run to the hills......

Two reasons for this post, firstly Blair Habernicht just posted a rad little article on surfline about the paralells between Snowboarding and surfing, check it out here

Second, Celtek's Iron Maiden Mitts are my new fave snow thing, super warm too!

GS got you covered

Gulfstream covering the perfect small wave quiver in style. 9'4 Slimpig model and 5'2 Seapea. December liquid lunch at P-Land. Chest high and reeling with one other out. Ended up a little quick and dumpy for the log but was super fun racing the sections on the seapea!

church of the open sky

Dawnpatrol via iPhone. Love the fact that i've always got a camera in my pocket in case there's a moment worth recording.

Slightly showing my age here but i've just finished reading Johnny Marr's (from the smiths) autobiography. I've always enjoyed his guitar playing. Its subtle yet incredibly accomplished. Whilst the impact of The Smiths was immense and is well known, Marr's contribution to music since then has been huge but has often been under the radar. From The pretenders to TheThe to Electronic to more latterly Modest Mouse and the Cribs, the number of hit records he has played/ written or produced is staggering. His recent solo stuff is pretty cool too!

Definitely recommended reading

big sur

The drive from Carmel at the south end of monterey through Big Sur and down to Hearst Castle is just jaw droppingly beautiful. It's difficult to keep your eyes on the highway as it twists it's way from headland to headland for 50 miles or so. It's impossible not to keep screeching to a halt every couple of miles to drink in the next stunning vista that just revealed itself. This is maybe halfway down, mid afternoon and one of many such photo stops.

roadside gems.....

With a summer south swell, Highway 1 on the mid-californian coast is peppered with little gems. This is just north of Cayucos and brought our tyres screeching to a halt. It's not in the guide books and it would be easy to miss but it was a fun right hander with a pretty much flat water paddle out from the little bay in the foreground. Long period swell and glassy conditions with a little bit of kelp to smooth the chop certainly helped too

quantocks gold......

 

No fake filters or digital trickery needed. 

exploring....

 

Amazing what you can find just around the corner if you keep your eyes peeled. This beautiful old stone bridge is hidden a couple of valleys over from my house at the bottom of a forest track. The late december light was beautiful and the frost was hard enough to solidify the mud. The only sound was my breathing condensing in the cold air and the babbling of the stream.

minus digits...........

 

#coldwatersurf

I'm not one of those people that gets excited about winter surfing. It's difficult for me to love heavy water, big swells and the cold. Give me warm sunny point waves any day. Thats not to say that i dont enjoy it, theres little nuggets of pure stoke amongst the grind of the the cold and grey. One of the best things is the light of winter sunshine and the burn of a crisp day's sunset over the western horizon.

This iphone pic was snapped in the last rays of light with barely there fingers fumbling to catch the moment before wrestling out of my suit in a dark car park reliving the stoke of fun min-simmons waves.

worth the wait..........

decisions

 

Well after what wasnt really a banner summer for surf, autumn continues to deliver so far! Another couple of days of long distance, well organised swell with perfect winds.

 I've spent my sessions on a mix of the two boards in the picture. The 5'8 Larry Mabile twin keel mentioned a couple of posts ago and the 5'2 Tyler Warren Bar of soap. It's been interesting comparing the two boards and also comparing the bar of soap to my SeaPea. The twin keel fish definately carves a turn better and takes more weight through the turn without slipping out but loses out in speed generation and section making. Definately fun though.

The bar of soap, as i've posted before, is one of the best boards i have owned. It's definately got more shortboard influence than most mini simmons, there's no stringer, the wide point is not forward and the bottom shape is roll into a deep vee'd double concave (spiral vee?!) That translates to a board that feels really alive and spritely under your feet with great down the line speed but slightly less smooth flow than the single concave of the seapea. Off the top it's looser and easier to whip through turns, feeling like it really sits up high in the water.It's not quite as good as the SeaPea in junk waves though, it definately likes just a little bit of shape.

 It really just wants to play, just like me!

continued

A few more from the iphone archive....

the gloves are off

pre millenium falcon.

Typically irritating film camera malfunction means an iphone picture will have to do! This is Billy's falcon cutting a fine rug at saunton carpark a few weeks ago. It's a massively long land cruiser of a car with a beaut of a red leather interior that brings pictures of freeway cruising past socal's famous beaches with the radio on and the window down to mind. It's also the only example with wood trim nthe UK and one of only four in europe!

ground zero

I've had a couple of really fun trips to London recently, feeling like a country bumpkin off to the big smoke. It reminded me how much fun living in a city can be. There's a real buzz of energy and a feel of excitement and possibilities. I'd never move but it's good to get some exposure to culture more vibrant than the backwater that Devon can be. We definately ought to do it more often..........

No trip can be complete without a sojurn along the South Bank and a trip to Slam City Skates both British skateboarding institutions and two places i looked forward more to visiting than any of the official sights when i first went to the capital.

Incidentally, if you or your kids have anything more than a passing interest in Harry Potter, i'd heartily advise a trip to the Harry Potter studio tour at Leavesden where you can wander amongst the sets from the films, drink butter beer and try out greenscreen broomstick flying.

all for one

 

Ready to log some tip time!

Here's a thing......... When you load your board on your car roof, do you put it fin first or nose first?

In the UK i'd say everyone goes nose first (with the exception of those kooks who stick it up through the sunroof etc!) and there would be some sniggering behind hands in car parks if you did anything else.

Cross the pond though and California is exclusively fin facing forward, at least if you want to swing into the car park looking cool and correct. weird eh?

Thankfully my boards travel inside a van so thats one less detail to agonise over in order to maintain my aura of hipster cool ;-)

Speaking of cool, Gulfstream now have a 5'2 SeaPea mini simmons available to demo, call them on 01271 815490 and get your shred on (brah!)

hanging in Matts man cave....

Big thanks this week to Matt, the gulfstream glasser for patiently helping me glass my mini simmons. Once again, it's not as easy as it looks, especially when there are multiple tints involved. I don't think i messed it up too badly and it is starting to actually look like a proper board! ( " Literally" eh matt?!)

 Fin wise i think we are going with 7 1/2 inch base glass on keels. More of a keel fish shape than a half moon so similar to those on the bar of soap and the bing mini sim but not as long in the base as the TW soap ones.

Hopefully it's going to be finished for my trip to France in a couple of weeks time!!

Small glassy logging is the order of the day today, the only question is which spot to haul my heavy single fin to!

swan lake

Well what a fine weekend it turned out after all! Sunshine and a lovely little swell.

Despite my somewhat gloomy post on friday morning, friday afternoon brought classic small zippers which i surfed on my own for an hour in sunshine with just a beautiful landward vista for company. It's so wonderful to be able to get a solo surf in these ever more crowded times.

Saturday was a lesson in opposites with the weekend warrior crowd in full effect. Enjoyable just the same for bumping into a couple of ex-locals who i used to surf with a lot when i first moved here but haven't seen for maybe 3 or 4 years. In fact, when i first started surfing i remember watching one of them in awe during what must have been a hotdoggers contest on a summer saturday trip from Bristol. Watching him cross step and hang five effortlessly, i was impressed and longed to be able to do the same. I never imagined then where i would be now........

made in california

dust busting....

 

So i already had a pretty large amount of respect for skilled shapers but my level of admiration for people like Jools has increased yet again after my morning "shaping"

 

Notice i'm using inverted comma's since if i had been left to my own devices i'm not sure things would have turned out quite so well as they are going to and that is mostly due to Jools patience in walking me through in baby steps and stepping in to smooth out the bumps before my hamfistedness did too much damage!

 

Something that i hadn't fully grasped is how fragile the foam is when you are wielding the planer. It's incredibly easy to slip or lose concentration and cause a dent or bump. It's also difficult to keep an eye on the overall shape as you concentrate on each area in turn. So far it's been fascinating, fun and seeing the blank take shape is really exciting.

 

It's a 5'2 mini simmons. We took some measurements from the Bing mini sim i borrowed but thats now gone back so this isn't an exact copy. We measured out the points on the blank and then templated it using curves from Jools archive of shapes. What is really interesting is the combination of curves. It's got the nose from a log, the tail of a 6'8 squash tail shortboard and the curve that joins them comes from the template of a 7'6 mini mal. Bottom shape is belly to flat to a decent single concave and we are going to keep the rails pretty foiled as per the bing and the bar of soap i have.

 

Only half way so far and i'm going back to finish it off soon.......

 

 

a wish away.....

end of an era