ouch!

This rad looking little board is a prototype Gulfstream 4'10 asymmetric Seapea with a keel fin on the toe edge (longer rail) and a quad set up on the backhand side. It's pretty mental looking but its pretty much all Jools has been riding in junk surf over the last 6 months.

I've been meaning to borrow it for ages and had lined up a loan ahead of a sunday AM with a perfect 3 foot and clean forecast a couple of months ago. All great until I offered to show BGA and his visiting mate a little rainproof mountain bike route. To cut a long story short, I went over the bars into some rocks at pretty high speed and broke two ribs!

It's not an experience id recommend and (amazingly considering the stuff ive done) the first time ive ever broken a bone! Pain wise i think I got away lighter than some friends experience but the worst thing was being sidelined from any kind of fun stuff for a few weeks! Most frustrating of all the board went back to Jools unridden so you'll have to wait for a full ride report.

5 summer stories

I did a little blog for Gulfstream again, five boards to ride this summer.............

https://www.gulfstreamsurfboards.co.uk/2017/07/07/5-boards-ride-summer/

rocking out

This is Morro rock, in Morro bay, home to a good beach break and a lot of noisy sea birds. We only really passed through on our way south but i scored head high glassy peaky waves on my Seapea early one morning.

Seemed like the seapea was the perfect second board to take with me, short enough to be fun in the faster peakier beach break waves but flat enough and with enough foam to make the most of small summer swell. This and a session at "the hook" in Santa Cruz were two of the best sessions ive had on this board.

ceepers

 

Looks like the Sea Pea buzz is going from strength to strength. ive seen a fair few bobbing around lately. Always gives me a small smile of satisfaction to see someone stoked on surfing it. 

Gulfstream just got this sent in from a happy customer........

Sea pea WTF…
Hi Will and Julian
Holy mother of Poseidon!!!,having had 2 surfs on the sea pea,one at low tide coombesgate which was somewhat ragged in the wind and just now surfing the ‘a’ frame peaks of gwithian towans I thought I’d drop a line to you.Having had the supreme pleasure of riding your 6’0 speed dialler and 5’10 keel fin fish I didn’t think it would be physically possible to travel much faster on a stick!,wrong,wrong and wrong.Along came Mr Sea Pea.Personally Jools I feel a nomination for the Nobel peace prize should be heading your way after this creation!, the sea pea is such an unbelievable ride,fast,smooth and drawn out ‘buttery’ like turns abound with a wicked little snap sensation during hard turns on steeper sections.Talking of speed this thing generates it in the most challenging conditions and cruises around sections with as much,if not a little more ease than the speed dialler.I can’t wait to surf it in slightly bigger and cleaner conditions and the thought of riding the sea pea at Saunton on a clean 3 foot or so is just too exciting.I have one minor issue though,it’s not doing my marriage any favours as it’s proudly on display in the front room to be admired for the thing of beauty that it is!,much to the wife’s annoyance!!.Massive thanks for this board,you deserve to sell bucket loads of them.
Cheers for now

If you're not on the mini simmons program yet for average UK conditions, get with it, they're so much fun!!

 

launching

 

CP Milking the high tide left,  pic  Rob Martin.

So last weekend saw the opening of the new Finisterre and Gulf stream joint venture in Braunton. It's in the original GS shop but the space is now shared so you can lust after Finisterre's high quality clothes as well as Jools finely tuned surfcraft. It looks fantastic and i think there is a real confluence between where the two brands are coming from. Hopefully its going to be really mutually beneficial.

Opening night was a real fun evening hanging out with some local friends and meeting the finisterre guys. Most of you will already be aware of their clothes but if you arent they are really worth checking out! Clothes designed for surfers by surfers and ethically made. 

I've always thought of them as a kind of British Patagonia and like the american brand, they are moving into the wetsuit game next year. They have been prototyping some winter suits designed to be warm, durable and dry quickly at a reasonable price. All things that we need for cold water surfing that overseas brands dont always appreciate. They look great from what ive seen so far.

#CP

Jools proving that 2 foot mush + seapea = fun

More pics and his surf stoke here

pic stolen from Gordon at Devon digital imaging

abandoned

 

Golden rays from a dying sun

On the subject of Sea Pea's, Gulfstream have a really professional looking new website up here. I know i'm slightly biased but i genuinely think they are consistently producing some of the best boards in the country right now and have been for a few years! There are some great little video's of Jools explaining the different shapes on there too. I particularly enjoyed watching the Sea Pea one (somewhat predictably!). I've got a real kick out of introducing jools to the mini simmons idea and seeing how much excitement and enthusiasm its brought him. That comes across really well in the video.

On the same page, i got chatting to someone in the water the other day who was riding a seapea. I played the dumb but interested surfer and didn't declare my interest. It was really cool to hear how much this guy was loving the shape and how much of an eye opener this little oblong from left field had been. In fact he had bought one based on his friends positive experiences.

If you've read this blog regularly you'll know i've been extolling the virtues of the mini simmons platform in UK waters for a few years. People are getting it now!

jewells..

 

Super fun weekend catching up with Jules on a flying visit from The North Face, spreading the SeaPea love, careering around lanes on indecisive surf checks and dodging the downpours. Some fun waves despite the wind. Jules take on the mini - simmons experience? "Looks like a comedy board but boy is it fast!"

Out on the bike too, our dry trails are well and truly gone now but getting both wheels sliding at the same time downhill through trees sure gets the pulse racing. 

Both on land and at sea, a little but of exploring can pay dividends!

on parade....

 

Stock SeaPeas now at Gulfstream's Braunton shop

Whatever your choice of trousers, corduroy lines never go out of fashion!!

So the other day, i lent my new little mini simmons, the SeaPea to my friend Will. To set the scene, Will is a shortboarder, he's actually a very very good shortboarder in a conventional pointy white thruster sense. He finds logs boring, doesn't like fish and thinks eggs are best confined to breakfast!

I think he wanted to try a sim partly becasue he's seen mine take shape and partly out of curiosity. I'm pretty sure he really just wanted to confirm that they were odd dysfunctional hipster shapes ridden by me and my beardy pals!

He rode it a couple of times, in onshore lumpy 3 foot croyde and in clean lined up 1-2 feet croyde. I'm just going to paste some of his texts to me here

"Oh my god, just surfed it at croyde, that was SO fun!!!!!!"
"It's by no means a shortboard but it went amazingly well in average waves and created speed from nothing!! I need one in my board rack!"

Whats pretty cool about this and the reason i've posted it, is that Will could see the fun in this shape despite coming at it from an entirely different direction and surfing reference points. It blew his preconceptions out of the water and in his words "made a very average day a lot of fun!"

 It's nice to know that someone with much greater small board ability than me, see's the validity in the design for our waves.

More about my board here Jools will make you one here