Posts tagged: Surfing

Just doing the final pre-holiday weather check and yep I can confirm its looking good, but don’t take my word for it, check out the forecast! Yep I predict surfing in the sun in board shorts, relaxing with a few beers and eating some nice tucker, oh yeah, 60% of the time it works all the time!

Yep it is also official that Team Crayon are going to be hitting up the beach and reef breaks of Fuerte’ in 5 days. The water’s about 23 degrees and the air temp is 24, can’t complain with that as it is about 11 degrees here right now!

All that needs to be decided is which boards to take, can’t wait! Hope my cold shifts before I head off!

So me and The Deano are hopefully heading off to Newquay to surf this weekend. The charts are predicting a solid 7ft swell @ 12 seconds for Saturday, with the winds coming from the right direction, so hopefully we’ll be getting wet round about Saturday lunchtime. Hoping to take a few snaps and will report back next week on how it goes.

British Airways have decided to ban the carriage of surfboards on all flights as of the 6th November 2007. This move is absolutely outrageous and means that surfers (including professionals) cannot carry their boards with them when they travel. A Facebook Group: British Airways Surfboard Ban has been set-up and I would urge fellow surfers to join and lobby them. Even if you don’t fly BA, this move will more than likely have a knock-on effect and other airlines will follow suit.

It is like saying to Golfers or cyclists that they can’t take their equipment with them when they travel, absolute bulls*it, unless they change their policy, my last trip to Brazil will be the final time I deal with BA.

Fuerteventura here we come (for the 4th time). Yes me, Simon and Gustavo are going to hit the northern shores of the volcanic islands in just over a month’s time, can’t wait, it should prove to be a quality trip: still warm, plenty of swell, less crowded and a break from the British winter.

So my buddy Simon and I might be hitting up South Africa next month for a little surf travel. Full of anticipation I checked out the charts on Magic Seaweed and low and behold it is going crazy down there this week. If you look at next Saturday you will see what I mean, a 19ft swell at 14 seconds is pretty damn solid. I have surfed Cape Town before and didn’t get munched, but am quite aware of the shark-factor down there, but I guess if its your time, then its your time, fingers crossed if we do make it, the only munching that we will be doing will be of the local seafood, be that from the ocean or the girls in the bars!

So it has been about 6 weeks since I have been in the water and I can really feel it, not physically, but more kind of mentally. It is hard to explain, but as the saying goes, only a surfer knows the feeling.

When I am not near the coast surfing for a prolonged period of time I start to get tetchy, sometimes depressed or claustrophobic and have to go and hit the gym or pool to get a fix of physical exertion. Surfing can be such a consuming experience, both physically, mentally and spiritually and when you feel and associate those feelings with an activity that you don’t do that often it always results in wanting more.

The longer I am away from the sea the more tension builds up in my system, and no amount of gym work, swimming or chasing girls totally gets rid of that. Fortunately I am off to The Gower in little over a week for a weekend session, lets hope the swell coincides with the trip. Me, BJC and Mark will hit it up and hopefully enjoy some of the first autumn swells of the season, it will be a little on the chilly side, but nothing a bit of neoprene and a warm cuppa won’t solve!

But I know this won’t be enough in the long run. Surfing is like an addiction, you get drawn into its appeal: the lifestyle, the travel, the escape, the challenge. The more you do it, the bigger the dose you need to get the same effect. I guess you could compare it in a way to smoking, the more you smoke, the more you need to get that nicotine fix. Although for me, surfing is a totally positive experience, there are no bad side effects from getting fully imersed in the sport/art, well apart from a beating to the bank balance.

I have 2 weeks holiday left before Christmas, and this will obviously be spent surfing, the question I guess is where. Then there is also the question of the long term plan, I am not sure how much longer I can live inland, being away from the coast and the sport that I love so much. It is great to go on trips both abroad and back home, but I don’t really have the opportunity to integrate surfing into my daily routine, which is what I feel like I need to do. I admit I have been pretty dedicated over the past 4 years, but I feel that over the next year I need to step it up a gear and make a move closer to where I feel most happiest: the ocean.

What this space…

Always eager to get in the water and for a new excuse to buy a new bit of kit, I was browsing on the internet today and came across some nice tasty SUB: Stand Up Paddle Surfboards. The concept of Stand Up Paddle Surfing isn’t new, the Hawaiians pioneered it years agobut it has come into vogue over the past few years thanks to Larid Hamilton, and more recently in the UK through the big man himself (Laird not me) paddling the Channel to France on one of these beasts. The idea is instead of paddling on your belly, you stand up and use a canoe-style paddle to propel yourself along.

Anyway I am thinking of getting into the sport as it means not only can you go out in flat conditions, which we get here on the East Coast a lot and get an amazing work out but it would be something cool and new to master. Olaus McLeod recently paddled from Lands end to the Scilly Isles and back on his board for charity, now that is something to get inspired about.

This month the UK Stand-Up Paddle Surfing Championships are being held in Watergate Bay on the 29th Sept, a perfect chance to go and check out the up-and-coming sport.

Anyway I am off to check out the shops to see how much one of these suckers will cost!

I was sifting through Surfline this morning when I came across this article on the poor bas*ard who got partially munched over in Northern California this week at Marina State Beach. He is now in a ‘fair condition’ over at San Jose hospital, and will hopefully be making a full recovery.

It is crazy when you read stories like this. I myself have surfed in some places known to have sharks: Cape Town, Durban, San Francisco, Fiji, Bali, Oz etc, but have been fortunate enough never to have seen anything. I can’t even imagine how I would react if I saw a 12ft Great White in the water coming towards me, bitchin’ stuff.

Today I took 2 of my boards into the shaping room (a.k.a the back garden) for a bit of an overhaul. I had gained a few battle scars from surfing in Brazil, Portugal and Devon, both in the way of the normal cut up feet, but also damage to my hardware (no I don’t mean my tackle, haha).

I had a few heavy collisions in both Portugal and Devon which occurred, mainly due to inexperienced surfers not knowing what they were doing, more on that later. Anyway I spent 2 hours today cutting out the bad foam, mixing up the resin and hardner and cutting the fibreglass cloth to size. The end results are pretty good, check out the pics below.

Anyway this brings me onto my second point. Beginners not knowing what the f*ck they are doing in the surf. This happened to me a few times whilst in Portgual, with some of the surfers who were learning. What became evident whilst surfing with these people was that they didn’t really have an awareness of their surroundings. I am sure they didn’t intentionally drop-in on me, but the end result is the same, a dangerous situation where large surfboards go flying, both into other boards and into people.

I admit awareness of the waves, the situation and safety comes with experience, and I have dropped in on a few people in my time, but I think a lot of this could be avoided by surf schools teaching surf etiquette to those learning to surf. People need to how to surf safely, both in terms of not hurting themselves or others, but also to avoid getting a thumping from some local.

I must admit, I often get the hump on in the surf, when I miss a wave or someone snakes me, or I just generally f*ck up by wiping out prematurely, but I nearly actually belted someone the other week whilst in Devon, surfing Croyde.

I had clearly got a wave and had been riding nicely along it for at least 5 seconds, when suddenly out of nowhere a lamo on an indescructable NSP board dropped in on me and caused the ding you see above. To say I was unhappy with his general lack of awareness was an understatement, but I let it go and just gave him a firm look and then paddled off. Croyde is not worth getting the hump over in the summer, the waves are generally small, sloppy and very over-crowded. Had I been on a low-tide barrel in a heavy swell and something had happened then maybe I would have got more annoyed, but battle scars go with the territory I guess.

Anyway hoping to go surfing towards the end of September at some point, with BJC and Sulli, hopefully the swell will get a little more consistent and the waves will be a little more challenging. I am also thinking of investing in a 4/3 or even a 5mm wetsuit this winter, as I want to hit up Thurso East up in Scotland, which is reportedly an amazing wave, reminiscent of Indo, and yes you can get some pretty good rides up there, they even host a WQS event: The Highland Open, all good!