5 summer stories

I did a little blog for Gulfstream again, five boards to ride this summer.............

https://www.gulfstreamsurfboards.co.uk/2017/07/07/5-boards-ride-summer/

introducing the slim pig......

Introducing the new Gulfstream Surfboards Slim Pig!

This one is 9'4 x 17.75 x 23 x 16.25 x 3 Flat rocker, wide point behind centre, a little tail kick, subtle nose concave and a tiny amount of roll in the bottom but really soft, pinched rails the whole length. Its a refined foil and fairl;y slimmed out, its not a chunky pig shape

Designed for a greenough 4a style fin. (This one is a mikey detemple 10 inch but its practically the same as a 4a).

Gulfstream's finishing just gets better with a part polish, geometric cut tail patches and a gold leaf logo.

The idea behind it is moulded from the shapes that people like Devon Howard, Harrison roach, dane Peterson and alex knost have been riding over the last few years and it borrows heavily from a board that Randall of if6was9 shaped that has been my go to log for the last two years. The idea is to get away from a parallel railed noserider that is hard to turn and bring a bit more performance (involvement!) to your surfing without sacrificing the traditional lines on a wave and a loggy feel. Moving the widepoint back does two things. It gives more surface area for the board to lock into the pocket for nose riding and it helps the board rotate under your feet when turning. this coupled with a slimmer fin than a traditional noseriding template means a more manageable board in steeper waves and harder turns when you are cutting back.

Whilst you might think a narrower nose would compromise nose riding ability, in a steeper wave it actually works in your favour by increasing control and allowing the board to get more parallel to the wave.  The narrower front end also reduces swing weight which helps your turns once again

 We've been lucky to have had some clean summer waves to test it in and Jools has definitely nailed it with this model, believe me it noserides really well, locking in really solidly and with a good trim speed from the nose. It turns superbly too. If you are after something a little different to a saunton foil or something that will cope with faster beachbreak waves, the this is a great choice!

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

the way we were...

Sweet little clip from a sunny summers afternoon at my local from Pete Hill. Makes you realise that the logging standard here ain't bad for a surfing minnow like Devon. Even I managed to sneak a couple of waves in at the 0.50 - 1.12 mark!

I'd love to roll down to the beach in the sun right now but the recent storms have left it looking like a different place with cliff falls and the demolition of Jules's Beach hut Office. How the massive sand movement affects our high tide wave remains to be seen. We are all hoping the zippy left into the corner has survived!

freshly mown..

A freshly shaped 10 foot Gulfstream saunton foil model, waiting on the racks while the foam dust settles.

I only make it over there every so often but it's always a pleasure to hang out with Jools at the gulfstream factory for an hour or so. He's always stoked on the latest batch of boards coming through and really cares about offering a proper handmade custom manufacturing service.

lest we forget

Tudor is rightfully venerated for being hugely influential in the second rise of traditional style longboarding but in current times it's easy to forget the contribution made by Robert "wingnut" weaver.

Back when Tudor was still all about pink wetsuits and tri fin longboards and Knost still thought his dad was the coolest surfer in the world, wingnut was cruising blackies on a single fin, taking his style cues from edwards and company. He did a huge amount to popularise riding longboards, particularly in a traditional style and not least by riding a log in everything the endless summe 2 shoot threw at him

It could in fact be argued that wingnut was one of the direct catalysts to tudor seeking out single fins and black wetsuits as the 90's wore on. Sure his personality and ceaseless self promotion grated with many as did his latterly association with surftech but he should still be remembered by todays loggers for his influence, despite not having the same "cool quotient" of others.

Oh and he still has one of the best drop knee cutbacks in the business!

CL13 out now!

The latest paper issue of Corduroy Lines magazine is available to order now. It's a limited numbers, no advert issue and features, amongst other things, some of my ramblings.

Go on, treat yourself and support non-mainstream, grass roots surf media.

Click here to get hold of it!

life is just swell.....

Dave Allee, owner of Almond does his best catalogue pose

slip sliding away..

Over the last few weeks i've been trying out a 9'6 james parry model by Slide 65 out of gwithian, shaped by Rob Wright. I really wanted to like it, it looks great, the black stealth finish is cool and i like the way Rob has consolidated the younger sennen crew over the last year, providing a rallying point for the talent they have and starting to give their little scene a collective identity. Unfortunately so far i've found it's not quite my cup of tea..............................

Admittedly the one i have is a protoype, they have pulled the nose in a little on the newer ones. This one is medium  weight, a relaxed log style rocker, 9'6 x 18 x 22.75 x 14.75 x 2.7/8. Where it differs from a classic log (and where i think my own feelings stem from) is in the rails and the base. The rails are 60/40 rather than 50/50. In another departure, there is a fairly deep concave in the nose but this mellows and extends back to 3/4's of the length of the board. The idea is to create a really fast trimming board that noserides well but cuts back with more performance than a standard heavy log. It uses a greenough 4a fin to aid in this respect.

So to the review........... Paddles great, people often make noises about concave boards paddling badly but i honestly don't think it makes that much difference, rocker does though and the rocker here is nicely judged, flat enough to feel stable while trimming and walking, just enough lift to make steep takeoffs a possibility. It does trim fast, in a peaky wave it outruns the pocket quickly and it is good on the nose, stable and responsive. It's off the tail that my problems manifest, and i should be clear i think this is more to do with a mismatch between my surfing and the shape rather than the board iself. While the concave helps as you move forward, from the back, to me the board feels a little awkward, sometimes whipping round, other times feeling sticky and catchy without the smoothness i'm used to. The slightly harder rails add to this feel. As a result my surfs have been peppered with moments of brilliance and frustration in equal measure and i've struggled to feel like i'm in sync with the board.

I think it likes / needs a little steepness to the wave for starters (which almost everywhere but saunton has!) I also feel that i've ridden so many logs with varying degrees of belly over the years that my style has evolved into a particular groove that doesn't fit here. Mine is a (hopefully) smooth style guiding the board through turns with gentle weighting of the rail with footwork , a real stall and trim style. I haven't ridden a progressive flat bottomed longboard consistently ever and not at all for over 5 years. James, on the other hand, as well as being a great surfer, spent a lot of the last few years riding competition boards where turns are more about planting your weight and driving the board around and i think this board fits far better with that style. It's probably a good log for someone who rides a "modern" longboard as well which ultimately isn't me!

I feel a little bad about posting anything negative on here because i like what Rob and friends are doing. Hopefully this comes across as fair and balanced and that it's not the boards failings that are the issue. This is just one model out of several  that Rob makes and i'm sure there are others that would suit just fine, hopefully i'll get to try something else in the future!

bada bing!

  

So i picked this board up second hand last year from a friend who brought it back from California, ironically it's now sitting in the corner of the condo i'm renting just north of Rincon, back in the golden state and still in one piece despite the baggage handlers best efforts! Officially its a 9'4 bing NR 2 (9'4 x 18 x 23 x 16) although it's fairly different from another friends older NR2. Not long after this one was bought, bing changed the NR2 model to the BN lightweight and i think this is more likely an early version of that model.

It's a parallel templated noserider, big nose concave, flat rocker with a lot of tail lift, soft pinched rails and a refined foil.  Where it differs from a regular log is in weight. It's purposefully glassed a bit lighter and foiled a little thinner than the traditional nuuhiwa style noserider template, the aim being to create a more manageable, versatile, traditional board. It's still got a little heft to it, we aren't talking progressive longboard style weight

I've ridden the board in beachbreak up to shoulder high and I have to say i think it's great! The relative lightness and the tail kick make it really loose off the tail. Pushing through your back foot yields really abrupt and satisfying pivot cutbacks. On the nose it's stable and fast, holding a high line well and letting you get ten or heels over with impressive ease. The lighter glassing also makes it feel really manageable in steeper or slightly larger waves than a heavier log might be suited to. I think it would make a good travel log as a result.

If there is a downside it would just be that it can feel a little twitchy as you transition from tail to nose (though once in a forward position it's stable) and it lacks the weight to cut through chop in quite the same way as it's stouter brethren...........but you can't have everything and the compromise does make this into a really good easy riding log style board, either to cover a few bases while travelling or for the lighter logger who finds dead weight & the momentum it gives difficult to reign in!

Mc mushburgers...

 I'm sure that certain designs or types of shape suit some people's natual flair more than others, i think it's a two way process and I think it's interesting how riding different things influences and improves your surfing. What you ride changes how you surf, how you look at a wave and the lines you aspire to draw . It's something i really believe in.

I've been riding my dano old pleasure a lot lately but last week i swapped it's place in the van for the classic malibu jai lee, one of my old faithfuls.

The dano's definately pig influenced - narrow nose, wide tail and wide point aft. Getting it to perform means quick footwork, an almost exagerated level of body english and stall and trim style surfing. Especially at a slack wave like saunton, it needs to be kept in the pocket as much as possible and bogs quickly on the nose if you stray too far away. In the wrong place it feels sluggish and heavy, in the right spot it's loose and stable will beat sections from the nose in breathtaking fashion. It's also my heaviest board yet turns on a dime with a bit of grunt to help it rotate.

The Jai Lee is more of a conventional noserider shape, albeit with a bit of a hips back influence, and is a much easier board to surf.  This particular session i really noticed how much quicker my footwork seemed to have gotten and how much more power (in a pivoty sense) i felt in my cutbacks since i've been riding the dano. Maybe it's just my perception but it really felt like riding the dano and thinking about how to get it to work best had kicked up my surfing just a little notch, that i got a few seconds more on the tip, that my crosssteps were more surefooted, my cutbacks a little deeper, my surfing more fluid around the pocket.

Of Course i'm sure i still looked like a kook fromt the beach but i'm a legend in my own mind!

a dagger of sorts....

  

but only of sorts.....................................

  I've rewritten this post several times, trying to be concise, accurate and honest so here goes.

I ordered a 9'4 gato heroi death dagger off Robbie Kegel, through the squire who had organised for him to come and shape some boards in newquay. I've previously spent a lot of time looking at these shapes from afar and felt pretty sure i knew what i was getting. What i actually got, despite the laminate, is different from any death dagger that i have seen for sale in US or Japan, different from the board an accquaintance in Oregon owns, different even from the death daggers posted for sale recently on the Gato blog. Among other things, it's only 9'3 and the nose width is at least an inch and a quarter less than anything i've seen them make for this model before. Needless to say, i am slightly gutted. Brendan at Gato agrees it's not the stock shape, Robbie himself seems less than helpful. Unfortunately they're a whole ocean away anyway. Sadly the board doesn't sit in my quiver where it was supposed to and as a result i'm not sure how much it will make it out of the bag. I had been warned to be careful with ordering but had thought this was a fairly safe way of doing it. It's not the squires fault either in my eyes, i hasten to add. Interestingly i know RK didn't want to put gato laminates on the boards he shaped here, perhaps thats because he didn't want the evidence of having let his customers down. I know i'm not the only person out of the episode who didn't get exactly what they asked for.

I must be clear that i'm not saying it's a badly made surfboard. In fact it's beautiful to look at with abstract glass and volan flex fin. It's heavily foiled and SO narrow, it's almost like some kind of shortboard gun under arm, all sleek and pointy. It doesn't paddle well despite it's exceedingly flat rocker, perhaps due to the subtle roll through the bottom but more likely due to lack of foam. Once you've taken off it is fast in trim though and feels lovely to jam hard rail buried cutbacks or deep crouched grab rail bottom turns. It's more akin to a midlength egg off the tail, smooth but quietly radical. So far so good.....

Sadly it's up front that things are not as they should be. It will noseride, just, in the pocket of a steep wave but the nose is so narrow that there isn't enough room to fit ten toes over and that narrowness means it is difficult hang five in anything other than a cheater position. Obviously, it's not supposed to be a nose rider and i didn't order it as such but if you watch footage of knost or others riding this shape. In fact if you watch segments of Gato's own DVD showing the model off, you will see that it should pocket noseride better. Of course you will also notice that the nose width on the death daggers  they are riding is close to 16 inches or more, not 14 1/4 like my board!

I'm left feeling frustrated. I like it but can't help feeling i'd like it more with a 15 1/2 or more nose width like i thought i'd ordered. Left feeling that the waves it will suit best as it is, are waves i'd probably be riding a shortboard in.

The saddest thing i think is this. I am a fervent believer we should support hand shaping, custom ordered surfboards, made by craftsmen not factories and yet the argument for doing that is to get a board you actually want. Instead i must settle for something that isn't exactly what i ordered with no prospect of resolving the problem without sending yet more money in a direction that i'm not entirely sure is deserved.

compare this:

 9'3 dagger in Ca........

with this:

my 9'3 "dagger"

Obviously it's a little difficult to show in pictures but hopefully most will agree the nose template is different!

going, going, gone!

For one week only, your chance to get you hands on the last UK boards from If6was9. These boards are brand new and the last ones made before the label goes back to it's australian home permanently. Shaped by Neil Randall, main shaper for classic malibu in noosa for a couple of years and a true surfboard craftsman, they are stunning looking boards and speaking from personal experience, his shapes work really well!

Starting today there will be a mini auction on their blog, finishing on saturday. Check here for pictures of the three boards and more details.

anticipation!

A few of you might know that Robbie Kegel of Gato Heroi made a flying visit to our shores a couple of weeks ago. Hosted by the Squire himself, it was a week of merriment, mayhem and manufacture in equal measure by all accounts. Luckily John locked Robbie in the factory long enough to shape these boards and burn through 60kg of resin! They are all spoken for already as far as i know and to quote John are the bladiest things you ever saw! Personally i've found RK's approach to longboard design really interesting when spied from afar and i jumped at the chance to get hold of a board from this trip.

Mines third from the left, just waiting on fins to make it across the pond then she's good to go. Full ride report to follow soon-ish!

a little bit of sam's magic

9'4 Anderson Breakwater model with C street in the background. I rented this board from mollusc in venice for the first three days of the trip. It's a classic paralell template noserider 19 x 23 x 16 x 3 ish with a nice foil, plenty of foam but not too big and blocky, pretty flat with nose concave and a decent kick in the tail. Really pretty similar to my favorite gulfstream and a board i really enjoyed surfing.

Interestingly (to me at least) was that it came with a 9.75 inch greenough 4a fin. Not the template i would instinctively put in at home on a noserider, but one that worked really well, held on the tail but loosened the board up nicely especially in the slightly faster point style waves.

Really i shouldn't have been so suprised, after all, greenough is a genius and the 4a is pretty much the template he encouraged Nat Young to use in the famous magic sam, the board he used to take the 66 world title and usher in the whole involvement school of surfing that led to the shortboard revolution etc.

told you so....

just to prove tudor still has it, and to celebrate the fact that some good quality single fin action got some serious exposure with not a rubbish progressive longboard aerial in sight!

Sadly the clip misses knosts board pinballing through the pilings and a couple of harrison roaches good waves.

Although it's all "traditional" longboarding, there's an interesting contrast in styles, here's what Thos had to say:

 Knost's attractive style is like a meta-language, beautifully stitched onto his surfing technique. Cool, show-offy, contemporary, cultural. Tudor's flowing style is more like nature: as if he's somehow made himself as a surfer into a new species. Tudor reminds me of seeing dolphins and seals playing in the waves.

It's almost as if they have inverse psychological desires from surfing: Knost to develop his ego and communicate with people; Tudor to dissolve his ego and become part of nature.

I think he maybe has something. I've long felt that your style comes from within and says somthing about you and your personality, one reason that good style is difficult to force, i think you naturally have it or you don't.

Sorry about the gratuitous stealing of videos, back to homegrown pics for the next few!




p.s. meant to blog a link to this before and forgot. Sure it will relate to more than a few of you!

the forgotten master..

When i really got into surfing, joel tudor was my first surfing hero, a beacon of smooth style amongst a sea of flapping shortboarders on impractical equipment. I know that some people have reservations about his personality, i've never met him. (i must admit to hoping to see him surf in California but no luck!)
What you cannot deny is his influence on the direction of non-mainstream surfing over the last 15 years. From ushering in a return to traditional style and heavy single fin logs, to prompting a re investigation of forgotten shortboard designs, his influence cannot be understated. In recent times he has stepped a little away from the spotlight, devoting much of his time to taking care of his son. His surfing is still as good as it ever was, smooth understated with a casualness that belies the technicality and positioning of the lines he draws.

This section, from cyrus sutton's riding waves was one of my favorite bits of footage for a long time. i still think if you wanted a short segment to show someone the grace of good traditional logging, you'd be hard pressed to find a better example. Slightly forgotten it's back in rotation on my dvd player this summer.

a barrel-fest of epic proportions!

Brit filmaker Ross Johns just sent me a copy of his new film, Fusion which is already out and available online here or from most good surf shops. It might just completely re-define your idea of british surfing and the quality of our waves. Here's my review for Drift

The shelves of your local surfshop are filled with a steady stream of new dvds each featuring an all star cast of action heroes pulling into monster barrels in Tahiti or pulling monster airs in Indo. Yet the number of movies celebrating our homegrown talent is woefully small. Having already seen some stills from some of the sessions included in Fusion, it was with a fair amount of excitement that i slipped it into my dvd player.

In the shops as you read this (or available through http://www.surfclips.co.uk) it aims to reveal British surfing and British waves at their best. It's been a labour of love for filmaker Ross Johns over the last three years and has lead to many an uncomfortable night asleep in the car and many a junkfuelled petrol station dinner.

From the start, there's no delusions of Thomas Campbell, there's no chin stroking celebration of how cool we all are for being surfers, this is straight up surf porn. Set to a pumping soundtrack of dance and guitar bands, it's a balls to the wall barrel fest of epic proportions.

If you are unaware of the quality of the current crop of top British surfers, or you are unaware quite how good some of the waves in the UK are, you will be picking your jaw up off the floor time and again. Some of the slab waves are very scary looking indeed with tow or paddle entry and the quality of the camera work is good. It's not all pits either, a large number of lips get well and truly slayed over the 60 minute(ish) running time along with some pretty progressive aerial surfing as well.

It's filmed all over the South West, shows the brown water of North Yorkshire at it's best and features some of the recent slab sessions in Caithness at waves like Bagpipes that have been well documented in Carve and others.

The cast list is a veritable who's who of UK shortboarding from Russ Winter and Stokesy (who has a good section as does Mark "Egor" Harris) to newer names like Tom Butler. Reubyn Ash is perhaps the only notable not present.

There's a dash of progressive longboarding in the mix too. Adam Griffiths and Ben Skinner wield their nine foot sticks into turns that most people dream of doing on boards three feet shorter, before they prove they are both equally at home on shorter, skinnier equipment.

This isn't "Thicker Than Water", its not trying to be. It is a great document of where we are right now and almost certainly shows the highest level of homegrown surfing captured on video to date. If it doesn't inspire you to pull in deeper or smack the lip harder the next time you surf then nothing will!

dano

Dano Forte holding my board outside Pure Glass in Costa Mesa, hopefully he doesn't mind that the perspective on this makes his head look a slightly weird shape. He is a super nice guy and a great shaper.

I had heard that he could be slightly "relaxed" to deal with but my experience has been totally positive. Right from staying in contact while we were finalising the order, to getting the board done in a little over a month, to meeting me on a sunday so i could pick the board up and not miss a weekends surfing by being without a board.

He nailed it too. It's a beautifully shaped and glassed board that has been much "oohed and aahed" over by the "peanut gallery" at home.

Thank You!

Devon Lanes and longboards

There's a new British longboard movie out as you read this, made by father of Ben, Andy Haworth. It's a loving look at the longboard scene in our corner of the world and well worth getting a copy, especially as all profits are being donated to cancer charities.

There's more rumination about the film and Andy himself over on drift here. For more on the film or to order a copy go here