#coldwatersurf

So over the last few weeks i've been testing a pre-production version of the new @finisterreuk wetsuit. It's a 5mm suit with a full time hood and even taking into account the bias that geting a free suit might engender, i'm really impressed and you should be too.

Talking to Tom Kay (head honcho at Finisterre) back in November about the suit that they have been developing over the last couple of years, he was excited and promised to send me one to try when they arrived. His focus was to make a suit that was properly designed to be a good winter suit for UK surfers, designed by people who surf through it, not by people who think 16 degree water is a bit chilly! His key aims were a warm but flexible suit that would dry quickly and be value for money - by using a direct sales model they are hoping to deliver a suit that has the features of a top of the range suit with a more reasonable pricetag than brands like Patagonia.

 I think they've nailed it.

Hanger appeal of the suit is great. It's 5mm chest entry with a full time hood and subtle branding (although there is a hoodless 4mm version coming out too) The neoprene feels supple and stretchy. It's mostly double lined with a single lined hood and chest and back panels. The seams look well sealed with a wide but flexible tape on all of them. Inside, the whole of the suit is covered in whats best described as a short pile version  of the fuzzy side of velcro, sort of reminiscent of patagonia but obviously not woollen (see below)

It looks like a well made, warm and durable suit, with a couple of well thought out features. Firstly, there is a small webbing loop on the back of each calf to aid getting your foot through the ankle seal. Secondly there's a clever extra liquid seam rubber reinforcement on the chest entry panel designed to reinforce this area (which is prone to tearing on chest entry suits) and act as a second seal where the chest flap sits.

In use it's been really good so far. It's easy enough to get on and off ( for a chest entry system - they always require a little bit of contortion to get the first elbow out). It is SUPER warm - almost too warm on a windless sunny day and feels very easy to paddle in with no real flushing of water. Overall i think its really very good.

The only negative i've come up with so far is that the cord in the hood is too short/ not elastic enough to allow pulling the hood down once in the water and the sizing on the hood is ever so slightly too big for my tiny head on the size small. This isn't the final version of the suit and i've no doubt that these small issues and any others that the testers around the country have identified will be sorted by the time the suit is available to buy next winter.

the light

is beautiful.............

quantocks gold......

 

No fake filters or digital trickery needed. 

just checking......

It's a bit of a cliched photograph, surf bus and line up but i guess thats for a reason. The picture doesnt show quite how cold and windy it was though!..........

this green and pleasant land

snow fun....

So, just back from a rad trip to Norway. The light is so good when the sun shines it's easy to take beautiful photographs, it's a shame that all my film cameras are too bulky to fit in a pocket. Thats my excuse for posting digital shots anyway, that and avoiding frostbitten fingers messing around with fiddly camera buttons!

it's here.........

 

6'10 of californian goodness and boy am i excited!

 I was hoping to have an initial ride report to post with the pics but it made it to devon just before i went to the mountains and the swell hasnt really co-operated yet, maybe today is the day?

It's a lovely board though, the glassing is flawless and the shape is really refined. It might be a midlength "egg" but it's about as far from a mini-mal or beginner board as you could get. It's going to be smooth!

#cx

Surfing is inevitably a stop/start endeavour over the cold months, bursts of consecutive panicking to get in the water while tide, swell and wind align followed by lengthy spells of wistfully watching videos and ignoring facbook posts from friends in warmer climes.

I've been riding inbetween, enjoying the hard excercise and the solitude and the beauty of my local surroundings. This cx bike (a charge filter if you're interested) was built up for next to nothing from ebay and scrounging and yet it's logged more mileage than anything else recently. It's comfortable and fast on our devon lanes and the added frisson of danger riding it off-road compared to a mountain bike makes it fun to link big loops of mixed terrain. I suppose in a way it's similar to riding a heavy single fin, taking something thats flawed in some ways and celebrating it's impracticalty, making it perform - overthinking again......basically its fun! ( apart from riding it home in the dark by light of my iphone when my batteries failed!)

handmade

Gulfstream have some exciting new shapes in the pipeline, it's all too secret squirrel to reveal here yet but it's looking exciting!

exploring....

 

Amazing what you can find just around the corner if you keep your eyes peeled. This beautiful old stone bridge is hidden a couple of valleys over from my house at the bottom of a forest track. The late december light was beautiful and the frost was hard enough to solidify the mud. The only sound was my breathing condensing in the cold air and the babbling of the stream.

20 years

So obviously it's not my photo..............

Turns out i've been snowboarding for over 20 years! Twenty Years, which is kinda scary when you think about it. It doesnt seem that long in some ways, i can still remember the nervous thrill of sideslipping down Gloucester dry ski slope in rented ski boots set at some ridiculous angle, still remember cautiously linking turns on snow for the first time in Tamworth snowdome, just after it opened, still remember spending far too long on a national express coach up to aviemore sat next to a real life Rab C Nesbitt, it seems like yesterday in some ways. Yet in others it doesnt, snowboarding has changed so much, the kit is SO advanced compared to 1993/94, it's an olympic sport with national teams and icons, not the slightly disreputable brethren of skateboarding feared by ski resorts the world over that it once was. It's gone from fringe counterculture cool to massive boom mainstream popularity, from anti establishment to accepted. The thought of beng gently ridiculed by fellow package tour skiers as a "gay on a tray" now seems ludicrous.

If this all seems a little nostalgic, it's been brought on mostly by Lib-Tech launching a little mini-site here celebrating 20 years of sponsoring Jamie Lynn. Jamie was one of the first rock stars of snowboarding and after Craig Kelly was perhaps one of the most influential. His smooth but raw skate influenced style was adored and emulated the world over. His method air (see pic above) is still held to be the definition of the perfect example. I'm not ashamed to admit, i'd still kill to be able to style one out like that. My first decent snowboard was jamies "blue man" pro model from 96 and i've always loved lib's boards since. If you've been snowboarding as long as i have, you'll be nodding your head by now and heading for google to watch some old video clips from TB2 or the garden. If you're a more recent rider, this probably wont mean much and its hard to retrospectively explain how small snowboarding was back then.

This (volcom's the garden) perhaps sums up snowboarding in 1994 and is vintage jamie.......

pov

There have been waves, HOORAY!!! It's cold although down here we have escaped the snow mostly. Hope you managed to sneak away from responsibility and snag a few!

Exmoor has some and there was a smattering up in the Quantocks where the picture was taken. This is from just before the swell came on a beautiful morning. If you ride a mountain bike and you havent been up there i can really reccomend it. Hard climbs but really sweet swooping singletrack descents that arent too technical and cope with wet weather well. Pretty much my favorite place to ride.

Obviously I'm normally not a fan of endless POV go-pro video but if it features me (in blue) then  it's ok! :-) Filmed and edited by Noel. Cheers!