just six months............

 

Just six months until it's all small clean warm waves, short wetsuits and long evenings. Patience.....

Happy New Year everyone

CP by Wavedreamer, Saunton Foil by Gulfstream

no waiting

Big scary birthday today......remember, age is just a number.........

cup 'o' joe

 

A surf check is better with coffee in hand.

the gloves are off

#CP

Jools proving that 2 foot mush + seapea = fun

More pics and his surf stoke here

pic stolen from Gordon at Devon digital imaging

benched

 

This could be the most photographed seat in North Devon. I don't think ive ever actually sat in it. I'm usually in too much of a rush to get my wetsuit on, especially when the view looks like this!

Winter hasn't been kind to the sand below though. At low tide there's a big lagoon that needs to be waded through or paddled across to reach the breakers. It's rippy too and two weeks ago BGA and i watched some learners (in a lesson i might add) get blown off the sewer pipe and need to be rescued. The helicopter got called but thankfully wasn't needed. 

The next day i watched two kids get swept out in the rip at hightide saunton and need to be paddled back in, one on a supermarket bodyboard, one on a shortboard. Scary for them and lucky that those in the water noticed! Saunton is usually really safe but the winters storms have changed the sand somewhat and it's not fully back to normal yet! With the holiday crowds around, please keep your eyes open, especially on the beaches with no flags!

abandoned

 

Golden rays from a dying sun

On the subject of Sea Pea's, Gulfstream have a really professional looking new website up here. I know i'm slightly biased but i genuinely think they are consistently producing some of the best boards in the country right now and have been for a few years! There are some great little video's of Jools explaining the different shapes on there too. I particularly enjoyed watching the Sea Pea one (somewhat predictably!). I've got a real kick out of introducing jools to the mini simmons idea and seeing how much excitement and enthusiasm its brought him. That comes across really well in the video.

On the same page, i got chatting to someone in the water the other day who was riding a seapea. I played the dumb but interested surfer and didn't declare my interest. It was really cool to hear how much this guy was loving the shape and how much of an eye opener this little oblong from left field had been. In fact he had bought one based on his friends positive experiences.

If you've read this blog regularly you'll know i've been extolling the virtues of the mini simmons platform in UK waters for a few years. People are getting it now!

sunset sands....

Not sure I ever posted this before since it predates this blog. Filmed by Ben Haworths dad in 20 minutes as the sun went down in Woolacombe, I think in 2007 ish. The board is one of the original few Gulfstream Saunton Foils and was my favourite board for quite a few years!

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!!!!

the sea pea

 

So i finally managed to get over to Gulfstream to finish shaping my first board under Jools watchful eye. It's come out really well and i am super stoked. It's not a straight copy of the Bing i borrowed although it does use that as a reference point. It also takes some influence from the TW bar of soap i own. Theres not much rocker, with a subtle bellied entry into a single concave from about a third back that deepens as it goes off through the fins. The rails are very soft 50/50, almost an up rail in the nose, quickly blending into a shortboard style rail with a nice edge to the back third. It looks "right" and hopefully will surf right too! Next up is glassing!

 

I want to say a massive thank you to Jools at Gulfstream for his patience in teaching me and correcting my cock ups before they got too bad. There's no way it would look like such a nice shape if i had been left to my own devices! 

I'd like to think that he enjoyed it  as much as i did, it's the first time he's shaped anything like this so there was a certain amount of head scratching and designing to get it to blend together well. Hopefully this is going to be the first prototype for a proper Gulfstream Mini simmons model! You heard it here first!

Obligatory cheesy shot..........hand shaping (well) is hard and my appreciation of it as a skill is even greater than it was!!

waypost...

There's sunshine for now outside the window but the eyeball surf reports are not promising. Hopefully the push will whip up a loggable ripple. I'm amping to get wet after a day spent drydocked in classroom and traffic jam yesterday.

In other news, i finally convinced Jools from Gulfstream to borrow and ride my TW bar of soap. It will be interesting to see how he feels about it coming from a 3 fin shortboard background. His current every day board is a 5'5 epoxy shortboard so even at 5'2 the soap is going to feel like a lot of foam!

1 fin

is all you need....

So it is officially summer and for once the weather seems to agree, even the surf has been in summer mood - crappy short period onshore windswell! There have been a few little cheeky sliding waves when the wind has dropped even complete with a kook running into me as i paddled out in true summer fashion. "he's paddling left, he thinks he's going left, he's going left, oh he's inexplicably wobbled nearly fallen off and is now about to hit me!" you know the story. Thankfully my arm took most of the blow!

Hopefully off to gulfstream to finish my "shaping"/blank butchering experience at the end of the week now Jools has recovered from the trauma of my two sessions so far!

dreams burn down......

Last one of the four shots rescued from the expired film debacle. Seems like a long time ago now, back when summer still seemed a promise of good things to come and not the damp, grey cold reality we've suffered again.

Incidentally the random post title is from a Ride song that my ipod threw up. Shoegazing was a huge musical trend there in the early nineties but most of the bands are long forgotten. Made me smile to hear the intro to "leave them all behind" on Steve Clevelands last movie. He always picks good soundtracks i think.

just add sprockets

Turn the volume up, close your eyes and chill to the honeyed sounds of Real Estate.....

don't just sit there!

Funny how a view that most members of the public would see as calming and something to sit still and soak up has the absolute opposite effect on us. That can't get your suit on fast enough excitement, a flurried burst of hectic activity slowing only when you make it out back and float waiting for the first set to roll through!

go west?!

swell times

Stolen from the guardian website (which i never frequent you understand!) a nice little piece that gives a flavour of surfing around here with little cheese and genuine respect for the subject. Worth wasting five minutes on.

checkpoint charlie

Massive congratulations to Tim and Louise who got married on Saturday. Hope you enjoyed your day as much as everyone else did!

Probably a good thing that Mr Heyland only got to dress you for your stag, not the actual day eh?!;-)

In other news, Gulfstream just sent their first epoxy prototype shortboard to morrocco with Nigel Cross who's loving it apparently. Stay tuned for their upcoming epoxy high performance thruster range. Jools is, as ever, fully stoked on making custom surfboards and has plans for a few new shapes to add to their range over the summer.

Meanwhile in California, plumber about town and lovable drunk Cotty was quite frankly robbed by the Billabong XXL commitee and missed out on taking the prize for biggest wave. He did get the satisfaction of having towed Garret McNamara into the portugese beast that won and some beer money as a result. Well done mate! Incidentally, if you don't read his blog it's well worth a click and a few minutes while the kettle boils!

count trimula..

There's something refreshingly simple about the feeling of pure trim you get from a true displacement hull on a clean wave.

I hadn't ridden my hull for a while but just cruising down the line, connecting sections with that hot knife through butter feel was so much fun on this particular day.

 Nothing else gives you quite the same slingshot feeling out of a deep full rail bottom turn either. Good times!

While i'm talking hulls, this one was shaped by Tim Mason a couple of years ago. Tim's fundraising efforts i posted about a few weeks ago are still going strong and the Timmy Mason Trust now has full charitable status which is excellent news and a real testament to the Tim, Kate and all those in the UK surfing community that have donated time or product.

room with a view...

So recently i've been listening to Elise by The Horrible Crowes a lot. It's a side project from Brian Fallon of Gaslight Anthem ( who are currently recording their fourth album ) and it's really very good.
More introspective, darker and less urgent than Gaslight. Fallon is a fine songwriter and lyricist who's stature is growing with each release.

This is the standout track for me, one i find popping into my head at quiet moments......behold the hurricane