a place to play

One from California, one is visiting in a couple of months....................

Tumbling.....

Tickets for the second ever Somersault festival at Castle Hill in North Devon are well and truly out. It's a cracking line up this year and should be a whole heap of fun if last year is anything to go by. It really feels like they have built on last years success and this year they have, amongst others, Laura Marling, Passenger, Bombay Bicycle lub and Crystal Fighters as well as legends Jimmy Cliff and Norman Jay.

It should be good!

In the meantime, feast your eyars on Laura Marling's first album. It's a really beautiful record. Top pop fact is that her band at this time contained some of Mumford and Sons before they "made it"

essentials

Longing for summer when all you need is a thin wetsuit and a board and a little bit of time....

evening

So lucky to come home to a view like this on a sunny evening

winter is receding

Spring is most definately in the air, the clocks are changing, the sun is gaining in strength. My thoughts are turning to summer already. Flights are booked for thre weeks in California. I literally cannot wait!!

#midlengthcrisis

 

The more social media aware of you will have noted that i finally took delivery of my 40th birthday present a few weeks ago. Ordered in June through Nineplus in Braunton it was mos definately worth the wait. It's a 6'10 Howard Special mini egg from Hawaiian Pro Designs (i.e Takayama) I think it is one of the most visually stunning boards i've owned with a stunning glass job and a beautifully refined shape. This is no magic carpet or beginers mini-mal, its a proper californian egg from the lineage of Skip Frye and friends. #midlengthcrisis indeed

It's taken a few weeks to get it in the water in some semi decent waves so i've held off posting until i had some decent initial thoughts to post. 

In one word........smooth

First impressions are that it is just unbelievably smooth. The bottom shape is roll into panel V so it's not a board for speed generation in junk. It's a board for swooping around and drawing smooth carves. It paddles in early and has a beautiful, slightly hull-like projecting bottom turn. It trims fast in a high line and comes off the top far spritelier than it's size suggests - theres not huge amounts of foam hidden in there so the swing weight is not that great.

I havent ridden a board with 3 fins for a long time, all my logs being single fin and shortboards are all twinnies or quads. It's also probably got the narrowest tail of any of my boards too. It turns beautifully, far more controlled and carvey than the wider tailed twins, far less pivoty than a single fin. It also carries speed through the apex of a cutback far better than a single fin egg would - i often find they have a tendancy to lose speed throughout the turn, especially without a nice flexy fin.

All in all, i'm super stoked with another keeper!

liquid lunch....

 

Testing, testing............. First surf in the new Finisterre wetsuit and second surf on the Howard Special Tak egg. Surf was cooking, suit was roasting, egg was flying......

one is not enough......

The trouble with going to the mountains early(ish) in the season is that it just whets your appetite to get out again. Feeling lucky this year to be sneaking off for another few days to France

#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!..........