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| Twiggy's blog |
| 28 November 2008, 22:40 |
Twiggy's blog: "Well, a plan is a plan but you can never plan your way around mother
nature". I was all booked and ready to leave for the USA on the 01
December and had planned to have my life at home all sorted out by
then.Girlfriend, work and other responsibilities neatly packaged away
for the next three months.
Planned to jet straight onto the North Shore for the Eddie opening
ceremony and to ease into the Northern hemisphere winter. But lo and
behold up pops the best maps you could hope for this early in the
season and suddenly my life is thrown upside down because I have to
leave one week early and nothing is ready. But luckily I have a great
support base with good people I can rely on at work and an
understanding girlfriend who knows how to read swell charts so I get
my shit together and follow natures plan.
I hop on a plane in Durban on Wednesday and arrive in Half Moon Bay on
Thursday night, get a good nights sleep at Jeff Clarks house and this
morning everything falls into place. Randy Cone has my boards, Grant
Washburn has my wetsuits and we are all meeting in the car park within
the next hour or so to paddle out at perfect 15ft Mavericks. And
looking at the charts Mavericks is going to cook for at least four
days, peaking at 25ft+ on Sunday morning.
The plan which wasn't a plan has planned out and I'll let you know how
the waves where for the weekend on my next blog.....
See ya
Twig
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| Party time! |
| 28 November 2008, 13:03 |
Wow! What a jol. For those of you who came to the launch party last night - a huge THANK YOU! It was insane to have so many friends, family, surf industry folk, subscribers and surfers all there to check out the advanced copies of the mag and to party with us! It was an awesome evening - Thanks to Brandhouse and Harveyz for the tab (Shot Hackers!) and to everyone who came.
We'll be posting up a slideshow from last night later today.
To everyone else around the country who couldn't be there last night, John and I are going to be doing another roadtrip along the coastline and we'd love to hook up some similar get-togethers with as many of you BOMBsurf readers as we can. You'll all have your mags by this time next week, so if we're in your 'hood, drop us a line and we'll hook up or we'll hopefully see many of you in the water! We'd really love to know what you think of the mag and get feedback on it.
So we're are planning to have some similar BOMBsurf get-togethers in EL, JBAY and CT over the next 10 days (we'll let you know dates, just keep checking the site and next week's theBOMBsurfnews emailer) we're hoping they'll be mellower than last night or we might need liver transplants by the end of our roadtrip! Seriously, we'd love to meet as many of you in person at these events, so please pull in when we're in your town.
Later
Iain
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| Everyone hates Mondays |
| 24 November 2008, 19:49 |
Everyone hates Mondays. The start of the week, 5 whole days of graft stretched out in front of you like a torturous sentence...piles of work, meetings, deadlines, orders, the boss....sheez, it's no-wonder everyone hates Mondays. Well, today our Monday was nothing like the above scenario. While most people were getting stuck into their 9am meetings, John and I paddled out alone at our favourite South Coast point break. It was a glorious day. The air was clear, the water was a crystal clean, the wind was gentle and some little 2-3ft peaks were unravelling themselves down the point. We surfed for a few hours and it was so peaceful out there. We didn't see another human being the entire time we were out there. Sorry, no trying to rub it in (ahem) it was just ironic to think that most people were hating the Monday Blues while we were loving the fact that it was Monday and no-one else was around! I guess that's the trade off for working until stupid o'clock each night for the last week, getting the mag finished. My point is this...the next time you find yourself at your favourite spot on a perfect day with fun waves and no-one else around, savour each wave, and bank the euphoric feeling for the next Monday morning when the Boss is breathing down your neck. It'll get you through, till the next session.
We've had a great response to theBOMBsurf Mag launch party (if you've been living under a rock, click here for all the info) so get your Hawaiian shirts out the cupboard, practice your dance moves in the mirror and tell your Boss you're taking Friday off. Beers are on us.
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| The unscientific laws of wave magnetism |
| 23 November 2008, 23:03 |
| Some things you just can't explain. I have this one friend that I surf with, his names Ant. Every time we go missioning for waves we get skunked. I have another friend called Brendan, and every time we hook up for a surf, we score. Last night I missioned up the North Coast and stayed over at Ant's house with the express intention of getting up early and scoring some waves before the wind came up. We woke up at the crack of dawn and paddled out at our favourite little secret spot. The East was howling, the currents were all over the place, the banks were all at weird angles and generally it was a nightmare. We surfed for about 20 mins and got out, neither of us getting any waves for our troubles. So Ant cruises off to "do something more constructive" and I think, since I'm in the area, I'll go visit some family who happen to own a house right by the beach next to the place we've just surfed. About 2 hours later, we're sitting on the balcomy having morning tea, and I notice the wind has dropped, the swell is coming through clean, the sea has glassed off and it's starting to turn ON! At that exact moment my phone rings....it's Brendan "Bru I'm amped for a surf, maybe on the North Coast, whaddya reckon?" "Bru, I just happen to be up the Coast and it's looking good!" I reply. 40 minutes later we're out in the line-up, the sun on our backs, a tiny hint of wind, some clean 3-4ft sets and we were trading waves with Jess, a cool local guy and his buds. Like I said. Some things you just can't explain. |
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| Post deadline surfs again! |
| 20 November 2008, 23:05 |
The good news is we're back up to 2 surfs a day after a crazy deadline - Man, it feels good to get some routine going again!
So we're in the car park getting changed after surf no 2, when who do we see getting out of his cabbie and heding for the beach? Rick Bobby himself! I though my eyes were deceiving me, but there he was, in the flesh looking as relaxed as ever. Turns our Ricky is going to Hawaii on Saturday and was in town doing some admin, so he jumped in for a quick surf. For a split second I felt kind of embarassed because we've been pretty hard on 'ol Ricky Bobby on this website, specifically on the BMT rankings (he nailed down the bottom spot of "who just blew it" for like 3 weeks straight) and when I pointed this out to John he gave me a really good answer: "We'll always be supportive of our guys, but that doesn't mean we can't be critical of them when they don't perform."
Speaking of Hawaii, go and check this link immediately: http://www.thebombsurf.com/pages/71/north-shore-postcards
It's a really cool new feature on the site, a full slideshow from the North Shore by ASP photographer and Durban North local, Kelly Cestari with audio to go with each clip! Nice one KC.
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| Shark fishing and Sea Karma |
| 18 November 2008, 23:06 |
Every year I go shark fishing in the Transkei. Now, you gotta understand, I'm no fisherman, I just happened to go to a boarding school in Pietermaritzburg (that famous rugby school) and all my farmer friends are avid fishermen. So every year we go to the Transkei on a "shark fishin trip"...but we don't end up cathcing many sharks and in fact we don't end up doing too much fishing either. Which I'm kind of happy about to be honest. You see I have an irrational superstition I call "sea karma" and it basically goes like this: If I treat the sea and it's inhabitants well, I will recieve equal treatment in return. And since I'm in the sea A LOT I like to keep my sea karma credit nice and high.So, on these infamous trips I end up carrying the cooler box around, playing my guitar and talking trash on the rocks, while the farmers waste their time throwing bait into the Transkei brine.
With the rains we've had lately in KZN, the sea is a nice shade of ginger beer with lots of debris in it and it's that time of year when the bigger fish come to investigate the rivermouths and shallower waters.
I'm looking forward to the trip this year...looking forward to strumming some tunes and sipping on a cold one while listening to the endless stories of "tugs" "rises" "strikes." Yup. Gotta keep that credit high.
Iain
P.S Send us your stories. We want to hear them. They can be on fishing, surfing, the Transkei, the sea and it's inhabitants or anything else that you want to tell us. We'll post the best ones up here. mail us crew@thebombsurf.com.
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| Deadline nights |
| 17 November 2008, 23:10 |
It's 9 minutes past midnight. The mag was supposed to go to print on Friday. This is the 4th night in the last week John Mc, Jon Ivins, myself and the Mauritian Alien (don't ask) have been here after midnight. Our wives are dis-owning us, our kids have forgotton us and the dog barks threateningly at us when we get home in the small hours. It's not that we're lazy or slow or anything bad (all the time) and we've nearly sent the mag to print twice...but then at the last moment we've seen something we could do better, a caption we could re-write, a desing element we could improve on, a kick ass photo that lands in our inbox, a pull quote that smacks us between the eyes...and the process begins again. Well, it's finally done. We've finally done everything we possibly could to make the best mag ever and we know you're gonna love it. Despite us being a day or two behind schedule, the BOMBsurf mag will still reach you before the end of the month as promised.
If you haven't subscribed yet, do it now, because there are literally just a few subscriptions left...and there's NO other way to get the mag. Once that 1000th subscription comes in, that's it. You'll have to wait 3 more months for issue 2 in February. Thankfully, the next deadline is also 3 months away, so we can get to know our families again.
Iain
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| Sunday bliss |
| 16 November 2008, 23:11 |
Where else in the world can you get in your car on a Sunday afternoon, take a mellow 45 min drive from your house and paddle out at a rippable warm water right hand pointbreak and surf alone for an hour? I sometimes have to remind myself that as surfers living in SA we live in a kind of heaven. That said around about this time of year, every year, my thoughts start wandering to the North Shore of Hawaii. Hawaii is exactly 12 hrs behind us. When you fly there you are literally flying half way across the world. If you fly any further you start getting closer again. I lived there for two years and its difficult to describe the excitement of those early swells. There are a lot of South Africans on the North Shore this winter and with the internet what it is these days we can pretty much see what they’re up to on a daily basis. By all accounts they’re charging, lucky bastards!
John
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| Surfing for sanity |
| 15 November 2008, 23:14 |
In the midst of deadline chaos I had to take a break. My body and mind physically craved a surf, plus the reports had been filtering in. The bowls are GOING ORRF! As my head slipped further and further below the surface of deadline mania I realised that this was not just a fun surf I needed. This was physical and mental therapy! I quietly slipped out the door and down to the beach for some ‘therapy’.
Reaching the beach it was beautiful. The surf was cooking. The sun was shining, the pretty girls were sporting their bikinis. Only one problem. Everyone else had the same thought as me at exactly the same time. I kid you not, the most crowded the bowls have been this year, easily. Talk about out of the frying pan into the fire, eish! I dodged the crowd for half an hour before finally lucking into a BOMB. A little barrel, a couple of hooks and a close out re-entry. Running up the beach and back to work I was fixed! So here we go again until the early hours. Damn that mag better be worth it!
John
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| Surf till I'm 60 |
| 15 November 2008, 23:12 |
I was standing in the queue at the ATM this morning at La Lucia Mall (Note to self: Never let the Missus send you to the Mall on a Saturday morning. Ever) and this ballie is standing in front of me. I notice he's wearing a surf branded tee, walkshorts and slops. This other ballie comes over and greets him. They're obviously long lost pals. "Are you 60 yet? " the one asks. "Ja, just had my 60th the other day," his mate replies." The they start comparing notes on all the people they know and it turns out a whole bunch of them are dead. Heavy. The conversation got more and more morbid, talking about how bad it was getting old and so on....I felt depressed for them until the guy wearing the surf gear piped up, "You know, that's why I try surf every day. You never know when it's your time."
I smiled, as they shook hands and went on their way. I'm gonna try surf every day until I'm 60.
Iain
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| Deon |
| 12 November 2008, 23:17 |
Every now and then you connect with an individual that just blows you away with their positive energy. Today that person was Deon Bing. I met Deon a couple of years ago at a contest in CT. I can’t remember what it was but he was instrumental in making it tick. Anyway to cut a long story short we connected again today because I want him to do a piece for the mag. “No worries!” was his response. Hey we go to print on Friday, so you have to understand the magnitude of what he is committing to. We shot the breeze a bit and compared notes the way surfers do when they haven’t spoken for a while. “Been getting any waves lately, what you riding, etc?” Turns out Deon’s been loving life on his fish and we’ve got the pic to prove it! I guess the message is simple what ever you ride if it gets you stoked that’s the whole point. So if you are battling through the same old same old why not try a Fish or a long board, go bodysurfing, just take the plunge and broaden your perspective, who knows you could be feeling like that stoked grom as a result.
Deon Bing...gone fishing.
John
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| Joburg |
| 10 November 2008, 23:18 |
I love Joburg. And I hate Joburg. I hate the mission - flying, car rental, traffic, booking meetings, traffic, no ocean and more traffic. But I love the people. They move fast, they make decisions and they get shit done. Tonight I went to the launch of NIKE SB and 6.0 - for those of you in the know, Nike SB is the core skate-only arm of the global footwear giant and Nike 6.0 (pronounced six-o) is the brand focusing on the 6 main boardsports surf, wake, moto-x, bmx, snow and skate.
The Joburg usual suspects were all there - Bod from Session, AD from Familia, Gavin and Quin from Boogaloos and a host of others. It was really cool listening to the stories behind the brand and looking at the plans for the roll out here in SA. Nike peolpe are really passionate about their brand and they guy who presented to us, David, was a really passionate guy, who told some rad stories and gave me a whole new insight into the inspiration behind each shoe. Almost makes me want to become a sneaker-freak!
The other cool thing is that they announced that Adrian Day (Familia Bossman and general skate Godfather in SA for those of you who don't know of him) is going to be running NIKE SB and Jevon le Roux (from Hurley SA) is going to be in charge of NIKE 6.0, so rest assured skaters and surfers in SA are getting looked after by 2 seriously clued up cats, both core skaters and surfer themselves. Good luck ous, can't wait to see what you guys get up to with the famous swoosh brand behind you!
It was also really cool listening to the Joburgers talk about their businesses. Talk about the industry and how things are moving up here. It's refreshing to hear all the positive vibes and to sink some beers with a kindred spirit of our sidewalk skating bretheren.
David, from Nike, chatting to the select few at the launch while the guys checked out the goods!
Iain.
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| One of those good days... |
| 9 November 2008, 23:19 |
I awoke to a call from a guy who’s judgement I respect. “Bru xxxxx spot is going off...” I jumped out of bed and set of for the spot in question. We’ve all had that magic tip off and ended up scoring and I hoped today would be one of those days. I got to the spot in question to find it deserted. Puzzled I had a closer look and it looked pretty good. Of course I wondered why there was no one on it, but with the onshore imminent I didn’t mess around and decided to hit it. Paddling out I realised it was a lot heavier than I initially thought. It was only 4-5 ft high, but around 4-6ft wide and going seriously below sea level. Maybe 2 in 10 drops were makeable, but every wave was spitting. For an hour I got smashed around and seriously pummelled. After one particularly savage beating I emerged gasping out the back only to see a shark hit a fish 10 meters away. Adrenaline now in full turbo mode I scratched down the face of a brute of a wave. I have no idea how I made the drop, pulled into the barrel and set my line. The wave sucked out so hard I actually felt I was riding downhill in the tube. The wave spat so hard it stung my head. I proned in, stoked out of my mind on an absolute high. Then I went to work and channelled that stoke into the making of the mag. I think its going to be a cracker!
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| Rock Star Sam |
| 6 November 2008, 23:20 |
A few blog entries ago I introduced Jon and Patrick, our designer and our web guru. Both occasional surfers. Yesterday I took our accountant surfing. It was howling east, the bluebottles were everywhere, the bowls were crunching onto the sandbank and it was choppy as hell. Probably the most miserable conditions of the year. Yet he paddled out with us on my borrowed 6'6, took a few on the head, got washed into the pier, stung by bluebottles, swallowed a whole lot of water and got thrashed until he had sand coming out of every orifice.
He didn't last long, but I was proud of him for at least trying :) Nice one Geoff!
Another guy who has been trying really hard to improve his surfing is Fox sales guy, Sam Edwards. He's out most mornings either on his long board or more recently his fish or short board. He sent us these photo's of himself charging the big swell we had in September.
What I like most about these images has nothing to do with the actual pictures themselves, though they are impressive indeed, but rather the labels that Sam gave to them. The one he called "Sam1" and the other he called.....wait for it...."Rock Star".
Rock Star Sam on his stage.
Same wave, same rock star. Pic by Mark Gardner.
Iain.
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| theBOMBsurf - one month old |
| 5 November 2008, 23:22 |
It's been just over a month since theBOMbsurf.com was launched and I must say, it's been a wild ride so far! Thanks to you, the users of the site, we've far exceeded our initial "launch month" goals. So much has happened in the last month that it feels like we've been doing this for ages! It's been great fun....but the best is yet to come. We are putting the finishing touches on the very 1st ever "theBOMBsurf" publication and it is looking beautiful! If you haven't subscribed yet, click here, to get it sent to your postbox absolutely free. You better hurry, 'cos there's just a few subscriptions left for the initial 1000 mags that we are printing. If you miss the first 1000, you'll have to wait till issue 2 comes out in Feb 09.
The most exciting thing for me is to see how large the format of the mag is. I've been playing out the proofs of the finished pages and the spreads are really huge! It's insane. The paper stock is also really thick and beautiful (we checked out some samples yesterday!) and at 120pages of oversized mag in your hands, we know all you folks out there are gonna be blown away.
The other really exciting thing is to see the contributions coming in....we have some really well respected members of the surfing community lending their pen to theBOMBsurf's 1st issue and it's so inspiring reading their stories, advice and insights into our surfing world..
Iain
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| Shit happens |
| 4 November 2008, 23:23 |
Something really sh%t happened to us today. We were driving down the N3 on the way back into Durban after a meeting with the printing company that's gonna print the mag, when all of a sudden the cars in front of us start slamming on their brakes. We're in the fast lane and quickly cars start weaving and dodging as the brakes hit rubber. John's on the phone next to me yacking away when this all goes down. What on earth could bring 2 lanes of traffic to a dead stop, I thought as I couldn't see any cars that had crashed or anything. As I weaved between the stationary car in the fast lane and the stationary car in the middle l saw it: A guy lying face down, abosuletly motionless on the tarmac - that's not a position anyone who's remotely alive lies in.. My blood ran cold and I felt sick to my very core.
"Darja, I'll call you back," John stammered as he hung up on her. We looked at each other and didn't say anything as the traffic trickled out of the bottle neck and picked up speed again. In my rearview mirror, I glimpsed a crowd of people gathering and cars pulling in to try to protect the body from getting run over by cars still speeding along the highway. The only thing we could think of is that this guy had fallen off the back of a bakkie as there wasn't a car with a dent or anything nearby.
We had a hectic day planned, but we drove straigh down the coast and just surfed for like 2 straight hours. It was good therapy, but as I write this I can't help but just thank God for every day we get to be healthy, surf, be with out friends and family...'cos it can all change so quickly.
If you're reading this tonight, go surf the dawnie tomorrow. If you're reading this at work, go surfing this lunchtime. No excuses.
Iain
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| Spider |
| 3 November 2008, 23:24 |
I’ve known Spider Murphy since I was 9. I bought my first surfboard from him 27 years ago. Since then I can’t count the number of boards he has made for me or the number of times he has been a positive influence in my life regardless of whether I’m riding his boards or not. Standing in his burnt out shaping bay after the devastating fire that burned through their factory over the weekend Spider was philosophical. “When you drive through the Transkei you can see the green grass that grows after the burn... We’ll find a way to turn this into a positive.” BANG! Another life lesson right there. Hell I might just order a new Safari, just to see what the evergreen Spider has up his sleeve for this summer...
John
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| Sunday arvo peaks |
| 2 November 2008, 23:25 |
Sunday arvo session in Durban are usually uncrowded, but with the bowls and the shoreys delivering the way they have recently and with the onset of summer it seems like things have been getting a bit more crowded than usual. This Sunday I cruised down for my customary ‘late one’ to find the North Beach bowl that has been cooking all week choked with all kinds of flotsam and driftsam. Wandering down the beach towards New Pier I bumped into Dale Bamford. “it’s on, right out there.” he gestured pointing to the mixture of A-Frame peaks exploding along the shoreline. New Pier never has A-Frame peaks. It’s a long perfect wall or a short bowl, but never A-Frame peaks. With a change in mindset I paddled out soon to be joined by Steve Price and Derek Girven. What waves we had! 100m away oblivious sat a crew of surfers wondering what the big deal about the North Beach bowl was. That’s summer surfing in Durban for you. Secret spots hidden in plane daylight, that turn on at just the slightest tweak of the tide.
John
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