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.

Come Ply With Me

"I don't know of anything so exciting as getting a perfect surf. Timing one's shoot off from the waves, and riding along on the crest and coming far inshore.  By jove!"

John Betjemen

The first Sunday in September each year is really rather special around these parts, and today was no exception.  The World Bellyboarding Championships is a wonderfully "British" event; a competition celebrating traditional wooden prone surf riding (judged primarily on smiles and length of ride) with the air of a vintage village fête.  Wetsuits are definitely not allowed, the Junior category is for the under-60s and the cake bake-off is as hotly contested as the surfing.  It's a day rich in bent plywood and cups of tea.

The Polzeath contingent; my former housemate Matt and Andy Cameron, who runs bellyboard company Dick Pearce and Friends.

Today I took three photos.  Last year I took about a thousand.  I had been commissioned by Coast magazine to document the champs and the article that I produced appeared in the September issue this year, which because of their slightly funny publication schedule was on newsagents shelves for the duration of August and has recently been replaced by the October issue.  It was great fun shooting the 2013 event and having an excuse to really research the fascinating history of prone surf riding in the UK - I geek out pretty hard on the history of surfing, vintage surf-craft and stuff made from wood - as well as getting to sit down and chat with so many of the people involved in the champs.   

The Expression Session

This year I entered again and had a thoroughly enjoyable and really quiet uncompetitive ten minute heat as the high tide started to push up into the cove.  The water was warm and I wore a pair of mid-century US navy seal canvas swim shorts in keeping with the spirit of the event.  I have no idea how I did.  I don't think any of the entrants outside of the podium finishers do, and most probably don't care.  It's not really about the competition, you see, but more about sharing the enjoyment of wading out to waist depth with a group of smiling folk (whose ages probably span 44 years), turning around and pushing off to ride a wave back towards shore on a flat piece of wood - the design of which hasn't really changed much in more than fifty years.  

These are some of my favourite images, shot at the World Bellyboarding Championships over the past few years.  They were all shot on 35mm film and I like them because, to me, they are the ones that really capture the spirit of the event.  I hope that some of you have had a chance to pick up a copy of Coast and check out the article that I produced (and that you enjoyed it!), and I hope to see some of you at Chapel Porth on the first Sunday of September next year with a thermos of tea in one hand and a bent plywood bellyboard in the other.

Jenni is the sister of the event's founder, Chris Ryan.  Chris (who works for the National Trust who own the beach) and local head lifeguard Martyn Ward held the first competition to celebrate the life of regular visitor and surf-riding enthusiast Arthur Traveller.

Photographer and bellyboard revivalist John Isaac, leaning on his Model A Ford.

Sally Parkin of the Original Surfboard Company (who very kindly lent me a lovely board to compete on this year) and John Isaac, next to the Museum of British Surfing's old van.

Chapel Porth

The Starter's Claxon

The opening spread of the article that I produced for the September issue of Coast magazine.

It was great to see so many competitors this year riding bellyboards that they'd made themselves whilst attending a one-day "Build-Your-Own" workshop at Otter Surfboards.  Click on the photo to see the short video, and click here to find out more about how you can make your own bellyboard to carry you to victory at next year's event.

Upcycling

“So I don’t think that I like grease and sparks quite as much as I like knitting and baking” Kate said as she handed over a box containing the various pieces of her vintage ladies shopper bike.  She’d found the dilapidated Hercules Balmoral online and proceeded to disassemble and strip the entire bike with the intention of refurbishing it, but now it looked like the task of reassembly was going to fall to me.  I took the opportunity to break down and rebuild my own bike, which had been my Dad’s mountain bike that he used to ride alongside me when I was a child, and come the start of the summer we had two good-as-new bicycles.  Her bike looked classic in black with a brown Brookes saddle and a wicker basket; mine looked like Frankenbike in green and black, with various boxes bolted on and a rack to hold my surfboard hanging off one side.

Kate and I used to live an hour's drive apart, she on the south coast of Cornwall and me about 45 miles away on the north coast.  It seemed like a nice idea for our first roll out last summer to be an overnight bicycle camping trip leaving from my home and travelling to hers, pedalling the coast roads and the cycle trails and stopping off at beaches along the way.  We’d upcycled our bicycles and we upcycled an awful lot of steep hills as we wound our way down the Cornish coast.  What follows is a photographic journal of our trip, shot entirely on 35mm film by Kate and myself:

We should've caught the ferry at high tide.

Long hills and lots of luggage.

Coasting downhill to the beach.

The Upcycling chalkboard.

Kate checking out the distance to our campsite, just the other side of that far headland.

Cyclo-shortcuts to avoid the holiday traffic. 

 Camp.

Washing the road off with a quick sunset bellyboard session. 

Fuel. 

We stopped at backroad farm-stalls to buy fruit and lunch provisions. 

 Two and a half foot at eight seconds with a light nor-westerly wind.  I probably needn't have bothered hauling my surfboard along with me if I'm honest.

A polite reminder to myself for all of the "up" bits.

Can you overflow a bike?

It turns out that Kate's house sits at quite some elevation.

The Last Lane.

The Finish Line.

A big thanks to the team at Babes&Bikes in Wadebridge for sorting out our gears and brakes (and giving my probably quite questionable workmanship the necessary once-over) before we set off on our journey, and to various colleagues of ours for the help and advice that they gave whilst ridiculing how heavy I'd made my bike.

Paipo-a-Go-Go

Me, a big baked bean and some deep-winter wedges.

What with it having been a long weekend here in the UK and many other countries, I should really have written this post a week ago so that the classic long weekend of DIY hammering and sawing could be channeled into producing one of these wonderful little surf craft.  But I've just moved house and spent the last few weeks without internet access, so now the challenge is for you to make one of these in two days instead of three next weekend…

But just what is it?

Dan Crockett on an Otter paipo.

When Captain James Cook dropped anchor in a Hawaiian bay in 1778 he witnessed many of the locals riding waves lying down on wooden boards.  These basic wave riding craft are called paipos (pronounced pipe-oh) and the name is derived from the Hawaiian "Pae Po'o" which means "to surf headfirst".  Generally around 3 feet long, the paipo is the little brother of larger finless Hawaiian designs such as the alaia and olo, the alaia having experienced a resurrection of sorts over the past decade in alternative surf-craft circles.  Travellers to and from the Hawaiian islands at the turn of the last century exported the paipo and it was adapted at various coastal locations around the world, becoming known most commonly as a "bellyboard".  In the 1970's Tom Morey introduced the boogie board and foam bodyboards instantly overshadowed the traditional paipo, with just a few small pockets of traditionalists keeping the flame burning - mostly in Hawaii.

I made my paipo a few years ago, and it's the sort of board that sits in my quiver waiting for a time when I've surfed enough good waves on my regular stick to make heading out on something a little different not seem like much of a risk to my monthly wave-count.  I managed to get hold of a 3'6" long paulownia kitchen worktop off-cut from a friend (the same wood that the majority of alaias are made from) and wondered for a while what I could make with it.  The worktop was made from a number of planks of varying widths, all glued together.  I cut these apart, trimmed them to uniform widths and then glued them back together with thin strips of a random hardwood (that I had some strips of lying around my workshop) sandwiched in between them.  I planed down the hardwood stringers and then drew out a template for my paipo.  It looked like a giant baked bean.  Once I'd cut out the shape of the board I shaped the rails using a small block plane (turned down at the tail, up at the nose and 50/50 through the middle section) with the board clamped against a workbench.  Because I have a bit of a thing for not wasting off-cuts I cut a band to go around nose on the deck, using the same template, and once it was glued in place I routed a groove into it to act as a hand-grip.  The whole thing was sanded smooth and then had a few coats of linseed oil to seal it before being taken for a splash in the sea.  All up it was a fun way to spend some time and I came out the other side with a new surfboard, of sorts.  It takes the bare minimum of tools (a pencil, saw, a few sash-cramps, glue, a block plane and abrasive paper) if you want to try making one yourself.  Essentially it's just a wooden bodyboard which makes it the ideal choice for shorebreaks, but it's also great just to run in with for a quick half hour in summer to catch a few waves and ride some whitewater back towards the beach.  It depends how seriously you take your surfing, I guess.  If you're open to different ways of experiencing waves though then I would definitely recommend sliding in on a few head first.

Ride anything: wave-wise and board-wise.

Check out the stoke that the crew at The Paipo Society have for these things, and keep your eyes peeled for the next Approaching Lines Slyder Cup event - celebrating finless surfing in all of it's many forms.

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.