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!

planing

Jools hard at work in his shaping cave.

It's hard to explain just how difficult it is to cut a decent shape with a planer (for a newbie like me anyway) The foam is so fragile and the planer so aggressive that the tiniest change in angle or speed is reflected by creating a bumo or worse still a gouge....

The best comparison i can make would be trying to carve sonmething out of florists oasis with a dremel tool! Steady hands and a good eye are the bare minimum.

Hope everyone got some fun fathers day waves over the weekend. There certainly were a lot of people in the water. In the end a bit of patience was rewarded with a slightly smaller but quieter session. I rode my pointy squire log which hasn't been in the water for a while. It's pretty different to a proper log and a nice alternative to a three fin longboard in bigger waves. Despite having the wide point back of center, the roll in the bottom and the flexy fin give it an almost hully feel to the bottom turn. Especially if you get low and crank it over. There's a nice pivoty drive to it's cutbacks and the 17 nose really makes you work for your tip time. It's an unusual but satisfying board to surf.

Monday was a beautifully fun logging wave, small glassy and perfect for the if6was9 log i've been favoring recently. Boots off too!

The rain may be back today but it's my birthday and i'm going surfing!!!!

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.......

 

 

the peddler

So this is one of the inhabitants of clovelly. Like i said, it's a slightly odd place. A recent headline from the local paper......" Girl attacks shop worker with biscuits!" "I'll make your glasses into contact lenses" she's quoted as threatening before pelting the checkout lady with custard creams. I kid you not!

build your own.....

Paul Jensen is considered a bit of a legend in building hollow wood surfboards and it seems like he's going to be over here in october running a workshop.

I don't know much about this but i do know Paul is supposed to be a great guy and a real craftsman and this will be a great opportunity to craft a beautiful, functional board........... if you have seven or eight hundred quid to spare!

quiver in transit...

Every option covered! Lovely bespoke Oddsocks board bags too!

So FINALLY a little bit of swell to write home about, the sun has been shining and the water has warmed up a little. The new Nineplus 3/2 retro full suit has been keeping me toasty, if only i could say my arms have been performing as well! It's depressing how quickly you lose paddle fitness, well i do anyway!

This time last year i was surfing Rincon and i can't help wishing we had booked flights this year too. Subscribing to the coastal push is not helping. The bank manager is happier but i miss surfing right hand pointbreaks! Next year hopefully.........

On the subject of subscriptions, i've recently had the first couple of issues of Foam Symmetry magazine. It's an Australian mag with Justin Bevan and Dane Peterson at the helm so you know it's going to be visually beautiful. It's high on content, low on advertising with creative use of design and paper stock, much closer to surfers journal than surfer but with more edge. I'd probably describe it as a paper distillation of the exciting stuff that's happeneing on the innumerable blogs out there. It's well worth a look if you get the chance. There's a cool article on the UK hip wigglers by Russ Pierre in issue two.

It may just be me, but whenever i've been out of the water for more than a couple of weeks, i'm always thankful i can still remember how to surf. I guess it's like riding a bike but it's always nice to get that first wave out of the way and know you can still make stuff happen. I've definately been feeling rusty this week though, bogging rails at stupid moments, making the wrong split second timing decisions.

Still it's been hella fun and thats the whole point when you think about it! Long may it continue.....

factory effluent

Just around the corner from the american road (so named as it's a remnant of WW2 military excercises) i sits this sign. It reads "Factory Effluent" and sat in the middle of a lush green vista, it's incongruity with it's surroundings made me pause for thought.

The shot, sadly, is a typical holga near miss, in my minds eye, the sign was a lot more legible! It's certainly not my best photo but if this truly rubbish run of "summer" conditions continues i am actually going to run out of photo's to post!

 It's on the way back from a short mountain bike loop that BGA took me on. I'm sure he took some sort of satisfaction form watching me hyper ventilate up the hills but the rush of bumpy downhill single-track is worth it and a new pleasure i've been introduced to recently.

Meanwhile the ocean went from flat to howling onshore mess and as i type looks like it's heading back to flat again, while i heroically fought some kind of stomach bug from under the duvet. I hate being ill - i'm really bad at sitting still!

 I did watch Steve Cleveland's new movie "Paradigm Shift" which runs along similar lines to his previous films. It's got some great surfing in it and some clever editing. Jai Lee and Dane Peterson probably have the best parts but Knost, Warren and all the other usual suspects are all present and ripping.

It didn't totally blow me away although that might be because i've hardly surfed at all myself recently and my stoke is at a low ebb. I think maybe watching it made me sad i'm not about to hop on a plane to california this year rather than get me excited about going surfing later as it usually would, which isn't Steve Clevelands fault!
 It might also be because the progression in logging seems to have slowed a little - there's no new noseriding trick that i hadn't seen before, nothing really made me stop and rewind. The level of noseriding is now so high it's inevitable it will plateau a bit before the next climb.
I certainly can't put my finger on anything that's wrong with the film, so ignore me and buy it, you'll love it and i'm sure i will once the flat spell is over!

Jack Coleman's "Polyester" is worth a watch too especially if you're an Alex Knost fan. Be warned it is SUPER arty, all scratched painty super 8, weird angles and a velvet underground type soundtrack. It's reminiscent of early Volcom films and definately in the "art piece" category but a good diversion for half an hour and i really like it.

 There's (pleeeeeeese!!!) a small chance of a loggable wave at this end of the week. If there's anything at all in the way of tiny clean waves i'm breaking the sup or a belly board out, i NEED some kind of sideways sliding action and at this stage i'm really not being choosy!

highs and lows.................

I mentioned before how interesting it was to see our coast through fresh eyes when i posted about my visiting californian friends a few weeks ago. As well as being slightly freaked out by driving in our narrow country lanes, they couldn't believe how big our tides were and were literally gobsmacked to realise that our biggest tides were pretty much ten times the size of theirs!

Most of our surf spots are tide dependent to some degree. Plenty don't even exist at certain tides, others vary in quality as the tide moves over the banks so having a handle on what the tide is doing can make the difference between scoring or not. Most tide clocks or watches are not really that accurate and most people will have one of the classic yellow tide books stuffed in a corner of the bookshelf or glovebox. A timeless classic perhaps but a bit boring which is why my friend Germi created "Highs and Lows" a slightly more surf-centric tide table.

At the moment it's only for the North Devon coast but next year there's going to be a cornish edition too. The tide times are clearly set out as you'd expect but it's bookended with nice pictures of our people, waves and coast. Useful and nice to look at!

So If you want to look like a local when you're checking the surf here, or just support a little homegrown cottage surf industry, keep your eye out for the highs and lows tide book in our local shops or get it online from www.eyeballhq.tv or www.citysurfessentials.com

logshop...

Part of the roomy interior of the Nineplus shop in Braunton, snapped whie Rob made me a coffee.

It's the closest shop around at the moment  in vibe (except revolver maybe) to the californian shops like Thalia or Mollusc.

With some nice US made logs, Vans, Levi's, some vintage clothes and smooth skin wetsuits, it's worth sticking your head through the door on your way over to Gulfstream to check out their locally made beauties.

in the estuary...

It's a boat.....who'd a thunk?!!

the last time.....

for a while that the beach will look this empty...

Living in an area that's a tourist destination, it's always interesting to see the change in the local population and it's density as the seasons cycle through. Even in the current days of webcams, internet forecasting and thicker wetsuits, it's not that hard to roll up to the beach to a view like this. Leastways over the colder months.  Yet as soon as Easter rolls around it's like someone, somewhere throws the people switch and there are people everywhere. No matter how bleak and grey and windswept, there's hardy british holidaymakers hunkered down behind their windbreaks. The village is filled with stressed, damp mothers ushering their bedraggled offspring from shop to shop looking for an alternative to the mud of their campsite.

In a weird way i've always liked it, it gives the place some life after the cold of winter. There's an air of anticipation of sun and fun to come. Spring is in the air... 

more tea?

surf museum open now!!!

The Museum of British surfing is now open! Massive congratulations to Pete and the team for making it through the long process with all it's trials and tribulations. It's located at the side of the main car park in Braunton. Please make time to come and visit and support it, it's preserving our nations unique take on surfing and it's really worth your time and support.

nineplussed...

There are some nice Ca made logs in here right now, the new version of the osprey model looks particularly nice. Shaped by Hank Byzak who has a long behind the scenes history and also has hands on Joel Tudor's Kookbox model's check the shop's blog here

longview

timmy's trust........

Longtime readers on here will have heard my appreciative comments about Tim Mason's surfboards. Tim is a real craftsman and one of the nicest men you could possibly hope to meet. Tim probably knows more than anyone else in Europe about hull style boards and makes beautiful displacement hulls as well as some lovely casper inspired mini simmons.

What lots of you wont know is that Tim is a real family man and at the end of the last year lost his 7 year old son Timmy after a long battle with cancer. It's such a sad thing that you feel even more keenly when you have your own children.

Tim and his wife Kate have set up The Timmy Mason Trust to help families in a similar situation in the future and to keep Timmy's memory alive.  Their first goal is to raise £5000 to achieve UK charitable status which will really mean they can move the trust forward. They would gladly recieve any donations of course.

To help raise funds, Tim is intending to auction off one of his beautiful boards every month. First up is the lovely Lis inspired fish in the pictures. It's 6'4 and like all of Tim's boards it's a thing of beauty and sure to be a joy in the water. Search my earlier posts to find out how much i rate Tim's shaping!

If you are interested in this board or to see what's available next month check here.

petro cruising

flotsam...

 

and bexon!