Slyding Sunrise to Sunset

This past Saturday saw the finless clans of the British surf community converge on Lusty Glaze beach to compete in this year's Approaching Lines Slyder Cup, presented by the good folks at Reef.  With it being just a few weeks shy of the winter solstice, the "Friction Affliction Winter Convention" filled the few short hours of daylight and extended the magical golden hour to cover what felt like half of the heats contested.  Huey co-operated and sent some solid lumps shoreward for the duration of the day, testing all competitors waterman skills as well as their abilities to ride waves with no traction.  Here's a selection of my shots from sun-up to sun-down that sum up a great day of wave sliding.

At first light the surf looked fun.  An hour later it had jumped in size by about four feet as a westerly swell filled in, providing big, cold and bumpy conditions for the bodysurfers.

Swasssshhhhh zone stand-off.  Crabbing my way half-way up a rock face and balancing my camera on my knees doesn't get quite the same results as a tripod, it would seem.

There was a lot of water moving around the small bay as the bodysurfers competed at high tide, with wash-through sets leaving the "smaller" inside waves as the only consistent options.

Wooden surfboard shaper James Otter preparing to swim out with a handplane produced using offcuts from one of his surfboards. 

I'm pretty sure that Rich Pope was entered into every category.  Here he takes on an outside bomb on a 4'x1' bent plywood bellyboard before going on to win the air mat category and take second place overall.

The Otter Surfboards demostration station - showing what goes on at a bodysurfing "build-your-own" workshop experience day.

Jimbo Bennet returned to defend his title, drifting all over the place on an albacore with control and grace - here delaying the drop with a mid-face tail slide.

Pat from Surfboard Art Wales made the trip down and caught some screamers in the paipo category, switching between prone and kneeling and causing the judges to quickly glance at the scoring system.

Sarah Bentley, deserved winner of the "Most Stylish Human" award for making drop like this time and time again on a surfboard with no fins.

The twilight expression session saw all manner of wave-sliding craft in the line-up, including Ross Curwen and his trusty tray.

The mat finalists making walk to the waters edge at low tide, and considering how they might paddle a large, buoyant, bag of air out through shifty overhead surf.

Contenders ready!  The finless finalists.

Jimbo Bennet using nothing but rail to stick a drop that most surfers would be stoked on if they had a few fins in their board.

Finless friends, congratulating each other on a well surfed day and demonstrating the camaraderie that exists between the tribes.

Event Director Chris Nelson with Wooden Surfboard maker James Otter, watching the sun set on the last minutes of the grand final and a day of great surfing.

Slipping, Sliding and Finless Wave Riding

Stop/Go, Surf/Stokesy.

Finless heat #1, Stokesy sliding beneath some seagulls.

"Your feet must be awfully cold?"

Yup.  I'd not had a whole lot of time to mentally prepare for this though.  When the call went out for the first annual Slyder Cup, a finless "friction affliction" wave sliding event, I thought that mid-April would mean a summer wetsuit and some heavy whomping in the shore-break.  Instead, I was stood at the waters edge in my winter suit with the hood up, gloves on and no boots.  I'd realised the night before when I was stuffing neoprene into my day bag that I can only just squeeze my hooves into my swim fins anyway, so I had no chance with wetsuit boots on.  Gwynedd, who I'd guess is easily twice my age, seemed quite concerned for my well being as we waited for the starter's claxon.  On the other side of me stood Alan Stokes, former British Surf Champion, and along from him was a bloke with a warped plank of untreated plywood that he'd cut from a sheet of 8'x4' that morning.  There was also a Welsh guy with the most incredibly shaped asymmetrical paulownia paipo with a drop-knee cut-out.  Five minutes into our paipo/bellyboard heat and Stokesy and I figured that Gwynedd was beating us fair and square (and for the first time ever I wished that maybe I'd had a childhood of bodyboarding to stand me in good stead for moments like this, a thought that I quickly dismissed).  

After twenty minutes, sure enough my toes had turned white and gone numb.  

 Alan Stokes and Gwynedd Haslock lining up for our paipo/bellyboard heat.  Read more about Gwnedd here and get inspired.

Paipo/Bellyboard heat #2.  Check out the craft!

Dream Big. 

Paipo

Sawboards are the people responsible for the assymmetrical paulownia drop-knee paipo in the photo above. 

The Slyder Cup featured four categories of competition; finless surfboards (anything from alaias and Wegener albacores to normal surfboards with the fins pulled out), paipos and bellyboards, bodysurfing and mat-surfing.  There were a couple of heats in each category before a final…and then a grand final with the winner from each discipline going wave for wave to crown the ultimate slyder.  

The albacore riders dominated the surfboard rounds, with Alan Stokes and the eventual champion Jimbo Bennet getting some insanely long rides with spins, slides, shove-its and even a couple of head-dips.  In the final they were spinning their boards right onto dry sand in the shore-break. 

There were tons of bodysurfers present, including a small crowd who turned up with some old skateboard decks, a load of hand tools and sandpaper to shape their handplanes there and then.  

The South-West's mat-surfing crew were also present; a committed bunch of surfers whose choice of craft would ordinarily raise a few eyebrows on the beach, but not here.  They looked to be having so much fun in their heats and I learnt a lot about these rare inflatable sleds over the course of a five minute chat with mat-maker Graeme, which will probably make another post altogether.

Alan's Albacore.

Bodysurfers on the start line.

Fin(s).

Marcus Healan, mat surfing victor.

Jimbo Bennet spinning on to the sand in front of a punk-as-hell spectator.

Bodysurf competitor kicking into a little high tide wedge.

At the end of the day, as the drizzle started to thicken, the final claxon sounded and Jimbo Bennet climbed the podium (a small slide) to hold aloft a tiny trophy.  There was a brief "run-what-you-brung" session in the high tide shore break with tea trays, polystyrene kids boards from the '80's and me trying to ride a canoe paddle like some sort of polynesian grommet with no success, before the crowd retired to the scout hut for a surf movie and then a few beers and some music.  This is slated to be the first of many events (some competitive, some not so) put on by the Approaching Lines crew, and I can only imagine that they will grow in popularity as word of the good-times and smiling spread out radially.  A competition where you need no prior experience, can borrow your vehicle, line up alongside champions and senior citizens in the same heat and nobody gives a damn about the scores, statistics and rankings?  Sign me up already!

Ben Sousek's homemade handplane quiver, crafted over the previous 24 hours from old skateboards.

Fins and Flags.

The final line-up…from left to right, Jimbo Bennet (surfboard sliding), Alan Stokes (bellyboard), Joe Brown (bodysurf) and Marcus Healan (surf mat).

You can read more about the event here, and keep checking back if you want in on the next one.

Huge thanks has to go out to the organisers Chris Nelson, Demi Taylor and Nick Holden for putting together such a great event, and to Reef and the other sponsors who put their faith in such a quirky, edge of the surfing spectrum, event.  There were a whole load of people who pitched in judging, tabulating and marshalling who did an incredible job just for the love of it.  Thank you.

Swimming in the Sea

Swimming in the sea is one of life's great pleasures.  I've banged on about the joys of bodysurfing and the benefits of negative ions on here before (No Surfboard?  No Problem, and Negative Ions = Positive Humans), but bear with me.  I was fortunate enough to hitch a ride down to Hossegor back in September and, as usual, I stuck a handplane and swim fins in my bag.  

We pulled into Hossegor late in the day, with about an hour of light left. By the time we'd sorted the keys for our accomodation and parked the car, it was already starting to get dark.  No time to unpack boardbags, screw in fins and rummage around for a leash; wetsuit on, handplane and fins out and in we got.  Half an hour of getting properly whomped in the shorebreak at La Graviere was plenty to wash off the feeling of having been sat in a car for almost twelve hours, and a good introduction to the new swell starting to fill in.

Now let's be clear, when given a choice, I choose to surf.  Bodysurfing is just another way that I enjoy the ocean, and the fact that it's not my main aquatic focus was bought sharply into focus the following morning when I discovered that there was a bodysurfing contest taking place right where we'd been swimming around the evening before.  Some of France's best torpedo-men were swimming themselves into the heaving shorebreak, throwing themselves headfirst over the ledge in a suicidal search for judges points.  The waves were un-surfable here; overhead and with thick lips, detonating into little more than waist deep water.  These guys were revelling in it though.    

Every evening for the next two weeks, having spent the day surfing and driving the coast searching for good sandbanks, we'd get back and jump in at La Grav for a bodysurf.  Not with the intention of filling our wetsuits with sand ready for the following day, but to actually swim in the sea, engaging every limb and immersing ourselves fully in the Atlantic rather than floating on it.  An aquatic cool-down.

 The bodysurfer on the right, under the lip, is rolling down the face before trying to get barrelled.  Skills.

 The judges truck, with a rare make-able left in the background.

All images and the short movie by Mat Arney.

Handplane featured is the "Hand Baggage" model produced by Otter Surfboards.  Check them out here.

As usual, please take care when bodysurfing.  Be aware of your limitations and protect your head and neck.  Getting drilled head-first into the sand in shallow water can have awful consequences so exercise caution.

No Surfboard? No Problem.

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.