Excuses, Excuses

I have an apology to make to those of you who are dedicated readers of this blog, because over the past couple of months the regularity of my posts (which for over five years went out almost every Sunday) has wobbled somewhat.  The reason is that for a little over a year now I have been transforming the way that I work and building a business beyond my freelance work, and for the past nine months or so this project has often taken precedence - resulting in the frequency of my postings to An Tor Orth An Mor becoming a little erratic.  So, without further ado, let me introduce you all to Hailer; you can hold Hailer entirely responsible for the disruption to your Sunday evening browsing.

Hailer is a difficult entity for me to label easily, but it is essentially in the business of storytelling.  You could pin such labels as "content marketing studio", "digital marketing agency" or "brand growth consultancy" on it, and all are equally valid definitions and yet each one on its own doesn't adequately describe what Hailer does.  What Hailer does is craft the stories and imagery that define brands, grow followings and improve performance.  If you're interested in a more concise explanation and taking a look at the various client case studies then please head over and check out www.hailer.media, otherwise I'll just be repeating myself in this post.  

The development of Hailer isn't the death knell for An Tor Orth An Mor, just a separation of my personal and freelance photographic work from the content that I produce regularly for a number of brands and businesses.  I intend to return to producing regular posts for this blog and am developing a new home for it (watch this space), whilst Hailer's "notebook" blog will feature syndicated client work and news.  If you like what you see on the website then may I suggest you give Hailer a follow on your social media platform of choice (instagram, facebook or twitter) so that you can keep getting more of the same.

Here's just a tiny taster...

Sharing adventures on the Cornish Coast with Cornish Rock Tors

Ongoing brand management and development for wooden surfboard makers Otter Surfboards

 Building an online surf magazine with an international following for Surf Simply

  

Volume Control

Surfboards are incredibly complicated works of craftsmanship, of that there is no doubt.  They're three dimensional shapes comprised of varying and complex parabolic curves which are meant to carry a human being across the face of a curved fluid surface and change direction on a whim.  They have to provide optimum hydrodynamic performance in a range of conditions.  We’re all different, our surfboards are all different, and the waves that we surf are all different, every single last one of them.

So why, when it comes to measuring the dimensions of these non-comformist sculptures, do we still revert to the incredibly basic dimensional equation of length x width x thickness?  Is there not more to it than that?

This week I had a piece published by The Inertia which examines the language of surfboard design and presents an argument for adding a fourth dimension onto the scribbled pencil statistics that straddle the stringer of our surfboards: volume.  The piece features incredibly insightful contributions on the topic from the coaches at the Surf Simply resort in Costa Rica and from Nick Blair of Joistik Surfboards in Sydney, Australia, for which I'm incredibly grateful.

If you've got even a passing interest in how your surfboard works and the thought processes and design principles that went into it, then hopefully you will find this article of some interest.  As far as I'm concerned, the more that we all know about our surfboards, the better.

Click here to check it out.  I hope that you like it.

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.

France: Dix Points!

Hurricane swells; sand dunes with wooden boardwalks; the smell of pine trees; croissants; short hollow rights; long reeling lefts; cafe au lait; offshore mornings; cheese; red wine; baguettes; bodysurfing the shorebreak; not being allowed in E.Leclerc without shoes on; citroen meharis; sand in your wetsuit; paddling (a lot); bicycles; barrels.

J'adore le Sud-Ouest de la France en septembre!

I hitched a ride down through France with my friends from Surf Simply in Costa Rica who're out here for the next five weeks hosting a series of week long, all inclusive residential surfing courses.  We've spent this past week driving the coast "checking the sandbars" ready for their first guests who arrived today, and I've been babysitting a funny small dog in-between surfs and shooting photos.  They're fully booked apart from the final week, October 13th-20th, which still has some space.  If you like the idea of being driven around to go surfing, getting some great video coaching and then returning to an amazing house full of incredible surf art to a dinner prepared by a private chef, then e-mail: kerianne@surfsimply.com

Quiver Me Timbers

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.

Explore Your Own Backyard: Part 3

Up the coast, shot early one morning by Harry Knight.

Alex, on our regular am routine.

"How far d'ya reckon it is?" Down the coast.

Alex reaping the rewards of looking around the corner, shot by Nosara Shack.

Sunday arvo, down the coast.

For my friends at Surf Simply out on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, there really isn't much of a need to explore their back yard because their front yard is so damn good. The beach where they live and work is a long expanse of sand with numerous peaks along its length, more than enough to spread out all of the surfers there so that you can surf with just your friends. When I worked out there (Ru and Gem have employed a few of us for varying lengths of time over the years) Alex and I would get up when the howler monkeys started roaring in the dark every morning and ride down to the beach to get an early surf, then start work in wet boardshorts.

But every now and then we'd all get up a little earlier, throw down a coffee, water and banana (Ru's dawny routine of wake-up, hydrate, energy) and straddle the quad-bikes to go surf someplace where we'd not only be the first ones in the sea, but we'd be the only ones in the sea.

The best of the backyard breaks was a twenty minute quad ride away in the dry season (before the rivers became impassable due to rains). We'd unload the boards and carry them across the rope bridges then tentatively ease the bikes over the bridges, pulling back the cables to get the handlebars past. There are three rivers to cross and it's a hassle but there are heaps of crocs in the rivers. And it's worth it when you get to the beach; a remote turtle sanctuary with a board-buckling beachbreak to wake you up.

North or South, every now and then we'd climb aboard one of the quad-bikes and go looking; guaging the paddle to off-shore reefs or trying to figure the optimum swell direction for nearby coves. The crew currently out there are still doing it, exploring safe in the knowledge that their fall back option of surfing out front is still the sort of surf spot that we're all doodling in the margins of our notebooks.

Go take a look around that corner and see what you find.