just jai'ving

Iphone shot, still dripping wet after an early morning session.

As is usually the case, my wonderfully verbose style leads to my submissions to drift being far too lengthy and the published version misses some stuff out so here is my interview with Jai Lee as it was originally written:

Jai Lee is a study in contradictions

 

A surfer from the sundrenched shores of Noosa obsessed with the dark worlds of horror and witchcraft

 

A man of the church of the open sky working miles inland and underground 

 

A man full of joy and life with intimate knowledge of  the furthest depths a mind can fall to.

 

A fantastically talented longboarder unable to turn his talent into food for his wife and child.  

   

 

Jai is a phenomenal surfer, arguably the most talented Australian logger of his generation. Images of him with both feet planted on the nose are synonymous with the perfect point waves of Noosa, his stylish surfing is just as flawless. For the last few years his floppy haired silhouette, streaking along perfect azure blue walls has regularly graced the screens and coffee tables of longboarders the world over.His surfing a smooth mix of jaw-dropping nose trickery and fluid turns. He is "Big in Japan"

From the outside it's easy to imagine him having the perfect life with perfect points on his doorstep, fans of his surfing worldwide, sponsors cheques and free stuff fluttering regularly onto his door mat along with tickets for exciting surf trips and yet.............

The reality is quite different and his story is evidence that real life behind the polished sheen of pro surfing, is not always what you thought it would be. Like all good stories jai's is one of a fall to bottom and ultimately a redemption. 

Sure "Real life" is sometimes hard, sometimes unexpected but ultimately joyous and more than you could have hoped for, even if perhaps it's in a different form than you thought you wanted....

 

What's your surfing history?

 

My surf history is vague at the best of times! Over the years I've done damage to the brain cells from having such a good time, leaving me with glimpses I aint even sure are true to start with!

 Officially I started surfing when I was around 9 ( on and off before that, as I hated the water ) I started on a shortboard, around 5'8 and then in my early teen years my dad got into longboards cause there wasn't much swell consistently around Noosa. So pretty much from that moment on I have spent many hours frothing along the points of Noosa on longboards.

What do you love about riding logs? 

 

It all started cause I live at Noosa, what else was I gonna end up riding!?

 The main reason I love riding logs is i LOVE noseriding. When you get one of those noserides that levitates across a section for multiple seconds, its a feeling I can't explain, but it feels farking good. The closest feeling I've felt to it, is getting barrelled, like reef barrelled. That weightlessness is addictive, the same reason people are addicted to drugs, they create weightlessness, they lift the unnecessary burden and help you escape. I am an addict, an addict to noseriding!

What are riding at the moment?

 

Mmmmmmm.. right now I have 2 new 9'6 Jai Lee Noseriders shaped by Thomas Bexon.

They're a new project I am working on with him that i'm really excited about.

A 9'4 Alex Knost shaped by Dano Forte

A 9'6 Kevin Connelly Noserider

A 9'6 Jai Lee Noserider shaped by Class Malibu

A 5'8 swallow tail thruster

A 5'10 Brother Neilson Mark Richards look alike twinnie.

 

Tell us a little about what you're doing with Thomas Bexon?

 

Thomas and I have been friends for a long time now, drinking beers and partying on rare occasions got us in tune with each other on board designs and ideas for Noosa as such. 

It all came together when I decided I wanted to be more independent in my so called surfing career. Steer right away from doing the publicity for someone else when I could just do it for myself, at least a make a coin or two on the side. So Bexon lived on the sunshine coast and so do I, I approached him about making a jai lee model and here we are today, still drinking beer and talking about board designs. These days though were actually producing something!

 

The new board with Thomas is more of a pig style template than your Classic Malibu model, what led you there?

 

Culture, travel and experimenting have all played a major factor with my log/noserider designs. Like everything, as you evolve, the things around you must evolve. So over the years with cultural influence, my ideas expanded, my knowledge grew and my surfing evolved.

What are the characteristics of your new Thomas board that make it special. I know you have narrowed the nose down to 17"?

 Yeah I've played a lot with Nose and Tail width's, and found they work best for me both around the 16' to 17' mark. 

Just little things, like I used to have a rounded off nose at the tip but I love having a pointed tip now to make me feel like its the arrow to go any direction I choose to go.

Over the years I've mainly mucked around with the blending of rails from nose to tail and concaves. I have always ridden a hard edge in the tail of my noseriders which nearly everyone I come across does not. This is just because of the way I surf, I find 50/50 rolled up rails create a start stop style of surfing. I on the other hand just wanna keep going, I want speed as well as flow in every wave I catch. 

Recently my rails have become a bit more old school compared to the more shortboard rails I had on my Classic Malibu model and I've flattened the deck a tad more and added more curve to the bottom of the board. Just these minor adjustments add so much more flow and control for my style of surfing.

This new design with Thomas Bexon has really captured the essence of the way I surf I think. It has complete flow with every turn, and it sets-up and noserides like one bad arse muther fucker!

 

So what's exciting you in surfing right now?

 

The creativity that's around in surfing right now. There are some amazing things out there. The internet has connected the whole world with one click. No advertising, No agents, No showings. Just upload and click play. Every week there is something new on the internet to check out and cause I don't get to leave home much, this is amazing.

 

Jaidivision.com is your little corner of the internet?

 

JaiDivision; my alter ego you could call it.

 It's definately an extension of me. I have massive issues with doing too many projects at once, leaving me without one finished project. I had to find a way to control that and jaidivision has helped me structure my projects until they're finished. It's taken time over the years but my idea of having all the clothes / boards / art and photos I like available for anyone else is slowly coming together. Anything I think up to make and follow through with becomes available on the website. Although these days everything gets sold through instagram and Facebook before it even makes it to the website! 

 

You were working on a film project as well, can you tell us about that?    

 

Yes, I was working on a feature film and all last year I tried to find sponsors and/or backing to help me follow through with this idea. But money = time, I don't have much money at all, so i don't have much time. 

It's pretty much been put to the side, some of my footage has been sold to Steve Cleveland for his new movie and the rest I was going to make a little series of clips for the internet ( when I have the time ). It fully sucks, I had so many ideas, but hey. Some things aren't meant to be.

 

Do you consider yourself a pro surfer?

 

A professional surfer surfs as a job and makes their income from it. I've made about $1000 (Aus) and two surf trips out of it. So, NO. I defiantly ain't one!

Do you feel let down by the surfing industry? Surely someone with your talent and previous exposure should be able to make a modest living or is that something you have never pursued seriously?

 

I used to think that, and it got me down a lot. In 2011 I gave it one last shot, I tried hard to get a paying sponsor, even hit the big dogs, was ready to sell my soul to them and I would have given them everything if the opportunity raised. 

My job (as a painter and decorator) wasn't paying enough per year to survive and the extra money from a paying sponsor would have kept me from biting the bullet and heading inland to work in the mines. The mines were my last resort and this week ( first week of march ) is my first stint out into the mines in which I miss out completely on the Noosa festival Of Surfing, a first in a very very long time.

 I've had my go, I've had my chance, life has had different plans for me and now my family comes first.

 

 How do u juggle the demands of being a dad and providing for your family with surfing?

 

It is a juggling act, but lucky for me, I don't surf as much as everyone thinks I do!

 One, cause Noosa doesn't provide a consistent swell program and two, when it does, every man, his brother, sister, mother, father and dog come from all corners demanding a wave. That isn't a pleasant way to surf!

 I sneak my sessions in at what I think is the right tide at the Noosa points and all the other times I surf, I head to the beach with my girls and find a isolated peak. I'm running back and forth pleasing the mrs and pleasing my need to soak in salt water!

Your interest in the macabre comes across strongly in jaidivision, where does that come from?

 

I have been asked that on numerous occasions, never really having a answer. I've thought it through and come to the conclusion that my personality has been seriously depressed for a long, long period of time. It's been a massive struggle working through the bizarre thought process which enables depression to take hold. Death is a highly romantic form of weightlessness, which is very intriguing. and death and depression go hand in hand.

 So I guess my infatuation came from a disorder I had before I knew I had it. Like I always saw the light in the dark, the good in the misunderstood and the bad in the well established good. I rebelled against the common idea of what was right from a early age, I saw the holes in societies perfect behaviour and this observation stirred me right towards punk rock and goth. The two loves of my life to this day. My heart is punk and my soul is goth and thats the way it will always be. It makes me happy

Sounds like you've been through some dark times? 

Dark times, oh yes. The ironic part is that I used to be farking scared shitless of the dark, now I'm just as scared of the day, due to anxiety and depression. ( luckily I'm a great actor, hahahaha ). 

But yeah, I've been down that line of massive amounts of drugs, and still large amounts of alcohol. Self medicating, its a bastard, but sometimes its just what you need to survive in this demanding world. 

There is such huge expectations from others and yourself, especially growing up in Noosa where everyone is retired and has all their desires right at their finger tips. I don't blame anyone else for my actions, it was only my way to loose control to feel a gain of control and now that I have crawled my way back from rock bottom there isn't anything in the world I couldn't take on, it's made me strong mentally and physically with a lot of stories to tell over a few drinks.

 If you have never hit rock bottom, you don't know what your missing. The crawl back is one of the most satisfying struggles you can ever encounter. Thats what I live by.

You've obviously turned a corner and you're looking forward. What plans for the future do you have?

 

Right now I'm actually right on the brink of finding a complete sense of happiness within myself. I've done the pills, I've done the self medication and what works best for me is to just consistently create. Having 100 hobbies isn't a burden, its a luxury.

 So my plan for the future is to be happy, internally and dive deep into myself and throw out all the trash I've had hidden in there for so many years.

 

 what are those 100 hobbies?

 

My Girls, Reading, Learning, Nick Cave, Bauhaus, My Umbraluva's, Joy Division, Photography, Filming, Editing, Old AFI, Strung Out, Poetry, Short Stories, Horror Movies, and most of all a few quiet beers with a few mates.

 

Who inspires you?

 

People who don't give up, people who fight to live in this one chance life we have. People who have passion, people who strive to gain knowledge. People who are really happy, I mean happy with themselves, happy on the inside.

 The more people I meet, the more the percentage goes up on people who are just pretending to be happy. But when you get inside you see something much different. 

How do you feel about the state of longboarding at the moment?

 

I'll be happy when longboarding or "logging" isn't "Hipster" anymore. 

Do you feel that there is currently a push in the surfing media to create a "scene" around longboarding, something that can be used to sell stuff? Is that what you mean by hipster?

There is definatly a push at the moment, companies always want a piece of the "cool" (hipster) action. Thats all cool with me, everybody has got to make a living and if you're smart enough to jump on board and make a few bob out of it, congratulations to you. I would if I could.

"Hipster" on the other hand gives me the shits cause I like REAL people. Hipsters are the ones that are into something totally different every six months, changing their values again for the millionth time. Usually it'll be in correspondence with what ever is "IN" at the present time. 

That is a definition of "Hipster" to me, they're everywhere, in every scene. Longboarding is just the cool thing to do at the moment and I hate that cause it makes me feel like a hipster for doing it.

How do you feel about the big surf companies starting to move into this part of surfing? Is it a good thing because there is money for the people involved or are they trying to cash in and diluting something real and organic for their own ends?

I actually think its great,. The big companies are the only ones who can offer up that lifestyle, the smaller companies involved with longboarding don't have the money to provide that. Maybe it helps the companies sell stuff but at least the surfers can get paid without just riding 6'1 thrusters.

 I would love to be in that situation where your job was surfing and being creative, I only work hard at my job to give me money to do that.

Anyone you'd like to thank ?

I just like to give a big thanks to my Dad, he was really the only person who deserved a sticker on my board if you think of it that way. Without his time and the use of money he didnt have, I wouldn't be in surf mags, I wouldn't have travelled the world and met all the different people I have over my time. 

 

Thanks Jai i think that prety much covers it, anything you want to get off your chest?

 

Yeah, I ain't a hipster and I want nothing to do with ya "Hipster" scene.

 Please leave me alone.

 

www.jaidivision.com

www.jaidivision.tumblr.com

http://adventuresintrim.blogspot.com

le chateau

I worked on this piece about Nineplus founder Richard Balding a couple of years ago before the plug got pulled on it. It seems a shame to let it languish on my hard drive for much longer so i'm going to publish it here, hopefully Richard still stands by what he said then! It might be a little rough around the edges since it was never properly readied for publication but hopefully it's interesting all the same!

Hasu no Hana.... 
Nineplus founder Richard Balding from the heart 

Richard Balding is something of an anomaly in UK surfing. In a scene that is
both insular yet heavily in thrall with the influence of the US and
Australia, his company Nine Plus is almost unique. While many of the
established UK brands dominate the domestic market yet fail to make an
impact abroad, Richard has steered Nine Plus into a truly global brand with
a higher profile overseas than at home. 

From humble but passionate beginnings, the journey has not been without it's
trials, it's small defeats and victories but through it all, Richard has
stayed true to the ideals he started with. At the heart of it he's just as
surf stoked as the rest of us, trying to turn his passion into a way of
putting food on the table. 

So Richard tell us a little bit of your own surfing history. 

I come from a small town called Wimbourne near Bournemouth.. I was really
into skateboarding but once I saw Surfing,aged 14, I fell in love with it
and just lived at the piers (Boscombe and Bournemouth).
I grew up surfing with people like Simon Firley, Dan Firley, Dale
Stergeous and i was the worst in my group for about a year, the one
most of the older guys took the mick out of!
I went to California at 15 with Minnow Green and met up with Joel Tudor and by 16 I was almost living at the beach catching the bus early in the morning trying to find a wave and riding anything. I used to borrow the rental boards from a shop under the pier called Waterways and
surf for hours until my Mum called me out or it was too dark to see!



What drew you to longboarding? 

Simon Firley, who was a couple of years older than me and
kinda a cool kat around town, had one. Then I saw a picture of Joel hanging
ten in the back of Surfing Magazine. That was the start
really, it looked different and I was drawn to that. I remember down at the
pier in Bournemouth, a guy hit me on his board and I ended up having like 14
stitches across my head. It was the first time Simon let me use his board as
I was so concussed and I was half like, "man I hurt" and the other half,
"man on a longboard – stoked!"


After that my Mum drove me down to Cornwall and we bought a longboard
off Minnow Green. He foolishly mentioned me coming back for a weekend to get
some pointers and I rocked up for 2 weeks, broke his board, the locks to his
van and spent 14 nights hanging out at the pub. Quite an education!

You were a pretty keen competitor back then?

I Started competing at 16 and went to the Worlds for 4 years running.  I did
all the European contests for six years while being supported by Oxbow and
Oakley.

When did Nineplus become part of your life? 
I started Nineplus at 19 and i resigned from my sponsors at 23 to do
Nineplus full time. Im now 33 and its been 14 years since the brand started.


Starting your own company at 19 is a bold move, how did it come about?


Actually I very nearly didn’t do it!
As time went on I noticed that competitive surfing for longboarding was a
love and not a money earner. It still is really! I saw that and i wanted to
enjoy the sport I love for the rest of my life so knew I had to do it
another way. I went to 'Toes on the Nose' to become their European person in
1997 but Richard Allred didn’t take my offer so I went the hard route on my
own, and here we are.
I just was like "I’m gonna do this" and had all these ideas in my head,
marketing ideas and would live, sleep and dream it and bore people with my
plans.  . I had met Fabrice Valerie, who part-owned Oxbow,  he sat with me
at Makaha and we talked it through. I  talked to Nat Young about it and
there were so many people who took an interest that I thought it "this could
work ". I kept going and slowly things started happening, like a ball was
starting to roll. 

 What
makes nineplus unique?

At our core we are a surfing company for surfers, we don’t have attitude, or
a plan other than to make beautiful products for people and do our absolute
best to operate a company that is authentic, I still have that attitude and
would leave if it was lost. We do not operate for money, we operate for
stoke and many times I will sacrifice in order to help someone feel the
love. That said we are obviously a group of companies that makes a profit
but its important to me that we stay as an independent, true to the values
that i started with.

Building a company like NINEPLUS must have involved some growing pains? 
For sure,  I started a company with no idea how to make anything, handle
finance, market a product, manage shipments or any clue about anything
regarding to stocking shops. I think the term, "ignorance is bliss" comes to mind!

When we started, Emma Skinner and i would travel all
over the UK in a car full of gear through rain, sleet and snow. We kept
going, no money, no accommodation, no plan, just cash in the dash and a
trunk load of garments. 

We operated out
of a house in St Agnes  and  each shipment of 20
boards or so coming in from California was boom or bust!
Ben Skinner and his mates would come over when they were
about 10 years old and help pack fleeces and t-shirts. Once the Shipments got bigger I would actually
tie wire around the boards that had to sit in the garden and then bring the wire up through the window and tie it around my ankle so I would know if someone tried to steal them!

We had plenty of growing pains to get where we are now, doing our own global distribution and all the logistics and paperwork that goes with that.
The last 10 years have been a huge degree course using the world as a classroom. I was a high
school dropout so its like a reverse education and having to pay now for all
those days I used to surf as a teenager instead of learning.  I've made
many, many mistakes, some which should have stopped us but we got back up,
dusted off and kept going. That’s the difference between being successful or
not, having that commitment.

Starting the wetsuit line seems to have been a real pivotal point for you? 
Definately! It's what communicated the heart of the brand through a product
that sold an image of a soulful company. We started doing them back in 2002
and they were simply to make an understated black suit like I had picked up
from ‘Mitchs’ in La Jolla a few years before. People liked it though they
were never for sale. Soon we had a demand for a product we didn’t actually
make and then had to figure out a way to make the whole system work.

We started down the whole Sheico road ( the factory in Taiwan and Thailand
that manages every major wetsuit brand in the world) and somewhere along the
way we found Yamamoto and they found us and since that relationship
developed we have never looked back. There have been issues to work through
but we now have a partnership in a small but well managed factory inside
China that we built over the past 4 years and between us  we have a good
plan I think.




From the outside it seems the wetsuits really helped to establish you as a
label with it's own identity. Where is nineplus going now?

We are concentrating on the US market right now, in
both marketing and sales efforts. California has the history, nostalgia,
waves and people that understand the ideas behind the brand. I strongly
believe that it's only in California that you are either validated as a
surfing brand or not. It sets the industry standard and is the epicentre for
our market.
Behind that is Australia which is a market where surfing is a lifestyle
almost on proportion to what football is to the UK. Then you have Japan that
look at California to inspiration and next Europe. 

Europe is strange and in my opinion the hardest, its easy to go the route of a good product and
a surfing image but its hard to have the roots that make going the distance a
reality, longevity comes from originality and that comes from the nucleus of
the market. To get there you have to be relevant and to do that you need to
be at the epicentre which takes us back to California. 

Alongside Nineplus, we've recently launched HASU which is going to be the equivalent of
Nike 6.0 in the wetsuit business. We are coming out with new fashion lines
and shoes under the HASU and Nineplus brand which is really exciting. They
are made with an environmental approach but also using the leading materials
and workmanship in the business. 

It seems ironic that a European brand has to make it in America to have the
relevance to be successful in it's home market! 
You can have success here without that but if you want to lead in a market
you have to be relevant in the US because it’s the epicentre of the industry
like Italy is to Fashion. Other stuff goes on for sure but california is a
focal point. If you can get a footing there it gives you credibility. That
to me is the litmus of a true surfing brand.


Do you feel saddened at the comparative lack of growth at home 
compared to abroad? 

Um without sounding negative, the UK is a beginners and
intermediate market as far as sales go. We have some great surfing but the
average market is quite a way behind that lead. It
operates like an island and is, to be honest, quite far behind what is going
on out there. 

The UK surf market follows, to a majority, what the consumer
buys or feels is comfortable. You can actually get quite far here in the UK
with simply a good product. That’s not possible in a market that actually
follows the lifestyle. Take 'Kangaroo Poo' for example - in the UK they
became a multi-million dollar operation with pretty much no overseas market,

They did that with a good product which hit the target audience, the British
public that wants to buy into an image. You put that in a core market like
the US and it wouldn't stand a chance. 

That's why getting a brand to
work from the UK is so hard, we are not built from the lifestyle but rather
instead try to sell from it using a perceived image. It will work well to a
non-core audience but for a true surfing brand, an authentic brand, it takes
actually getting to
the nucleus. That takes either a lot of money, being owned by an established
company with kudos or just slogging it out the
hard way.

Why do you think the UK is so far behind? 
If you have seen the Truman show then it sums it up. You work in a local
environment, see the local environment every day, take your money from the
local environment, promote yourself in the local environment and generally
exist in the local environment. In return you judge everything by the local
environment. Then someone shows you another land and tells you there are
lots of different lands but to each of them the people behave the same -
locally.


It takes being shown what exists and then becoming local to each
environment to do the same in every place.
With surfing it’s the same, the best guy in the UK is noted and in his
environment is important, this is relevant to a brand or competitive surfer
or whatever. Once you start to
realise that the UK is maybe the 10th most important market to branded
surfing goods and you venture out into the wider world, you see why
certain countries run the game.

I personally think this is part of the reason why the UK scene does not
impact outside
of its borders too much whereas other countries do. It takes something
different to export it, be it a person or a brand and that is very seldom
come by. If you are going to be another Kelly, beat Kelly or else carve your

own path -  no matter how much money you make its not success, it can bring
prosperity but true success is about being relevant, and being
relevant means your existence is warranted and if you left there would be a
gap - that’s hard to do,

What's exciting you in surfing at the moment? where do you see things going?


Everything excites me and I think surfing is in a great place. When you
travel you see people are switched on to everything and that’s good. Its
about having an open mind and people like Rob, Kelly, Donavan, and Rasta are
embracing
that.  Joel Tudor is owed a lot of respect for starting that trend,
probably 15 years ago and he is still doing it, he will continue to lead to
an extent as he's the real deal and feels what he does, He is truly
authentic, then gets copied for
it.
The media controls so much of our perceived image of what surfing is but I
think
we will see more people doing their own thing in the future. Companies have
to try to remain
relevant as this approach grows and that will be hard for many
of them unless they truly feel what they do.With the internet, people are
more intelligent
than ever and to get someone to buy into a brand now takes much
more than marketing, it takes walking the walk and that is something that
cannot be bought.

Who are your influences?

Okay, well firstly and as surprising as this may sound its Jesus Christ! I
read the Bible about 5 years ago right through. I was interested in how long
it had survived in a world that disregards everything in due course. I
was staggered how great the influence of Jesus Christ still is on
everything in our age from courts to
governments to the monarchy, its overwhelming and its worldwide. People
disregard it but if you were to equate that influence in a commercial or
industrial sense it would be and is unmatched by anything else, ever -
thousands of years
later, its bigger than when it was started and if you stop and consider that
then you can learn allot. That influences me, I think there's is untold
wisdom behind
that success, When I read it, it was like, okay so I never picked this thing

up before and I know most other people don’t either but i was dumbfounded
at the advice it gave and knowledge it contained.
Adding to that and my biggest influence is passion, I love passion, it is
what changes things  It’s the passion that I see in people that shows
me they live their dream and that inspires me. Business people like Richard
Branson, missionaries like Billy Graham, from Surfers like JT and designers
like
Paul Smith . They draw their own lines
and carve their owns routes and that is what I value as success.
If you follow the heart, there are no regrets !!





You have travelled a lot, where are your favorite places? 

Um, well when I focused on the brand about 10 years ago I thought my travels

were over and now its like i'm constantly travelling.  I feel fully blessed
to be able to
see both sides of the coin. One week I'm in the depths of
China living at a factory and the next sitting in a café in Laguna beach
with famous people,
after waking with views over Trestles. I often fly through a place in only a
few
days but I always try to get immersed in the culture so on that level
favourite places
are Hong Kong, Shanghai and throughout India.
Surfing wise its gonna be Malibu on a south swell, Rincon on a North Swell,
Hossegor on a West Swell and Rainbow Bay on an East!.


What else do you enjoy outside surfing? 
I enjoy charity work, poetry, reading, travelling, designing, sales, music,
business, investment, history, culture & learning more about the work of
Jesus and spending time with
Sarah, my girlfriend.

What are you most proud of with NINEPLUS?

Linking everything into a career that actually puts food on my
table, friends in my heart and a spring in my step. 

pick up the planer..

This little run of summer waves and weather has given me the first proper chance to run my newest log through it's paces. It's a 9'4 "mod log" from the last batch of boards Randall shaped before hanging up his planer indefinately last year. I loved the look of it when Neil showed it to me and wished i'd had the cash and the space in the shed to buy it then so when it popped up for sale on magic seaweed i wasn't about to make the same mistake twice!

Template wise it's pretty much what a lot of people have been moving towards recently, less Nuuhiwa noserider and more Hot Generation/ Magic Sam with a greenough fin, thin pinched rails, widepoint pulled back a little, plenty of roll out into the rails and only a shallow nose concave. The nose is fairly narrow at 17 3/4 and the tail is wide at 16 1/4. Despite being 23 wide and 3 in the center there's not a great deal of foam in there. It's similar to the boards Dane Peterson has been riding recently or Chonoski's "involvement" Mctavish's

It's not really a "saunton board" being designed for waves with a little more zip but like most boards with a wide point back of center, as long as there is a steepish pocket to tuck into there's plenty of scope to get piggies dangling. Off the tail it's whippy in a pivoty way and it's got a nice responsive lively feel despite it's volan glass. In fact my only negative so far would be that it paddles really slowly although i'm not entirely sure why as it's fast in trim.

It's a crying shame Randall is no longer making boards, his logs are great and he makes a great mini-simmons too. His templates are spot on and the boards are beautifully finished with some very neat creative touches. Mine has a carbon fibre cloth asymmetric tail patch for example!

I think everyone i've known to ride one of his shapes has rated it and there are more than a few people who would like to get a board off him if he can ever be persuaded to pick up a planer again. In a way it's a little bit pointless posting a detailed review since none of you can currently order a board off him so perhaps this can form another little prick at his concious that his skills are prized over here and an occasional trip to the shaping bay wouldn't be such a bad thing!

pickle in print!

I'm Stoked to post the link to my latest piece for drift. It's an interview with man of the moment, Tyler Warren, who seems like a nice guy with a good head on his shoulders as well as being an immensely talented surfer on pretty much anything. I'm sure i'm not the only one who's excited to see the TW Experiments film later in year.

Click here to read the interview

Big thanks to Tyler for doing it and to Kyle Maclennan for the great photos. Kyle also made the clip above.

Surf is still less than epic and guttingly i missed out on Monday's suprise swell. I did get wet on tuesday though, albeit caught by a downpour walking back from a pleasant evening climbing on Baggy Point. Fun to get on some proper rock again, whipped by the wind with a frothy sea crashing below as we climbed.

waxhead waxes lyrical

I'm  stoked to publish a link to my latest feature for drift, an interview with the waxhead himself Matt Chojnacki.

Matt is articulate, a super nice guy and a really talented surfer with a smooth and powerful logging style. He's one of the surfers who's exciting me at the moment and well worth checking out. Hope you enjoy the piece.

The photo above and the ones for drift are all by Matt Johnson, yet another young photographer who's talent makes me jealous!

Salt and Wax

I'm super stoked as i write this. Not only did i score a really glassy session at lunchtime with a handful of others but my latest piece for drift is now live. A conversation with the very talented photographer Mark Leary about his latest book, Salt and Wax, available now (nearly!)

check the piece out and get a taste of the book here

a barrel-fest of epic proportions!

Brit filmaker Ross Johns just sent me a copy of his new film, Fusion which is already out and available online here or from most good surf shops. It might just completely re-define your idea of british surfing and the quality of our waves. Here's my review for Drift

The shelves of your local surfshop are filled with a steady stream of new dvds each featuring an all star cast of action heroes pulling into monster barrels in Tahiti or pulling monster airs in Indo. Yet the number of movies celebrating our homegrown talent is woefully small. Having already seen some stills from some of the sessions included in Fusion, it was with a fair amount of excitement that i slipped it into my dvd player.

In the shops as you read this (or available through http://www.surfclips.co.uk) it aims to reveal British surfing and British waves at their best. It's been a labour of love for filmaker Ross Johns over the last three years and has lead to many an uncomfortable night asleep in the car and many a junkfuelled petrol station dinner.

From the start, there's no delusions of Thomas Campbell, there's no chin stroking celebration of how cool we all are for being surfers, this is straight up surf porn. Set to a pumping soundtrack of dance and guitar bands, it's a balls to the wall barrel fest of epic proportions.

If you are unaware of the quality of the current crop of top British surfers, or you are unaware quite how good some of the waves in the UK are, you will be picking your jaw up off the floor time and again. Some of the slab waves are very scary looking indeed with tow or paddle entry and the quality of the camera work is good. It's not all pits either, a large number of lips get well and truly slayed over the 60 minute(ish) running time along with some pretty progressive aerial surfing as well.

It's filmed all over the South West, shows the brown water of North Yorkshire at it's best and features some of the recent slab sessions in Caithness at waves like Bagpipes that have been well documented in Carve and others.

The cast list is a veritable who's who of UK shortboarding from Russ Winter and Stokesy (who has a good section as does Mark "Egor" Harris) to newer names like Tom Butler. Reubyn Ash is perhaps the only notable not present.

There's a dash of progressive longboarding in the mix too. Adam Griffiths and Ben Skinner wield their nine foot sticks into turns that most people dream of doing on boards three feet shorter, before they prove they are both equally at home on shorter, skinnier equipment.

This isn't "Thicker Than Water", its not trying to be. It is a great document of where we are right now and almost certainly shows the highest level of homegrown surfing captured on video to date. If it doesn't inspire you to pull in deeper or smack the lip harder the next time you surf then nothing will!

post modern punk

I am really beyond stoked to publish a link to my latest article for Drift magazine. It's an interview with Randall, former shaper at classic malibu in noosa and temporarily crafting beautiful handmade boards in the UK again. I feel really lucky to have my words laid over the amazing photos of Dane Peterson. I think it came out great, hope you do too!

clicky here to have a butchers!

note to self

I shamelessly stole this from Dane Peterson's blog for three reasons:

Firstly, it made me smile,.

Secondly, Dane has always been one of my favorite surfers, ever since he appeared as a slightly be-quiffed teenager in The Seedling, I've loved his super smooth, effortless style and his impressive noseriding. In the last few years, he's also become one of my favorite photographers, with an eye for capturing the little moments that make surfing such a special thing to be involved in. A friend recently asked me what i love in surfing and i pretty much directed them to Dane's site and told them " it's what you see here!"

Finally, Dane just sent me a batch of photos for a feature we're working on for Drift. Unsuprisingly, they're really good and i woke up feeling inspired in a journalistic kind of way & excited about how things are coming together(stay tuned for details :-)

I know those of you in Kernow are cursing the Northerly wind of the last few days but up here where there's a little shelter i've had some fun micropeelers and hopefully the forecast will continue to stay as it is into next week. I still don't fully understand why some people don't own a longboard for these sort of occasions!

Devon Lanes and longboards

There's a new British longboard movie out as you read this, made by father of Ben, Andy Haworth. It's a loving look at the longboard scene in our corner of the world and well worth getting a copy, especially as all profits are being donated to cancer charities.

There's more rumination about the film and Andy himself over on drift here. For more on the film or to order a copy go here

bleakers!

My friend Chris just posted a great interview with Sam Bleakley on Drift, check here. Chris is a fine photographer and one of the people who inspired me to pick up a camera. Check his work out here

all a quiver.....

My much trailed ramble on the joys of owning a few too many boards is up now on drift. Nice comments only.........pleeese!

clicky clicky

Lovely photos and helpful quiver caddying from Jamie!