tonic water

Cornish Tonic from Ruwac Productions on Vimeo.

Beautiful little clip of James and Rich filmed by Simon and Joel in Gwenvor, a beach thats always worth the rudge down the cliff even if your tired legs are cursing lugging a heavy glass job back up later on!

James just landed in California with his freshly stamped green card. It's gonna be great to see him continue to fly the flag in the epicentre of cool over the next couple of years.

more cornish gold

 

Mike Lay talks body english for the talented Sennen photographer Dave Muir

Loving the sharpie marker graffiti on Mike's board

I think this shot kind of epitomises the current trend in traditional style longboarding towards more manouverable boards, flexier raked fins and harder full rail turns mixed in with proper noseriding

you know he means it

I have a few cherished surfing memories that i hold on to, a couple down the coast, a couple overseas. One of my favorites was watching Skip Frye surf his local wave at Tourmaline, from the beach and the line up. He exudes class, ocean knowledge, positioning and an understanding of trim matched by few world wide. His lithe movements belie his age and i can only aspire to surf half as good as i move into my dotage. The pic above is actually Rincon (another place of memory) and comes from Andrew Kidman's "Lost in Ether" book which is what this preamble is buliding to.

It's a beautiful film and book project and like all of kidman's work is something of a gem. It's probably best described as a love letter to the art of surfboard building, particularly to the backyard tinkerer's and surfer/shaper/wanderers, often at odds with the machine of the "surf industry" following their own trip and enriching our collective cultural experience as a result.

 Thos posted a great review here and so i'm not going to go into huge detail because i think he nailed how i feel too. If i have a criticism, it's just that, like litmus and glass love, it sometimes feels a little unfocused without a distinct narrative but that doesn't interfere with my enjoyment.

Something that does come across strongly in all of Kidman's output, this being no exception, is how much he really means it, from the minute questioning of rail and bottom theory to the handwritten thank you for ordering note in the envelope. Much like the shapers he features, Kidman himself is something of a wanderer, a deep thinker, often railing at the percieved status quo. His work often questions more than it answers and through it all is a feeling that he cares passionately about surfing as an entity, and not in the business or conventional sport sense but as a way of being. He's someone who has frequently put his own money where his mouth is and as our "sport" becomes more and more integrated into the mainstream, people like Andrew become more and more important to help us hold onto what makes surfing so special for so many people. I'm sure he feels like he has a responsibility to almost "curate" and preserve and celebrate that which the industry machine ignores as not commercial and more power to him for that.

I'm sure he will never read this, but thank you Andrew!

way down west.....

In the Morning from Frankie Davies on Vimeo.

Mike Lay cruising in deepest west cornwall. Mike is another of the Young crop of stylish loggers from the Sennen talent pool riding Rob Wright's slide 65 boards. Looks like it's working for him!
i'm guessing a lot of you are reading this with sore muscles after gorging yourselves on a week of fun waves, i certainly am. With a decent quiver of boards to choose from, there's always a sneaking suspicion that you brought the wrong one to the beach, but not this week. The last few days i've put a few more hours into learning to make the bar of soap fly and let me tell you, its well worth the initial rave i posted. Its such a fast board, i honestly think that despite being only 5'2 it's the fastest ive ever been on a surfboard and with that short rail line engaged it glides through the sweetest roundhouses. The mini simmon's family of boards are ridiculous fun and well suited to our waves, it kind of suprises me there aren't more people riding them yet!

slip sliding away..

Over the last few weeks i've been trying out a 9'6 james parry model by Slide 65 out of gwithian, shaped by Rob Wright. I really wanted to like it, it looks great, the black stealth finish is cool and i like the way Rob has consolidated the younger sennen crew over the last year, providing a rallying point for the talent they have and starting to give their little scene a collective identity. Unfortunately so far i've found it's not quite my cup of tea..............................

Admittedly the one i have is a protoype, they have pulled the nose in a little on the newer ones. This one is medium  weight, a relaxed log style rocker, 9'6 x 18 x 22.75 x 14.75 x 2.7/8. Where it differs from a classic log (and where i think my own feelings stem from) is in the rails and the base. The rails are 60/40 rather than 50/50. In another departure, there is a fairly deep concave in the nose but this mellows and extends back to 3/4's of the length of the board. The idea is to create a really fast trimming board that noserides well but cuts back with more performance than a standard heavy log. It uses a greenough 4a fin to aid in this respect.

So to the review........... Paddles great, people often make noises about concave boards paddling badly but i honestly don't think it makes that much difference, rocker does though and the rocker here is nicely judged, flat enough to feel stable while trimming and walking, just enough lift to make steep takeoffs a possibility. It does trim fast, in a peaky wave it outruns the pocket quickly and it is good on the nose, stable and responsive. It's off the tail that my problems manifest, and i should be clear i think this is more to do with a mismatch between my surfing and the shape rather than the board iself. While the concave helps as you move forward, from the back, to me the board feels a little awkward, sometimes whipping round, other times feeling sticky and catchy without the smoothness i'm used to. The slightly harder rails add to this feel. As a result my surfs have been peppered with moments of brilliance and frustration in equal measure and i've struggled to feel like i'm in sync with the board.

I think it likes / needs a little steepness to the wave for starters (which almost everywhere but saunton has!) I also feel that i've ridden so many logs with varying degrees of belly over the years that my style has evolved into a particular groove that doesn't fit here. Mine is a (hopefully) smooth style guiding the board through turns with gentle weighting of the rail with footwork , a real stall and trim style. I haven't ridden a progressive flat bottomed longboard consistently ever and not at all for over 5 years. James, on the other hand, as well as being a great surfer, spent a lot of the last few years riding competition boards where turns are more about planting your weight and driving the board around and i think this board fits far better with that style. It's probably a good log for someone who rides a "modern" longboard as well which ultimately isn't me!

I feel a little bad about posting anything negative on here because i like what Rob and friends are doing. Hopefully this comes across as fair and balanced and that it's not the boards failings that are the issue. This is just one model out of several  that Rob makes and i'm sure there are others that would suit just fine, hopefully i'll get to try something else in the future!

scary golf!

Kinda scary for a children's play area in my book!

boats@sennen

pazza...........

Christiaan Bailey just posted this neat profile of James on the mycornwall.tv site.

fish frenzy

head over keels

Over the last four years i've been nursing a serious obsession with fish, particularly those of the keel variety, there's just something about the feel and rhythm they produce as they move down the line, drawing lateral rather than vertical lines. This beauty was my now departed 5'10 gulfstream, copied from a fish shaped by jimmy blears just after he won the 72 world contest, complete with glue on rubber leash disk. My current fave is a magic 5'8 Larry Mabile classic keel replete with double foiled ply keels and a glass job to die for, definately a keeper and a board that i can honestly say i have never had a bad surf on.

Weirdly fishing does nothing for me, probably something to do with my inability to sit still!