lens flare

winter

Had a pretty busy winter, some decent waves, some fun bike riding and a couple of really good trips out to the alps.

Turned out to be an epic winter for snow with many saying it was the best for over twenty years. Personally I lucked into a few days of freshies. It's also the first time i've had a proper powder board with me, One of the Lib x Lost Jamie Lynn colab boards. It's loosely based on the concept of a fish surfboard being short (146) and wide giving the same surface area as a much longer board with a fully 2-3 inch stance set back. It's also the first time i've ridden a camber board for a few years.

The board was amazing. Actually pretty fun on piste holding a good carving edge despite its width. In soft snow I couldn't wipe the grin off. It's genuinely the closest ive come to surfing on frozen water. Effortless float with no need to lean back so no back leg burn and just so much flow with huge rooster tails on each turn. Even my wife commented on how much fun it looked and she is usually the first to burst my bubble of self-congratulation!

Most definitely recommended!

like a phoenix from the ashes.....

"AAAAAAND WE'RE BACK" to quote CRob from one of my current favorite podcasts, The Nine Club. Short hiatus due to general lack of time and lack of film photos to post.

Following on from the drowning of my last waterproof film camera I invested a whole £7 in a new semi disposable waterproof point and shoot. It's a lovely yellow plastic colour and looks like £7 was slightly overpriced but the first roll through yielded some decent results.

thems the breaks.........

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about the aforementioned broken ribs was watching lovely autumn swells on the webcam, knowing there was no way I could consider paddling out. I tried a couple of times after about a month but with varying success and pain levels and it wasn't really until past 6 weeks that I managed a proper little logging session.

In an effort to distract myself I searched out a cheap old canon waterproof camera, an a1 sureshot which took some lovely pictures on my first session back in before it sprung a leak and died. That's what you get for shooting with 30 year old cameras I guess!

ouch!

This rad looking little board is a prototype Gulfstream 4'10 asymmetric Seapea with a keel fin on the toe edge (longer rail) and a quad set up on the backhand side. It's pretty mental looking but its pretty much all Jools has been riding in junk surf over the last 6 months.

I've been meaning to borrow it for ages and had lined up a loan ahead of a sunday AM with a perfect 3 foot and clean forecast a couple of months ago. All great until I offered to show BGA and his visiting mate a little rainproof mountain bike route. To cut a long story short, I went over the bars into some rocks at pretty high speed and broke two ribs!

It's not an experience id recommend and (amazingly considering the stuff ive done) the first time ive ever broken a bone! Pain wise i think I got away lighter than some friends experience but the worst thing was being sidelined from any kind of fun stuff for a few weeks! Most frustrating of all the board went back to Jools unridden so you'll have to wait for a full ride report.

hey kook!

I had a couple of evenings home alone the other week so i indulged myself with a couple of glasses of a nice red and rewatching some old surf dvds. Notably two of my perennial faves, Thomas Campbells "Seedling" and Michael Halsbands "Surf Movie Reels 1-14". Both feature pretty heavy doses of Joel Tudor in the peak of his "ride everything" influence.

I came to a few conclusions as the bottle slowly drained. One, Tudor is a ridiculously talented surfer on pretty much anything you put under his feet. He is the master of making the difficult look easy and he is SO smooth. He's a pretty impressive skater too!

Two, lots of Tudor's single fin eggs actually have the wide point slightly back of centre instead of forward which is the more widely seen case with eggs. Tudor is quoted as saying he prefers the widepoint back for turning and doesn't like it forward unless he's getting barrelled!

Three, I haven't owned or ridden a single fin egg for ages!

Luckily, a couple of friends do have Tudor eggs and Thos very sportingly agreed to lend me his 6'6 Kookbox Archie's left (in the pics) in exchange for a few days on my Mandala.

Ideally i'd have had Saunton at head high doing its best pointbreak impression as a test track since I suspect that the board would truly light up under those conditions. That's what Thos says anyway. As it was I had to make do with a pretty mushy, onshore, chest high P-land and a clean but a bit too small dawn patrol at saunton.

I did get a good feel for how fun a board it is though! There's lots of foam in there at 21.65 wide and 2.75 thick, a little bit of nose rocker but otherwise flat as.  Widepoint I think just back of centre, flexy kookbox 8 inch fin. Small roll in the nose but quickly into a single concave that moves to a fairly deep double in the back third. Rails are soft for the first foot but then tucked under becoming a hard edge just in front of the fin. In short, it's definitely designed to turn and feel lively rather than cruisy.

It's got far less Hull influence than I expected from what I thought I knew of this model. As a result it's way less quirky to ride than a v bowls, which is ostensibly a wide point back egg too. It went backside well and in both directions had that snappy, pivoty turn that you would expect from a single fin.

I really like a flex fin in a single and you could definitely feel a nice spring from the fin as you exited a deep railed bottom turn.

What really impressed was its glide over the flat spots despite its shortish length. I think the lack of rocker and the plentiful concave in the bottom keeps it high and planing where others bog. In short its a cool little board, really easy to surf like eggs generally are, with a wide range of suitability for waves and the ability to be pushed if you want to.

Thos calls it his "guilty pleasure" and I can see why. 

Hopefully I'll manage to wangle BGA's Tudor Karma off him soon to compare.

#winteriscoming

It's starting to feel like we are on the cusp of seasons. There's definitely a hint of autumn creeping slowly in. Lets hope she brings some well groomed swell and ushers in a cold winter off offshores and deep powder to play in.

vespa

Vespa scooters in Italy may be Cliché, but its cliché for a reason. There are genuinely loads of them weaving around with questionable traffic awareness.

They are also a design classic. I don't understand why you would buy anything else if you were shopping for a moped since no other company seems to have nailed it with the simple elegant lines and certain "je ne sais quoi" style that makes the vespa stand out.

Funny how some things just seem "right". The original mini is an other example or the foil on a good displacement hull surfboard........

marina

Lakeside

Putsawatu

Looking empty for probably the last time until autumn

daybreaker

One thing I love about this time of year is seeing so many beautiful sunrises and sunsets, I'm lucky to get a spectacular view from just outside the house on many occasions. #lovewhereyoulive

finally

Not only is the flat spell over but I have a new film developed and scanned to start posting again!

I'm typing fresh out of the water at S-town having lucked into some small little offshore zippers with just Damo (on his posh new teamrider Karma Surfboards Log) keeping me company. The waters still got a little nip to it but the sun shone, the cave turned on and I got reacquainted with the front foot of my Gulfstream Slimpig. It kinda felt like the first little surf of summer today and it was cool to get some nice logging in without feeling as rusty as I sometimes do at this time of year on longer equipment.

Hopefully looking at a couple more days of bigger waves too......... Yew! As my Californian Friends would say!


Pic obviously not from today. V bowls loaned by Bill, more details to come!

Fourth Gear

Sometimes the simplest things are the most fun...............

I don't often remember that i've got a mat stashed in the van but every time I surf it, I wonder why I don't use it more often!

by dawns early light

7'10 of Gulfstream speed egg goodness. Template is a mix of Russ Pierre's wild west shooter with a bit of Devon Howards takayama model mixed in. Ride report to follow............

a ghostly presence

Low light, bulb shutter and a shaky hand. I kinda like it though! GS keel fish at P-Land, early winter 16. Over the next year i'm going to be helping the boys at Gulfstream with their online content. Really looking forward to getting my teeth into some writing again.

oldschool

I spent a lot of the pre and post Christmas period driving our old VW around after the cambelt blew in my T4 (boo!) Never fails to put a smile on my face even if it doesn't have heating and has questionable brakes for muddy roads.

in an instant

The perfect small wave quiver?

I reckon a Single fin log and a small Mini simmons (9'4 and 5'2 respectively in this case) covers everything up to head high. Logging when its smaller and cleaner, mini sim for junk or dumpy wave fun and section racing on head high lined up days. Handcrafted by North Devons finest- Gulfstream surfboards

coffee eh?

Cool little coffee van tucked away in a bank holiday Cornish campsite

b-logging

I've just started helping Jools out at Gulfstream with some of their online content. First up is a little blog about their longboard models, how they surf, where they come from etc. Pretty pleased how it came out!

Check it out here

The picture is an oldie, Dawnpatrol with Swedish Thom and Mr Vowles back when he surfed!! 35mm film x holga

surf car no.2

Absolutely Baltic dawn patrol polaroid of Toms Volvo. Really fun session with plenty of the local logging crew out as I recall. Rad car too!