase to shape a replacement, pulling the original template out to the dimensions i'd wanted but otherwise copying the original as far as possible.

The result is the beauty in the photos, which (apologies to john) don't come close to doing it justice. The tint is ace and the finish really out of the top drawer. It's flat, foiled out with soft pinched rails, a hint of concave, a tiny bit of tail kick and some gentle belly in the back. The fin is a slightly raked volan flexy affair, taken from the original gato board. The proof as they say, is in the eating and however good a board looks on the rack, it's in the water that it's true nature is exposed. This isn't supposed to be a noserider, more of a tool for what we might term the new involvement school of surfing, referencing the surfing of Chonoski  and Knost and friends, who in turn are influenced by Nat Young and friends of the magic sam vintage. Namely pocket noseriding with full rail commited turns in a traditional sense. (i know what i'm talking about even if that's confused you!) It's made for waves with good shape and a little pace but not necessarily size.

In the water, it paddles fine, as well as modern progressive longboard. Take off's are a little late compared to a true log but the lack of nose area helps avoid pearling despite the flat rocker. It trims fast and feels responsive and alive under your feet although it demands quick footwork. Bottom turns have a nice spring off the flex in the fin and cutbacks whip around with weight firmly over the fin. In short, a lot of fun and similar to the gato. Noseriding is obviously more of a critical affair with a 16 inch nose but with a steep pocket forming around you and quick feet the board will lock in nicely. In fact, in bowly little waves, the narrowness probably works in your favour making it feel much more manageable. It trims fast and holds really well on the nose through sections and cheating five while head dipping is particularly fun. It will allow a brief ten over though thats hardly the point of the excercise. It is exactly what i wanted and i feel somewhat vindicated that the dims and shape i originally envisaged do perform how i imagined and ultimately how i wanted. It's definately a departure from most of the longboards in the uk right now, not that easy to surf and most definately not everyone's cup of tea but......... For someone like me who rides longboards a lot but has no interest in the 3 finned variety, it's a really fun departure from the norm.

So there you have it, the best and the worst of the custom surfboard experience in one episode! Big thanks to John Isaac for sorting it out patiently and Phil Hodge for taking care with something out of the ordinary. If you're looking for a new board squire are worth considering. contact john here or here

As an aside, if you have read the comments on the previous post you will see that robbie did offer to swap the board for a used one of his or shape me another (at cost!) when he came back to europe this summer. Perhaps unsuprisingly he's already here (& perhaps gone who knows) but no contact to make good on the promise so far.

the kook 2

Out Now,the second installment of Dan Crocketts labour of love, The KOOK.

In his words:

*****What is the KooK?******

*24-page Independent Surfing Newspaper
*Pink Newsprint
*UK-printed paper from sustainable forests
*No paid advertising
*Almost 90 Global Contributors
*Available worldwide to your door

Buy exclusively through http://thisrichtapestry.blogspot.com/

I'm proud to be one of those contributors and i'm amping to get my grubby mitts on an actual paper copy. If it's anything like the last issue it's going to be thoughtful, aesthetically pleasing and well worth supporting. I think Dan deserves congratulating for putting the huge effort in to get these out because it's not easy. Please support him if you can!

ten piggies over..

On the way to Doheny one morning i rather randomly bumped into my friend Jake, who works for Almond and is a really talented surfer and one of the nicest guys you could ever hope to meet. He was on his way south with Alex who runs the tenpiggiesover blog and John Wesley who does some shaping for Gato as well as his own boards.

Like everyone i've met in Ca, they were really friendly and stoked to hear about our little corner of the world. I've checked Alex's blog for some time so it was cool to meet him in person. John's car, an old vw type 3 like the one i posted a photo of recently, deserves a mention too. Very cool indeed!

Doheny was tiny and those guys headed on south to san o. I paddled out anyway and got a couple of fun ones eventually, alone with just a few pelicans for company. The photos make it look better than it actually was if i'm honest!

silhouette

La torche

Vive la france!

Scored some super fun waves in Brittany last week, while everyone was scoring at home. Couple of days on the log before it was time to break out a shorter board. This was Tuesday morning, we were the only ones out at first light for about 40 minutes. 

Massive thanks and apologies to the random french photgrapher, who took the pics, sadly i have no idea of his contact details to post as these were taken from a forum, but cheers Benoit!

hai - Ya!!!

Something about doing these feels super fun

twinkling toes

I tell myself my hooked toes are an evolutionary advantage to aid my control while hanging five or ten but really i'm just deformed!

With the forecast looking promising, hopefully today's wind allows just a temporary rest between the fun waves of the last week and what lies in store for next.

I've had plenty of hull related stoke recently, culminating in probably my best session on the slippery wee thing on Tuesday. I know i've said before but the feeling of smooth drivey projection off the bottom and the knife through butter high line trim are just awesome. It's also kind of fun lending it to friends who are good surfers and watching it confuse them. Trying to surf hulls off the back foot just doesn't work (eh Ben?)

There's a Isaac organised surf jumble in St Merryn tomorrow, in the village hall i think. He'd love it if lots of you stopped by. I wish I could!

twinkling fingers

This is a slight cheat as it isn't my photo, it's taken on a diana by my friend Jim (star of the old blog banner!) but it is a picture of me indulging in one of my other obsessions, keeping the winter blues away with some proper blues (a bit of john mayall if i remember correctly). I really like the picture and, as you know, love a bit of self promotion :-)

suction, self promotion and the art of noseriding...

Issue 11 of corduroy lines is out now, click here to check it out. I wrote them a piece on the art of noseriding but (as i type this) the mag version has half the text missing (but not in an edited way) and the article makes less sense as a result. I'm sure it's an oversight on their behalf but the full text is below just in case......

The Art Of Noseriding


Magazines like this one are filled with pictures of surfers nonchalantly perched on the tips of their longboards. Yet to many intermediate surfers, standing on the front 18 inches of their boards can seem a daunting, almost impossible prospect.

In truth, noseriding isn't THAT difficult and is within the grasp of most people once you understand how it works. Like many things in surfing, it's difficult to teach people how to noseride, there's a lot of feel and experience involved and this isn't intended as an exhaustive "how to", more a list of tips from someone already in the know.

- Learn to cross step

This isn't a specific noseriding tip, more a general longboarding one. Learning to cross step fluently is a major step to good longboarding. Not only does it look better but it is more functional too, allowing you to move up and down the board quickly and make use of the noseriding sections of the wave as they appear and disappear. If your water time is limited, learning to cross step on a long skateboard or an indo board can help a massive amount
You will notice that some surfers take two steps to the nose while some take four. This is dictated by the length of your legs and the length of your board, to begin with just go with whichever feels "right" to you.

-Pick your waves

Small clean waves are the ideal learning conditions. Although it's possible to hang five in almost any conditions, the bigger and messier the waves get, the more difficult it is. `Ideally  you want a lined up wave that has a long tapering shoulder- there's a reason the worlds two best noseriding waves (Noosa & Malibu) are sandbottomed points.

- YOUR Longboard WILL noseride

Sure some shapes make it easier to stay up there for longer but any board over 9 feet will let you noseride if you get the board in the right place on the wave.

- Practice, practice, practice

Don't be afraid to fall off, just make sure you understand enough to only try and go to the nose when the time is right. Try and analyse your waves and note the differences between the waves where it worked and it didn't so you can concentrate on replicating the successes.

- Positioning

This is the biggest part of getting your toes on the nose!
In simple terms, when you stand on the nose, your weight is counterbalanced by two things

1) The upwards force exerted by the water rushing up the face of the wave and across the underside of the nose of the board. Wider noses and nose concave increase the amount of lift available

2) The counterweighting force of the wave breaking over the tail of the board. Look at some pictures of people noseriding and you will see that at least the back third of the board is sunk inside the wave. Having soft "50-50" rails and a convex "bellied" bottom in the tail encourage the water to do this. Tail kick also helps here as well as acting to slow the board down and hold it in the wave.

For a really solid noseride, no. 2 is the most important thing. You will see pictures of people perched on the tip where the suction is so great that the whole front third of the board is lifted out of the water. These things only happen if you position yourself in the fastest part of the wave, about two thirds up the face and as close to the breaking part of the wave as possible. The further away from this position you are, the more likely you are to nosedive or stall out of the back of the wave. Straight off your take off you can get in the right spot by fading towards the peak as you paddle in before standing and swinging back the right way. Once riding you can either stall the board and wait for the wave to steepen in front of you or cut back far enough so that the wave is already steep ahead of you as you bottom turn again. Obviously in a sectiony beach break style wave, the wave might steepen ahead of you naturally.
Once the wave is steep ahead of you, dont hesitate, go straight to the nose, the moment can be gone in a split second. Too many people wait too long and let the board trim too far in front of the pocket before they start to move. The board outruns the section and then nosedives as they reach the nose.
It helps to think of starting to walk forward as the board begins to climb the face after you bottom turn so that you arrive on the nose as the board reaches trim, rather than trying to move forward once at the top of the wave with the board already starting to head down the face. Weighting your inside rail helps too. In fact when on your backhand it often helps to have your heel quite a long way across the stringer towards the inside rail.
Unfortunately, knowing exactly when is the right time is one of those "feel" things that takes experience to fully master but trying to heighten your awareness of what is happening on each wave you ride as mentioned earlier speeds up this process.

- Stretch those toes

Don't worry too much about where your back foot is to begin with, just make sure your front toes are properly dangling over the tip. Anything else is just forward trim.

- Don't be greedy

Once you're up there, it's easy to freeze then fall as the wave breaks or stall out of the wave. Often the section will only support you for a short time. Once you sense the board start to slow down or drop down the face, step back, cut back and set up again.

- Watch some videos

There are lots of good logging films and plenty of clips on you tube. When you watch them, analyse what the surfers and waves are doing. Watch waves that show the surfer setting up the noseride. Pause the action just before they go to the nose and look at where they are and what the wave is doing around them. Try and visualise how the wave looks at that moment from the surfers point of view.

Once you become adept at hanging five you'll notice that there are some times where the board feels much more stable and "locked in" compared to others. This might only be for a split second, especially in beach break style waves. These are the moments when the time is right to move the back foot up to hang ten or kick it out into the wave face or hang heels or lift it up and hold it while you stand on one leg! Only feel and experience can help you judge the moments it will work but you can practice the balance needed for the moves over an over again on a long skateboard. Then when you're in the water, you're only learning how to get set up properly not trying to improve your balance as well. This is something i found really useful when learning to hang heels.

- Most of all, have fun with your surfing, after all thats why we all started in the first place isn't it?

I should also mention that Tom Wegener had an article in an issue of pacific longboarder about 8 years ago that greatly contributed to my understanding and influenced what you see here. I think it's still available to read on tomwegener.com

Pic is from Woolacombe a couple of August's ago, shame it isn't this warm all year round!

disco fingers

It's probably clear to anyone who checks here often that i think style is important when you surf. I think everyone has an innate type of style, a natural look to the way they surf, be it smooth as silk like Dane Peterson, nonchalant like Lopez at pipe or just plain different like Alex Knost.
Although it is possible to work at surfing in a certain way, it always looks slightly contrived compared those who are lucky enough to have good style naturally. Obviously "good style" is a very subjective judgement and to a certain extent a personal assessment.
I've spent a lot of time watching video of people surfing, both other peoples films and the footage that went into my two. After a while it's very easy to identify different people from the way they move, the body positions they adopt, even if they are riding similar equipment, doing similar things, on similar waves.
I'd like to think i am at least a little smooth when i surf but my own weird style quirk is pointing my index fingers, especially on my left hand. Don't ask me why, i'm not sure it is crucial to successful balancing, but i do it on a skateboard or a snowboard too. Check the photos!

let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.....

Off to the mountains today :-) Hopefully it'll dump so i can live out all my slater/ curren fantasies on snowbanks and it'll be flat or onshore for the whole week i'm away! Of course it'll probably be the best run of nice clean swell for weeks and the westerlies will return as we land next week.
Thanks to Mr Gardner for loitering in harms way to snap the picture last year and a massive thanks to Stent for leaving a shiny new Lib in France for me to play on this week.

fifty words

This week should see the relaunch of Drift magazine . After a, sadly shortlived, foray into print they are going back to their roots as a rapidly updated online portal for surf editorial with a focus on real surfing, not just the antics of the top 44. As far as i am concerned this is a great thing, not least because i have been asked to be part of their global blogging team ( which also includes such luminaries as Tom Wegener ) but also because i believe they have something interesting and relevant to say that is an alternative to the sometimes blinkered view of the more established surf press. Please support them!

I've had to come up with a 50 word "mission statement" to sum up where i'm coming from for their contributors page, hopefully this covers it:

North Devon, Logs, Fish, Vans, Brian Setzer, Gamboa, Red Sox, A Quiver Approach, Tudor, Gretsch, Knost, Tens, Jamie Lynn, Adventures in Trim, Stills, Heels, J Mascis, Heavy Boards, Fender, T. Moe, Surfers Journal, Final Cut, Powder Turns, Sprout, Andy Davis, Mac, Right Hand Points, Black Van, Seedling, Film, STYLE IS EVERYTHING!