Dear Santa...

If that special someone in your life is casting around for christmas pressie ideas, here's a book that it might be worth dropping a few hints about..........The Surfing Tribe by Roger Mansfield..........

The british isles has rich and storied surf history but for many years, not much of it was written down, that was at least until roger mansfield took the task in hand and started to write "the surfing tribe"


Originally released in 2009 and now back in a second, updated edition, it's a beautifully presented book, crammed with high quality photographs and little vignettes of the places and characters that have populated british surfing over the years. From the outside, its a mind boggling task to begin, even if you experienced much of it firsthand as Roger undoubtedly did. It must have taken a huge amount of work to bring it together. The resulting tome is well researched and lovingly written with a section for each of the surfing areas in the country, detailing the history of the scene in each place. The prose is easy to read if a little simple at times and the scope of the information is vast which perhaps necessitates the slightly simplified approach. While the focus is very much our own country's stories, the worldwide history of surfing is told in broad strokes which helps to contextualise our history within the greater whole.

Like much of history, it's the characters within the stories and events that make it interesting and as the name suggests, the sufing tribe is very much about people rather than places and things. With surfing's counterculture past it's little surprise that the book is filled with tales of wanderers, dreamers, chancers, visionaries and hustlers. Names that still grace our surf landscape today and names long forgotten, tales of derring do and those with better luck than judgement.What comes through it all is a peculiar britishness to surfing in this country, something the book rightly celebrates and something that we should be proud of and celebrate more than we often do. Surfing in our damp windy isle is not quite the same beast as it is in sunnier climes and this comes across well in "The surfing tribe".

All in all its a worthy addition to any coffee table or bookshelf. I like to think that I have a reasonable grasp on the past but I learnt many new things, not least about the stretch of coast closest to my front door. I enjoyed it and I think you would too!

searching for a life less ordinary.....

aren't we all?

solace in a six string....

 

One of the peculiar (and also best) things about surfing is how all-consuming an activity it is, while you're out there i mean. There's the oft-used quote of the "church of the open sky" and hackneyed though it is, the sentiment behind it rings true. For me, and for lots of others too, no matter what's going on in our lives or how busy or stressed we feel, we can leave everything on the beach and let our minds be all consumed by the activity itself. The lines of whitewater serving as breaks to disconnect a busy mind as we wade out, the physical effort bringing peace through repetition of simple action. The rhythm of the sea, not the ticking of a clock dictating the pace of the activity. It becomes a touchstone, a constant in our lives, marking the passing of events, helping to deal with the peaks and troughs, a stillness we can come back to, a place of refuge in a sea of change.

Playing the guitar is a lot like that too. I've been playing a long time, counting up just how long makes me feel old, and though the desire to play waxes and wanes as the years pass, it never leaves. It's hard to explain to a non-player but, though your mind is partly focussed on making your fingers move, letting the notes flow through you and out of your fingers, especially while improvising, brings a kind of relaxing that makes minutes drift by and nothing else matter. Sounds cheesy typed out but some of you will know what i mean.

As an aside, i was well into music before i picked up a guitar. Not long afterwards, I remember one day looking across at my guitar in the corner of my bedroom and thinking how cool and amazing it was that pretty much all the music i'd ever heard or would ever hear could be coaxed out of those six strings. The breadth of the human condition and the full gamut of our emotions expressable for anyone with enough imagination. My tastes and views are more mature and broad and sophisticated now but its still true and its an idea that still fills me with wonder whenever it flits through my conciousness.

a minor disaster...

So in my minds eye this was a cool little set up for a photo of a new addition to the quiver (it's a 5'6 Mccallum Mford just so you know!) All good until i dropped the camera about ten minutes later...... Much of the charm of taking pictures with toy camera's like the holga comes from there cheap build quality yielding quirky images. It also means they are very much basically cheap crap plastic!

So i dropped the camera, lunged for it, nearly grabbed it, watched in slow motion as it bounced off my outstretched hand onto the pavement, inwardly groaned as the back of the camera flew off exposing the nearly finished roll of 35mm to bright daylight...........in the words of the great homer simpson DOH!

Thankfully i only lost a couple of pictures, a few were unscathed and these two i sort of rescued in iphoto. All part of a fairly crappy week where my laptop died taking a load of files with it and i came within an ace of rolling my van but thats another story!

I'm going to write a proper report on the board when i've ridden it more but first impressions are that it's really fun, even in utter junk surf, up and planing early with a really shocking amount of lateral speed with a real positive on rails feel and without the slip slideyness of wider tailed simmons shapes. Oh and it looks beautiful, a real eye pleasing shape with a real organic tactile feel, much like a nice hull has........anyway......

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!

the dirk of doom

 

Absolutely not a death dagger.........9'4 x 16 x 22.5 x 14.75 x 2 7/8 by the Squire

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, i ordered a surfboard from a wandering minstrel. I didn't get quite what i asked for. I'm not going to rehash the whole story here, the tale was posted previously and you can read it here. I felt somewhat let down and nervous of re-entering the kingdom of kegel again.

As luck would have it, the Squire who hosted the wanderer did feel that something should be done. After measuring the original in great detail he ordered his workers at seabase to shape a replacement, pulling the original template out to the dimensions i'd wanted but otherwise copying the original as far as possible.

The result is the beauty in the photos, which (apologies to john) don't come close to doing it justice. The tint is ace and the finish really out of the top drawer. It's flat, foiled out with soft pinched rails, a hint of concave, a tiny bit of tail kick and some gentle belly in the back. The fin is a slightly raked volan flexy affair, taken from the original gato board. The proof as they say, is in the eating and however good a board looks on the rack, it's in the water that it's true nature is exposed. This isn't supposed to be a noserider, more of a tool for what we might term the new involvement school of surfing, referencing the surfing of Chonoski  and Knost and friends, who in turn are influenced by Nat Young and friends of the magic sam vintage. Namely pocket noseriding with full rail commited turns in a traditional sense. (i know what i'm talking about even if that's confused you!) It's made for waves with good shape and a little pace but not necessarily size.

In the water, it paddles fine, as well as modern progressive longboard. Take off's are a little late compared to a true log but the lack of nose area helps avoid pearling despite the flat rocker. It trims fast and feels responsive and alive under your feet although it demands quick footwork. Bottom turns have a nice spring off the flex in the fin and cutbacks whip around with weight firmly over the fin. In short, a lot of fun and similar to the gato. Noseriding is obviously more of a critical affair with a 16 inch nose but with a steep pocket forming around you and quick feet the board will lock in nicely. In fact, in bowly little waves, the narrowness probably works in your favour making it feel much more manageable. It trims fast and holds really well on the nose through sections and cheating five while head dipping is particularly fun. It will allow a brief ten over though thats hardly the point of the excercise. It is exactly what i wanted and i feel somewhat vindicated that the dims and shape i originally envisaged do perform how i imagined and ultimately how i wanted. It's definately a departure from most of the longboards in the uk right now, not that easy to surf and most definately not everyone's cup of tea but......... For someone like me who rides longboards a lot but has no interest in the 3 finned variety, it's a really fun departure from the norm.

So there you have it, the best and the worst of the custom surfboard experience in one episode! Big thanks to John Isaac for sorting it out patiently and Phil Hodge for taking care with something out of the ordinary. If you're looking for a new board squire are worth considering. contact john here or here

As an aside, if you have read the comments on the previous post you will see that robbie did offer to swap the board for a used one of his or shape me another (at cost!) when he came back to europe this summer. Perhaps unsuprisingly he's already here (& perhaps gone who knows) but no contact to make good on the promise so far.

patience.....

It's a virtue........ or so we are told, everything comes good in the end if you have it.

I got to thinking the other day that so much about surfing involves patience. For all the flurry of action when you're actually riding a wave, there's a lot of waiting, for sets, for swells, for the tide or wind. Waiting even to get a chance to go to the beach. It's only with patience that you can accept the waiting with good grace, take the long term view. It's not something i'm particularly good at, maybe lots of you are te same. Modern life is lived at such a frenetic pace we rarely slow down, any tiny delay the cause for frustration, often the recipe for conflict in our crowded line ups. It's worth remembering, making yourself remember, the timeless words of duke kahanamoku.

"Wave come"

rhyme for the summertime..

By the time Garret "G Love" Dutton kickstarted Jack Johnson's career with his Rodeo Clowns single , he was already four fine albums deep into a career that's still going strong today. I forget exactly where i heard him for the first time, i think it was on mark radcliffe's old late night show on radio 1 in the early nineties, or maybe on the soundtrack to an early snowboard video at my friend ed's house. What i do remember is how the mix of blues sounds with a strong groove and elements of hip hop topped with g love's laidback delivery was something i'd never heard before. Hell he just oozed cool!

After starting out busking acoustic blues on the streets of philadelphia before hooking up with "special sauce" his sound has evolved several times over the years but it's his early stuff i still like best. He's a very fine slide/acoustic blues guitarist and really underated. check his youtube channel for some evidence! (under the moniker phillyglove) He's still one of the best artists i've seen live and his first couple of albums are well worth re-visiting or discovering for that matter!

the kook 2

Out Now,the second installment of Dan Crocketts labour of love, The KOOK.

In his words:

*****What is the KooK?******

*24-page Independent Surfing Newspaper
*Pink Newsprint
*UK-printed paper from sustainable forests
*No paid advertising
*Almost 90 Global Contributors
*Available worldwide to your door

Buy exclusively through http://thisrichtapestry.blogspot.com/

I'm proud to be one of those contributors and i'm amping to get my grubby mitts on an actual paper copy. If it's anything like the last issue it's going to be thoughtful, aesthetically pleasing and well worth supporting. I think Dan deserves congratulating for putting the huge effort in to get these out because it's not easy. Please support him if you can!

quiet peaks.......

far from the madding crowd.


Braving the wind and dodging flying surfboards i put my new fish through it's paces. At 5'6 x 20.5 x 2.5 ish it has less foam than anything i've had before, little enough to have given a few worries that i'd gone too small. My fears were unfounded though. It still paddles well and is so responsive and loose it feels like an extension of my feet, coming really square off the bottom and whipping through cutbacks with ease.

It's also the best fish i've ridden on my backhand. The decreased length really lets you feel like your weight is fully engaged on the rail on your bottom turn and it sticks less off the top too. Safe to say i'm looking forward to putting her through her paces in depth over the summer.

oh yeah, it's a gulfstream!

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!