film still rules / love c street!

Much a i like the immediacy and convenience of having a camera and editing software in my iphone shaped trouser pocket, shooting film is still the best. Manipulating an instagram picture this much might seem contrived and yet this is just a straight 120 film scan from my holga complete with light bleed and weird colout cast from the cross processing. I love the fact that you never know exactly how the picture is going to turn out until you scan the negative.

I'm pretty stoked on this one. It's from the county fairground parking lot in Ventura at the top of the C street point, somewhere i surfed quite a few times on this trip. Although the Santa Barabara/ Rincon area is littered with right hand points, most of them only properly wake up in winter when the swells come from the north. In summer, C street is the go for many locals and it is a really fun wave on a log when its small or a fish when its bigger. Despite the crowd, it's pretty mellow in the water and usually has multiple sections / take off spots to thin the pressure on the sets.

As with most of the waves i surfed, even on days that the locals considered sub-par, it was better than 99% of the waves i surf at home.

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.

'sup jake?!

clickety          click

life is just swell!

Sunshine, waves, smiley faces, people and traffic everywhere and putsborough charging £7 to park,  it IS summer!

 A couple of bits of local news to share.
The Nineplus shop in the village now has some Bings in the racks to salivate over, along with their own logs and a couple of Takayama's. Bing himself is coming over to the UK and will be doing stuff with Nine plus and the Surfing museum over the weekend of the 16th September so stay tuned for more details of that.

Braunton also has a new surf shop! The Board Barn has moved from chivenor to the old spa shop next door to surfed out (bet glen is stoked!) in the centre of the village. Yet another place to mooch when it inevitably starts raining again!

how much rubber?

Jake and Anna contemplate how many extra bits of neoprene they need to put on before paddling out over here.

jamie's trip

My friend Jamie recently got back from a trip to the Mentawi's and has been making us all jealous with tales of warm water, barrels and beer with friends. He is a really talented logger and teamrider for Bing (not the Microsoft one!) and has one of the best fade takeoffs i've ever seen in real life and is someone who pushes me to aspire to better longboarding.

He is also an amazingly talented photographer with a solid history of shots published in the mags including the hallowed pages of surfers journal and a stint as photo editor of the sadly "resting" drift magazine. Currently he's paying the bills shooting weddings and is starting to turn heads in that sphere too. His favorite pics from his recent trip are here and give a real sense of what it's like to experience a magazine style trip without the names or the hoopla you get in a surf magazine article.

Bound to either brighten your day or get you depressed at the general flatness right now!