swamis

Sadly doing a good impression of a bad beachbreak on the day we passed through

clock watching.....

*rake* from shaun freeman on Vimeo.

 Yet again clock watching at work waiting for yet another flake with a poor sense of following through on commitments made, i came across this little gem from shaun freeman and the crew from Rake clothing and surfboards. As if i wasn't dreaming of righthand pointbreaks enough already

troenen

A slightly unusual beach hut? 

Really it's one of the many abandoned German bunkers that littler the beaches of France. Thankfully us Brits are assured a warmer welcome now than we were 70 years ago!

I got a copy of the new Captain fin movie, "Rip shred tear" last week. Pretty short but some really high quality logging from the usual suspects on show. Highly reccomended!

boats@concarneau

lost in translation..

Retro French busker in the citadel in Concarneau. Sure his songs & instruments were all very vintage correct and i'm normally a fan of culture, but man he sounded terrible!

Salt and Wax

I'm super stoked as i write this. Not only did i score a really glassy session at lunchtime with a handful of others but my latest piece for drift is now live. A conversation with the very talented photographer Mark Leary about his latest book, Salt and Wax, available now (nearly!)

check the piece out and get a taste of the book here

silhouette

La torche

a private view

Behind the scenes, work on getting the surfing museum off and running by next summer is in full swing. At the moment the collection is housed in a store at a secret location. Last week i spent a couple of hours lugging boards around helping out on a photo shoot. It's the first time i've been to the store and seen the whole collection, the place is a true Aladdin's cave of surfing memorabilia. There are some beautiful vintage and not so vintage boards and loads of posters, newspaper clippings, belly boards, old boardshorts and wetsuits.

The pic above (not mine i might add) shows an old Tiki board catalogue and an old photo from Putsborough in May 1965. It's a weirdly timeless image, a longboarder in forward trim in shorts and a neoprene jacket, it could just have believably been taken this week & posted on a blog from So Cal!

See more pics from the shoot here

Hopefully everyone got some waves this weekend. There was plenty of swell around up here on friday and saturday but plenty of wind and plenty of people. Still there was some fun and some beatings to be had if you were in the right (or the wrong) place at the right time. I saw one friend who suffered a scary post leash breaking swim in at croyde and another local that has an arm in plaster after an incident at Saunton on friday evening!

Sunday brought some really fun logging waves despite the kooks and it was fun to get back on a board over 6 foot for a few. Pretty much flat today unfortunately but at least it's sunny.

The green gulfstream below still needs a good home.....

my faith in human nature restored!

Big public thanks to "buttons" for picking up the aforementioned lost mandala and getting in touch with it's very very grateful owner to return it. A pleasantly suprising and happy outcome to what i had very much assumed was a sorry tale!

The pic, by the way, is of our newly restored 73 bay making her maiden voyage to Putsborough. Apparently it's too nice for me to put sandy wetsuits and boards in so the trusty rusty T4 is staying as a mobile board store for now!

in need of a home...

9'4 x 18.25 x 22.75 x 14.75 x 2.75 Gulfstream single fin. Flat, volan and medium weight. In need of a loving home. £350

more pics here

zipper

Remember when it was summer? 

La Torche, France

lost stolen or ripped off?

My friend accidentally left his lovely 5'11 mandala quad fish at the roadside near a semi secret spot south of westward ho on saturday and drove off. It was gone when he returned. Any help recovering it would make him feel a lot happier! It's seafoam green opaque tint, clear fins, white logo, andy davis free sticker on the bottom. There are probably only a handful of these in the country so it should stick out if you see it. Leave a comment if you see it please.