Hoping that you’ve all had a great start to 2010 ! 

Been pretty quiet on the blogging front, and I’ve not been in the water as much as I’d like, although there seems to have been plenty of groundswell about. Between one thing and another I’ve always seemed to be away or have plans made. For the most part these swells have been mid-week so the issue of having a job has prevented me from getting in also. Not that I’m bitter or anything !!  Anyway hope you’ve managed to score some of these somewhere along the coast (she says through gritted teeth !!)

With the beginning of a new year, thoughts inevitably turn to looking forward to spring and in turn planning some well earned surf trips (warm water, mechanical lefthanders, on tap, everyday please – not asking to much am I ?!) Seeing as this year I’ve endured the whole winter here in Britain, I’ve booked a flight to Bali for later in the year. Hopefully this will also address the current pasty skin issue!

That said, it’s not been all doom and gloom. We scored some epic snowboarding practice whilst the snow graced us with its presence. A group of us headed up into the South Downs for the day where we managed a few runs down one of its many long wide slopes, built a few jumps but mainly spent hours walking back up the hill again. I will never curse a button lift ever again !! The experience even included the post snowboard aches and pains the following day ! Some enterprising kitesurfers even took their kites along as well for some random kite-snowboarding. Is that even a sport ? Am sure it probably is somewhere…

Although there’s little in the way of surf predicted for the coming weekend / week, hope to back to consistant surf again soon ! Pray for waves!!

With the sun shining and light offshore winds you could be forgiven for thinking you were somewhere else…  I had saved the last half day of my yearly allocation in the hope that there might be a good mid week swell worthy of its use.  And I think its fair to say yesterday was definitely worthy of it.

The first session on Thursday morning was nothing short of a pleasure, being in the sea at dawn and watching the sun come up with a fun little 2ft swell rolling through .  The tide was on its way  out so I kept it short and sweet before going and doing some work, little pic here courtesy of David from A1surf.com:  http://twitpic.com/t18jm

I wanted to get to Witterings for the push but the minor detail of not having a car meant I was going nowhere fast.  In the end, the other half came to the rescue, being self employed,  gave himself a half day too.  So off we went, getting there for about 1pm, about one and a bit hours up from low tide. This picture here posted on the local Witterings site, Mellowave is pretty much what we were greeted by:  http://www.mellowwave.co.uk/wittering%2009/dec-10th-8.jpg - yes thats right, a damn long paddle out !! I took with me what must amount to being the worst long paddle out boards I could think of….my CI fish and the Biscuit.  So in the end I used Marcs shortboard and he used the fish….problem solved.

We surfed til just before the sun set in what can only be described as a marathon session. I got out at one point with the intention of calling it a day but as the sets still rolled through I couldn’t bring myself to leave. So back out it was,  cursing myself the whole way out why did I ever get out in the first place !?

It’s just unfortunate that Witterings really has no proper banks that deal with a swell of this quality/size. Wave selection was the key with most of the sets closing out.  It did improve slightly with the pushing tide. But all in all cannot complain apart from a sore neck and shoulders after what totalled almost 5 hours in the water. No more exercise for me this week !

Hope you all managed to score a slice of the action wherever you were !

I’ve uploaded a video of the Brazilian charger Maya Gabeira at good ol Teahupoo back in October.  She scores what surely must be one of the heaviest waves taken on by a female. Anyway for her hard work she nabs herself a Billabong XXL nomination – and rightly so !

An evening involving a few (or several) beers has been organised  aimed as a pre-Christmas get together for the Brighton and general south coast surf community. It’s an informal meet and just gives everyone the chance to meet up in er slightly nicer surrounds than the Hotpipe car park !! Details are below:

Where: upstairs @ the Lion & Lobster in Silwood St. Brighton BN1 2PS

When:  Dec 10th at 7.30pm

Who:  everyone is invited !!

Thanks to the ’social butterflies’ that are Sharkbait James and A1 David for organising this !

                         

Am just back from a long weekend in Paris where we were lucky to attend the Quiksilver Tony Hawk Show. I saw TH skate 2 years back in Hossegor on a huge vert ramp, so on this occasion, given the location and the other features of the event i.e Art and Music, proved to be an epic show all round.

The ramp was located in the the main hall of the ‘Grand Palais’, an imposing large glass exhibition hall built for the Paris Exhibition in 1900.

The daytime events included street contests, signings and workshops with Quik team riders aswell as live painting.

One of my favourite features of the show was the Quiksilver Time Capsule which involved a walk through sample bedrooms based around the theme ‘I was a teenager in…’ starting with the 70’s all the way through to present day. 

Also present were the now completed boards sprayed by André which I had previously posted about albeit in their incomplete state. He was ever present throughout the day and its save to say there was hardly a blank wall left in venue by the close of the weekend !

Saturday night was the main event, opening with a parade of some of the biggest names in board sports, including Robbie Naish, Travis Rice, Kelly Slater, Jeremy Flores, Andy MacDonald aswell as Lisa Anderson & Kassia Meador from Roxy.  After all that fanfare, the biggest cheer of the night was kept for the man himself.

For the next hour or so the 5000 strong crowd was entertained by arguably some of the world best skaters including Omar Hassan, Kevin Staab, Daniel Cardone, Sandro Dias and the above mentioned Andy MacDonald. TH pulled off his legendary 900 and, one for the girls, Lyn-Z Adams became the first female to land a 540 McTwist.

I think my earlier suspicions about the fetid water in the harbour have been confirmed with myself and others coming down with bouts of queasiness or worst case scenario a nasty 24hr vomiting bug. The common denominator being we all surfed in and around the harbour breaks at the weekend. Yuk !

As the weekend approaches, the only thing getting me through is my excitement, as we’re off to see Tony Hawk skate at the Grand Palais in Paris.

I believe its being broadcast live on http://quiksilverlive.com for anyone who might be interested !

More to follow…(if I make it to Paris !)

So things didn’t go quite to plan on the shoes front, all because of an elaborate wristband/queuing system. Boo and hiss to that. However any disappointment soon disappeared and I was cheered up no end looking at two lads getting absolutely smashed in the shore break at New Beach. Cruel, yes I know but come on we’ve all been there and experienced the famous Brighton pebble shore dump ‘exfoliation initiation’. It’s all part of the learning process (isn’t it ?!) It was still fairly high tide, so along with the gusting 50mph + winds made for pretty treacherous conditions.

A friend of mine who was already in the sea whilst this was happening had only just himself wore a smack from his board to his nose in this shoredump, resulting in this below (see photo). Now Jon is no novice, having spent much of the last 20 years surfing and more recently kite surfing extensively, both here and in many locations overseas, so to say he’s competent is an understatement.  

Anyway the upshot from this is that if you’re new to surfing take some time to examine the conditions before going in, check what the tide is doing and if there’s not many people in, there’s usually a reason why !

I did eventually manage to get a low tide session in at the harbour, after battling with my board all the way to the waters edge. It wasn’t great, not helped by the foul smelling / tasting water…euughh I dread to even think what’s in it ! A build up of stones made for quite bouncy conditions which,  at times made for an interesting take off if nothing else ! Here’s a little pic..

On Sunday the wind dropped back and the sun even came out, so we made the most of what swell there was left over from the previous day. The odd (almost) head high set on the dropping tide…

Just wanted to say a big Well Done and Congrats to my mate Gabe Davies who won the Quiksilver ‘La Vaca Gigante’ big wave competition in Spain over the weekend.

Sunshine, strong offshore winds and a 4-metre (15ft) swell greeted the 15 competitors and hundreds of spectators, who lined the clifftops at this winter’s ‘La Vaca Gigante III’ big wave event on Saturday the 14th Nov.  The spot ‘La Vaca’ or ‘The Cow’ breaks 400m out to sea, off a rocky coastline beside a rural Cantabrian cattle finca.  The cliff-lined surf spot is far from inviting, but allows spectators a gladiator style view of the proceedings.  Armed with boards up to 12’6” in length, the invited surfers competed in a four-hour final.  When the results were announced in ascending order, it was British Quiksilver and Gravis surfer Gabe Davies who rode a series of solid sets successfully and claimed the ‘Best Surfer’ first prize.  The judges decided Gabe took off deeply and critically enough on a series of solid set waves to claim the top prize. 

Good on ya mate, don’t know how the hell you do it !

Ok so normally a surf takes precedent over just about everything else come the weekend. Usually I am loathe to make any plans of a Saturday or Sunday in case (as with last Sunday!) there might just be a decent swell running.  Sad maybe, but that’s just the way it goes!

With this weekend looking promising still I am faced with a dilemma where for once, there may well be something else that is of almost equal importance to going for a surf .  It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity that may not come around again….the Jimmy Choo collection for H&M (http://www.hm.com/gb/#/jimmychoo/) is being launched at 9am Saturday Nov 14th !

What to do ??!!  I’m pretty sure there’ll be queues and no doubt it will be an elbows-out-grab-what-you-can-affair!  So the plan is: buy Jimmy Choos then rush off to the beach, praying in the meantime it won’t take so long as to miss the all important tidal window…Will just have to wait and see I suppose !

You see not all of us girl surfers are butch, man-like he she’s (as sometimes portrayed) !!

 

What a weekend ! Or at least what a Sunday ! Witterings looked decent, picking up most of the 16 second swell and benefitting from the grooming NE winds.  Having boarded an early flight back from Dublin I opted to surf at an eerily quiet hotpipe - a decision I later regretted although it was a fun surf.  Seemingly everyone was down the coast, with talk of 100 + people in the water ! I did eventually make it to Witterings an hour before high and although there were sets it looked full and was pretty much closing out.  Some friends who had been there earlier confirmed my suspicions and said the lower tide was a better shaped wave.

We did look at other spots but they didn’t quite materialise, maybe given the size of the tide….but thats the way it goes sometimes…

Some pics below of Witterings near to high tide but James has posted the best I’ ve seen so far on sharkbait…http://www.sharkbait.co.uk/images/wittering_nov09big.jpg

Any more pictures out there you would like to share ?