Lemon next to the pie..

 

 A little cove near Cayucos, central california. They make AMAZING pie in cayucos!

santa cruz

 

Santa Cruz is rad. It deserves the hype as a surf town with something for everyone and i really enjoyed the couple of days we spent there. I think i've had a soft spot for it ever since i visited with a skateboard in pre-surfer days twenty odd years ago. Reading Dan Duanes "caught inside, a surfers year on the coast" further ingrained it's appeal in my conciousness. For me it encapsulates a lot of what i like about california. It's a little more "real", quieter and less plastic than some areas further south. The people are friendly, it has a wealth of right hand point breaks. The surrounding coast and countryside are greener and a little more rugged than SoCal, and there are more breaks in the urban continuum along the coast. It feels like an "outdoors" kind of place in the same way that the lake district does over here.

I'd love to go back soon, i could definately live there

doho days.....

I think Doheny is probably the spot that ive surfed most in California, mainly through it's convnience to the a couple of the condos we've stayed in. It kind of gets a bad rep amongst the wider surf world for being fat, slow and busy but its a fun wave with a mellow crowd and some really good longboarders across several generations. This particular sunday it was baking on the beach and busy in the water with glassy head high sets rolling through in boardshort temperature water. A classic californian beach day shared with the three G's (thats you Threadills! :-))

wait for the hook....

The next installment of views from california. This is a glassy set wave peaking up at The Hook, just south of Pleasure point in Santa Cruz. Lovely short paddle out in giant lulls through kelp beds then slightly overhead reeling right handers section chasing down the point. This particular morning was unusually quiet compared to other times i checked it. The kelp was so thick in places you could feel it pulling at your fins and leash, alomost enough to pull you out of the wave at times. It sounds weird but you could almost imagine getting tied up in the fronds underwater when you duck dived or wiped out. It was too fast for a log, i rode the seapea but even that had a little bit too much foam. My friend Matt from SF loves this wave on a fish and i can really see it being a great board selection.

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

film still rules / love c street!

Much a i like the immediacy and convenience of having a camera and editing software in my iphone shaped trouser pocket, shooting film is still the best. Manipulating an instagram picture this much might seem contrived and yet this is just a straight 120 film scan from my holga complete with light bleed and weird colout cast from the cross processing. I love the fact that you never know exactly how the picture is going to turn out until you scan the negative.

I'm pretty stoked on this one. It's from the county fairground parking lot in Ventura at the top of the C street point, somewhere i surfed quite a few times on this trip. Although the Santa Barabara/ Rincon area is littered with right hand points, most of them only properly wake up in winter when the swells come from the north. In summer, C street is the go for many locals and it is a really fun wave on a log when its small or a fish when its bigger. Despite the crowd, it's pretty mellow in the water and usually has multiple sections / take off spots to thin the pressure on the sets.

As with most of the waves i surfed, even on days that the locals considered sub-par, it was better than 99% of the waves i surf at home.

a pleasure

This is probably my favorite photo from our Californian trip, taken in Santa Cruz at about 8 am from the sidewalk above The Hook at the south end of pleasure point. I was still dripping wet from a glassy headhigh session on the Seapea, avoiding the thick kelp beds and chasing and racing perfectly shaped right handers down the point.

I've never surfed in such a thick layer of kelp before. It's weird paddling through it, you feel a little like its going to grab you as you duck dive and hold you under and it pulls at your fins as you take off. Like all of the california coast, it's beautiful and having a couple of sea otters breakfasting just outside the line up only added to the picture.

the swede

One of the nicest people you could hope to meet and always a pleasure to share a session with

lines

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"

this green and pleasant land

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!

bathing forbidden

Les dunes again, in warmer times

dawning

 

There arent many good things about dark mornings but seeing the sun rise is one of the few

a place to bury strangers...

 

Somewhat macabre title to this post, for no reason other than it's the name of a band (heavily influenced by my bloody valentine) and they just popped up on my shuffle!

Obviously i took this a couple of months ago (in Norway), it's the cabin we stayed in. It's a shot from the first roll of film through my Lomo Konstructor camera. The roll came out pretty well for a first try and i'm happy to have another plastic beauty to add to my camera quiver!

If you didnt click the link yet, the Konstructor is a plastic SLR 35mm camera that comes in a kit of plastic bits with a screw driver and some instructions. It's actually fairly easy to build and with the exception of the film counter it pretty straight forward.

It's probably a bit less robust than a holga because of the folding hood thing for the view finder and it takes a little more care and effort to frame and focus up a shot. That said, because it's a reflex camera, what you see through the viewfinder is actually what you get, in contrast to the somewhat random relationship between exposure and viewfinder on a holga or diana.

It's a cool looking little object and there is a definate warm and fuzzy feeling to building it up and using it. A good one to add to your birthday list!

no waiting

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

fin.

So i was killing time on the internet the other day during the inevitable downtime at work and i came across a thread on magic seaweed's forum asking about noseriding fins. It got me thinking a little bit.

There's a lot of time and marketing BS put into the idea of making a board noseride easily, fins, tail shapes, nose widths, concaves or no concaves, square noses, pointy noses etc etc. In reality everything really comes down to rider skill and wave positioning. A good longboarder can make pretty much any longboard noseride and most people who are on a quest for things to make it easier in reality just need more time in the right waves or a better idea of the mechanics behind it. Thats probablynot what you want to hear but it is true in my opinion!

A few years ago i would have probably told you that your fin was really important but these days i'm less sure. I think you're fin choice has far more influence on the way and feel of your board in turns than it does on noseriding. The classic position is that you need a big fin to noseride, the bigger the better - reference the dewey webber hatchet fin for example. But the truth is that as long as you have good soft rails and some tail kick, you dont need a big fin like that to hold the tail in or lift the nose. Likewise with nosewidth, it's less important thatn the rail and tail shape.

Case in point: I've spent a lot of time on logs with some kind of pivot fin. They have seemed to suit the stop/go nature of my tradtional style surfing but.....
I've done almost all my noseriding over the last year on the If6was9 log i've posted photos of before. It's foiled out, the nose is only 17 3/4 wide and the fin is a greenough 4a, which has a wide base but a narrow tip and some flex. It turns beautifully with more flow than a pivot and loosens the board up nicely, especially in faster waves. The board noserides really well and i've never had the tail skip out while hanging up front, even on a wave as fast as croyde! If there is a disadvantage it is just that the board is perhaps a little more sensitive and a little less stable - thats the trade off better turning that a smaller fin area gives, but that doesn't compromise it's noseriding, perhaps just demands a little more skill.

My feelings are in line with a global move away from big fins on logs, led by tudor and his duct tape crew. Cruise the net and they are all pretty much riding greenough derived templates. I'll leave you musing with jack lynch. The 4a isnt holding him back!



+THE SEA OF POSSIBILITY+ JACK LYNCH from Nicholas Damen on Vimeo.

the skies.

Letting film expire before you use can do weird but great things! Talking of weird things, i just read this. Completely un surf related but intriguing in a strange but true x files kinda way!

the people switch

 

It's the Easter Hols, at least it is for school kids, i'm still working with no time off for good behaviour! Living in an area that makes much of it's income from tourism, this weekend tends to mark the beginning of the season. I often think of it being when "the people switch" gets thrown since the contrast can be so dramatic. Winter can be fairly sleepy with little traffic and few people around, especially in places like Woolacombe. As soon as easter comes, so do the throngs of families jaywalking through the village, the traffic queues to get through Braunton, the lack of parking spaces to sneak a few waves at combesgate, the bobbing foam flotsma clogging the line-up.

With dry weather and small swell forecast, it's likely this year will be no exception. Time to dust off a big log and a bigger dose of patience!