#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.

bathing forbidden

Les dunes again, in warmer times

travelling light

 

Anyone that knows my family will know that my girls dont really travel light. Although they love camping it's definately the making camp for a while and getting it comfortable type rather than the fast and light feral missions we are all supposed to lust after as surfers. Of course i'm all for sleeping in a tree and drinking rainwater - actually i'm not, i like being comfy too! Hence the embarassingly large tent for three people! 

Actually we got it online half price and we didnt really realise quite how big it was when we ordered it! 36 guy ropes, it's the opposite of feral!

Anyway, this pic kinda harks back to posts i've made in the past, namely that a "workable travel quiver" for me is definately a fish and a log. In this case it's a 9'4 if6was9 and a 5'8 larry mabile fish but there are a few variations on the theme. Of course the only thing you can't pack - (the kitchen sink will fit if you pack well ;-) is waves and as this trip proved, it doesnt matter what boads you've got if it goes flat afer 3 days!!

flags

 

 Of course this is what you really want to see when you round the corner on a surf trip. Three foot and reeling

hunkered down

Lovely memories of using a tent to shelter tired sun burnt arms from the sun and not other elements!

One of the cooler things about running this blog is the random worldwide connections it creates with  other creative, surf stoked people. Case in point was a recent email from Evan at Travelgrom.com from california whose got a pretty slick looking site based on his passion for travel on a budget, waves and music. Worth clicking through to if you have a fwminutes to spare.

the path.

I remember feeling all Endless summer as i walked along this path through French dunes, crossed the horizon and saw empty small warm beach break in front of me. Not quite Cape St Francis but not a bad substitute for a couple of hours!

I'm actually off to the snowy vistas of Norway again in a week or so, looking forward to some nice mellow snowboarding and hopefully some sneaky fresh pow turns.

Norway is not really high on most peoples bucket lists for snow trips. Most people’s preconceptions are that the mountains are small and it’s really cold, and expensive.

That’s kinda right. It’s certainly a different experience to visiting the alps. There are no towering crags and precipitous roads as you approach, no winding hairpins and heart in the mouth moments as French locals overtake you on blind bends.

It’s more of a snowy wonderland. The last tarmac you see is the runway at Gatwick. The plane lands on snow and all the roads are white. The hills are rolling and pine covered and white as far as the eye can see and you’re just as likely to see locals zoom past you on cross country ski’s as pass on foot.

The resorts themselves are pretty small with a limited vertical drop and it’s not that steep. It’s not a place for motorway skiing or ticking off several places in one day. You’re not sold so far I know.

But…… the snow quality is excellent, pretty much guaranteed. The cold temperatures prevent any kind of freeze thaw freeze cycle like you often get in France so it stays as packed powder that holds a beautiful edge on-piste for ever after a snowfall. I reckon Tahoe is the only other place with such consistency I’ve been. When there are freshies to be had there’s amazing, safe tree runs to be had, which don’t get tracked that quickly because the resorts are pretty quiet out of weekends.

It’s not that cold either really as long as you have a decent set of gloves (mitts are good) and a good jacket. I’m a sucker for a nice down jacket and I’ve been loving my volcom one the last couple of trips. I digress but check out theclymb.com if you are in the US reading this, they have big discounts on ski equipment and other outdoors gear at discounts up to 70% off retail!

The parks are ace too, really well maintained with kickers from tiny up to scary giant size. Quite often they are dotted around at the sides of main runs so easy to hit if you are spending the day with non freestyling family!

And that’s where the real strength of the place comes. It’s a great place for getting your kids stoked on skiing. The instruction is great, their English is better than some Englishmen I’ve met and the resorts are perfect for building confidence in children or that non skiing girlfriend / wife you have coerced into joining you!

It’s not even that expensive, with the euro so strong and the “off the radar” nature of the place it’s a similar cost to going anywhere else.

It’s also a really great, different experience to the classic brits abroad/ party vibe that you get in the big alpine resorts and sometimes doing something different to the taking a low budget flight to Geneva and beyond can be good!

tow the line

I like to think that i'm farly objective in my surfboard reviews. I hope i have moved on from the childlike wonder that used to greet every pretty resin tint (when those things were much less common) and the gushing over every new line and turn and new surfing experience. That said, i'm aware that i'm rarely critical of the boards i buy and borrow to surf. Perhaps a little out of courtesy to others hard work and tightly held views. I like to think though that it's because there aren't many bad boards out there anymore, just stuff that suits some people more than others!

keepers...

There was a thread on the Magic seaweed forum a while ago about keepers, those boards you will never sell. Thinking about it i'm pretty fickle, there are a few boards that i was sure i'd never get rid of which went to make way for supposedly bigger and better things. That said, there are a few in my quiver that have survived the periodic culls and that i'm still really fond of.

Ask me again this time next year and who knows but currently...

5'2 Gulfstream SeaPea by me!!

5'2 Tyler Warren bar of soap
5'6 Jeff mcCallum mford

Both rare, both beautiful, both fly! The McCallum has the best laminate ever, a signed, defaced Dollar Bill.

9'4 if6was9 mod log by Neil Randall, my current beau for logging and the board in the pic above. Based on Dane Petersons logs with a greenough fin. Super fun off the tail and super good on the nose in steeper waves. It's pretty much where current "cutting edge" longboard design is right now.

9'6 classic Malibu jai lee noserider by Peter White, such a good noserider it's almost cheating!

180 degrees south

I love the beach early in the morning, you can walk for miles and see only your own footprints, hear only your own breaths and think with a clear mind while the world is waking up.

zippers

This is the north end of Les Dunes 1 near Brem sur Mer in the vendee. It's a really fun beachie, not too dumpy and retains pretty good shape through most of the tide. Busy but nowhere near our summer crowds. I guess it's a bit like combesgate, a nice peaky speed with a long wall, perfect for extended tip time on a log or for flying down the line on a fish when it's bigger. Boardshort temperature water in midsummer too!

mobile home

 

The van, specifically the VW t4/t5 and to a lesser extent the Merc vito, hold a special place in UK surf culture. I think perhaps in a way that is different to their place in the rest of europe or the in US where the big pick up truck holds more "beach cool"

Maybe it's to do with our more inclement weather and the more fickle nature of our waves. Whatever the reason, it's a mobile home, kitchen , changing room, board shed, bedroom or sanctuary from the world outside, a good van is an essential to a fully realised British surfing life.

Mine is currently parked up overlooking some sweet French beach break while i ponder which of my toys to play with......

castles in the sand

fall into the sea, eventually!

little fluffy clouds

Another piece that seems to have been marooned on my hard drive for over a year now. I was quite pleased with it at the time, even if it is somewhat self congratualtory chin-stroking.

What is traditional longboarding?

When i was asked to write a "What is traditional longboarding" piece. It sounded pretty simple, it's just noseriding, one fin and drop knee cutbacks isn't it? Yet the more i sat and thought about it, the more difficult to pin down it became.

In it's original sense it's a term that defined a part of longboarding for a few years in the mid nineties. Back in the first "age of the longboard" there was just surfing and everyone rode longboards until Nat Young and chums changed things in 1966. When longboards started to become popular again in the nineties, it was driven by shapers like Bill Stewart applying the lessons learnt with the evolution of the shortboard to longer equipment. The focus was very much on emulating the "radicalness" of cutting edge shortboard surfing with a handful of throwback manouvers thrown in. The boards were light, often narrow nosed with shortboard style concave bottoms and multiple fins.

It wasn't until Joel Tudor and his contemporaries like Wingnut, Jimmy Gamboa, Kevin Connelly and others started to look backwards, sometimes riding vintage thrift store finds that things began to change. Longboarding begin to develop along two fairly seperate paths. While the hawaiians and aussies continued to develop the high performance school, Tudor led the charge back to black wetsuits, single fins, Volan and a focus on a style with it's feet firmly in the body english of the early 60's. Looking in magazines of the time, "traditional longboarding" really means trying to emulate David Nuuhiwa at his 1966 noseriding prime, hanging ten was once again paramount along with smooth footwork and drop knee cutbacks.Board Templates  closely followed those of period noseriders with wide noses and tails, flat rocker, concave nose and paralell soft rails. Once again, first point Malibu became the focus of world wide attention.

The years tick by, things change and evolve, "pro" longboarding faltered from lack of corporate support and to a large extent stayed as a fringe activity in the surf media despite the ever increasing numbers boards over nine feet leaving the racks of surf shops world wide. Tudor retreated from the limelight a little and turned his attention to shorter equipment. Thomas Campbell made a couple of very influential surf films and huge numbers of surfers rediscovered the joy in the glide of a heavy board in high line trim. From where we (i) sit today, traditional longboarding is much more than emulating '66 vintage Nuuhiwa.

 

Almost all of today's top "loggers" are incredibly well rounded surfers, riding heavy single fins in small waves but shorter equipment when the waves get bigger or hollower, be that fish, egg, hull, simmons, even thrusters. Shapers like Tyler Hatzikian and Robbie Kegel have started to take single fin longboard design into different territory. Both these shapers say they use the zenith of 60's design as a jumping off point but aim to design shapes that continue the evolution of the longboard as though the shortboard revolution never happened. They are not alone. The last few years have seen a subtle shift in "log" shapes away from parallel templates and wide noses to more pig influenced shapes with wide points pulled back narrower noses and more defined hips to the board. The lines these boards draw on the wave is subtly different and surfers like knost and kegel have started to turn harder as a result while still retaining the essence of a traditional style. Noserides have become much more focused on being in the pocket not out on the shoulder and the standard of noseriding and the technicalty of the poses struck with toes over has gone through the roof.

Far from being old and stale, a dry study of glories past, traditional longboarding is more varied and alive than ever and that's where the difficulty in pinning it down lies. In fact it's one of the most vibrant parts of the whole of surfing in current times, with an almost punk ethos of experimentation and expression fuelled by a worldwide internet savvy community and not bound by corporate ideas and marketing plans. 

 So if we must try to pin down a definition what can we say? What is "traditional"  today?

 I think it's best to think of it as an approach, a "state of mind" if you forgive the cheesiness of that assertion, defined by  some basic tenets. Fundamentally Style is important, . Surfing with style is paramount whether it's the Steve Bigler-esque exaggerated body English of Alex Knost or the Phil Edwards style smoothness of Tyler Warren. It's an adherence to the principles of good trim, harnessing the waves energy with good positioning and without needless flapping. It's working with the wave, harmonizing with it's form in more lateral lines rather than attempting to bend it to your will or slice it to pieces. It's about using the extra three feet of your longboard for it's intended purpose and noseriding the hell out of any suitable section. It's about believing a good bottom turn is far more important than whatever maneuver you can do at the top of the wave. It's about weight, glide, momentum and grace under pressure. 

It's not about being retro or being overly consumed with looking backwards, it's about taking the essence of Surfing's history and treating those reference points with due reverence but taking them somewhere new. 

Unsurprisingly perhaps, people are beginning to take notice and the big surf Companies are perhaps beginning to sniff opportunity. Vans have poured a fair amount of money into Joel Tudors unashamedly traditional duct tape contests and Billabong, one of the "big 3", just sponsored Tyler Warren  one of the best "all boards" surfers in the world and something that would have been unthinkable even 5 years ago. Whether this is ultimately a good thing remains to be seen but one thing is for sure. Style is alive and kicking.

 

random musing...

Procrastination is the thief of time....

Sat in the tent one evening, a few vin rouge deep and a few hours after the photo above was taken, belly full of excellent french seafood, the conversation turned to the general high quality of french cooking and from there to shopping in french supermarkets. One thing we all agreed on, in the way one does at these hazy moments, is how fantastic it is that they sell Prince biscuits.

Most people who've been to France will be familiar with Prince biscuits. If you aren't they are kind of a chocolate cream sandwich and they are yummy. We always try to find space to bring a few packets back with us. They obviously sell well right across Europe but no one sells them over here. I'm not sure why but with grape fuelled logic we agreed this was a heinous crime! In fact even in daylight sensible moments i'm not sure why they dont sell them in the UK. 

Maybe i should import them, i'm sure i could turn the country on to the gastronomic pleasure of a crisp biscuit sandwiching sweet chocolate filling.There'd be a revoloution in biscuit eating and my future as a workshy surf obsessive would be assured.

Of course in reality, it's going to be one of those idea's guarunteed to make a fortune that i never get around to doing anything about, the same way i never actually get around to sitting down to compare car insurance prices or check i'm really on the right energy tariff. 

 I've got a good friend who comes up with a suitable world beating idea every month or two. All bound to lead to early, wealthy retirement and a small island in the bahamas. He never follows any of them up either, too lost in the frantic whirl that is modern life.

I've just read that back and i really am rambling today, sober too. I'm not sure i really have a point i'm trying to make, or maybe it's just....

 Carpe Diem,

 seize the day because who knows what tomorrow brings! 

 

les conches

Gotta love french beach break!

capsule quiver

I, like many people in recent times, am lucky enough to have a reasonable quiver of boards racked up in the shed, covering long, short and several different schools of design thought. Some are bigger favorties than others and there is a gentle cycling through of boards over the years as my tastes, thought processes and surfing evolve. I dont get to travel far to surf and riding different boards at the same few places keeps things fresh but still local in a way exploring new places does for those lucky enough to be time rich and responsibility light.

So i've usually got a couple of boards in the van and i chop and change them bsed on the forecast and my mood. When i do get to travel is when the difficult choices arise. With the usual luxury of a shape for every eventuality, picking one or two boards for a trip can be a difficult process, fraught with insecurities about making the wrong selection. A fortunate dilemma to have obviously!

Over the years i've come to the conclusion that the photo shows my perfect "capsule quiver". I reckon i can have fun in pretty much anything i'm prepared to paddle out in with a skinnyish fish and a single fin log in the bag. Much as i love the mini simmons i've been riding over the last yearor two, their super flat and foamy nature don't give me as much confidence holding in (or squeezing under) bigger faster waves elsewhere. The GS twinnie above (which is heavily influenced by the christenson school of fish shaping) is slight enough to cope with decent size (for me anyway) bowly waves and still flat and fast enough to be fun in punchy small surf.

As for having a log with you, sure they are a pain to travel by air with but if there are small reeling point breaks (or even small clean beach break) on the agenda then a single fin is a must. My current personal taste being for something a little less bulky and more foiled / narrower than i'd ride at saunton.

forward observation post

If you don't have young kids is difficult to understand how much of an expedition a simple day at the beach can become. If you do, you'll know exactly what i'm talking about. The beach tent, an essential bit of kit!

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. 

hello buoys........

If only i could have got closer but there was a river in the way!

 

 

Well, we've had waves!!! Really quite good ones too. Yeah there may be greyness, drizzle and wind but at least it was wind in the right direction! SO nice to get into some small clean zippers even if it does feel like the water temperature has begun to drop a little! Finally feels like the surf stoke is creeping back.

Thumbs up for logs and long lunchbreaks!

 

Had some memorable waves on the Randall the last few days. The narrow nose and hips back locking in nicely on the pockets steepened by the strong offshores. Had a few fun ones on the borrowed Bing mini sim too, once again reinforcing how good these shapes are in our average waves!
 

Now the wind is coming back westerley you might want to check out Kook 3 while you look out at the rain with your steaming cup of joe.

 If you missed the first two, it's a surf newspaper very much from the fringes steered by the very english hands of Dan Crockett and Alex Rowse. It's eclectic, intriguing and thoughtfully put together. Well worth supporting! Click here

an authentic story.....

[TRAILER] The Avthentic Story from Avthentic Films on Vimeo.


I've just been watching this new little dvd from talented frenchman Rudy Jacques and it's really pretty cool. Least it made me want to go surfing and thats a pretty good test of any movie i always think!

It's 40 mins of artfully shot french logging with a handful of oher stuff thrown in. Rudy would be the first to admit that Thomas Campbell is a huge influence and it shows clearly here, there is a definate feeling of the seedling being a strong point of reference.  Dismissing it as purely derivative would however be unfair and would be missing the originality and gallic flair that Rudy's filmakers eye exhibits.

Most of the surfing is by guys you wont have heard of (although Clovis donzinetti is in the latest vans duct tape comp) and most of the waves are under head high. It will probably redefine you're preconception of French beach breaks - it's not all thumping barrels, summer offers trunkable logging waves as well as the obvious attractions of ace seafood and fine cheap wine. I think my two favorite sequences are the body surf/ paipo session and the guy cruising on a frye fishsimmons at the end.

What really pervades the footage is a sense of fun and an absence of pretence. This "authenticity" is a thread that runs through all of Rudy's work and it's something i know he regards as central to it.

Bottom line, i really enjoyed watching it. Head on over to avthentic.com to get a copy and see for yourself!