theBOMBsurf blog

Twiggy's Blog : No. 6 – Snow.

Ok, so it sounded easy, if there's no waves and no wind, go snowboarding...mmmm. Easy in theory but not so in practice because invariably you will need to choose what the best of the three options will be.

So there I was sitting in my good friend Jeff "Clever" Harrisons house looking at a very large swell that appears to be coming from too much of a Northerly direction to be any good at Mavericks, but as you know, you never really know!!

It's obvious that this swell is coming with more than enough wind but with probably too much weather making kiteboarding unpleasant and not very good. On the other hand I have just picked up an amazing sponsorship deal from Cabrinha and have some awesome new kites I need to try out.

The third option is to head for the snow and this looks like the call, it's been dumping for a few days and the report is more snow with periodical blue skies or blue bird days. So I pull the trigger, load the van, pick up Kate from the airport and head for Tahoe.

Holding thumbs the whole way that Mavericks is shitty....Na, Frank Solomon has been here for almost a month without even seeing the place break so I really hope he gets a day out there. Just not to good you know...ha ha

We are staying in Tahoe with another friend, Ryan Seelbach and we follow him up on what was supposed to be a three hour drive. It takes us six in the most radical driving conditions ever. Narrow roads in the middle of a blizzard, traffic with 100km traffic jams because it's the day before Christmas, snow chains in the dark and eventually zero visibility mountain terrain. Heavy!!

When we wake up in the morning it's all worth it, the cars are 2ft deep in powder and the slopes are empty because it's Christmas day...Happy Happy.

Thanks to Mogwai and his foray into Switzerland to grow and sell Potpori in the late 90's I can hold my own on the mountain and for the next three days manage to follow some top locals at Squaw Valley into some amazing powder runs.

So now we have the age old question. Is one extreme sport as good as the next or for this argument is a perfect day of snowboarding as good as a perfect day of surfing?

I believe so, the feeling you get from a perfect run in waist deep powder is just as refreshing and exhilarating as a mindless barrel. Wow, big call but yes I believe it is!!

But after three days, all the powder has been used up and the weathers warming up so it's back to San Francisco for some nice clean offshore waves at Ocean Beach....I hope?

See ya
Twig

Blog 5 – California

Hey I'm back and it's been quite a week.

It started with a 6 hour flight back from Hawaii to LAX where Greg Long picked me up and drove me down to San Clemente which is a small town in the heart of Orange County and also home to the famous Trestles surf spot.

San Clemente is an awesome little town and it's a great place to wind down after surfing, eat some good food at the assortment of restaurants and have a few drinks at the bars that seem to appear at every corner. So I spent a few days doing just that and also getting my new home sorted out.

When I say home I mean my Ford van which we spent a few days decking out with a bed, a board rack, wetsuit storage, clothes cupboards, fridge, internet access and just about everything else I need to survive for the next few months scouring the California coast for waves.

Just the full surf wagon which for me is a dream come true and something that I have wanted to own for a long time. Suddenly there I am pulling out of Greg's driveway and heading on a slow drive up the coast towards San Francisco where I will meet Kate as she flies in early next week.

First stop is Los Angeles where a good friend, long time scelm and now big shot Hollywood bar owner Reg Macdonald lives. It's always fun to drop in on Reg for a few days and check out basically one of the craziest cities in the world.

I guess that in Roman times it would have been important to go and check out Rome and such is Los Angeles right now. LA is a melting pot of money, power, sex, drugs, guns and just about every other type of heinous act out there, a vibrant modern day city in all its decaying glory and such a good place to go for a short visit.

But at the end of a few days I just feel so thankful to live in South Africa with all its positive energy and pure spirit. I've been here to long and it's time to get out , it's been snowing cats and dogs the past week so I've scrounged up some snowboard gear from a bunch of different friends and I'm heading to San Francisco, loaded with surf, snow and kite gear.

The stitches are out, the swell maps are looking better and we should get a few sessions at Mavericks but if not Tahoe is a few hours' drive inland and powder is almost better then a great day of surfing?

Stay tuned....

See ya
Twig

Hawaii Part 2

Hey I'm back and in my previous blog I mentioned the swell maps where looking bad for everywhere and that I might go off to LA or Maui. That just shows you how much I know about swell in Hawaii because the waves kept cooking right up until Friday when the Kona winds finally came up and the rain started.

But I guess that's why I'm here, to surf at and learn about the home of surfing and I have been doing just that. Sunset, Jockos and OTW have been my haunts this week and it really has been good. Light offshores on a medium size swell with warm water and less and less crowded as guys get more and more surfed out. It's amazing what a long term swell does for a crowded area.

At the same time the Billabong Pipeline Masters has been on and it's been awesome to post up at the Billabong house at OTW and watch the best barrel riders in the world go head to head in flawless Pipe and Backdoor. Jamie O, Parko, Jon Jon Florence and the eventual winner Mr Slater have been my picks and between them have the place wired. It's humbling and motivating to see how well barrels can actually be surfed.

So my routine was set, early surf at a more obscure spot, then head down and watch some heats followed by some midday barrels at OTW and then some more heats and a few beers in the afternoon...Paradise?

Paradise until I got dropped in on at OTW on Thursday morning while in the barrel and my fin hits me in the arm causing a laceration that requires 12 stitches and costs a whopping U$ 1500-00 that is..... Oh well, I guess you need to pay the band every now and then.

Luckily the maps do really look bad for the next week or so and that's about the same amount of time I have to stay out of the water, and after seeing some of the injuries from the season over here I can honestly count myself fortunate it wasn't something worse.

So that's me for the North Shore for a while, I have some things I need to sort out on the mainland and my girl Kate is coming over next weekend so I'm out of here and back to the cold of California and hopefully some more big waves at places like Todos, Cortez or even up in Oregon.

If you are not getting tired of my ramblings I'll keep you informed.

See ya
Twig

Twig - Blog No3 – Hawaii

Hawaii, Hawaii, Hawaii....what does it mean to you as a surfer?

Big waves, shallow reefs, heavy locals and some great surfing is what it means to me and funnily enough that's exactly what I've got this past week

But there's something more isn't there?

The Northern Hemisphere storms have literally been pumping swell into this little hot bed of offshore reefs for the past six days and I've had the pleasure of surfing some of those swells along the entire length of the fabled 7 Mile stretch that is known as the North Shore . From Haleiwa in the north to V-land in the south it's been pumping 6 - 15ft every day since I arrived.

My first session after Mavericks was on Tuesday at the offshore reef know as Phantoms and it was great to be able to wind down on a 15ft outer reef that although testing isn't nearly as heavy and intimidating as Mavericks. I paddled out on a brand new 8'0" Jeff Bushman surfboard which was one of four he made up for me and soon discovered that I was way under gunned compared to what the other guys in the line-up where using. Anything from a 9'6" – 11'0"!! I managed to catch a few until Evan Slater paddled out and told me I could borrow a bigger board off him. From there we surfed for about 5 hours and shared some big, clean drops.

I mentioned my boards already but it's important to stress just how important equipment is in Hawaii and I am so fortunate to have been given four of the best surfboards I could possibly have hoped for over here by a master shaper from the North Shore. Tuesday I was given a 7'0" for Backdoor/ OTW and Haleiwa and an 8'0" for Sunset and on Wednesday I got a 9'0" for the Bay and a 9'6" for the Outer reefs.

These boards are all made under the Country Feeling label which is owned by my Aunt Cheron Kraak and they are all organically produced using hemp cloth, sun drying resin and soy blanks. They are truly beautiful works of art and it's an inspiration to be able to surf on them.

The next day was smaller and all about Backdoor / OTW, and as we all know this is the most crowded surf zone on earth. I paddled out, surfed for about 4 hours and managed to catch two waves, one of which was a close-out and the other was a nice barrel. What a freak show, guys just charging these shallow reefs with total disregard for their bodies or their equipment, dropping in, fighting, swearing and shouting at each other in between some of the best surfing you will ever witness. I vowed never to surf the place again....ha ha

Thursday dawned crisp and beautiful with a light trade wind fanning the palms and I could feel it was going to be a special day; it was the Eddie ceremony that I have waited my whole surfing life to be a part of. The swell was back up, we went for surf at Haleiwa which was 8ft and cooking and then went down to the Wiamea valley.

The ceremony itself was amazing, just imagine being surrounded by 40 of the best surfers in the world while a native Hawaiian prays and gives thanks to Mother Nature for her gifts while thousands of onlookers take your picture and marvel at the likes of Kelly Slater, Brock Little, Darrick Doerner and Tom Carrol.

Twiggy: "I really don't know what to say about what has transpired since my last blog but let's just say the plan has definitely worked out!"

The first session at Mavericks on Friday wasn't quite 15ft but was a great warm-up for me after spending two days on airplanes and in airports. I got to test my new board, a 9'0" Jeff Clark that was developed off an idea we have been talking about for some time which is to make our boards shorter and thicker so we can still catch the waves fairly easily but once we are up and riding have more control and are able to really surf waves over 15ft. Straight away I could tell that this was a magic board.

Saturday dawned with thick fog and a huge buoy report reading 17ft @ 25 seconds and we had to wait until 12pm before we could get out of the harbour and out to the line-up and when we finally did we were confronted with some of the heaviest waves I have ever surfed. What a 25 second reading does is make the waves so much thicker and although they don't stand up as tall they are much more dangerous and testing then smaller period swells.  We surfed for about four hours before the fog moved back in and I honestly feel that we were lucky that no one died. Greg Long came close when he got clipped by the second section, forced into the "hole" which burst his ear drum and held him down for two waves....

Sunday however dawned clear and crisp with a light offshore and some of the most perfect big waves I have ever seen, 20-25ft and not a drop of water out of place. We surfed ourselves sick for 8 hours with short rests on Rob Browns boat ,just rolling the dice on these massive bowls of pure Mavericks power.

Some of the waves ridden where amazing and I was fortunate to witness first hand another major progression in big wave surfing. Guys like Skindog , Nathan Fletcher, Grant Washburn, Josh Loya, Anthony Tashink and Rusty Long just pushing the limits of what is possible in waves of this size. For me to be able to be there and learn from these guys and bring that knowledge back to South Africa is what makes surfing such a great sport.....camaraderie personified!!

We could have had a few waves on Monday but unfortunately the beer and tequila flowed a little too briskly on Sunday night at the famous Half Moon Bay Brewery, amongst stories of the weekend and we all woke up with sore bodies and even worse heads.

So now I am off to Hawaii tonight for the Eddie ceremony on Thursday and there looks like some good swells for over there for the upcoming week, so I'll let you know how it goes on my next blog.

See ya
Twig