Over to DRIFT

I've decided that it doesn't make any sense to have two different blogs in English and as I'm VERY happy with Drift I've decided to let this blog die.

So if you want to follow my ramblings in English, you'll find me HERE. I hope to see you there!!

S.M.A.S.H. @ Wallako

Do not miss it if you are around!!!

Where were you on September the 4th?

Artist Pablo Ugartetxea was somewhere on the Mediterranean Coast and took these snaps of a couple of local surfers having the best waves in a while.

Drifting (2)

If you want to read the story behind this two pictures -or the one I posted last Friday - click HERE.

Good banks...

...somewhere north of Hossegor. Picture taken the other day after a 2h session:

Drifting

But not drifting away. Or at least not just yet. While I keep working on my new blog that will, eventually, replace this one in the future, I've managed to convince the nice people at Drift to let me post (in English) on their site. Here's a direct link to my first post. I hope you enjoy it.

Back @ home

Just back from two weeks tramping the NW coast of Spain in the van. We had good waves, nice beaches, amazing food and spent quality time with some friends. Now back to work on several projects.

Fall is right around the corner and that means the best time of the year in terms of waves and weather. Let’s keep our fingers crossed!

A shot from the very first day of our trip.

And a shot from the very last day of our trip. Enough said!!

Last week’s highlights

Hossegor on Thursday morning. Courtesy of Jeff Ruiz.

-meeting Tyler & Jennifer and surfing with them at Guéthary and taking them out for tapas around Donosti. Glad to meet you guys.

-surfing for my very first time a wave I had heard quite a lot but never surfed before. It’s a reefbreak, not too far from home and it’s more of a winter wave (requires big swells), but it worked on Wednesday (on-shore) and now I know I’ll get there more often.

-trying my Bing Synchronizer as a quad. It works much better than as a bonzer in “not so fast and hollow” waves, and can provide for a good alternative until my new quad is ready as an everyday board.

-checking the forecast and seeing that we might be in for a whole week of waves and light winds.

Stoked.

Kurungabaa... THANKS!!!

It was a huge honor already to be invited to submit one of my stories (the English version of Dino’s Left) to a publication I admire as much as Kurungabaa. But when I saw my name next to Drew Kampion, Nick Carroll or Jamie Brisick (who I met for the first time recently) among other notable writers I had to wonder: can it get any better? Stoked!

A little break

Yes, that's what I'm taking right now; pheeeeeew!!! Since my last post (a month and a half ago) I've been very busy first with THIS, and then with THIS. And right now I'm working on THIS one (due in a month's time). AMSTEL asked us to run their surf campaing this summer -first time they ever go into surfing, at least here in Spain- and we are stoked to be organizing some stuff for them within long stablished events as the Cosmic Children of the Festival Internacional de Longboard de Salinas...

In between all this the new 3sesenta came out with the Mediterranean Special Issue, something that is very close to my heart because it is the very first time it's done... and after all that's where I come from. Can you imagine if Carve mag, o Surfer magazine US, published an issue dedicated entirely to the UK's -or US- East Coast? Well that is what 3sesenta managed to do and I'm very happy to be part of it. Check the cover of this issue on the right column.

And as for the waves it seem like we missed spring this year, and swell, weather and wind wise we moved from winter straight into summer. Right now we are enduring one of the worst flat spells ever (along with a heat wave) that just got broken by a rainy episode with on-shore dribble. Not stoked... specially now that i have some time on my hands!!!

Thanks God, there's been a few classic days... but only a few. Courtesy of Esnifa Salitre.

Where's my time?

When I went freelance last November I thought that, free from 9 to 5 constraints, my surfing would take a leap forward as I could plan my daily chores around the tide, wind and swell combination. Ok, sure... this has been one of the worst winters ever in terms of on-shore winds, rain and cold... but now we are breezing through spring and I can't really say I'm surfing much either. It seems that working for oneself makes me work longer hours than before... and even during my freetime I surprise myself thinking about work. Will this be the year when I reach the 183 days of surf per year mark? I hope so, but it's going to be close. Sure, the arrival of a longboard in the next few weeks can help reach that mark now that summer approaches, but it's not done deal yet.

La Galea a couple of weeks ago. On one of the last big swells of the season (and one of the few clean ones). Way out of my league. Via El Canelo.

And what work is it to drains my brain so much? Check out the AMSTEL Surfilm Festibal7 - 2009 website, and also its blogs and the DailyMotion channel. I can tell you that although it doesn't look like much, there's hundreds of working hours invested in there.



Mundaka last weekend. If only it weren't soooooo crowded!!

On the other hand I'm really excited about the special issue of the next 3sesenta mag. I can't really say what's the theme... but let's just say that it's something (or maybe... somewhere) that is very close to my heart!!!

Weekend plan

Last weekend was horrible: raining, cold, stormy seas, on-shore. But I had the perfect plan (see picture). Let's see what's the plan for this coming weekend. Have a good one.

Where have I been?

Hi again.

Almost two months since my last post here; sorry about that if you -whoever you are- expected more. The thing is that I've been really busy lately: working on a daily post for my spanish blog, setting up the whole AMSTEL Surfilm Festibal7 - 2009 txiringuito (check out the DailyMotion channel and make sure you send your surf clips; the Surf Short Film Competition is closing in 3 weeks time), putting together some nice texts for the special issue of the next 3sesenta mag, and... not much else really. Money is getting tight and foreign surf mags don't seem to be interested in new contributors. I was a bit bummed when a widely-known english mag that had commisioned something from me some time ago, once got the text asked me to give it for free. I said NO and asked to be paid something (I don't even know their rates), anything... but not for free. And all that in spite of the fact that I got them the photos (from a top local amateur photographer) for free. Problem is I'm a long-time subscriber to this mag and I see, issue after issue, some of the stuff they are printing and - I suppose- paying for and... no comment. Anyway, the text has not been published and sits -bored- in a file somewhere in my laptop guts.

On the other side the good guys of Kurungabaa asked me to send some texts and they selected one. It's going to be printed for free, but in this case I don't care as Kurungabaa is the closest thing to an NGO. And being printed next to some great surf writers such as DC Green, Nick Carroll or Tim Baker is worth more than the couple hundred € that my text would get in another rag. Kudos to them!!

Last Friday smwhere North of Hossegor. Courtesy of Surfing Biscarrosse.

On the surf side it's been a wet and stormy winter, very unlike the last two ones. And spring is doing what's supposed to do: offering a couple of glimpses of what might summer be in between showers. Wrong winds and lots of weak swells. I can't say I've been very happy with my surfing lately but I hope the best is yet to come.

Over & out.

Saturday

First warm day since... October!!! Blue skies, south wind (dry and off-shore) temps in the high 20s (centigrades) and a nice little groundswell. All the pencil pushers -along with some paper shufflers- were out there today but the intense rip in the main peak kept things interesting for everyone. A one hour surf that felt like a three hour surf to my arms courtesy of that rip. Stoked nevertheless!!!

On a more bitter note when I see stuff like THIS I feel like flying to Baja California, map all the good pointbreaks (GPS, “hot to get theres”, Google Earth maps, etc…) and post them on all the wannabetravelsurf.com sites out there along with links to cheap airlines, rentals, etc... I actually even feel like financing someone to open surf camps for beginners in every single one of those Baja pointbreaks…

Like… did you really need to mention the names of the places and the Google Earth maps? People @ Surfline, would you have published all this info if it had been somewhere in Baja California? Not nice…

Over & out.

Sigh

One week ago today in the Canary Islands:

Click here to see what we've got at home right now. Sigh indeed!

Big again!!

The usual suspects were towing-in at Playa Gris today (Sunday). Too much wind for Belharra aparently. The peak of the swell is due for tomorrow morning and some classic XXL conditions are expected. I think there are a few nominations among the waves surfed today but there was only one set (IMHO) that could be a contender and the crews were way too deep to give it a go. Next time folks. I'm sure in the next 24h. we'll see lots of photos/videos from the session of today and tomorrow on the net.

(The first team checking a set wave from the jet-ski. Click to enlarge).

(One of the first rides of the session by Axi Muniain. Click to enlarge).

(Karramarro just before nightfall. A nice spot when the rest of the coast is way too big.Click to enlarge).

I'm flying off to the Canary Islands tomorrow. Hopefully I'll find a sheltered corner somewhere to surf. Cheers!

Amazing day...

...for some... and I mean that special breed of big wave riders. Today (Friday) Belharra, the big wave that lays dormant almost a mile off Saint Jean de Luz, in SW France, was surfed without the help of jetskis for the very first time. Sure it wasn't huge-gnarly-hollow Belharra... or rather it was huge but not humongous. Axi Muniain (first European surfer ever to reach the final of the XXL Monster Paddle Award), Yann Kazandjan (first European surfer invited to the Mavericks contest ever) and Pilou were the pioneers floating among a waltz of noise and jet ski fumes to catch a few elusive liquid monsters. They only rode a few waves, with Axi getting the biggest and Pilou getting the worst beating, and I'm sure we'll se the photos soon all over the media and the screens.

My hat's off to them!

(left to right: Yann, Axi, Pilou and Luc).

(In order to avoid getting blown out by the offshores and to stick the board down to the surface during a bumpy drop Axi has installed a system of mobile leads -2.200kgs. in total- along a curtain rail on the nose of his boards. Today was the first test and he is more than happy with the results).

(12'6'' and almost brand new. Check the leads rail system).

La vie en rose...

Go South, waaaaaaaaay South young man!!!

four

Last Friday, when I got home after a little surf in France, my body was in the shape of a "4". The cold got me -it had snowed some 20cms on Thursday and the air was like 2ºC when I was surfing- and blocked my lower back so much I could barely stand upright. All it has taken for my lower back to heal is to rest in the warmth of home and some gel.

This reminded me that I had seen some warming kidney belts in some mag and I managed to find them on the internet. They are the poor man’s version of Rip Curl’s heated wetsuits… which, if I’m not mistaken, comes with a price tag of some 1,000USD in the US (ouch!). As we still are in early winter I’m seriously thinking of buying one of those heated kidney belts.

Have any of you tried them (or do you know someone who has)?

Cold water is also known to produce another effect on our bodies, as George Costanza found out in this Seinfield episode:

Nothing a hot shower can cure though…

First surf of the year...

Not for me, but for these blokes. Very tiny waves at home this morning but at the low tide you could get some funny lefts at La Zurriola, especially on a mal. I walked the dog on the beach for a couple of hours instead. There'll be plenty of other opportunities to surf this year, i'm sure.

Here's wishing a Happy New Year to everyone!