a stones throw

The south side of the point at La Torche is littered with hundreds and hundreds of these little piles of stones, like some kind of ancient offerings to the gods of the sea. Makes for a slightly surreal landscape, especially in the dawn half light.

tonight i'll call you from the 4th st payphone....

sleep on the beach if we aint got a ride

basking in the afterglow..

Full of stoke from an uncrowded twilight session in zippy small p-land. Back in love with my Dano and it's ridiculous section beating capabilities from the tip and cruising the net for further logging stimulation i turned this up.

It's a sweet little promo video of tudor's noseriding thing at the US open. Made for pacifico by Dana Morris, a talented young filmmaker and the guy who made "way of life", my most played surf dvd for a long time.

Enjoy wasting a few minutes of someone else's time....

they are waves jim....

 but not as we know it....... The Gardner contemplates another wasted lie in!

suits you sir

The last couple of months i've been testing this Nineplus stylist wetsuit and so far i'm very impressed. The latest generation of suits seem a real step up in quality from the last nineplus suit i had a couple of years ago. Mostly single lined 3mm Yamamoto neoprene, it's soft, fits like a glove and is supple and flexible too. Seams are glued blindstitched and spot taped on stress points. The "shorts" area in particular feels very flexible, you aren't aware of the seams in this area at all.

Closure is with a back zip and a generously sized "batwing" collar underneath to keep it watertight. It's a warm suit and i'm looking forward to getting my full leg version soon which i'm sure will be even warmer!

The big problem with the Nineplus suits i've owned in the past has been durability but so far it doesn't look like an issue thats going to affect this suit. All in all, stylish, warm, flexible and good value for money.

retail therapy

Being the assiduous student of surf culture that i am, and secretly enjoying shopping more than most blokes, we visited plenty of shops on our trip. Probably the raddest was "the captains helm" in Oceanside. Owned by Mitch Abshere of captain fin fame, it's best described as newquays revolver on a US scale with motorbikes instead of tattoos!

A little further north in Laguna is Thalia Street Surf shop, somewhere i was keen to visit having ordered boxes of t shirts on a couple of occasions in the past. It's a cool little shop with a friendly owner, Nick and stocked to the gills with todays cool brands of clothes & boards. In pride of place on the counter was Dan Crocketts "the kook" surf newspaper. Really cool to see something thats pretty english in it's inception and style being loved by the so cal locals

a little bit of sam's magic

9'4 Anderson Breakwater model with C street in the background. I rented this board from mollusc in venice for the first three days of the trip. It's a classic paralell template noserider 19 x 23 x 16 x 3 ish with a nice foil, plenty of foam but not too big and blocky, pretty flat with nose concave and a decent kick in the tail. Really pretty similar to my favorite gulfstream and a board i really enjoyed surfing.

Interestingly (to me at least) was that it came with a 9.75 inch greenough 4a fin. Not the template i would instinctively put in at home on a noserider, but one that worked really well, held on the tail but loosened the board up nicely especially in the slightly faster point style waves.

Really i shouldn't have been so suprised, after all, greenough is a genius and the 4a is pretty much the template he encouraged Nat Young to use in the famous magic sam, the board he used to take the 66 world title and usher in the whole involvement school of surfing that led to the shortboard revolution etc.

christiaan

Christiaan Bailey, curator of the surf screen and one of the select club of people to have produced and sold a british surf film, perfectly dressed for a day at the beach in July.

Vive la france!

Scored some super fun waves in Brittany last week, while everyone was scoring at home. Couple of days on the log before it was time to break out a shorter board. This was Tuesday morning, we were the only ones out at first light for about 40 minutes. 

Massive thanks and apologies to the random french photgrapher, who took the pics, sadly i have no idea of his contact details to post as these were taken from a forum, but cheers Benoit!

over sand under grass..

Just post dawn patrol glass and pre pancake breakfast at San O. Sadly the perfect little waves at old mans are burnt out of the background. We were so lucky to spend a day with the Threadgills there. They used up a precious day of annual leave to show us a classic san o beach day of surf, cookout and stomp rocket fun. I've already thanked them on here once but, thanks again guys, you showed us an awesome time.


San O was definately somewhere the average level of surfing was pretty high. Plenty of my surfs in California left me feeling pretty good. I left San O feeling distinctly average having witnessed some really great logging by pint size rippers, Josh Baxter put on one of the best displays of prog longboarding i've seen in real life and an unamed hero hang ten like i dream, of on a soft top!

Course they all have some super good consistent waves to get good on. One interesting thing about San O is that SUP's are banished to their own peak, way south by the (slightly pornographically shaped) power station. A pretty good thing in the opinion of everyone i talked to.

toontown

willa chillin...

My daughter's favorite bear, Willa, chilling out post surf at C-street in Ventura. Really fun longboard wave and one of my favorite sessions of my US trip. You should see her hang paws!

I took the picture because it seemed a fun shot and i was goofing with my daughter but if anyone important asks (especially if they're wearing a cravat) i was really trying to capture the essence of surfing as play, albeit for old children, drawing a paralell between a childs toy and the board which is in essence an adults toy, not a functional tool for any purpose other than enjoyment...... or something!

Willa and I are scouring Brittany for loggable fun as you read this. Hopefully the reality lives up to the forecast!