the view from out here....

So yeah maybe we moan about the weather here a lot. Moan about the cold water, the rain, the prevailing westerlies, the crowds of kooks, the windswell. It's easy to get grumpier and grumpier the older you get and the more you think on it.... the grass is always greener. One thing we do have, despite the congested nature of much of the country, is lush green landscapes barely interupted by human hand. Sitting in the line up with a couple of friends, taking it all in on a small day is one of life's simple pleasures. A time honoured antidote to the grumpiness.

little packets of stokefulness..........

 

A little while ago I rolled into the car park half an hour before dusk, not expecting much, not really expecting a rideable wave if i'm honest. Sea breezes were still blowing and at first sight they were crumbling barely knee high waves. Seconds before I turned tail and headed home, a set came through, hit the best bank on the beach and a familiar silhoueted figure carved it up smoothly with tip time and drop knee.



Decision made, I scrambled into my suit and paddled out anxious to wash off the grime and suncream after a day of shed clearing and visiting the local dump. The sets were infrequent but there were  few to share them with. When they came, the waves were still a mushy waist high at best but with just enough shape to allow some fun logging, the bank marshaling the disorderly bumps into decent shape, the breeze slackening as the sun dipped towards the horizon. The small righthanders were playful and teasing, demanding fleet of foot and light of touch but rewarding with stolen moments of ten over and dropped knee. Kick outs with smile lost in the fading light.

As i sat waiting, alone with my thoughts, it struck me how personal the surfing experience is, how little the experience of each wave is shared no matter how many there are in the line up. How the feel and the feelings engendered are different (yet the same) for each of us, modified by board choice and local conditions. For me it's the little things i love, the perfect imperfections. I'm drawn to the edges of things. The warmth of the sun on your face, the glow of the sunset sky, water drawn over  soft rails,  making the most of a flawed wave. It's in the subtle grace of good trim, the weightless feel of a well placed noseride, the sweeping swing of a well timed cutback and the addictive momentum of a well timed fade as you take off. Grace in adversity, good style making economy of movement more powerful than wild action. It didn't need to be six foot and perfect, i didn't need to be here yesterday, i just needed to be here now.

The light was gone all too soon and I wandered out in near darkness, spent but smiling, storing my little packets of stokefulness like a squirrel mindful of the uncertainty of my next meal but content with an appetite sated.

surplus to requirements

it may be my somewhat narrow mind, but i'd say some of the surfing in this clip, knost in the final especially, renders progressive longboarding as a concept somewhat superfluous. He effortlessly marries full rail cutbacks with lightning quick footwork, turning as hard as many of the three fin longboard pro's aspire too, yet still with the grace inherent in the traditional aesthetic.

Just my two cents but id watch that every day of the week instead of arm waving, butt wiggling and forcing airs on a board of a length more suited to something else....

ringside seats for the neighborhood fight.....

I haven't been playing guitar much the last few months, and when i have it's been the 335 through my little vox combo and Mayall style blues, but as of this week the Gretsch hollow body is back in heavy rotation.
Maybe because i've been grooving on Chonoski's hot rod style, it got some setzer back on the old ipod. There's just something about a 6120 through a fender on the verge of break up that makes me smile and remember there's more to life than sand between your toes....

blurred vision

This week i spent a very enjoyable evening at the Tiki offices seeing them launch their new range of epoxy boards. In between being force fed real ale by Tim Heyland (who i now hold partly responsible for my worst hangover in recent memory!) here's what i remember........

The boards are the frutition of a five year design process and represent an attempt to push board construction forwards by marrying natural and manmade materials to create something with the best of both. The original shapes are by Bruce McKee, an aussie who has shaped for quite a few big names over the years and range from a 5'9 shortboard up to a 7 foot something fun board shape. There are a couple of fish style SUP's in the range too but interestingly no longboards. Tim, who is a very good longboarder himself, doesn't feel the technology gives the right feel to longer shapes and i think that's probably right.

Each board is machine preshaped then hand finished from a eps foam blank. The first "clever bit" is the use of a much much smaller cell and therefore denser and stronger foam stringerless blank. From there things get a bit hazy but..........

The blank gets a layer of glass then the deck and bottom get a thin bamboo skin and the rails get a carbon fibre cloth wrap. The deck gets another 6oz patch where your feet go and the whole baord gets another 4oz layer of glass over all of it. What you end up with is four layers of glass on the deck and the equivalent of seven layers on the rails, but, and here's the second "clever bit",  because it's all epoxy, the boards come out lighter than a conventional PU shortboard!

Aesthetically they look lovely and feel well made. They are strong enough for a well built chap to jump on upside down without damage. I can't comment on how they surf... yet, but i know they spent a lot of time testing to try and avoid the corkiness and tinnyness that surfttechs are often accused of. The bamboo apparently gives a dynamic flex that you wouldn't find in a tufflite board.

They're not entirely my "cup of tea" and others will be far more qualified to comment on how well they work but it's cool to see something new, especially when it's homegrown.

a couple of randoms...

A couple more shots from the scenic cycle route to our local beach. I'm sure it's pretty obvious that i'm heavily influenced by all things californian and i love everything i've seen of the coast there so far.  One thing they don't have in abundance is lush green rolling countryside, far from busy roads, hiding small coves and rocky bays, some with great waves. I'm really hoping our Californian friends make it over next year so we can show the place off. I think they will love it, narrow lanes, tractor caused traffic jams and all!

 

fixer

Miles Hunt, just post Wonderstuff in classic vitriolic form. Vent was made up of Miles, Morgan Nicholls, originally from senseless things and currently keyboard player for Muse, and the drummer from Eat whose name i've forgotten. One brilliant album and they were gone. It remains one of my favorites.

Finally made it back into the water today after a month off( ! ) Surfed just like i hadn't for a long time but it felt good to slide a couple of semi clean peelers. Lighter mornings and evenings are definately well on the way, even if the dawn patrol would have been easier with a foghorn today.

dessication

 

I'm feeling distinctly landlocked and in danger of drying out, a mixture of work and bad timing  keeping me away from the few windows of waves we've had recently. Typically there are frustrating tales of derring do filtering back from those with more luck in their schedules. Hopefully a little swell will linger and the wind will abate soon.

If there is a plus, it's time for my shins to heal properly after their argument with a handrail......... still, i have a quiver feeling lonely and unloved in the board shed!

the jamie lynn method

Anyone who got into snowboarding in the nineties should be aware of the influence of Jamie Lynn. I'm sure i'm not alone in saying he remains my favorite snowboarder ever. He stood out mainly for his smooth style, with spins that looked effortless without the flailing rotataion that was prevalent in snowboarding at the time.

This section is from the 95 mack dawg movie "the meltdown project" and much of the footage, gloveless and stylish, is from the mountain high camp at verbier.

He has the best method, ever............period!

speed freaks

By the power of youtube, the aforementioned Mike Vallely segment from the 1989 santa cruz video, speed freaks. I remember watching it over and over at a friends and being blown away, then skating SO hard the hours following, amped on this section.

At the time, Vallely had just done the unthinkable and left the bones brigade, the biggest team in skateboarding, joining punk upstarts World industries, which seemed incomprehensible to us. He followed it by releasing the first "double ended" pro model featuring the iconic barnyard graphic. This shape was revoloutionary and it, and the decks that emulated it, had an effect on street skating which cannot be underestimated. The "pill shape" deck is still the industry standard today.

If you want to follow me down memory lane have a look at Mike's website here.

There's a documentary in the works about the Bones Brigade, with Stacy Peralta behind the lens, the man largely responsible for the team originally and one of the originators of the skate video itself, it should be something to look forward to.

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!

bring back summer

Finally a few little lines to slide yesterday. Nineplus 4/3 is plenty warm still, especially with the sun in your face. After logging a few i broke out the mini sim on a whim. Once again big smiles in waist high waves, i'm seriously addicted to the smooth lateral bar of soap feel!

the waiting...

I think this was the last time we had a proper fun little swell up here, feels like months ago.

suits me sir!

Just took delivery of a couple of full suits from Nineplus to try out. Out of the bag they look lovely, soft supple yamamoto neoprene, mostly single lined with stretchy double lined in the crotch area. Understated subtle logos complete the high quality look. Inside there's neat seams and furry warm looking lining on the torso.
Probably a bit cold for the 3/2 already but hopefully the 4/3 is as warm as they say. I'll report back!

a lost identity?

I must admit to being almost childishly excited to see my words in print in a paper magazine for the first time. Corduroy Lines issue 12 is the august publication responsible for my excitement. The magazine is still available from their website

I've held off publishing the full text on here for over a month as a courtesy to them but for those unlucky enough or too far overseas to have a copy here it is now. Ironically, since i wrote the piece we have had a single event "world longboard tour" in Makaha take place. Once again sponsored by Oxbow, shockingly they couldn't manage to provide a live video feed like the other major asp events. Once again a clear illustration that longboarding is the poor relation. It's almost a chicken and egg situation. Lack of decent coverage leads to lack of exposure for the surfers and their sponsors, which makes the surfers less valuable to the brands and the brands less likely to invest in longboarding. 

That said, i did make the effort to follow the scores and watch the heats on demand and from a personal point of view came away saddened by what i saw. It's probably well known i'm not a big fan of progressive longboarding and to my eyes many of the waves looked like pedestrian shortboarding. Noseriding, which is surely the thing that defines longboarding as being different from other areas of our sport, was almost an afterthought on many of the waves. Yes i know it's hard in bigger waves but from my viewpoint maybe that questions the relevance of running a longboard contest in such conditions. Several "world class" competitors seemed to struggle to hang five with toes properly over the nose, let alone ten. Worse was the shock realisation that you can make the semi finals of the world title event shuffling to the nose and back rather than cross stepping. It's a world away from the surfing i fell in love with.

Style it seems, at least in contests, is dead!

Right, step away from the soapbox!

HAS LONGBOARDING LOST IT"S IDENTITY?

Are we longboarders?

Are we surfers?

Does it matter?

Up until the late 60's, all surfers were longboarders. Before Greenough, Mctavish and friends, the average board length sat around ten feet, so surfing was longboarding and vice versa. In the years following the shortboard revoloution, longboards all but disappeared, ridden only by eccentrics and old men. The big name shapers of the era moved on to fresh pastures and board design underwent an intense period of change and experimentation, almost on a weekly basis.

It wasn't until the late eighties when shapers like Bill Stewart started to apply the concepts of high performance shortboards to longboard blanks that riding a longboard became cool again. For a short few years there was something of a "longboard" revolution. Many old shapers picked up the planer again and many youngsters pulled dads old board out of the shed. Nat Young, with backing from Oxbow, established a bona fide multi stop tour to crown an ASP sanctioned world champion. Along with the buzz came money for sponsorship and contests. The future looked bright..

As we sit here, fifteen or so years later, it almost looks as though things have gone backwards. Few longboard professionals actually manage to survive on surfing alone, prize money often barely covers the cost of travel to the contests and the ASP struggles year on year to find a backer to run even a single world title event. In contrast, the shortboard tour is awash with money, with the elite on salaries with many zeroes, some with the clout to cross into the mainstream and transcend their surfing origins to be seen as true athletes on a par with those who top more conventional sports. Despite this longboard sales regularly account for over 50% of board sales worldwide.

Shortboarding, for it's part, is easy to understand, easy to draw comparisons between surfers, in some ways easier to package. Longboarding is more multifaceted with a wider range of approaches and this lack of cohesion in it's identity may be one of the reasons for the differences. Even the participants themselves find it hard to agree. In competition terms there has always been an uneasy compromise in the judging (which is subjective anyway) between traditional and progressive approaches. In Nat Young's tour, the points were supposedly split 50-50 in rewarding the contrasting styles but as time has gone on there has been a shift.

Whatever the rulebook says, most top sufers agree that progressive surfing is presently rewarded more highly, with boards becoming ever lighter and noserides with the back foot in the middle of the board commonplace. At the cutting edge it's about trying to take to the air, something i personally think you have no business attempting on a board bigger than 6'2!

This group, who would most robustly classify themselves as longboarders in the true sense, have their "spiritual" home in the waves of Hawaii, Australia and Brazil and conforming to this model gives the only hope of progressing in the contest scene.

At the other end of the spectrum lies a different group. One that has it's roots in the point breaks of places like Malibu and Noosa and Joel Tudor's rejection of three fins and pink wetsuits in the mid nineties. For them, style is everything, aggression is replaced by smooth flow, noseriding is paramount and longboarding (or logging if you prefer) is an "under head high trip". Perhaps ironically it is the limitations of of this approach and it's heavier equipment in larger, faster waves that has pushed it's proponents to become more well rounded surfers with more open minds, pushing the riding of things like eggs and fish into the mainstream. Most would label themselves just "surfers" as a result, riding the right tool for the conditions at hand, maximising the fun in any given session and liberated from the restrictions of practicing to fit a contest format.

While the path for these "lifestyle" pro's is not necessarily easier, their scene is linked with pop culture with a degree of crossover into art, music and fashion allowing a multi factorial approach to their career as well as their quiver. Surfing is less an athletic endeavor, more a lifestyle to aspire to. While naysayers would dismiss them as "artfers" their influence on both longboarding and surf culture as a whole cannot be ignored.

Sitting in the middle is a group, probably the majority, for whom the distinctions are somewhat academic, irrelevant musings in magazines such as this one. They are the dads, the weekend warriors, those who would love to be fit enough/ young enough/ talented enough or time rich enough to ride a high performance shortboard. People who's surfing references are still Kelly, Bruce an Mick, who think little about the surfing they actually partake in and more about the "dream tour" that the mainstream surf media cover. For them, riding a longboard is less of a considered stylistic choice and more a way to maximise wavecount and enjoyment.

Sadly their existence is a big reason for the state of professional longboarding. Their lack of interest in longboard specific media or surf media in general and their willingness to be influenced by the shortboard world means there is no need for quiksilver and co. to target their demographic with their advertising money. The big brands figure they will buy the stuff anyway and concentrate on influencing their children in the more fickle teenage market. As a result, the big brands see no need to waste their money on sponsoring longboarders or longboard competition and longboarding stays the poor relation.

The situation has been like this for the last few years and, especially in the current climate, is unlikely to change. Whether that actually matters to you as much as it does to those attempting to make surfing their career is unclear. Despite being partially ignored by the mainstream surf industry, our niche of surfing is alive and kicking, relevant to multitudes worldwide. longboarding may have not quite decided what it wants to be when it grows up, perhaps it may never decide but holding on to the joy we felt in pure play as children is part of what draws us in. When you reach the bottom line, it's all surfing and we are all surfers.

Discuss! :-)

flying the friendly ghost...

Anyone with even half an idea of current trends in surfing outside the all encompassing thruster movement will doubtless be aware of the emergence of the mini simmons as a new branch on the board design tree. Coming out of the work of Simmons in the late 50's and his adherence to the principles of even earlier boat hull theory, the concepts were rediscovered by Richard Kenvin as part of his Hydrodynamica project. Working with Joe Baugess from much longer simmons originals  and apocryphal stories of simmons riding a styrofoam 6 footer til the windansea shorebreak destroyed it they first made a 9 foot replica in balsa that Kenvin and co. successfully rode in large waves in California and the Galapagos. Then they went shorter..

The result was an epoxy 6 footer quite unlike anything else out there, a seemingly simple shape with decpetive subtleties. This first board was named "casper" after the friendly ghost and started to pop up in photos and videos around the net a couple of years ago. Having been ridden by a number of high profile surfers, all well documented with glowing ride reports the idea caught on and quickly many different shapers began to take the idea and put their own spin on it.

I think it's pretty safe to say that few people in the UK have actually seen one of Baugess original shapes though there are a few UK shapers who are making a version. For the past 6 weeks or so i've been riding the little 5'8 in the pictures and it's very quickly become my favorite board. This one is a Point Concept Velo sim, designed by Ryan Lovelace in Santa Barbara but loving shaped over here by Tim Mason off Ryan's templates.

Tim actually does a very fine copy of the Baugess which is shorter and thicker than this with a more pronounced s deck and has a slightly more complicated bottom shape. My board is bellied to flat to concave through the fins, 5'8 x 22 x 3 but foiled out through the rails. The fins are wood keels but more semi-circular in shape than those for a classic fish.

So after digesting all the hype i was keen to get a feel for the shape people are raving about, and let me tell you it's a hell of a lot of fun!! It's definatley a board that draws lateral lines rather than truly vertical ones on the wave. The feel is probably best described as being like riding a bar of soap. It rolls from rail to rail smoothly and cuts through the water much like the feel of a hull. It's a board you need to get low on as you bottom turn and it feels great in a high line trim. Where it differs from the hull is in turning.The fins are set well back, only a few centimetres from the tail and the board will pivot off the bottom or the top much like a normal twin keel fish. Once you outrun a section it cuts back like a skatey loose fish so you can set up for the next speed run, then repeat til your grinning like a loon and hooting yourself!

 It's much friendlier on your backhand than a hull too. Like a hull, the roll in the bottom gives it a slightly "unsafe" feel as you put it into a bottom turn. It requires a bit of practice to get the right amount of weight on the rail as you start the turn, you almost need to gently but progressively weight the rail but once you have that figured it performs backside too.

Like any board, it loves a clean down the line wave, i've had it out in headhigh and under surf so far and the speed it generates is awesome. Where it really excels, however,  is in junk surf. I can honestly say that a couple of weeks ago i had the best surf ever in 1-2ft sloppy windswell. The combination of effortless speed generation and quick direction change facilitated by the bottom contour and short length respectively give you the ability to chase the open face through, over and around whitewater and maximise the fun in poor conditions. It could be the ultimate junk wave design, as long as you're not a died in the wool shortboarder desperate to live out your slater fantasy for every surf.

While Tim obviously isn't the only shaper who will make you one of these, i honestly think few shapers in the UK understand boards derived from hull principles as well as he does and for something like this you want someone with that knowledge. Ryan, whose original design this is, has a proven track record in these types of shapes with a group of like minded test pilots and Rincon to work out the flaws. Once again not it's not going to be everyones cup of tea but it is a MUCH more functional daily driver than a hull while still retaining the smooth feel and different enough from a Lis style fish to warrant having both in your quiver.

 These shapes are a different branch of the tree than conventional concave bottom shortboards and if you believe Kenvin, are the true ancestors of the modern high perfomance board as well as both skateboarding and snowboarding. Big claims but the proof as they say, is in the eating!

note to self

I shamelessly stole this from Dane Peterson's blog for three reasons:

Firstly, it made me smile,.

Secondly, Dane has always been one of my favorite surfers, ever since he appeared as a slightly be-quiffed teenager in The Seedling, I've loved his super smooth, effortless style and his impressive noseriding. In the last few years, he's also become one of my favorite photographers, with an eye for capturing the little moments that make surfing such a special thing to be involved in. A friend recently asked me what i love in surfing and i pretty much directed them to Dane's site and told them " it's what you see here!"

Finally, Dane just sent me a batch of photos for a feature we're working on for Drift. Unsuprisingly, they're really good and i woke up feeling inspired in a journalistic kind of way & excited about how things are coming together(stay tuned for details :-)

I know those of you in Kernow are cursing the Northerly wind of the last few days but up here where there's a little shelter i've had some fun micropeelers and hopefully the forecast will continue to stay as it is into next week. I still don't fully understand why some people don't own a longboard for these sort of occasions!

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

jus lookin

They say procrastination is the thief of time (i've always loved that phrase) and they are probably right. Most of us always look at the surf when we get to the beach (despite often having spent a fair amount of time checking a variety of webcams beforehand) but i think sometimes you can look too long. Especially  if it is small or cold or massive or onshore, too much time looking can just allow that element of doubt to creep in, is it rideable? is it too big a paddle? am i feeling a bit tired? Usually you are actually better off just changing and going in anyway, if you're like me you will rarely regret it. Take this pair for example, watching a succession of (admittedly occasional) very loggable sets come through before going home again.
The next few days were flat. Moral of the story, make the most of what you've got and never drive away from clean waves without getting wet first!

twinkling fingers

This is a slight cheat as it isn't my photo, it's taken on a diana by my friend Jim (star of the old blog banner!) but it is a picture of me indulging in one of my other obsessions, keeping the winter blues away with some proper blues (a bit of john mayall if i remember correctly). I really like the picture and, as you know, love a bit of self promotion :-)