keels are so hot right now...

The third(?) rise of the keel fish is coming, mark my words!

They may have been the design that spearheaded the "ride everything" alternative shape revoloution in the early two thousands, turning plenty of thruster riding shortboarders onto designs with more volume and flow and coaxing longboarders onto something shorter, but the humble keel fish hasnt really been the board du jour in more recent times.

They flat out work though, in a wide range of surf, not just mushy junk waves ( the design was basically born in san diegan barrels) and ive long believed that with a log and a fish as a quiver you've got pretty much everything covered for everday waves.

Auralian Asher Pacey and his self shaped 5'4 along with Ryan Burch and Bryce Young in california have bumped the design back into the limelight. Burch's section (most of which is above) in Psychic Migrations from Volcom in particular shows the keel in bigger more powerful surf than it is often associated with. Burch rips.

Over here Gulfstream make an amazing keel fish. If you havent ridden one, its a design that deserves your attention, whether you're concerned with being "on trend" or not!

lifted

Sometimes i wish i lived somewhere sunnier with more point breaks, sometimes i love where i live.

Woke up to this view from my kitchen window with the anticipation of a few more winter waves from this swell. A great start to the day until my POS T4 refused to start.Cue a morning of stressing to get to work, leave early, get the van started and panic to the beach.

All came good in the end, even if it was a little too windy to be perfect.

 It never ceases to amaze me how much a fun surf will transform my mood......

thats more like it...

So this IS one of my favorite spots. Leo Carillo state beach, a few miles north of the Malibu zoo, another quality right hand point wave with a tight take off spot but a smaller crowd.

Fun on a log or a fish!

more sunshine on a grey day

 

Funky restored beach shack at Crystal Cove near Laguna on a hot summers day. Pretty much my girls favorite US beach. More of a skimming than a surf spot though so not really mine!

i heart california......

Santa Barbara sunshine, born on the fourth of july

hiatus

 

and...................... we're back in the room!

Slight hiatus in posting, partly from busy life syndrome, lack of water time to get excited about and not having any new film pics to post. Maybe im mellowing with age but there hasnt been much to rant about either......

New year's resoloution is to keep this up though. I guess life moves on. When i started Adventures up, blogging was hot news but modern life evolves at such a pace that i suspect blogs are generally less visited than they used to be. Instagram has become such an all pervading platform for visual media that a lot of the photographic content of blogs has migrated there (& twitter i guess)  I'm as guilty of that too. I always think it's slightly ironic that instagram is an app aimed at making crisp digital pictures look like the expired, badly developed, crappy toy camera ones that people were taking 50 or 60 years ago.

What's old is new again i guess. Anyway my instagram is here 

Less film, more immediate probably more muddy bikes and coastal vistas.

doho days.....

I think Doheny is probably the spot that ive surfed most in California, mainly through it's convnience to the a couple of the condos we've stayed in. It kind of gets a bad rep amongst the wider surf world for being fat, slow and busy but its a fun wave with a mellow crowd and some really good longboarders across several generations. This particular sunday it was baking on the beach and busy in the water with glassy head high sets rolling through in boardshort temperature water. A classic californian beach day shared with the three G's (thats you Threadills! :-))

cruisers

How smooth?

ONE SESSION WITH: DANE PETERSON from travis kuhlman on Vimeo.

Turns out i cant embed this video here but it's worth clicking the link. Sure malibu is a perfect logging wave but DP makes it look so easy. I love his understated style and catlike movements. He's definately a big influence on my own surfing. His  board in the clip is very similar to my if6was9 log, piggy shape, greenough fin, not too much foam and i personally think its where a good modern log should be right now. Still noserides great in the pocket but turns smoothly too.

wowzers.......

What a great run of autumn swell we've had! Definately been keping the stokeometer up and most of the quiver in heavy rotation. Curent boards in the van are the if6was9 modlog dane peterson influenced 9'4, the 5'2 TW bar of soap and the gulfstream 5'6 twin keel which absolutely flies and i cant believe i allowed it to languish un-loved in the board store for such a long time!

surly

Big sur is stunning

alpine traffic jam

Waiting out the traffic at the start of a 15km alpine descent a couple of weeks back in France. Epic weekend trip, 4 days, 233 miles and 30,000 plus feet of climbing.