An Tor Orth An Mor

Quiver Me Timbers

2012-02-12T17:18:00.006Z

Cornish photographer Karl Mackie took this photo of his Australian friend Tim Crabtree when they had a Cornish summer staycation in 2011, when rather than going off on a trip they stayed put at home and shaped a stack of boards each.

A shipment of fresh joistiks upon arrival in Cornwall after the long journey from Australia, about to be divvied out to some excited surfers.

On most of the rare occasions that I end up in an ice cream parlour I get vanilla ice cream. My friends used to call me Mr Plain when I did this, but I disagreed. Vanilla's a flavour after all; plain ice cream would just be milk flavour. It wasn't that I only ever chose vanilla ice cream, it's just that vanilla was my go-to flavour. I'd tried other flavours but preferred vanilla, and every now and then if I felt like something different then I'd have that instead and mix it up a bit. I'd claim that exactly the same thing applies to surfboards.

If you only ever surfed the same surfboard then there's no doubt that in one way or another you'd be restricting your surfing. If your board was ideally suited to your local surf spot then the chances are that if you went to a different spot, either home or abroad, your surfboard wouldn't be the best horse for that course. And what about when the surf is ankle-slappingly small? Or terrifyingly huge? Then what? Your 6'2" x 18 1/2" x 2 1/4" squash tail probably wouldn't be doing you any favours; you'd be grovelling and flapping around in the small stuff and paddling yourself into a too-little too-late air drop straight to oblivion when it got big. Surfing the same surfboard all the time isn't as good as surfing the same surfboard most of the time and surfing other boards every now and then when the conditions call for it.

That's why I think it's worthwhile, over time, collecting a few different surfboards to give you a range of options. You might choose a fully functional but minimal travel quiver with a small wave weapon, a standard shortboard and a semi-gun for when it starts to intimidate (because if you go away for a surf trip with just one surfboard then in reality you're probably kidding yourself and you're going on a holiday but you might sneak a surf in, unless you're travelling really light), or you could set yourself up for every eventuality at home. You might want to try out all of the different feelings that you can get from riding waves by getting your hands on every weird and wonderful wave riding vehicle or fad that you can. It depends on a a variety of factors.

Former ASP world champion (1982 & 1984) Tom Carrol once claimed that he couldn't tell the difference between a squash tail, a square tail and a swallow tail when he was surfing and defied most surfers to be able to notice a difference. So unless you're a tour chasing professional who doesn't have to pay for their sticks and snaps them within the first week, there seems little point in getting a stack of for all intents and purposes identical boards with a 16th of an inch added here or shaved off there. Having a couple of different boards to cater for a variety of circumstances, from tiny summer beachbreak surf or a trip to peak season Indo, would surely be a bit wiser and allow you to surf to the very best of your ability with confidence in what's under your feet, whatever the Ocean throws at you. Horses for courses, even if you do choose vanilla most of the time.

At least, that's the excuse that I use for being so cash poor and surfboard rich.

When I joined my friends from Surfing Dubai for an exploratory trip down the Arabian Peninsula we piled every single surfboard under the sun into the back of Scott's enormous truck (Scott's not particularly pint sized, that Chevrolet is truly massive) - everything from hand planes through shortboards, an alaia, a 70's single fin and a stand-up paddle board - planning for every eventuality and not leaving a whole lot of space for camping gear.

My friend Harry from Surf Simply: 6’0 x 185 lbs, then from left to right:

- 6’1 x 18 3/4 x 2 1/4, 28.5 liters

Round pin, single concave, thruster

Step-up

- 6’0 x 19 x 2 3/8, 27 liters

Round Diamond, single to double

5 boxes, quad fins set inboard

Standard shortie

- 5’10 x 19 3/4 x 2 3/8, 29 liters

Double wing pin, single to double

5 boxes, quad fins on rail

Small wave ripper

- 5’10 x 21 1/4 x 2 5/8, lots of liters

Big swallow, Flat to Vee

Keel fin twin

When my friend Alex spent the winter of 2010 on the North Shore of Oahu he called in some Hawaii contacts and was put up by a friend of a friend who was a pillar of the North Shore surfing community. How's the ceiling of the guy's living room?

The contents of my stable, Autumn 2011. Cash poor, surfboard rich and totally ok with it.

A Cold Snap and the Stink Test

2012-02-05T18:30:00.012Z

Initiative Surf coach Alex Espir, layered up and dry on the search for winter waves.

Drive, walk, watch, wonder, repeat. Sometimes whole days are spent in this cycle looking for waves when winter storms roll through.

It was -8 degrees celsius one morning this week when I got in my car to go to work. Damned cold. We're having a proper cold snap at the moment and it's coincided with a nice little run of good waves, with the cold easterly winds coming from Russia being straight offshore. It's times like this when I'm glad that my friends at Finisterre make fully functional technical clothing that keep me warm when it's cold and cool when it's hot.

Tom Kay started Finisterre making fleeces and hoodies in his attic in Perranporth. When the business grew into a workshop in St Agnes he brought a university friend of mine called Ernie onboard as the marketing manager and Tom Podolinsky as a technical garment designer. The brand has slowly grown and picked up a shelf-full of awards along the way for it's ethical business practices and environmental conscience. Alongside considering every step of their products life cycles, they also brought back a rare breed of fine fibre British sheep from the edge and used a Land Rover that ran on bio-fuel to get them all down to the beach for a surf. All things considered, they're the sort of company who deserve all of the praise and success that they get.

"Take this and just do what you do, be as hard as you can on it, and let us know how it goes" were Ernie's words to me as he handed me a Brisa synthetic base layer the day before I boarded a train for Morocco last Spring. The Brisa was a new addition to their range, and a controversial one being a synthetic performance base layer rather than their normal preferred material of merino wool. Synthetics are well known for their ability to wick sweat and keep you dry when active, but they're also regarded as being a bit stinky. So I stink tested it: I wore it for a week straight all the way to Morocco by train with all of the stresses, all nighters and running for trains involved in hauling surfboards across a continent, then climbed a mountain in it and made it to the coast. The Brisa's construction is like a double skin, with "pores" on the weave of the outside surface, kind of like human skin. When static the pores are "closed" but when the fabric moves (due to movement of the wearer) the pores are stretched open, allowing sweat to be wicked away. Here are a few select extracts from my product testing journal:

My friend Kyle in a Bise insulation layer, waiting for a train somewhere in France.

"Put brisa back on at 5am after a wash, underneath a Coho and Etobicoke and it's smelling ok. Had my camping knife confiscated and binned by security at St Pancreas (I've had it for 20 years, so upsetting) then spilt milk on the brisa. Not a good morning."

"Hauling a boardbag across Paris in the sunshine made me appreciate it's wicking abilities, plus black hides sweat. Note: Parisian cafe baguettes fit perfectly into the pockets of our Etobicoke and Bise insulation layers."

"8 hours on a "regional" train to Madrid, I did some yoga on the floor of the luggage area and then a night in a cafe bar next to the train station. 5 and a half hours so far of coffee, beer and backgammon, still 3 and a half hours until our (potential) train. The Brisa has now done 24 hours straight since it's last hotel handbasin wash and it smells alright. My eyes feel as though they've had fire spat in them though."

Day 6 of the Brisa stink test; drinking from a mountain stream whilst trekking in the High Atlas Mountains.

"Ferry. Bus. Tangiers. The Brisa has done 39 hours straight. Carry my bag and boadbag all around the crowded streets and alleys of the medina until we find a nice old hotel. We get offered hasish eight times and I have sweat my rig off. The Brisa gets a wash in the sink and the evening off."

We trek for miles up to the "roughage" climbers hut. It was damned hard going, hot and at altitude (up above the snow line) but the Brisa worked absolutely perfectly - kept me warm, kept the sun off and wicked sweat well so I didn't get cold in the wind." Back at the gite the armpits smell but the rest seems ok, hung it up to air.

"Could I wear it as a rashie? Alone with boardies or under a wetsuit? Our surf issues meant that I didn't experiment with either - it's not cold enough to need a rashie under my 3/2 and it's too windy for just boardshorts and a surf-shirt. I wonder what SPF rating the Brisa would have?

Lost down the lanes around the River Severn back in the UK looking for a "secret ledge" that turns the incoming tide into a surf-able river wave.

The Finisterre Landy: ever-ready for wind and tide to align ready for the dash downhill to the beach.

Finisterre have an online sale happening right now and are having a workshop sale next weekend, on Saturday 11th February at The Tubestation on Polzeath, with some big reductions on this past seasons range. It'd be worth your while swinging by if you're in North Cornwall.

Howls From The Pit: An Reun Govynnus

2012-01-29T18:44:00.006Z

"Ships are the nearest things to dreams that hands have ever made."

Robert N. Rose

I've heard it said that whenever you start a project, plan for it to take three times longer than you expect. I'll put my name to that.

An Reun Govynnus was a pretty ambitious project that I cautiously took the lid off back in March last year in the first "Howls From The Pit" post, and considering all of the other things that I had going on last year I really shouldn't have publicised the fact that I aimed to launch her in the summer. Needless to say I missed my planned launch date and the boat's still sat down in The Pit, 95% complete but still confined to dry land while I work on the finishing touches and take the winter to go back over her and make sure everything's all ship-shape and Bristol fashion. I don't want this fancy floating box falling apart on me when I'm around the back of the headland after all.

Since March last year a lot has happened, but often it sometimes doesn't look that way. The eight foot outrigger arms (iakos) were laminated up with 5 strips of ash sandwiched between layers of iroko top and bottom and formed to a curve to meet the outrigger float (ama).

Following a self imposed "tread lightly" sustainability challenge I researched all of the different options available for sheathing the hull and ended up opting to use standard fibreglass cloth and epoxy resin from a local surfboard materials supplier. Not all that sustainable I hear you say, but I had to balance out sustainability, safety and cost; hemp cloth absorbs a lot more resin and only really works with epoxy so would add weight and expense, after a few tests and enquiries I decided against bioresin and fibreglass (questionable bond strength with wood), and in the end after checking every cloth/resin combination the best option was the least environmentally friendly one. But it works and now the hull sections are laminated and painted white.

I glued up the biofoam offcuts using old tyre inner-tubes to strap it all together then glued on balsa and western red cedar nose and tail blocks made from workshop offcuts. I had to stand the ama on it's end in the yurt in our back yard to use it's own weight as pressure on the glue joint with the tail block which made for quite a neat image.

The deck panels had the admiralty nautical charts for the coastline where I live etched onto them using a laser cutter in case I lose my charts overboard and I realised then that all of the clamps in the world still wouldn't be enough to hold them to the tight curves as the glue set. I begged and borrowed as many clamps as I could and cut up sections of drainpipe to apply pressure in between clamps, and the decks are on.

This winter I've had even less time than last year to sneak down and whittle the boat but I've ripped down leftover lengths of iroko and capped all of the gunnels so they're looking all classic in dark hardwood. I've spent a lot of time trimming glue overspills and working on small important things that I can't even see when I step back, knowing that it's the small things that count.

I also saw an advert in my local Newsagents window, advertising an old mirror dinghy in need of some TLC. I called up and on December 27th I headed along to the next village of Rock, just inside the Camel Estuary, to take a look. The dinghy has a hole in the hull and some bits of rot that need cutting out and patching, but it came with spare everything, even a complete set of spare sails. The price on the advert had said £60 and as the elderly gentleman talked me through all of the bits laid out in his garage I was sure that he'd made a typo and that I was £540 short.

Luckily for me it wasn't a mistake so I'm now the proud owner of TWO un-seaworthy vessels. I think that makes me a Commodore? Or a straight up idiot. Probably the second.

I assembled all of the bits a couple of weekends ago on a windy but sunny(ish) January morning with my great friend Alex of Initiative Surf filming my fumbling and confusion (see below, thankfully sped up and crammed into 30 seconds), and the plan is to cannibalise all of the spare bits of the Mirror for An Reun Govynnus and get her under sail. Then I can patch the holes and have two boats...but one step at a time. Three times as long right??!

"A lot of people ask me if I were shipwrecked, and could only have one book, what would it be? I always say "How to Build a Boat."

Stephen Wright

Top two images shot by Dave Williams.

Bottom two images by Mat Arney.

Mirror Dinghy footage shot and edited by Alex Espir.

Beauty in Nature

2012-01-22T18:15:00.004Z

Nature, whether on a large or a small scale, is unquestionably one of the most incredibly, awe-inspiringly, beautiful things that we are all able to interact with on a daily basis.

Planet Earth, you're amazing. Keep up the good work.

Tom Blake wasn't wrong.

Guy Martin: Shifting Sands

2012-01-15T19:04:00.003Z

Egyptians in Tahrir Square celebrate the resignation of Hosni Mubarak.

Protesters on the streets of Cairo. Note the sticks, clothes wrapped around heads for protection and bandaged protestors.

A Libyan rebel fighter pulls over onto the side of the road to wash himself and pray before re-joining the offensive against Gaddafi loyalists.

Misrata, Libya, April 20th 2011. A rebel fighter on Tripoli Street takes cover behind a tree. Just a few hours later Guy Martin was severely injured and Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros lost their lives in exactly this same place.

If you've ended up here by way of my website and The Surfer's Path article then you're probably after some of the posts below that are a bit more sun, sand and surf. This week's post is a bit more sun, sand and revolutions.

This past week my friend James Allen has been curating an amazing exhibition of images from the 2011 Arab Spring taken by acclaimed photojournalist Guy Martin, and Monday just gone I headed down to the opening night.

It's pretty common to hear of news-gatherers risking their lives to get the story but Guy's story really shines a light on this. During the Spring of 2011 Guy travelled to Egypt and Libya to cover the unfolding Arab Spring, in Egypt he was on assignment for The Wall Street Journal and in Libya he chased his own stories which were later printed in The Guardian and The Observer. On April 20th, whilst photographing some of the fiercest urban warfare in recent history he was severely injured in a mortar rocket attack from Gaddafi loyalists that killed his two friends and fellow photographers Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros. He underwent significant surgery in Misrata before being evacuated to Malta and then back to the UK.

The exhibition was divided into three parts; Guy's documentary photography from Egypt and Libya and then an exhibition of large images of some of the many missing persons posters that were posted on the walls of the Bengazi court house as the revolution took hold. Some of these people had been missing since the 1970's.

I was lucky enough to have James show me around the exhibition and talk me through many of the images (all shot with a 35mm fixed lens, requiring Guy to get right in close to what was happening). Some were symbolic, others directly telling a story, a couple were uncomfortable to look at and many which were incredibly subtle. Images like a hand holding a bit of string with a rock tied to the end in the thick of an Egyptian protest, with another hand touching their wrist; a non-verbal request for restraint - for the sake of peace or to wait for the right time to attack? Or an image of two pro-Mubarak Egyptians being interrogated, one arguing and another with his face in his hands whilst they are being photographed by revolutionaries, then in the corner of the image you notice a clenched fist...

I spoke with Guy, now relatively well recovered from his injuries, and we discussed the tight deadlines that photojournalists on assignment are faced with, having to send 12 images up to three times daily via satellite phone which meant racing an hour back to a hotel, do a rough cut and then spend a fortune sending them through to his photo editor in New York. In Libya Guy followed his own leads and told me about the strange state of these modern revolutions, with kids in Nike trainers racing out to the frontline somewhere in desert and running to the top of the sand dunes, pulling out their i-phones to report back and then waiting for a NATO air-strike. His images show young Libyans, some holding automatic weapons and wearing flip-flops (not sure how I'd feel about fighting a war in flip-flops) fighting from house to house, or away from the fighting relaxing and behaving like young people everywhere.

The range of incredible images that he captured, and the price that he paid in doing so, shows just how important it is to tell these stories, no matter how uncomfortable some of the realities are. The truth must out, and it's through brave photographers like Guy Martin and his colleagues from various medias that the often brutal, horrible but sometimes possibly necessary realities of revolution and conflict can reach the rest of us and help us to form our opinions. Having one such internationally acclaimed photographer from and working out of Cornwall is a nice thing too.

Shifting Sands was shown at The Poly, Falmouth from January 10th - 14th. It was hosted by Cartel Photos and University College Falmouth (where he is an associate lecturer).

Guy Martin is represented internationally by Panos Pictures.

Hitting Paydirt

2012-01-08T17:43:00.005Z

"Twenty years from now

you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do

than by the ones you did do.

So throw off the bowlines.

Sail away from the safe harbour.

Catch the trade winds in your sails.

Explore. Dream. Discover."

Mark Twain

The phrase "If you don't go, you'll never know" gets bandied around a lot, particularly in the "action sports" (I hate that label) arena. But in fairness there is a truth in there.

These days it's difficult to search out novel experiences; in almost every endeavour you can bet you bottom dollar that somebody else has already been there, done that and posted it on the interweb. But not always, and even if they have, that doesn't mean you can't come a close second. Surfing-wise, you'd struggle to find a rideable wave that's yet to be ridden because in the past 60 years surfers have scoured just about every nook on every coast and checked every kink in every reef. When they find a wave then sometimes they'll tell, but if it's good then they generally won't. But secrets out over time and so the surfing map slowly grows. It's nice to think though that there are still mystery spots out there, or fickle, rarely surfed stretches of coast that rarely see a wave and even more rarely see a surfer. It gives me hope that perfect, uncrowded waves are still out there if you can get the stars to align.

I have a bit of a thing these days with that faint possibility that I might find an as-yet un-surfed or un-named or unknown place to catch a wave. I scour maps, study swell charts, tear photos and articles out of newspapers and magazines and relentlessly pester friends or acquaintances for information on far flung coastlines.

Sometimes I hit paydirt.

So the past few years I've tried to follow up on some of my hunches and research and gone looking. Now, I'm not so devoted that I'd risk hauling my boards around on a surf trip with a high risk that I might not find any surf. I still want to catch waves. Instead I've tried to tie my inquisitive forays into slightly bigger trips, either as an aside or as part of an extended stopover on the way to or from a wave-rich destination. I guess if I had more time, more money, and a 4x4 then I'd be able to indulge my curiosity but alas this is the best I can manage.

In August of 2011 I headed back to Jeffreys Bay in South Africa to visit some friends and scratch my Supertubes itch. From there I had two choices: West to the cold Southern Atlantic and the cold, sharky left-handers that peel along the base of the sand dunes of Namibia, or East up the coast of the Indian Ocean to look for warm, equally sharky right-handers in Mozambique and up towards Tanzania.

From the images of the flawless right-handers rolling down tropical points above and below, you can see which option I chose. I have to admit that my decision was mainly down to my desire to surf in boardshorts and my preference for surfing on my forehand.

I'm not saying where these photos were taken, the only clue that I'll give is that they are on the East Coast of the African Continent. The few people whom I managed to prise information about surfing up here from warned me that I ought to take a good thick book with me because I was most likely to find a flat ocean devoid of swell, whipped up by strong winds and teeming with sharks. The stars aligned however and I lucked in, but there were still plenty of X's on my map that I didn't/couldn't make it to where I'm sure I might've found equally good waves but without the handful of other surfers that I ended up sharing the water with. Those other surfers weren't a bad thing though; despite my desire to find solo perfection, it's nice to reduce the odds when there're that many big grey fishies swimming around beneath you.

So next time you wonder whether or not there might be waves there, or have an extended stopover some place strange, or even just want to run the risk and go looking for adventure as well as waves, pack your board and do it. You might just hit paydirt too.

Go looky,

Get lucky.

Images, top to bottom:

Ponta
One of the handful of other surfers whom I shared waves with, doing a pro-lap up the point.
Local Lady on her way back from market.
Dawn launch, in lee of another point.
Well, it was offshore.
Well worth the risk.
Sunset swaying.
I dare you to pour some of this on your food.
Back beach barrels.

P.S.

If any of you read The Surfer's Path then you may well have noticed that an article about wooden surfboard maker James Otter and mine's "The Storyboard" project has made it into print. It's in the Jan/Feb issue (#88) and we're dead stoked about it. The Storyboard exhibition is also due to go on display at the Scarlet luxury eco-hotel at Bedruthan Steps, Cornwall, for the rest of the winter and into Spring, please go check it out if you're in the area.

Repeat After Me: "I Am An Islomaniac"

2012-01-01T22:19:00.008Z

The sunset before the storm, Nusa Lembongan, Indonesia.

Newland, due just North West of my front room window.

You can set me down just here thanks. The Maldives, appearing out of the blue.

My name is Mat and I am an islomaniac.

Ok, it’s your turn to say it too. It feels better to have got it off your chest no?

I’ve been putting off admitting my fascination with islands for a while now, I kept telling myself that I needed to wait until I had visited just a few more; a couple more photos of an island from the bow of a boat, maybe another image of a rocky outcrop silhouetted against the sunset. But it’s time to lay it out: I have a thing for islands. I can’t define it but their mysterious charm has cast a spell on me. The list of islands (and groups of) that I want to visit just keeps growing, and at this rate I’d never get around to writing this so strikes me there’s no time like the present.

There are thousands of islands on the planet. Trying to find out just how many depends on how you define an island and how you categorize them; The Vikings would only class land as an island if they could pass a ship with a rudder between it and the mainland, whilst the 1861 Scottish census defined an island as “an area of land surrounded by water and inhabited by man, and where at least one sheep can graze. Some are prisons, others holy, some are glorified cruise ship docks or have been razed and re-turfed as golf resorts, some are owned by film stars, some support the world’s biggest cities, some of them are islands at high tide and linked to the mainland at low tide, and a lot of them are knee deep in bird crap.

Big, small, sandy, rocky, volcanic, coral atolls; a lone palm tree, jungle, desert or bleak and windswept; cold, tropical, temperate; oceanic, freshwater, river; remote or a stones-throw from the mainland; there are so many variables that actually coming up with a definitive number of islands on planet Earth is nigh on impossible.

But why are so many of us entranced by islands? After all, they’re just bits of land restricted by water. But maybe that’s it; are they are reflection of us as human beings, individual and often isolated? “No man is an island”? Perhaps not John Donne. Perhaps we see a bit of ourselves in them and are comforted by the fact that when we view them in our minds eye we usually see an island that’s manageably small - the sort that you could walk around and get to know.

When I was little there were times when I exclusively read books about islands: Treasure Island, The Coral Island, Swallows and Amazons, Peter Pan, Swiss Family Robinson and later Robinson Crusoe, Lord of the Flies and The Beach all fuelled my over-active imagination. There was a pond near where I grew up which had a little island in the middle of it that my friends and I used to gaze at, but never swam out to it because we all knew that it would never live up to our expectations and imaginations. And these days when I look out of my window I stare straight at Newland, a rocky outcrop straight offshore from where I live. In the summer when the ocean’s flat some of us will paddle out to it but there’s nothing much to do when you get there; it’s just a lump of rock. At least one of us will still make the paddle year on year though. One day I’m sure that one of my friends will find pirate treasure out there though and make it all worth it.

George Orwell argued that we need solitude, creative work, and a sense of wonder as much as warmth, society, leisure, comfort, and security, and that “man only stays human by preserving large patches of simplicity in his life.”

It would appear that it is often much easier to gain and maintain this simplicity on an island than on a comparatively sized chunk of continental land (Thurston Clarke).

Simply put, we’re more human when on an island.

Tavarua, Fiji, as previously featured in a Desert Island Discs post.

My friend Jack casting for mackerel in front of Mouls Island, Cornwall.

St Michaels Mount, Cornwall. A mythical giant used to live on it according to Cornish folklore.

Prison island: Alcatraz, shot from the ferry from San Francisco to Sausilito.

Bay of Islands, North Island, New Zealand.

A friend of mine found this on the wonder of the interweb. There's no way it hasn't be photoshopped to turn it into every surfer's daydream, but who cares if it fuels some searching?

If islands are your thing too then take a peek at this book, be warned though, it'll only pour fuel on the fire.

Ho Ho Hoping...

2011-12-26T13:10:00.006Z

Apologies for being a day late - I was eating, drinking and being merry. I hope that all of you enjoyed a white Christmas/Winterval, whether white snowy or white sandy, and wish you a great final week to round out 2011. Spend a bit of time doing stuff that makes you smile.

Whether you're a regular reader, drop-in sporadically or have stumbled upon this by accident and not clicked away yet, thanks heaps for pausing to take a look. I hope that you enjoy the blog as much as I enjoy producing it; there're a few plans bubbling away which I hope will throw up some content that'll entertain and keep you checking back through next year too.

Have a great week and see you January 1st.

Wish I Was There...

2011-12-18T19:15:00.005Z

It's the middle of December. Hand's up who'd quite like to be in Hawaii right now?

The (fully functional) mosaic tile ukelele was made by an artist friend of my housemate. It's for sale so drop me a line if you're interested and I'll put you in touch. Print by Hawaiian artist Heather Brown.

A Letter of Thanks

2011-12-11T20:45:00.007Z

Dear Mother Ocean/The Seven Seas/The Big Blue,

This letter is long overdue, because in all this time I don’t think I’ve ever stopped to say thank you.

Thanks for all the good times. Thanks for all the good waves.

Thanks for being so enthralling and for captivating me ever since I can remember, for being so full of wonder and living up to all of the hype. Thanks for always keeping a little back to keep me guessing though, wondering what’s still hiding beneath the surface.

Thank you for always being there, wherever I go; you’re always there when I look out of the window in the morning and you’re still there at the end of the day and I find your constant presence comforting. It’s so nice of you to give the sun a place to sleep at night.

Thank you for making the “sea air” and the positive ions that blow on the wind, keeping me cheerful.

Thank you for being so floaty.

Thank you for getting me from A to B so often, for allowing me to get around a bit and see other places.

Thanks for being so accepting, supportive and accommodating, but thanks also for scaring me. Whenever I get a bit too big for my boots you’re always there to put me back in my box and keep me humble. Sometimes you terrify me, other times you bounce me off the bottom, hold me under, pull my limbs in wrong directions and disorientate me, but I know that it’s all for my own good. I have enormous respect for you, more than I can articulate here.

When we have a bad day and don’t quite see eye to eye I know that more often than not it’s the wind’s fault, not yours.

Thanks for making my landings soft.

Thanks for dinner the other night, and for all those other times that you’ve provided me with something to eat.

Cheers for letting me wash in your waves. And for being such a good wake-up, I’d rather you than a cup of coffee any day.

I really like the way you’re always cool on a hot day and, most of the time, not as cold as the air in winter. You’re never as extreme in your temperatures and I really like that. On that note, nice one for regulating global temperatures.

Good work absorbing all of the carbon that humans release, I’m sorry that the job has fallen largely on you to do. I’m sorry too, on behalf of the human race, for all of the plastic. For what it’s worth I try to do my bit to remove the bits that I see from in and around you and I know many others do too.

Thank you for being there when I need a bit of quiet time to sit and reflect, for helping me to find the answers that I seek and not passing judgment on me.

Thanks for always being more interesting to watch than TV.

Thanks for all of the beach treasure, the shells and the seaglass and webbles that you make, the flotsam and jetsam that you carry to shore. Thanks for making sand, even though it fills my pockets and always ends up in my bed. It’s a nice little reminder that I always take away with me.

Thank you for delivering messages in bottles.

Thanks for being such a great horizon.

Thank you for giving me focus, drive and purpose. Thank you for giving me so many good memories.

Thanks for being such a good friend.

I appreciate it all more than you know.

Images, from the top down:

Quiet Sunday afternoon, Playa Garza, Costa Rica
Under the sea, North Shore Oahu, Hawaii
Geographe Bay, WA
School of baitfish, Hawaii
Serenity, Sri Lanka
Playing with the waves, Cabarita, Australia
Sunset at Playa Guiones, Costa Rica
The infamous "Neptune at Horta" - better than TV.

Call me a pessimist, but...

2011-12-04T19:08:00.006Z

Sometimes I just feel like casting off the lines, hauling in the fenders and getting the hell away.

I'll apologise here and now for following a none too chirpy post with one with a rather bleak outlook, but the timing is rather appropriate for this one and you can blame my piss-poor planning. I promise to publish something far more optimistic and full of sunshine next week.

You see, this weekend saw the politicians of the world gather in Durban, South Africa, for another seemingly doomed climate conference although you'd be forgiven for not being aware of that. The world is rather preoccupied with global economic woes right now and as such the fate of the planet that hosts us and our silly games of gambling invisible money seems to have slipped down the agenda. No habitable ecosystem on planet earth = no venue for our global economy. Seems to me therefore that it ought to be higher up the list of things to do.

Back in September, on or around the 27th, humanity exhausted nature's budget for the year. Earth Overshoot Day signifies the point at which we start using resources that the planet cannot regenerate or absorb the waste from within that year. It's the point at which we humans started spending more than we earnt in the year 2011 in an ecological sense, effectively living off an environmental credit card. Every year the planet can only absorb so much CO2, grow so many plants or support so many fish, however each year we use more than that. In 2007, the last year that data is available for, we used 1.5 planets worth of resources. Since 1966 humanity's ecological footprint has more than doubled.

All of this really, really scares me. I guess I'd be even more scared if I was a penguin or a polar bear though.

Jackass penguins, South Africa, some 1,600km from where their fate is being decided.

So how's about we all pull together and each try to do a little so that together we can achieve a lot. If not then perhaps I'll break the piggy bank and buy this little submarine so that I can visit the cities of the world in 50 years time when they're all underwater. It's quite expensive though...anybody want to go halves?

"It's not beyond possibility that warming will actually cause sea-level rises which could threaten the centre of London. The stakes are very high. We know these changes are happening – the evidence is incontrovertible – and if they go on, they will have catastrophic effects on the human race."

Sir David Attenborough

Broadcaster and naturalist (The last episode of Frozen Planet, On Thin Ice, will be shown on BBC 1 on Wednesday at 9pm)

£28,000 + VAT. Who's in?

Tales of Bush Fires and Banksias

2011-11-27T18:50:00.006Z

Gas Reef. No point waiting around.

Blackened old branches from a past fire, with new plants sprouting up to replace them.

Margaret River was on fire last week.

The little town in Western Australia, famous for producing high quality Bordeaux style wines and world class, heavy, waves was being threatened by an enormous and ferocious bush fire that was started as a "controlled burn" by the authorities (on a 37 degrees Celcius day??!) but which quickly spread beyond it's planned boundaries burning an area of 3,400 hectares.

Photos taken from outside the town's fire station (at the end of the street that I used to live on) showed the sky west towards the coast filled with thick smoke. The fire raged along the coastline west of Caves Road, burning through the beachside communities of Redgate, Gnarabup and Prevelly destroying 31 homes, 9 tourist chalets and a historic house (dating back to 1865 so historic by modern Aussie standards). This is one of the most wave rich stretches of coastline on one of the most wave rich continents on the planet, but I guess that that fact was no longer relevant to the residents sheltering on the beach while their homes were razed. One guy got his wife to safety then returned to defend his home from the fire; he stuffed rags into the gutters and attached sprinklers to the rooftop then, when the flames started to engulf neighbours homes he pulled on a scuba tank and mask and jumped in his neighbours pool, laying on the bottom for 5 minutes whilst the fire passed overhead. His home was saved, deservedly so I reckon.

My friend Krede, who lives in Margs, checking the waves at Redgate. Probably less green and more black around here right now.

WA is a state familiar with bushfires. Has been forever. Banksias are Australian wildflowers perfectly adapted to the regularity of fires resulting from the scorching sun beating down on the tinderbox scrub and bush. Roughly half of the banksia species are killed by fire but the fire stimulates the opening of their seed bearing follicles and the germination of seeds in the ground. The other half have bark so thick that the trunk is protected, or they have tubers underground that resprout straight after a fire event. The communities of Gnarabup and Prev'll do just that I reckon; resprout and bounce back.

It's too early in the season for this fire to affect this season's wine vintage, and nothing'll stop these waves continuing to break on the limestone reefs fringing this beautiful coast. Good luck down there.

Mainbreak

There's Lots to See Under the Sea

2011-11-20T20:42:00.008Z

"THARE SHE BLOWS!"

We were out on the boat to take scientific samples of whale sharks. I was fully aware of the amount of sea life swimming around underneath us but I really wasn’t expecting a humpback whale calf to almost jump into the boat.

Friends who I’d spoken to about looking for waves in this part of East Africa wished me luck then told me to take a good thick book and that I’d probably end up in Tofo snorkeling with whale sharks by day and drinking the local moonshine rum by night.

I hadn’t realized that Tofo is centrally placed on a stretch of coastline that’s world renowned for the high concentration of large marine creatures swimming around under the surface there, although it didn’t take me long to work out after spending ten minutes on the headland looking out to sea. No more than twenty seconds would go by without a whale breaching somewhere out in the vast Indian Ocean leaving spray lingering over the Ocean in the distance.

But there’re more than just migrating humpbacks here. It turns out that Tofo is the base for The Foundation for the Protection of Marine Megafauna run by two experts in their respective fields. Dr. Andrea Marshall from the States who is the world’s leading expert on manta rays and giant rays (she was the subject of a recent BBC wildlife documentary “Andrea Queen of The Rays”), whilst Kiwi marine biologist Dr. Simon Pierce is a leading scientist in the field of whale shark research. Both giant rays and whale sharks (the world’s largest fish) are found in surprising concentrations almost year round on the reefs off Tofo so it’s the perfect location for a research base. Both Andrea, Simon and their resident PhD student present weekly lectures (Manta Mondays, Whale shark Wednesdays and Fauna Fridays) open to the general public and sending them away with probably more knowledge on those individual species than many of the world’s top marine biologists have.

This was how I ended up on a boat with Dr. Pierce and a group of volunteers from All Out Africa helping to collect samples. We’d jump off the boat and snorkel alongside the whale sharks, through and under the various boatloads of bobbing “ocean safari” tourists and then when we’d left them behind, dive down and use a Hawaiian sling to fire a capped spear into the giant fish, collecting a plug of skin as it was pulled free that could be analysed to determine the fish’s diet, and thus, where in the great blue it had been. Another, sturdier, sling is then use to fire a tag into the whale shark that trails a little sonar tracker which allows it’s movements to be followed by satellite. Underwater photos are taken to identify them as each whale shark’s spotted pattern is unique like a fingerprint and they can be logged into an international database and then tracked long-term by various dive operations around the world.

A happy humpback family

That was it, nature done for the day I thought. Nature wasn’t done though, as on our way back a family of humpbacks surfaced near us; Mum, Dad and a calf who was keen on showing off. The calf was learning how to breach, the acrobatic jumps, slaps and splashes that mature whales use to display their virility, and came up so close to us at one point that it nearly filled my entire viewfinder on my camera. Once he decided we’d seen enough, the family slowly swam off and then a larger lone, slow and ponderous humpback drifted along. Doc Pierce decided that this whale was mellow and slow enough to allow him to do something he’d never done before and jump overboard with a waterproof movie camera to try and film it as it swum past. I don’t think he expected it to dive under, double back and come check him out a second time. The thing was the size of a bus, one slap of its tail would’ve been the end for the curious Kiwi.

Humpback populations worldwide are back from the brink, having been hunted to the brink of extinction there are now about 80,000 individuals. These humpbacks were visiting the tropics to breed and give birth before returning to the Southern Ocean off Antarctica to feed for the summer months.

Dolphins. Old news.

We also saw dolphins on the way back too, I don’t think they realized what they had to live up to though in order to impress. We motored on to get our samples back to the lab.

This was taken by a real nice Aussie guy called Crewe Dixon, a volunteer with All Out Africa. He was on a dive looking for giant rays, looked up and saw this. Wow.

The Foundation for the Protection of Marine Megafauna are looking for two volunteers to assist with their valuable research in Mozambique, a whale shark research and admin assistant and a manta ray research and admin assistant. Check their facebook page for further details on the positions and how to apply.

Footprints in the Sand

2011-11-06T17:45:00.003Z

When we find footprints in the sand,

Leading from the Sea,

We imagine an envoy perhaps

Or a traveller from a distant country

Come to tell us long term exiles that we can return.

At night we sit by beach fires,

As driftwood adopt animal shapes:

Fishes, lizards, snakes.

We invite nostalgia with our threading flutes,

The galloping guitar,

Hoarse laments of our favourite singer.

And in daytime fields tending red and purple fruits,

We watch the silver river

As it flows into the Sea

And it occurs to us that the mother country,

The one we have abandoned,

Is the Sea itself.

Those footprints then,

Whose were they?

Richard Gwyn

No Surfboard? No Problem.

2011-10-30T17:38:00.008Z

It's pretty rare these days for me to go on a surf trip and not have my home-made handplane and hand-me-down swim fins wedged in my carry-on luggage so that I can go bodysurfing as soon as I arrive; several episodes of lost, delayed and damaged boardbags have taught me that it's worth having a back-up option with me so that I don't go loco watching good waves breaking whilst I'm sat on the beach without my stuff.

Plus bodysurfing is damned good, simple honest fun.

Hold your breath and go. Image by Dave Homcy.

Swimming into waves and riding them prone without a board has always been a staple and core "waterman" practice for lifeguards and surf coaches to get back to the beach quickly (you can knock a load of seconds off your timed surf-swims if you can bodysurf a wave in) and water photographers who have to swim around with their camera rigs, but it's older than surfing itself and this last year seems to have been stepping out on it's own and getting a bit more attention which is great.

This seems to be culminating now in the release of Keith Malloy's movie "Come Hell or High Water" which is the first mainstream surf movie dedicated entirely to not having a surfboard. Turns out that as well as being a top flight pro-surfer, about ten years ago Keith started swimming into waves in an attempt to reconnect with the ocean and ended up being one of the best in the world, regularly competing in the World Champs at Pipeline. Around the same time his big brother Chris teamed up with North Shore lifeguards Jeff Johnson and Todd Sells to swim and hike a section of remote Hawaiian coastline, bodysurfing along the way, for a Surfer's Journal article entitled "The Body Will Suffice" (available to download here) which was all about taking the search for waves back to the rawest possible form.

When I pulled up to check this super heavy spot near Cape Town, South Africa, the only guys in the water going for these waves were a small crew of Hell-man bodysurfers. More power to you.

Whilst for most of us, leaving the board on the beach and swimming out to get our waves will never become the dominant choice, it's worth remembering that it's always a valid option. Whether it's for fitness, searching for a purer connection with the ocean, because the airline's lost your surfboards or maybe you just love having seawater rammed up your nose into your sinuses, every now and then it's good to ring the changes.

A few weeks ago I met a seemingly mad and immune-to-the-cold Welshman at the World Bellyboarding Championships who was telling me all about a bodysurfing trip that he did up the entire Eastern Coastline of Australia with nothing but a set of swim fins and a handplane. At the time we were bobbing around in the sea as part of a bodysurfing handplane demonstration (I was helping out James Otter who had a stand there) amongst the wedgy high tide bowls of Chapel Porth in conditions that, in all honesty, were only really bodysurf-able. Set me to thinking that maybe there's merit in the idea of a surf trip without a surfboard, and I think I've got the beginnings of an interesting plan in motion.

Kick hard and think of your body as your surfboard.

As Mr Malloy states, it's all about "taking a breath and kicking your feet in the big blue sea".

Why the Hell not?

My long arms spread out trying to fall into the pocket whilst a Welsh bodysurfer wearing nothing but a pair of speedos looks on. WBBC , Chapel Porth, Cornwall, 2011.

Photo by Kate Fewster.

Mid-winter tunnelling, image courtesy James Otter.

Beautifully channelled plywood handplanes made by my friends Rich and Nick at Thirdshade. They look all tiger-striped and rad. Available here.

James Otter's bespoke handplanes produced using leftover hardwood from his beautiful wooden surfboards. Available here.

It's Coming, Best Get Ready...

2011-10-23T18:42:00.008+01:00

Autumn's definitely bedded itself in here. I can hear Winter knocking on the door; stock up and get prepared:

1 - Soup.

2 - Tea, and a teapot.

3 - A good pair of gumboots and thick socks.

4 - Good friends.

5 - Lots of dry firewood.

6 - A warm jacket.

7 - A good thick winter wetsuit with a built-in hood.

8 - A project to see you through to the Spring.

9- A stack of good books.

10 - A determination to find the fun in the colder months, and a secure knowledge that Spring is on it's way.

Wavecrest's Wellington Boots and A Wheelbarrow of Wood images shot by Dave Williams, Winter 2010. All other images shot by Mat Arney over the darker months of the past few years, Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

A Glimpse Through the Lens of Mr Mike O'Meally

2011-10-16T18:24:00.005+01:00

Every now and then I like to share the work of some of the image-makers whose photographs make me want to go play with cameras.

I've said before how much I dig skate photography (Surfing's Baby Brother post); the ability to play around with props and lights and try over and over again to nail the shot means that skate photographers produce some crazy and creative images.

This set of images is the work of Mr. Mike O'Meally, an Australian bloke with skills. I really like his work, I hope you do too. I'll let the photos do the talking, click here to check his website and read an interview.

Where The Wild Things Are

Meanwhile in Mundaka...

2011-10-09T16:29:00.006+01:00

Harbour Hop Off, Mundaka.

Spectating Spaniard, as some surfer gets slotted.

High tide, and it still looks better than your local spot on it's best day.

It's autumn in Europe and the migration's on. Just like the birds, as soon as the wind starts to blow the leaves off the trees wayfaring surfers based in Northern Europe start to work their way south down through France and Spain and then onto Portugal, Morocco and the Canaries for the Winter, following the weather and the waves.

The WCT is in France at the moment along with a fair few of my friends who keep telling me how sunny and nice it is, and my mind has been cast back across all of the trips that I've done down to the Basque country over the years.

All that I can think of is Mundaka.

The rivermouth sand bar that sits just outside the entrance to the harbour of this small Basque fishing village can, on the right day, produce some of the best left handers ever to happen to moving water from any of the seven seas. Tom Curren reckons so (Surfer magazine 52.8, The 100 Best Waves) and I won't argue.

I've made the two hour dash there from South West France a few times when it's looked like it might be on and only lucked in once but that once made up for all of the other failed attempts. The swell has to be coming from just the right direction out of the North West and needs to be a good groundswell, it needs the right tide, sand in the rivermouth, the sand bar needs to have settled into just the right shape over a calm summer, and you have to be on it before the secret gets out and every other European surfer arrives. That's a lot of stars that have to align to get good waves here.

But when those stars align you find yourself paddling into a wave that funnels along the sandbar, locking you in and drawing up like a drainpipe being wrung out, completely mesmerising you as you battle with the decision to stall and grab rail or try to stay out front in relative safety clipping swooping turns off the top.

I lucked into all-time Mundaka with my good friend Krede Wright from West Australia back in 2008 when we were driving (slowly) around Europe in a Westfalia named Turtle. We got two days of great uncrowded swell, double overhead on the sets and overhead on the friendlier ones. A local ex-pat claimed that in the fourteen years that he'd lived there working for Billabong it didn't get much better very often. I watched Krede weave through some big tubes on his backhand whilst I sniffed around for some more manageable ones. It still ranks as the only wave to leave me spitting blood without hitting the bottom or my board, just the sheer force that the water smacked my face was enough. I decided that my hair needed cutting to get it out of my eyes when surfing and shaved my head with beard clippers which took almost an hour. Our van broke down and we spent three nights sleeping on a garage forecourt. None of it mattered after the waves we'd got. Just look at the photos: That's after we got out, at high tide when it had filled in and got "a bit rubbish" compared to earlier.

Over the years various factors have conspired to result in the WCT no longer holding an event here; the Prestige oil spill left globs of heavy tar buried just beneath a thin layer of sand (the soles of my feet were stained black for a week after wading in the waveless shallows in Mundaka in 2002), the sandbar was starved of sediment for a few years in the middle of the decade and almost disappeared and the fickle nature of the wave meant that too many of the professional surfing events scheduled to be surfed here had to held at the rubbish beachbreak around the corner.

How fortunate.

The eyes of the world are elsewhere and still this quiet fishing village sits here, sleepily waiting for a swell to light up the rivermouth and keep the fishing boats in the harbour for the day. If it happens and you're anywhere nearby, you have to drop what you're doing and get yourself there before everybody else gets on it.

Just trust me on this one.

There's other good stuff in Spain too; Flamenco Feet, Barcelona.

Negative Ions = Positive Humans

2011-10-02T17:44:00.004+01:00

Getting in the sea just for the sake of it...Immsouane, Morocco.

X-processed out of date slide film.

Being by the sea makes you happy.

People have been chirping on about how good sea air is for you since Victorian times, "taking the sea air" was even prescribed by British Doctors back then, and being lucky enough to live down beside the seaside I'd have to agree that there's something in it.

The science is a bit wafty but it's here's the theory: When waves break or the wind and sun evaporate seawater, the molecules are broken apart and split into charged atoms, or ions, and released into the atmosphere. The predominant minerals in seawater are sodium and chloride (sodium chloride is the salt we put on our food) which are both negative charged ions, and the story goes that negative ions make us feel better by increasing blood oxygenisation and having a similar effect to sunlight by increasing seratonin levels in our brains (the stuff that makes us happy). If you spend your working days surrounded by computers emitting that high voltage buzz or standing over a photocopier which spits out positive ions then chances are that your face isn't lit up by a smile when you walk into the office. Not so when you're beside the seaside.

The sea temperature in the UK gets pretty low by the end of winter. 6.5 degrees Celcius this day and this lady still went for a swim in the sea and came out smiling. Huge props.

So now we all have another excuse up our sleeves for going down to the beach and taking a big deep breath. Whether you're just beside the sea taking a walk on the beach or holding a fishing rod, or in and on the sea surrounded by negative ions surfing, swimming or sailing, you can claim you're improving your physical and mental health. It doesn't matter if you don't believe the hype, it's definitely another string for your bow when you get cornered for having a two surf day and not getting anything else done, and I'm pretty sure that any surfers stuck inland in cities will testify.

There's a whole lot of negative ions in the air around here. The Indian and Southern Oceans colliding of Cape Leeuwin, South West Western Australia.

Buy, Use, Discar......Reuse?

2011-09-25T14:48:00.006+01:00

Back to base early, with less surfboard than I'd set out with. Mozambique 2011

A pretty weak image this week I'm afraid, sorry about that but it's there to illustrate a point not make your eyes smile.

It's a sad fact that most of us decorate our lives with a whole lot of crap that we don't really need, and then when we're done with it we store it away never to be used again or we throw it in the bin. What a waste. But there's an alternative:

REDUCE, REPAIR, REUSE, RECYCLE

Now I'm no saint when it comes to all this, but I'm trying my best. Luckily this photo of my sour "surf cut short" self does illustrate kind of well the point that I want to make.

REDUCE: First up, don't by what you don't need. Simple huh? But how many people buy stuff like clothes to follow fashion and then end up with more than they need? Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia has, in a beautifully inspired and completely crazy business move, instructed all of the sales staff in Patagonia stores to ask customers "Do you really need this?" He claims that their product is made to last so you don't need a brand new jacket every year. Anything that anybody makes costs the planet more life than it can give back. Doesn't matter how sustainable or "green" it is, it has a negative impact on the environment, so please reduce you impact.

REPAIR: 6'2" x 18 1/4 x 2 3/16ths Clayton shaped for Kelly Slater.

I found this board in the second hand racks of a surf shop in Jeffreys Bay, South Africa three years ago. The story goes that this board was shaped for Kelly Slater for the J-Bay contest by Clayton Nyanaber the ZA Quiksilver shaper. I doubt that Slater ever surfed it; I imagine he gets given a stack of shiny new sticks at every contest, picks them up and looks them all over then grabs his trusty Merrick and paddles out. The "Kelly" boards are then distributed to the local Quiky sponsored surfers and this one bloke had changed board sponsors so was having to sell off his entire quiver. It cost me £100 and is one of the best boards I've ever crabbed along a wave on. The first thing I had to do was peel all of the big red Quiksilver stickers off it so that when I ran down the beach with it people didn't expect me to rip. It's got a contest weight, super light, glass job on it for speed over strength and I swear every time I duck dived it I could feel my thumbs squidging the deck in so it was a snap waiting to happen, and snap it did in Mozambique in August this year. I don't snap a lot of boards; either I'm pretty light footed or, more likely, I'm not charging hard enough. Any clown can fall into a barrel but it's a lot harder weaving your way through and making it out, and my bin it:win it ratio isn't all that good. This board kicked the bucket on a really good swell but a pretty ordinary wave when I pulled up under the lip and as I tried to drive down and out of it the lip landed right on the nose, snapping my board half way between the nose and my front foot. When I came up the nose was still hanging on by a flap of fibreglass, but then the next wave landed on my head and I ended up proning in with just the back half of my board. Another surfer found the nose washing around the shore break later on and brought it back up for me.

Repaired snapped or creased boards are never the same again, particularly ones with light glass jobs; they flex differently, they carry a bit more weight around the repair but there's no way I'm putting this board in the bin: it's either getting repaired or I'm turning it into a chair or a cool looking shelf. The snap's close to the nose so won't affect the important part of the board and truth be told I probably won't notice the stiffness or extra weight.

The scene of the crime on the day before I went from two boards to one board and two bits in my boardbag. Mozambique, 2011.

REUSE: Howies "buy, use, discard" organic cotton tee shirt.

A friend gave me this tee shirt almost 10 years ago. It was the nicest tee shirt I owned and was top of the pile for a while, kind of my fancy going out tee shirt of choice despite getting a lot of grief from people with no sense of irony. After a while it slipped down the rankings and just became a standard go-to bit of clothing before ending up in the "Sunday stack" to wear for painting fences and doing odd jobs. Then it got the promotion to surf shirt when I lived in West Australia. A knot got tied in the back of it so that it wasn't all baggy when wet and wouldn't end up being pulled up over my face in an approximation of being water-boarded when getting rolled around underwater. This shirt was originally a really dark petrol blue, but now when it's dry the shoulders and back are a really pale lilac colour where it's just been punished by the sun and salt water over years of surf trips. The only bit that's close to the original colour is under the arms and whenever I see the faded shoulders I'm glad it wasn't my skin copping all that brutal UV. When it starts rotting and an arm falls off or something it'll end up in my workshop as a rag for wiping up glue or oiling picture frames. That or I'll hang it up on my wall as a trophy. I think I've made the most of this garment.

RECYCLE: Patagonia Wayfarer boardshorts.

Good, surfable, boardshorts are rare like rocking horse poo. Finding out that your new pair of boardshorts chaffe or catch on your knees or are too tight or have a button that makes them damn uncomfortable to lie on a surfboard in is rubbish, especially if you've only taken two pairs on a trip with you because you're going to be spending a lot of time being uncomfortable. My old pair of boardies are starting to give up the ghost so I'm phasing in these new favourites and the nice thing about them is that they're recyleable under Patagonia's common threads programme so when I've worn them out, ripped them in half or decided that I don't like stripey shorts any more I can send them back to them (or drop them in store) and they'll recycle them into new fibres or fabric. They've also developed an ebay store to sell on unused or unwanted Patagonia items rather than have people leave them at the back of the cupboard because they don't surf/climb/go outdoors anymore.

Do the planet a favour please and take stock of all of your stuff then see if you can implement any of the 4R principles in any way now or in the future. The future will thank you for it.

The Train To Taghazoute and The Storyboard Go Live...

2011-09-18T12:20:00.008+01:00

Gare du Nord - departure board possibilities...

It's been a busy week here; an article that I put together for Drift surf magazine has been published, to my despair hot on the heels of great articles featuring the photography of two of my favourite image makers Chris Burkard and Dane Peterson (talk about big shoes to fill), and The Storyboard exhibition opened in Polzeath, Cornwall.

The sights, sounds and smells of the souks, Marrakech.

First up, the article: Back in April my friend Kyle and I set off on the train aiming for Morocco, lugging our boardbags with us and hoping for the best. I had a couple of cameras with me and the trip became more than just a mission for waves, with a mountain climbed, some cities explored and a few arguments with Spanish railway officials along the way. We got good good waves, but that's not the point.

Drift have been as encouraging and supportive as ever and have put it out there for people to see so please click any of these jumps to see The Train To Taghazoute in full. I'd also like to push out a big thanks to the team at Finisterre for their encouragement and for keeping us warm when it was cold, and cool when it was hot.

Then on Friday night James Otter and I spent a lot longer than anticipated carefully hanging our Storyboard exhibition in the Tubestation in Polzeath, Cornwall. We finished up at midnight surrounded by pizza boxes and an assortment of tape measures and hanging wire but we're really pleased with the results. The Storyboard is being exhibited "open" alongside two finished surfboards and a set of twelve images documenting the process, all framed in timber from the same tree as the surfboard.

James starting to carefully shape the rails of The Storyboard.

The Storyboard is for sale (it will be fully finished and ready to surf, including in the package the entire set of framed images for a total of £2995), as are framed or mounted prints (£75 and £25) and signed and numbered handmade coffee table books (£25).

If you're interested in the board, prints or book then leave a comment on this post at the bottom with your contact details and I'll get in touch, or hit up James through his website.

The board really is a beautiful piece of craftsmanship and we believe that the "one tree" lifecycle angle makes this an exhibition worth making a detour for. If you do get a chance to eyeball it any time over the next six weeks, please let me know what you thought.

I love it when a plan comes together.

6'10" Mini-Magic against the workshop wall.

The Storyboard

2011-09-11T18:06:00.006+01:00

I've been sitting on this project for a good while now, dying to shout about it, and now at long last I'm allowed to leak out a few images and let you in on it: For the past 9 months a friend and I have been working on a wooden surfboard project called 'The Storyboard' which goes live next Saturday, September 17th, and we're both really excited about it as what started out as a small seed of an idea has grown into a multi-faceted project incorporating an exhibition, a book and a magazine article.

The tools of his trade; James shaping the nose of The Storyboard.

James Otter designs and builds beautiful bespoke wooden skin and frame surfboards here in Cornwall, in a workshop on the most photogenic smallholding above Porthtowan beach.

We've documented the lifecycle of one of these surfboards, using timber from just a single Western Red Cedar tree, all the way from the woodland in Cornwall where the tree was felled, through the sawmill and then every single step of the making process. Ordinarily this style of wooden surfboard uses a variety of hardwoods wrapped around a plywood frame but due to the "one tree" principle James even made his own plywood from the same planks that were then used to make the rest of the board, going as far as producing the frames for the exhibition from the leftovers and offcuts.

The internal framework of the surfboard is being left exposed (displayed without the deck) to reveal a poem which has been engraved onto the plywood ribs that traces the lifecycle of the timber from tree to sea, from the moment it crashed to the ground to the moment it will splash in the waves.

It took many hours of painstaking craftsmanship to get to this skeletal stage.

The Storyboard will be displayed alongside a photographic exhibition that documents the entire build process, and accompanied by a small coffee table book, from September 17th through until the end of October at the Tubestation and Zeath Gallery in Polzeath, North Cornwall, UK.

You're all welcome to come along to the launch party on September 17th from 3pm for tea, cake and wooden surfboards, and then another event is planned to coincide with the Jesus Longboard Classic being held in Polzeath over the weekend of October 15th and 16th, where James will also have some demonstration boards available for people to paddle out for a wave on. Or just stop by anytime over the six weeks to get your eyes on it.

The Surfer's Path has an interview with James in the latest issue, which to my great surprise ran with one of my images.

Delphinus Delphis

2011-09-04T18:01:00.004+01:00

A common dolphin leaping between Mouls Island and The Rumps, July 2011.

Commiserations on a bad summer this year if you're a Cornish fisherman; These guys (common dolphins) have been around in force the past few months cruising the North Cornish coast and chewing up all of the mackerel for miles around. At least that's the excuse I'm sticking with for striking out and coming home empty handed every time I've gone fishing...

Paired up, off Pentire Head. July 2011.

These images were taken on a trip with Cornish Sea Tours (my housemate Matt's rib sea-safari outfit, which is handy!), using an old olympus trip 35mm compact camera which is about 30 odd years old. Matt reckons that he can count on one hand the number of days that he hasn't seen dolphins since June this year, not a bad record!

IMPORTANT!

If you find a stranded marine animal in South West Britain:

For live dolphins, porpoises or whales call BDMLR immediately on (01825) 765546
For all dead marine animals call Cornwall Wildlife Trust immediately on (0845) 2012626 - my friend Jo will probably answer the phone.
For live seals in difficulty call the National Seal Sanctuary immediately on (01326) 221361

Ta!

The Car Whisperers

2011-08-28T12:45:00.003+01:00

Dave, throttling.

Engine block.

Mikey got hold of this old Ford Capri one winter a few years ago. He took it back to his Dad's garage in North Wales and set to work doing it up in order to sell it on. When he pulled back into town the following spring we could all hear him coming, the sound of the throaty 2.8 V6 engine preceeding the view we got of the sleek black machine; reborn.

What an amazing car it had become. Mikey went to put the car up for sale but his twin brother Dave, who is just as much of a rev-head as Mikey, couldn't bear to see it leave the family so ponied up his winter's wages to buy it from his brother. Both of the Jones brothers are crazy car whisperers, able to listen to a crook vehicle and make an instant diagnosis. The Capri has been their labour of love and I spent an evening with Dave in their garage a few weeks ago to get some shots of him spannering on the car, part of a 1950's style greaser set of images that we wanted to produce. This was the first shoot, as Dave prepared the car for a classic car show that weekend. On the way to that show some clown reversed into the side of the Capri in a supermarket car park, stoving in the passenger door and the wing and effectively writing it off in the eyes of the insurance company. Both brothers are now hard at work, spending all of their spare time trying to nurse it back to health and keep their baby on the road. Once they're done, we'll get some images of their machine going sideways in a cloud of tyre smoke up at the old airfield... I for one can't wait to see that thing on the road again.

A workshop wall to envy.

Tight for space; The Viva, Dave and the Capri.

Check Dave's motor racing and Caterham 7 blog out at www.rawkusracing.com.

Pick Up 3

2011-08-21T20:25:00.010+01:00

In mid-winter we have all sorts of flotsam and jetsam wash up on the beaches of Cornwall.
Photo by Dave Williams.

Iniative Surf recently ran a training camp on Long Island, New York and the groms got involved with improving their beach environment after a training session.
Getting good habits at an early age.
Photo by Alex Espir.

All this will end up in the Ocean that you can see at the end of the ditch (right into the line-up of a surf spot) next time it rains. This has to change.

An Tor Orth An Mor took a two week holiday this northern summer, a bit last minute and far enough off the map to make posting photos difficult so apologies if you missed us...but we're back now, so on with business.

This one is an important one, both to spread a message well worth spreading and to try and shout it from the roof tops and encourage you the reader to pass the message on, but also to salute the people in this post who lead the charge in one way or another and do their bit.
Litter. You wouldn't believe how much of it ends up in the oceans or washed up on beaches, almost anywhere in the world no matter how remote and off the beaten track you go there's a pretty good chance that you'll find some plastic washed up on your idylic beach, maybe carried there by the winds and currents from thousands of miles away. In some places there are unbelievable levels of rubbish on the beaches and in the water, perhaps because of the prevailing wind direction or because the locals there don't have any refuse collection and wherever they throw it, it washes downstream to the coast. But regardless of the reasons why, it really shouldn't be there at all. But how can you help? Sometimes there's just too much to feel that you can make a difference.

Pick Up 3. It's that simple. The brainchild of 16 year old Cobi Emery from San Diego, California, Pick Up 3 asks you to pick up just three pieces of litter or trash when you walk back up the beach from the surf. You can carry three bits in one hand and dump them in a bin at the top of the beach or put them in a bag in your car to dispose of later, that way slowly but surely, little by little, we can start to make a difference; it's enough to have an impact whilst still being easily manageable.
Not only does the beach look nicer then, but the impact on the marine environment is amazing too - thousands of turtles and dolphins die each year because they mistake plastic bags for jellyfish and eat them, only to either fill their guts with undigestable plastic and starve, or in the case of turtles, float to the surface because of the increased buoyancy and bake to death in the sun. Wrong. So plastic bags, bottles, bits of fishing nets and line...if it didn't grow there it shouldn't go there.

My friend Alex from Initiative Surf asks all of his clients, be they junior competitive surfers or clients on guided surf trips to pick up 3 on their way back from every surf as part of his coaching regime, whilst Tom and the staff and customers of Island Vibe in Jeffreys Bay do regular beach clean ups there, with one big annual effort. This year 80 of them collected litter on the western beaches of J-Bay, filling bags and bags with unwanted refuse. Unfortunately, the next time the wind blows offshore, more plastic will blow out of the township and down the beach, just as after the first rains of the season in Morocco, Indonesia or any other developing coastal nation the water is too filthy to surf or swim in because the floodwater washes out all of the ditches and drains that locals use to dump their refuse in to. But perhaps slowly, 3 pieces at a time we can set an example, educate and begin to clean up the marine environment because we all live downstream of something and the oceans are too important to mess with.

Leave it better than you found it. Please.

Staff and guests at Island Vibe clearing the beach and drains that make up their back yard.
Photo by Rene Thornton.

More people and less litter than the previous year, so it's looking hopeful.
Photo by Rene Thornton.

A good job well done.
Photo by Rene Thornton.

Volounteers from the Polzeath VMCA clearing our local beach, thanks guys!

www.pickup3.org
www.sas.org.uk
www.surfrider.org
www.polzeathmarineconservation.com

Super Soul Sunday

2011-07-31T21:46:00.006+01:00

Dave and I used to have a solid Sunday morning routine in our draughty cold house on the cliffs above the sea. 10am through until midday was Super Soul Sunday time: Big pots of coffee, poached eggs, newspapers, absolutely no work and the Reverend Al Green and lots of other great soul music blasting from the stereo. Whoever woke up first put the music on loud enough to wake the rest of the house. Guests crashing over on our sofa had no choice but to wake up and engage, and friends would come by for the morning bringing breakfast stuff, newspapers or music with them.

It's a damn fine way to take some time out on the weekend, so go get on i-tunes or spotify, or heaven forbid perhaps actually get some good old fashioned cd's back in your life and hunt down these tunes, the ones that influenced and informed the current revival and rehash of soul music that's all over the radio these days.

Right here, right now, An Tor Orth An Mor presents the Super Soul Sunday playlist for your aural enjoyment. Hallelujah!

Frank Wilson - Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)
Martha Reeves And The Vandellas - Heatwave
Al Green - Keep Me Cryin'
Sam And Dave - Hold On, I'm Coming
Martha Reeves And The Vandellas - Nowhere To Run
Little Richard And The Disciples Of Soul - Inside Of Me
Frankie Valli And The Four Seasons - The Night
Tony Clarke - Landslide
Dusty Springfield - Live It Up
Gloria Jones - Tainted Love
The Flirtations - Nothing But A Heartache
Marlena Shaw - Let's Wade In The Water
Stevie Wonder - Uptight (Everything Is Alright)
Sam And Dave - Soul Man
The Temptations - Ain't No Mountain High Enough
Wilson Pickett - Land Of 1000 Dances
Curtis Mayfield - Move On Up (LP Version)
Ray Charles - What'd I Say (Parts I&II)
The Hot 8 Brass Band - Sexual Healing

Get Some!

Image: Dave getting into the music sat on the workbench in The Pit one Super Soul Sunday a few weeks back, mug of coffee just out of shot.

The World's best righthand point? I reckon so...

2011-07-24T20:04:00.006+01:00

Dawn at Supertubes in Jeffreys Bay, South Africa. Having run 5km in the dark to get there it was kind of annoying to find it breaking straight onto the bricks...

The 2011 Billabong Pro J-Bay has just finished up with South Africa's wonder-kid Jordy Smith coming out on top at his home contest. Every time I watch the World's top 44 surfers hacking into arguably the best right hand point break on the planet my jaw drops at how many turns they manage to cram in on a wave that is just too damn fast for mere mortals to even consider sticking a turn on. The first bit of advice I was given when I moved there was "don't even think about doing a turn, you'll just get left behind. Just take off and start going down the line as fast as you can..." Most of the contest was held in 4-6ft surf, pretty perfect size for Supertubes however the weather was grey, rainy and pretty strong onshore. It still looked heaps better than most surf spots do on their day of days though, despite the wind and rain.

It's set my feet itching, I'm trawling the internet for flights south right now...

A Word Before You Go...

2011-07-17T16:59:00.005+01:00

Teak Bridge, Myanmar (formerly Burma)

Zanzibar

Packing antique heat, Ethiopia

Colonial Hangover, Sri Lanka

Samoa

Gorilla, Rwanda

Angkor Wat, Cambodia

Ethiopian Highland Kids

African Sunset

You're in for a treat. A little while back I posted a blog with the ten top travel tips that I've accumulated and have served me well over years of hauling my sorry ass and a surfboard all over this big blue and green marble. I thought that this list was pretty concise and comprehensive, and then I got an e-mail from my friend Yvette which blew my list out of the water. Yvette is one well travelled lady who works in International Development, most recently for the UNHCR in East Africa but before then in South East Asia, and in between travelling for work her hobby is collecting cool passport stamps. In the past she's gifted me with solid gold nuggets of travel wisdom like this:

"Coconuts - the elixir of life, the saviour, the hangover cure, the life-giver. Any time you feel crap, drink a coconut and it will save your life. It's chemically akin to plasma and absorbs faster than h2o. If you need a blood transfusion and you have no blood - hook an IV up to a coconut, I'm 100% serious."

So here I've pulled together a selection of her photos and below for you to log away ready for next time you're getting ready to head off are her additions to the list. I strongly suggest that you take some notes:

"My tips are a bag for your cords and cables. A bag for your bras, undies and socks. Roll. Pillow case for laundry bag. Crappy phone (some countries won't let in smart phones). SARONG. Hard drive or iPad full of movies. EAR PLUGS. Steal the eye mask while you're stealing the blanket - you'll never sleep more soundly. Condoms. Stick your condoms and meds in the fridge. Don't fill your bag, 17kg max. Clothes that make you happy - you'll feel better if you look like yourself. No dark clothes - mozzies breed inside them. Toenail clippers. Notepad and pen fo sho. Board games for those days with no electricity (there will be many) ... backgammon? Social responsibility and a sense of the two way obligations and duties of the traveller. The Do No Harm principle. Norfloxacin - when it hits, you won't want to go to the chemist. A vocabulary that doesn't include the word 'do', or any variation on this, as in: "I did Thailand." A basic history. Courage."

The Kook

2011-07-11T18:41:00.003+01:00

The hyper-creative Mr. Daniel Crockett has released the 2nd edition of The Kook surfing newspaper. An independent UK based surf publication with over 90 international contributors, The Kook is all about the creative side of what we all do. There are no paid advertisements and all contributors provide their creativity for free, simply for the sake and love of it, including some very high profile people in the wide world of surf - and some very low profilers.

I got in touch with Dan a while back about a photo project that I've been working on (2/3rd's complete to date) and it turned out to be deadline day. He managed to sneakily squeeze one of my other images in there for which I'm very grateful, prizes if you can spot it...

Please help to support independent, creative surf journalism.

Purchase The Kook through Dan's blog or website, or from selected discerning surf shops.

Art on Walls

2011-07-03T21:33:00.004+01:00

Art on walls? I love it.

I'll put that in context: good art or poignant statements (not shite tag scrawls) in appropriate places is amazing and contrary to the opinion of many city councils can enhance urban environments. When I was at university in Plymouth I worked for a company called After Dark Media who organised the renovation of the skanky old underground bus station. Previously the concrete underpasses were the preferred hangout of the city's homeless and it was kind of an intimidating place once the sun had gone down, not to mention it stank of piss. But the council sorted the lighting out and it was transformed by a collection of graffiti artists over one weekend into a colourful, vibrant and engaging space. In the right place, and in the right context, why wouldn't you put art on the walls for everyone to enjoy?

Images: The assorted wall art of Barcelona, Melbourne, London, Oman and Morocco.

Green Peace Oop

2011-06-26T21:49:00.005+01:00

On my wall I have a big motivation montage; a collection of pictures, images and quotes to prompt me to get on and do the right thing. On it there's a photo of Trevor and Margaret, a really lovely couple who I did some work for when a big macrocarpa tree (monterey cypress) came down on their small holding on Waiheke Island in the Hauraki Gulf just off Auckland in New Zealand. They'd been involved with Greenpeace since way back when and Margaret had been the cook on the Rainbow Warrior when the French Secret Service planted a limpet mine on it and sunk it in Auckland harbour, killing a Portuguese journalist who was trapped on board. In big red letters next to the image it says "make sure you end up like this when you're older".

They fed me a lot of soup whilst I was chopping up their massive tree, and in the evenings I copied out a lot of recipes from Margaret's files. My favourite was this one, I've renamed it "Green Peace Oop". It's real easy and you can mess around with it heaps, here's how you make it:

Dried green peas
Onions
Vegetable stock

Boil these together in the vegetable stock until soft (but watch it as it can foam).

Puree it and then add frozen peas or green beans, diced red pepper, chunks of ham or gammon, whatever you've got in the fridge or cupboard. Get fuelled and then go chop some wood.

Happy Catch a Wave Day

2011-06-19T19:19:00.004+01:00

Little longboard peelers at Malibu, California.

Kim Bowra running down an early morning line, Burliegh Heads, Goldcoast, Australia.

Unknown invisible - some guy enjoying one on his guts (seriously, I have a lot of respect for good bodyboarders, I'm only teasing), North Shore Oahu, Hawaii.

Drew sweeping up on his SUP. Flat day training, Jeffreys Bay, South Africa.

Now depending on who you listen to and where you read it, either today ( Sunday June 19th) or tomorrow (Monday June 20th) is International Surfing Day. It's a bit of a hallmark day; dreamt up in 2004 by the folks at Surfing Magazine and the Surfrider Foundation and now also run as an industry day in Europe, it's meant to be a day when surfers can take stock of how lucky we are, celebrate it and give a little back.

There're normally a few competitions held in various spots across the globe, beach-cleans, movie screenings, free surf-lessons and stuff like that which are sometimes accused of being a little overly corporate. But lets boil it down a bit: A day to enjoy and celebrate sliding around on waves, sharing the oceans energy. We should be thankful for it everyday but perhaps sometimes it just becomes a bit normal so it's no bad thing to take a day and think about it. Remind ourselves just how good it really is.

What would you be, where would you be, who would you be without surfing in your life?

So either take what's left of today, or make a plan for tomorrow, and take a moment to enjoy surfing. It's a couple of days off the summer solstice here in the Northern hemisphere so you've still got time to get in there now. Go get in there and catch a few waves, be it on a shortboard, longboard, squishy board, no board, with a paddle, whatever. However you harness the Ocean's energy to move you back towards shore be thankful for it. And on your way back up the beach pick up any litter/trash you see and stick it in a bin, so that the Oceans remain nice for everybody else to enjoy too.

Thank you surfing.

Big Sur

2011-06-12T21:09:00.003+01:00

There are roads, and then there are roads.

I damn near drove off the edge of the cliff a few times along the Big Sur stretch of California's Pacific Highway 1 because I was trying to peer over the edge and take in the view the whole time instead of just being sensible and keeping my eyes on the road. This is looking south across Bixby Bridge (as featured in Jack Kerouac's Big Sur) in the late afternoon - beautiful light on a beautiful stretch of coast with a huge NW swell rolling in and throwing up loads of mist and spray.