shiny toys for sale..........

BGA is having a bit of a quiver cull and has some tasty boards up for sale, apologies for the crappy pictures!

9'9 Thomas Campbell / Junod Pignar

pic above

Proper pig, surfs really great and looks beautiful. Wish i could buy it! This was one of the first few Junod and t mo made together £750 Very rare, maybe the only one in the UK!

9'8 Junod Two tone noserider

This is michels everyday log, slightly wide point back shape, smooth controlled pocket noserides and pivoty turns. Glass on single fin, lovely glass job £550


6'6 Joel Tudor Karma

THE egg tudor rode everywhere a few years ago (think shelter dvd, sprout etc) £450

You can email BGA at alastairgreen@sky.com

Contacthim quick before he changes his mind!

made by Michel

This beauty is a 9'10 RON model log custom made for my friend BGA by Michel Junod
Junod isn't a massive name this side of the atlantic but he is very well regarded in his native California both as a surfer and a shaper. He hails from the Santa Cruz area and was heavily featured in Thomas Campbells the present movie which is probably where you have heard of him before if you've been scratching your head!







 He makes beautiful surfboards but they are great value because his name doesn't have the worldwide cache of Bing and others. His boards deserve it though. The shapes and finish are every bit as good as other californian prestige brands.

BGA is most definately a fan and has had a few different boards from him over the years. This one came over with Nineplus and is one of Michel's Regular Old Noserider models. It's defiantely got a little bit of a piggy wide point back/ hippy influence but it's more of a full all round log shape than his Pignar or Two tone models. As a result it probably suits our average days  little bit more.

I rode this one the other day in waist high semi-clean medium speed beach break and i was really impressed. I normally dont like long logs, anything over 9'6 and i usually find that the extra inches are a hindrance rather than a help. Not so here, despite it's size, the RON has a nice weight, not too heavy, not too light. It has a nimbleness off the tail (in a traditional pivoty sense) that belies it's size and i found it was easy to whip through fades and cutbacks for me even though i'm only ten stone. The gentle roll in the bottom and nice round 50/50 rails undoubtedly help too.

Up front there's a subtle teardrop concave and perched with toes over it's very stable both in the pocket and when the wave fattens a little. It paddled great too but then there's a lot of float relative to my (fly)weight. BGA is taller and heavier than me and it suits him to tee. His daily driver for the last couple of years has been a 9'8 junod two tone which is a superb noserider when the wave has some shape but at mushy gutless saunton it's not the easiest board to get the best from. The extra width in the front half of the RON gives more forgiveness when the wave gives less and it's flattering his surfing already.

In short it's a good value californian all around log and well worth thinking about if you are in the market!

one more

There's an old bumper sticker, seen around california a few years ago: "One Fin, One God, One Country"

While I'm not in any way a religious man in the normal sense of the word, I am perhaps something of a zealot when it comes to my choice of logging equipment. I know there are sound performance reasons for choosing a 3 fin board but I've never found they work for me, their more drawn out turns don't fit naturally with how I want to surf, and as for bigger waves, in the words of Tmoe Campbell, "logging is a strictly under head high trip." (Don't even get me started on progressive longboarding!)

Thinking about this the other day lead me to an interesting question: Does your choice of equipment end up defining how you surf or do you end up choosing equipment that fits your natural style? It's probably a chicken and egg question but by way of illustration...

I spent a couple of hours surfing a friend's Junod Two-tone noserider the other day. It's a very "pig influenced shape" with lots of roll, wide hips and a narrow nose. Very much a pocket noserider and a beautiful board. I tend to surf with a fairly smooth (in my own mind) traditional style but with this particular steed, the more outrageous body english I attempted, the more it seemed to respond. Fixing in my minds eye a vision of Alex Knost style theatrics, I proceeded to have an absolute blast. Suddenly I could see where his style had it's roots and I'm sure that years of getting the most out of such a shape may have helped to define his approach. Jared Mell surfs similar boards and clearly has similar elements to his style too. Musing further, it's also clear that your local waves will have a massive influence both on style and choice of equipment. Piggy logs, for example, love clean steep waves but don't noseride especially well in the mushy windswell waves we deal with so frequently.

Not a conclusive answer or a scientific approach at all but something that made me think.

small wave weapons

First film shot in the Holga is back, pretty pleased & relieved it wasn't a complete disaster!

wave come....