longview

With the new parking arrangements at saunton, i've ended up surfing P-land a bunch over the summer. Its a maligned wave in many respects, oft overlooked unless the wind is wrong elsewhere. In truth it can be a lot of fun on a log or a fishy shortie, especially if you catch the right banks.

terminus

 

End of a film roll, end of a long day, end of a swell.

lake atlantic

Summer seems a long time ago right now........

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!!

long way home

 

So this is one of those photos i'm secretly pretty pleased with. Working with such low budget cameras you are never entirely sure what you are gong to get back when you open the film envelope and sometimes pictures that you think will be great are disappointing and others you almost forgot you'd taken and just shot from the hip as it were sometimes turn out fantastic. This is one that came out exactly as my eye imagined it and i think it's not bad.

 

Looking at it, it's the view from the coast path behind middle beach woolacombe, it makes you realise how fantastic an area this is to live. I shot it on my way past on one of my regular mtb loops, a kind of eco friendly way to check the surf before heading back, showering the mud off and meeting the rising swell on the rising tide.

 

We are nlessed with beautiful beaches and waves to explore, amazing moorland riding almost on the doorstep, quiet country lanes and friendly relaxed people. Once the hook is set, i dont think you could ever leave...

made in california

a wish away.....

end of an era

a fresh perspective

Amazing how a few steps in a different direction can give a fresh perspective on stuff that is there all the time......

where sea meets the sky......

 

So close yet always just out of reach

keeping it old school

bonne anniversaire

Happy Birthday to my little bean!

changing man

you know that can't get into your suit quick enough feeling?


I

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?

tugs like gravity

I started typing "i'm going to be landlocked for the next week" but as i'm off to the lake district, i'm not sure how true that statement is! I'm really looking forward to visiting a part of the country i've never been to before and hopefully getting some good photos.

It's Good Friday today and while i'm heading north, no doubt lots of people will be heading south west towards the coast. If you are, please remember to be courteous to other surfers, especially locals. There's no excuse (or need) to drop in on people and ruin their wave and it can be dangerous too. If you're bringing an SUP, do the decent thing and find your own peak.

Today is also the official opening day of The Museum Of British Surfing in Braunton. The opening party last night was super fun and featured the music of one of my favorite musicians, the excellent Neil Halstead who very kindly donated his time and talent. The museums's first exhibition is "The Art of Surf" and it's well worth yor time. This is what they say

‘The Art of Surf’’ is an exhibition created from the Museum of British Surfing’s collection of surfboards and artwork dating back more than two centuries.
Many people describe the act of surfing as an art, and creativity has been at the heart of the wave riding experience for hundreds of years.
Early explorers sketched surfers; surfers decorated their boards, took photos and made films; advertisers plundered surfing’s rich imagery – and today in Britain there’s a flourishing art scene inspired by surfing.
Now it’s time to immerse yourself in ‘The Art of Surf’.
The exhibition runs from April 6 to December 24, 2012.


Finisterre are having a sample sale at the museum today and tomorrow as well so if you are in the area, please make the effort to come and lookn around and support/ reward all the hard work Pete and Howie and eveone else have put in over the last few years!

velo - city

It's taken me a while to feel like i've surfed this board enough to properly review it here but i've had it out in a decent variety of waves now so here goes!

It's a 5'6 x 22 x 2 - 2.5 Mford model by Jeff McCallum. The template is based on Greenough's velo kneeboards with the rails and base borrowed from a mini simmons. The wide point is well forward and the bottom goes from a gentle roll quickly into fairly flat then a big single concave through the fins. The deck is scooped out a bit, though nowhere near as much as a proper flexspoon kneeboard. The fins are beautifully made half moon style quad keels glassed on and beautifully polished. In fact the whole board is a work of art from the shape to the tint and the finishing. It's definately a board you could have on the wall if you wanted!

Paddling is fine, in fact the concave deck feels really comfy and "connected" with your chest. Despite the width it's thin enough to duckdive fine too. It paddles into waves smoothly and then you're off to the races!

It's a really laterally fast board, covering a lot of ground with each pump along the wave. There's a real feeling of squirt out of each bottom turn. It's great at racing sections down the line and it's short enough to coax up and over encroaching white water. It's got a lovely, smooth, knife through butter feel through the water, closer in feel to my old velo - sim than the bar of soap. A little bit of hull smoothness but without the "squirlyness" the greater belly on the velo-sim gave. The lack of rocker and width let you carry through flat sections easily and it's much more of a junk buster than the bar of soap has been so far.

All this lateral speed needs to be reined in and the smoothness carries through cutbacks. I'd probably describe it as like a very smooth fish, a flowing softness to the lines it draws. Not as shortboard feeling as the bar of soap, not as hully as the velo-sim.

The width and the position of the widepoint does need a little getting used to, both setting on a rail and bottom turning on your backhand but it's not a problem after a couple of waves. Thats about the only negative thing i can say, all in all it's a worthy addition to the quiver and a keeper for sure!

searching for a life less ordinary.....

aren't we all?

BGA

 

Al, architect and onetime art director for Wallace and Grommett, reflecting on another quiet fun offshore logging session while the masses battled unfavorable winds elsewhere.

It's starting to be the season for finding the quiet corners out of the wind, for boots, more rubber and rather depressingly gloves and hoods before very much longer. With the dark evenings and winter storms, it's the time of year that my mind starts to focus on climbing (indoors) a little bit. Al is often on the other end of the rope as i dangle two storey's up desperate to clip the bolts before my finger strength gives up. Quite a position of trust if you think about it....... i must remember to stay on his good side!

It's quite refreshing to be able to pick a day and time to go do somthing and not have change plans for weather or tide at the last minute. We're pretty spoilt for choice around here for indoor climbing at the moment. The excellent bouldering room in Pilton school is getting about a third bigger as we speak, Barnstaple has walls in Petroc and an old church, the Mill near south molton is still open and exeter has the quay, reviewed in a previous post.

For those a little further along the coast, Bude just got a brand new bouldering facility, called the chalk house, in the kings industrial park on the edge of town. It's not been open that long and i went to check it out last week. It's a decent size, not as big as say the climbing academy in bristol but bigger than the bouldering areas at exeter or south molton. A lot of the wall is slab rather than overhang though they have plans to add a proper roof area soon they say. It's got a fairly lo-fi feel with ply rather than coated climbing wall surface and is obviously born out of a few peoples passion rather than a big investment by a business. On the day i went, they had just had a comp on so there were fewer routes than normal but there were still 50 routes up. They were ungraded but the majority weren't too hard, many of the steeper ones having fairly juggy holds, which i think is a good thing for a part time climber like me. One big difference compared with other places i've been is the height. The wall tops out at 4.5m which, although is regulation international contest height,  feels a long way up when you're clinging horizontally on bad holds lunging for an uncertain grip!

All in all it's pretty cool and great to have another alternative if you're down that way and the surf forecast lied!

business as usual..

 

After a run of fun little groundswell waves a couple of weeks ago it's back to the British summer time we've become used to, finding the pockets of sunshine between the showers and making the best of the onshores and windswell while the holidaymakers shelter behind their windbreaks and brave the low temperatures in their speedo's. That said, yesterday had a fun little wave despite the onshores and was topped off by pushing my daughter into a whitewater wave and watching her get to her feet for the first time! She's goofy but I can live with that! Big smiles all round in our household last night!

If you're around Newquay this week, the relentless boardmaster's is on which is best described as a mini US open type thing. Elsewhere, there's a couple of interesting things on the horizon...

Fresh from his semi's berth at the joel tudor duct tape in spain ( with an invite to the next one in malibu) James Parry is putting on his own single fin thing. The Hip Wiggling Invitiational Single Fin Gala is at gwithian on the 3 & 4th september and promises to be a beacon of style in a contest season filled with butt wiggling and people attempting lame airs on longboards.

A couple of weeks after that, Royal and friends are hosting the European Fish Fry at Crackington Haven in North Cornwall on the 17th September. Visiting US shapers to be confirmed but it promises as usual to be a fine day of surfing and chinstroking over alternative board design. Hopefully my brownie point bank account will be full enough to release me from familial duties for the day and i might see some of you there!

log o clock....

Small wave weapons of choice