a devon terrier.....

George with all the beach essentials! Thats my old Dano Old pleasure which has found an appreciative new home with Mr Barrett. I loved the shape but always found it had a little bit too much heft for my diminutive size to man handle in our beach break waves. It suits George to a tee and i always enjoy watching him pilot it through a busy saunton line-up

it's all pleasure...(sort of)

My 9'5 x 17 1/4 x 23 x 16 x 3 Dano Old Pleasure lying in the parking lot at Doheny State Beach, just yards away from where i dumped it a couple of days earlier after limping out of the water with blood pouring from my foot........

Doheny, depsite it's detractors, is a fun wave on a log, a mellow lined up point style righthander though of course we all know it's a shadow of Killer Dana, the wave lost when the harbor was constructed. I'd just enjoyed a mellow dawn patrol getting to know my new board, chatting with friendly locals. As i walked out of the water i suddenly felt a sharp stabbing pain in my right heel.

A number of choice expletives left my mouth as i quickly realised that i had done something pretty serious. It felt like i had stepped on some kind of spike or nail and i thought that may have been my last surf for at least this trip and maybe longer. I limped back to the car and changed with difficulty, leaving a puddle of blood on my board bag and drove home trying to concentrate as waves of pain pulsed up my leg. Believe me it really f****ing hurts!

After staggering into the condo in proper melodramatic fashion, i steeled myself to wash my foot, expecting to reveal a huge gash requiring stitches, flaps of skin etc. Instead there was a neat puncture wound seemingly out of proportion with the ever increasing pain. Turns out i had been properly skewered by a sting ray and let me tell you it's not an experience i'd like to repeat!

In this situation it is not possible to understate how much putting your foot in a bowl of hot water helps, denaturing the venom and taking the pain down to a manageable level as long as you keep the water at just below scolding temperature. To cut a long story short, it took us clueless english people a call to 911 to belatedly find this out and a trip to the hospital for x-rays to confirm that there was none of the barb still in my foot.

The weird thing is that by the 4 hour mark, the pain is gone and you are left with a pathetically small wound to heal. I'm not even going to have a scar to impress ladies with!

Not a part of the California experience i was looking for but a good story now.

footprints

This is from the first roll out of the diana toy camera i was given for my birthday (thank you mr Gardner!). Typically mixed results, personally i think this shot was the pick of the bunch. Weirdly, in exact opposite to the holga, the view finder shows far more than the shutter sees and that scuppered a fair number of the shots on the roll. Nevermind, at least i know that now and on the plus side they were all pretty well exposed.

I sit typing this a while before it's going to appear, still buzzing from a super fun surf at sunset p-land. Mostly friends in the water, strong offshores and a swell building with the tide added up to very fast, fairly hollow zippers. When i got there, it was most definately log size and i rode the dano from the post below. I had a feeling it would like the wave there and i was right. Cutting back it felt far more alive and the speed and hold in the pocket on the nose was incredible. I had one especially memorable head dip cheater five where i was certain the tail would break out and it never did. It's a really fun board and my opinion of it gets better each session!

As the tide pushed up so did the size, as is often the case at p-land. It started to get a little too exciting on such a big board with no leash so i broke out the hull and rediscovered the joys of forward trim again, and burnt a lot of brownie points as a result. Still you have to make the most of these long evenings, all too soon the nights will start to draw in, slowly but inexorably......

dano

Dano Forte holding my board outside Pure Glass in Costa Mesa, hopefully he doesn't mind that the perspective on this makes his head look a slightly weird shape. He is a super nice guy and a great shaper.

I had heard that he could be slightly "relaxed" to deal with but my experience has been totally positive. Right from staying in contact while we were finalising the order, to getting the board done in a little over a month, to meeting me on a sunday so i could pick the board up and not miss a weekends surfing by being without a board.

He nailed it too. It's a beautifully shaped and glassed board that has been much "oohed and aahed" over by the "peanut gallery" at home.

Thank You!