ouch!

This rad looking little board is a prototype Gulfstream 4'10 asymmetric Seapea with a keel fin on the toe edge (longer rail) and a quad set up on the backhand side. It's pretty mental looking but its pretty much all Jools has been riding in junk surf over the last 6 months.

I've been meaning to borrow it for ages and had lined up a loan ahead of a sunday AM with a perfect 3 foot and clean forecast a couple of months ago. All great until I offered to show BGA and his visiting mate a little rainproof mountain bike route. To cut a long story short, I went over the bars into some rocks at pretty high speed and broke two ribs!

It's not an experience id recommend and (amazingly considering the stuff ive done) the first time ive ever broken a bone! Pain wise i think I got away lighter than some friends experience but the worst thing was being sidelined from any kind of fun stuff for a few weeks! Most frustrating of all the board went back to Jools unridden so you'll have to wait for a full ride report.

rocking out

This is Morro rock, in Morro bay, home to a good beach break and a lot of noisy sea birds. We only really passed through on our way south but i scored head high glassy peaky waves on my Seapea early one morning.

Seemed like the seapea was the perfect second board to take with me, short enough to be fun in the faster peakier beach break waves but flat enough and with enough foam to make the most of small summer swell. This and a session at "the hook" in Santa Cruz were two of the best sessions ive had on this board.

abandoned

 

Golden rays from a dying sun

On the subject of Sea Pea's, Gulfstream have a really professional looking new website up here. I know i'm slightly biased but i genuinely think they are consistently producing some of the best boards in the country right now and have been for a few years! There are some great little video's of Jools explaining the different shapes on there too. I particularly enjoyed watching the Sea Pea one (somewhat predictably!). I've got a real kick out of introducing jools to the mini simmons idea and seeing how much excitement and enthusiasm its brought him. That comes across really well in the video.

On the same page, i got chatting to someone in the water the other day who was riding a seapea. I played the dumb but interested surfer and didn't declare my interest. It was really cool to hear how much this guy was loving the shape and how much of an eye opener this little oblong from left field had been. In fact he had bought one based on his friends positive experiences.

If you've read this blog regularly you'll know i've been extolling the virtues of the mini simmons platform in UK waters for a few years. People are getting it now!

testing testing 1,2,3......

I've just stolen Gordon from Wavedreamer's pictures of the aforementioned Will from Gulfstream testing the first stock SeaPea. This is Will's take on it:


As you know I have been given the responsibility of testing our new board, the Sea Pea. Mainly im testing this one to see if it surfs how we want it to, and most importantly like its Father, Chris Preston's aka CP, Sea Pea.

I knew of a few subtle differences before surfing it. There was slightly less rocker, and i felt it had a slightly straighter rail line. It looks fantastic and was praying that it surfed as well as the original one.

The first session was in horrendous 2ft woolacombe. Strong NW winds had been blowing all day saturday and it wasn't til 5 oclock that i mustered up the stoke to get in. Gordon from Wavedreamer came along with his camera to document the event.

To give you an idea of how bad the surf was, there was only 2 other people actually attempting to surf, both of which were on shortboards and were having no luck at all. To say this board made me smile is an understatement. It didn't even have many good long faces to open up its turbos but good golly did it surf well. There is few boards that accelerate and trim quite like this board did in conditions like this. The whole experience of surfing this type of board is rad.

I also surfed it early Sunday morning in super clean 1-2ft. It was really weak and gutless but the Sea Pea served its purpose yet again. While a few keen loggers where in trim and getting nice nose rides, the Sea Pea was flying across little walls and making me wonder why i haven't owned a board like this for the last 5 years. Dam you CP.

Testing boards in good waves is no real test, most board will go well in 3 ft glass, but very few will go well in 2 foot absolute wind blown rubbish. This board is one of those few. It finds speed from the flattest wall, and drives through forever searching for the next section. You can beat sections that wouldn't dream of making on your standard thruster. It caught waves very well too, being flat and floaty gives you plenty of paddle speed. Once up, a few moments after, a subtle pump and I was going mach 10.

I will say a few constructive criticisms of it though;

- friends wont want to surf with you anymore as you get too many waves

- your hair will end up long

- you'll grow a moustache

- words like 'rad' will and 'stoke' become normal day to day words

If you can deal with the above then come and get one! See below for a few little snaps of it in action. More updates to come when i have had a few more surfs on it...

There are more of Will's thoughts and pictures of the orange SeaPea here.

Whatever your choice of trousers, corduroy lines never go out of fashion!!

So the other day, i lent my new little mini simmons, the SeaPea to my friend Will. To set the scene, Will is a shortboarder, he's actually a very very good shortboarder in a conventional pointy white thruster sense. He finds logs boring, doesn't like fish and thinks eggs are best confined to breakfast!

I think he wanted to try a sim partly becasue he's seen mine take shape and partly out of curiosity. I'm pretty sure he really just wanted to confirm that they were odd dysfunctional hipster shapes ridden by me and my beardy pals!

He rode it a couple of times, in onshore lumpy 3 foot croyde and in clean lined up 1-2 feet croyde. I'm just going to paste some of his texts to me here

"Oh my god, just surfed it at croyde, that was SO fun!!!!!!"
"It's by no means a shortboard but it went amazingly well in average waves and created speed from nothing!! I need one in my board rack!"

Whats pretty cool about this and the reason i've posted it, is that Will could see the fun in this shape despite coming at it from an entirely different direction and surfing reference points. It blew his preconceptions out of the water and in his words "made a very average day a lot of fun!"

 It's nice to know that someone with much greater small board ability than me, see's the validity in the design for our waves.

More about my board here Jools will make you one here

after dinner speaking.......

I've known Joel for a long time, albeit as more of an acquaintance than a real friend. He's quiet and  humble but he's a talented surfer and backyard shaper. He's most definately a thinker, tinkering with his own ideas, sometimes outside the percieved norms.

The port glass is his take on a modified mini simmons kinda thing. I think you'll agree it works pretty good! The point break is a local gem, sadly it's not often as quiet as it is here anymore!

it lives......

 

The Sea Pea is finally finished and in my grubby mitts! Massive thanks to Jools, Matt, Ellis and Will at Gulfstream for your time and patience! 

I know you are all dying to know how it surfs. 

It's great! Really 'effin great!!

 I can honestly say that if i had bought it off  the rack i would have been really happy so to know that i designed and made it pushes the stoke-o-meter off the scale!

First session was mid to high p-land, 3 footish sets, really just windswell cleaned up by the southerly blowing cross offshore. I've ridden quite a few different iterations of the mini simmons and this one is definately a good one!

 It paddles great, despite being 5'2. There's quite a lot of foam in there and i think we struck a good balance between float and duck divability. There's a hair more rocker than some versions of this shape, something we borrowed from the bing version and that really seems to work when you're up and surfing and yet isn't enough to affect wave catching or "mush busting"

It's fast, really fast and skatey and responsvie, section racing and feeling lively under foot like it will react to every little pressure change from your feet. The bottom has a pretty subtle roll up front and that transitions quickly a single concave that deepens through the fins.

 There's not much of a hull feel here, more jet powered fishy. That translates into whippy cutbacks and a board that is really happy to go backside with no real nursing required, something that can be the downfall of mini-sim style boards.

Personal bias aside, i honestly think we've come up with a great shape. Like i've said before, these style of boards go great in the UK but up til now getting hold of one was difficult. Well now you can get one that you know will work great and you know it will be lovingly shaped and beautifully hand finished by Jools and co at one of the best factories in this country.

 The 5'2 x 21 5/8 x 2.5 Gulfstream sea pea in full flow, available now...... disco fingers not included!

Big thanks to Tom for the company and the picture!!

great expectations...

Surfing is a funny thing sometimes, the most fun sessions can come from the most inauspicious beginnings. Conversely sometimes the expectations of a great session are high and it just doesn't quite deliver.

Last time i rode my Mccallum mford was what i can best describe as a shocker! Lovely 3 foot offshore day but people everywhere, tired arms and i just couldn't get into a rhythm. Everywhere i sat was the wrong spot. I left the water deflated amid others joyous tales of fun waves.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and i sneak off after kids story time to catch the evening high tide glass off. Calling it thigh high would have been charitable and the tide dictated short sections and close outs. I grabbed the Mccallum again on a whim, expecting only the extra excercise of paddling a 5'6 instead of a 9'6 around. How wrong i was, over the course of an hour i hooked into quite a few tiny reelers with sections to race and spray to throw. I rushed home with the fading light feeling more alive and with the fire duly stoked. A timely reminder of the capability of the mini simmons platform to add excitement to junk waves!

Sometimes the most fun comes when you least expect!

the sea pea

 

So i finally managed to get over to Gulfstream to finish shaping my first board under Jools watchful eye. It's come out really well and i am super stoked. It's not a straight copy of the Bing i borrowed although it does use that as a reference point. It also takes some influence from the TW bar of soap i own. Theres not much rocker, with a subtle bellied entry into a single concave from about a third back that deepens as it goes off through the fins. The rails are very soft 50/50, almost an up rail in the nose, quickly blending into a shortboard style rail with a nice edge to the back third. It looks "right" and hopefully will surf right too! Next up is glassing!

 

I want to say a massive thank you to Jools at Gulfstream for his patience in teaching me and correcting my cock ups before they got too bad. There's no way it would look like such a nice shape if i had been left to my own devices! 

I'd like to think that he enjoyed it  as much as i did, it's the first time he's shaped anything like this so there was a certain amount of head scratching and designing to get it to blend together well. Hopefully this is going to be the first prototype for a proper Gulfstream Mini simmons model! You heard it here first!

Obligatory cheesy shot..........hand shaping (well) is hard and my appreciation of it as a skill is even greater than it was!!

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.......

 

 

Geppy's on parade

ghost in the machine

For the last couple of months i've been borrowing this 5'2 Bing mini simmons from a friend. It's pretty well recorded on here that i'm a big fan of this type of board and the bing version certainly hasn't disappointed. Matt Calvani supposedly put a fair bit of time into refining his design and his version is similar but different to the kenvin/Baugess original. While the bing keeps the absence of rocker and the s- deck, the step is fairly subtle. The belly up front is there but much less severe than in Ryan Lovelaces velo-sim version for example. Bing have also kept the rails thin so they stay in the wave face as it gets steeper and speeds increase. The fins are lovely ply keels with a template closer to gephardt fish fins than Kenvins half moon design. Right at the back, the tail has a slight curve (arctail) and it's 21.5 at the widepoint and 2.5 thick so closer to a fat keel fish than the original Baugess shape in this respect also.

In the water in paddles well and crucially is foiled well enough up front to duck dive more easily than most of these shapes. It gets into waves early and has a feel of a smooth, fast, fish. The very subtle belly roll water entry gives the classic simmons style lift but without the overtly hully feel of the Velo Sim. This flatter contour is most definately noticeble on your backhand and the board feels far less skittery under your heels as a result. There's plenty of down the line speed on offer, both from a high line trim and top to bottom pumps, the gephardt style fins giving plenty of drive but a more positive hold than the half moon template. It's perhaps not quite as "alive" and whippy in feel as the bar of soap i own, probably beause there is less concave on offer through the fins and the wide point is further forward, i'd place it more as like a normal fish with better glide and less carvy more skatey looseness.

Like all mini simmons, it goes great in junk waves, far better than a conventional keel fish. I'd say that this is where these shapes excel. They're great at making average (or worse) days fun, i'm not sure they would be your first choice on the best day of the year, but then we don't get many of those if we're being honest do we?

Although i agree we should all try and support our local shapers, not many people in the UK are making a tried and tested simmons still and the bing version is a very usable in a daily driver sense and less specialist than some that are available. In short, i'd consider buying one if there was space in the shed.

handmade

So if you're anywhere near Hayle / Gwithian on the 8th or 9th sept, James Pary's second annual Hip wiggler single fin invitational is happening along with schmoozing oppurtunities with the Bing people. It's kindof the low key Brit eccentric version of Joel's duct tape contests and is bound to be a fun time. Hopefully the weather will be kinder for spectating this year!

Bing, Matt Calvani, Elliot Dudley and Mick Rodgers will be demo ing boards at Saunton from 8 on the 15th sept then hanging in the Nineplus shop in braunton from 12 and at a special film screening at the surf museum that evening. The museum is also hosting a bbq / old board meet with them at saunton from 11 on the 16th september.

Finally, Rich Mcgonical and friends are organising the european fish fry at Crackington on the weekend after (22nd sept) Should be fun and great to catch up with Rob Royal!

Today's reccomended is sound track...... Handwritten by The Gaslight Anthem, shades of springsteen only cooler....

the handplane five

Karl Mackie lives a couple of hours west of here. As well as making rad little hand planes, he takes some lovely photographs (like this one) and is just about to launch his own little shaping label, Born to the sea featuring among other things, his mini simmons which, from the photos at east, look like little beauties

relations

Two different branches of the simmons design tree with the same basic ideas within them but a different application.

It's interesting how influential Richard Kenvin and his championing of Simmon's ideas has been over the last few years in terms of board design outside the thruster realm. Although you could argue that the recent trend to shorter wider thrusters has some roots here also!

Before Kenvin's original simmons replicas no one was really using the concepts Simmons came up with all those years ago, with the possible exception of the hull crews and whilst related, they are very much a different type of craft. Since then, more and more shapers are offering some kind of take on the concept.

Take these two, both definately directly inspired by Kenvin but neither direct copies of the original "casper"

On the left is a 5'2 Tyler Warren Bar of Soap. The shape originally came from Tyler making a small version of the original "casper" mini-simmons for the daughter of his father's friend. It came out so well, he kept the first and made her another! Hands down the favorite board i've owned to date. It has the chracteristic short wide mini sim style but with the wide point pulled aft of center, snub nosed with a wide tail block. It's stringerless with two very wide based keels which owe more to a conventional keel fish than the half moon simmons style. The bottom contours are the classic simmons bellied entry into flat but through the fins theres vee and deep double concave (spiral vee if i remember correctly!) The rails are soft in the front third but pretty hard through the fins and pretty thinned out.  In the water it's fast and lively, very responsive, probably best described as a fish with afterburners. I've overtaken people who've dropped in on me on this one on more than one occasion. Although it's still a lateral style board it's looser off the top and goes more vertical more easily than the other mini sims i've ridden.

On the right is a 5'6 Jeff McCallum Mford. Named after Jeff's tattooist mate Milford Barnes, he asked Jeff to make a board that felt like floating on a cloud (allegedy - it's unclear how many ales had been consumed at this point!) Jeff is credited with making the second ever mini simmons and is part of the same san diego surf scene that spawned kenvin. This board takes the bottom contour and the rails of the simmons but marries it to a template based on Greenough's velo kneeboards with a widepoint forward and a narrower tail block. The fins are quad half moon keels and the deck is concave. The rails are softer and rounder than the soap but still follow the same high to low shape. Bottom shape is still bellied entry but very quickly goes flat for most of the board with a medium single concave through the fins. In the water it's more idiosyncratic to surf, smoother and more flowing through the water, more lateral, more hull notes in there. It's wider and a bit flatter and goes better (brilliantly) in junk waves.

There are lots more variations on these ideas out there. Mccallum himself makes at least two other shapes based on the simmons idea, Royal makes his Simzers, Baugess makes copies of the original casper and bing, zamora and christenson all have versions. Unfortunately hardly anyone over here has jumped on board although dale walker and Tim Mason have been making some, steve croft at empire has his lumus model (a bonzerised quad version) and Nineplus have one in their new Hasu range thats out soon . It's only a matter of time before more shapers do, they are superbly suited to our regularly average waves and a whole heap of fun!

pickle in print!

I'm Stoked to post the link to my latest piece for drift. It's an interview with man of the moment, Tyler Warren, who seems like a nice guy with a good head on his shoulders as well as being an immensely talented surfer on pretty much anything. I'm sure i'm not the only one who's excited to see the TW Experiments film later in year.

Click here to read the interview

Big thanks to Tyler for doing it and to Kyle Maclennan for the great photos. Kyle also made the clip above.

Surf is still less than epic and guttingly i missed out on Monday's suprise swell. I did get wet on tuesday though, albeit caught by a downpour walking back from a pleasant evening climbing on Baggy Point. Fun to get on some proper rock again, whipped by the wind with a frothy sea crashing below as we climbed.

soap and chair no.1

 

Feels a little like groundhog day around here, the pattern of big lows but strong westerley flow has wrecked any plans for surfing my local for the last few weeks and i'm starting to worry i might actually have forgotten how to surf by the time i get in again. The water temp will undoubtedly have dropped by the time the wind eases and the rubber quotient will have risen to the full gimp suit level as a result!

Listening to others plans for imminent departure for sunnier climes is not helping either! At least there's plenty of christmas cheer around in the village to keep our spirits up!

torn like an old dollar bill.............

Possibly the best laminate ever!

Ride report to follow soon but this video pretty much sums it up.......

soap and chair no.2