Bonzer Bonzer

I read a fantastic article in “The Surfers Path” magazine recently about the Campbell brothers and their incredible Bonzer Shortboard.  Here is a great related clip which gives a 10 minute sneak peak into the world of the creators of this wonderful contraption:

Anybody can be a Photographer

Nowadays with digital cameras at affordable prices everyone fancies themselves as a budding photographer, hell sure I even think of myself that way sometimes.  It is however an even more difficult craft to perfect than it looks and those who can take truly exceptional photographs on a consistent basis are in the minority, you can know your theory and equipment inside out but there is something to be said for those who have an “eye” for the shot.   One person who has two eyes, each as good as the other is local skate wizard and keen photog Jay Doherty, he was up snapping a few photos around the workshop this week and left up some real beezers.  Here is one of Rosy pretending to do some work!  Sweet:

Check out more of his photos at Jaydoherty.com

The price of oil

For 2 years running I bought an Excel infinity 6mm hooded wetsuit for under £230, I phoned up the surf shop I bought the suit from at the start of last winter to see if they had my size in stock again, which they did, however they told me the price had gone up to £270. I asked the reason for the leap in price and I was told it was related to the price of oil.

I thought bollocks! I heard that Billabong were buying Excel, and had reasoned that because the infinity had won the “wetsuit of the year award”, Billabong were hiking the price to nearer O’Neil prices for their premium wetsuits.

Anyway, as the days got shorter and water colder I kept an eye on the price of oil, well you couldn’t get away from it! It was all over the news, Brent crude hitting record highs week after week after week. I was feeling it in the pocket as my petrol costs, home heating oil, electricity bills and even food were soaring, each by different percentage amounts but all adding up to make me sit back and think carefully about what I was spending my money on! I also gave a thought back to the surf shop assistant who had enlightened me to the increased price of oil in the first place all those months ago, and thought, “what a clever little fecker”.

Now yesterday the price of US light sweet crude dropped to $56 a barrel, a 20 month low, 60 percent down from its peak at $156 a barrel, and again I am thinking bollocks! My petrol is still expensive, wetsuit prices haven’t dropped, food and electricity are getting even more expensive, what is going on? Is it all a load of bull or what!

Recession busting pic from top man Billy Mc. back in Ireland for a few weeks.

Relentless Revolution

Check out the spit:

Sick!
Worth throwing your sterling at for a copy
Sure its worth fu*k all now anyway

Suffers

First Mick.

Now Dane’s out too:

“ask not what your surf club can do for you – ask what you can do for your surf club”

The surf pumped today, a 15 foot west swell wrapped around Malin Head while a strong south westerly cleaned up the corduroy lines before they unloaded on the local sandbars.  Surfers were out in force from low tide in the morning until last light making the most of the good conditions in what is commonly regarded as the best time of the year to be a surfer in Ireland.

The NW Surf Club had a competition scheduled for this weekend, however they cancelled it because of a lack of pre-entered contestants, passing over a great opportunity to run an event in some epic conditions on a detail not widely communicated to surfers.  Needless to say local surfers were dismayed by these actions and they duly expressed their concerns and opinions on local forums.  The consensus view being,   the surf competition should have went ahead and the reasons given for cancelling the competition were indeed shocking.  The number of posts regarding this issue showed that surfers here are interested in competition as a way to raise the standard of surfing in the local area as a whole.

This fiasco now brings to the fore a topic many have talked about on the long drives to the beach and over big black pints apre-surf, the issue being the direction the NWSC has taken since its foundation.   It is easy to see that the most successful events run by the club from a local surfers point of view are its previous competitions, and it would also be fair to say that it is these competitions that are the only events that benefit surfers.  All other events such as movie nights, charitable swims, and open days with reduced rate surf lessons could be seen as not much use to established surfers, and I wonder when a vote was cast amongst the local surfing population over a year or so ago, did those who voted yeah, for the Surf Club in fact know what they were voting for? 

Now it is easy to point a finger of blame at the committee members in this instance, however that wont change a thing, so I am going to write something now that has been vomited upon me many times by individuals, and indeed I have probably been guilty of projectile vomiting it upon some poor souls in the past, and it is that the NWSC and the ISA are only representative of its members and if you are unhappy with a clubs direction you can change it by getting involved.

Each year the NWSC committee has to be voted in by members of the surf club, it is this collection of people who decide, organise and run all the events for the upcoming year.  The current committee are serving a second term in the same positions as the first year they were voted in, but soon it will be time to vote in fresh blood.  Therefore, any surfer who feels strong enough to criticise should maybe feel strong enough to put their name forward for consideration next time round, I know there is at least one post that needs to be filled straight away.

And so, my fellow sufers: ask not what your surf club can do for you – ask what you can do for your surf club……Written By Ex-NWSC-Committee Member

A picture is worth a thousand words

Going through some old photos; brought back some good memories of good times and good waves:

This is J Fryers ripping Anchors, same day K-man snapped his board on the duckdive.  I think Jay might have lost one or three aswell….hoho

After your first Janurary leaving Ireland to surf in the Sun its easy to get hooked, turning that bank breaking one time winter surf trip into an annual occurance.  Its goodbye to the port and brandy, to the vodka and the stag, to the smithwick and the Harpic and the bottle, the draught and keg! But its hello to 3mm prene, chocolate creps, Ice cold bottles of coke drank on the balconcy in your shorts in the depths of winter, bubbly, crazy moroccan cats trying to sell you shitty T-shirts, and most of all hello to some super waves to dust off the winter cobwebs and re-energise your SAD arse.

I have been telling myself all summer im going nowhere this winter, but I think I may have just changed my own mind….Shim 

 

 

The evolution of a Surfboard in My Time

Remarkable things have happened since I started surfing, the interweb arrived, Martin and Big Ian became known for their friendship instead of their hatred, and the Celtic tiger brought wealth to man and heur alike, many of whom have made the trip from Dublin to the real capital of Ireland, Bundoran, to learn how to surf and thus a surf industry was born.

 

When you remember the difficulty in getting even the most essential of equipment back in the day, such as a Custom made surfboard, wax, or even a decent wetsuit (cue memories of wearing t-shits and shorts under 2 piece front zip wetsuits, from everyone over 30! Aghhhh – we love our new prene), then we must be grateful for where surfing is at in Ireland.

 

The most notable achievement for Irish surfing is its emergence as a big wave destination , and it has been the desire to ride bigger waves coupled with the purchase of Jet skis from Celtic Tiger wealth that has led to the Tow board, a really short surfboard with wake and kiteboarding influences that also straps to your feet for extra ankle breaking control.  This board is possibly the only true new surfboard design that I have seen created in my time of surfing, but it the possession of the elite athlete and not ment for the feet of mere mortals like me.

 

Two other evolutionary steps have taken place, the first being the regurgation and refinement of old school or classic surf designs that may have been thought not to work anymore!  This “Retro” movement seen the big comeback of the fish in many different variations, some so varied that they are labelled a “Fish” when indeed the board is so far from the original concept of the Fish that in fact they should probably be called something else.  You can buy single fin fish, twin fin fish, three fin fish, four fin fish and I haven’t seen a five fin fish, but that doesn’t mean someone isn’t riding one somewhere.

 

The single fin made a comeback, and people discovered the bonzer for the first time, good job the cambell brothers stayed true to the same design concept since its inception.  In this funny time period the thruster seemed to have a bad name, everyone was talking about down the line speed and performance without giving the thruster shortboard a look in!

 

The second evolutionary step or should I say revolutionary step came in the guise of new construction techniques, and the emergence of big corporations taking over surfboard construction from the everyday shaper and moving manufacturing to china or elsewhere in search of cheap labour and higher yields.

 

Some designs have come and gone such as the blue, hollow, carbon fibre stringered contraptions built by a ski company and whose name escapes me.  I remember them being marketed as virtually indestructable, but the first time I set eyes on one it was in two halfs, lying in Rosy’s shaping bay.

 

The development of stronger Epoxy resins, lighter foams such as XPS and EPS, the emergence of carbon fibre as a material, parabolic stringers and so on…….have all played their part in the emergence of the “sandwitch construction” surfboards, all claiming to be better in some way from what has gone before.  It seems like any company can now take three or four new raw materials, pop them in their witches cauldron with eye of neut and magic out the “next generation” surfboard; lighter, stronger, faster and better for your surfing!

 

Now the question is, are any of these new permeations of surfboard better than what has gone before?

 

I would say a resounding NO!!!!

And Why?

 

Well, just look at the pro tour and the boards they are riding. The shortboard with thruster setup combined with the traditional Poly construction technique is still King.

 

So, what for the future?

 

Well, Well, the credit crunch has arrived and maybe this will put a dent in the average surfers desire to have a quiver of boards as big as the pros, maybe the idea of one board for many waves will come back! But I don’t think so.

 

I also can’t see another big leap in design like the tow board anytime soon, but maybe continued refinement of the already numerous classic designs to ease the hunger of the surfing public’s need for something that little bit different is where it will all be at, things will come and go, like the noseless board, but some things will stick like the new Fish.

 

Hopefully, the next step in construction will come from more environmentally friendly products such as Bio-Foam, an environmentally friendly surfboard blank, brought to us by the colleraboration of Cornwalls Eden project with Homeblown, to produce this plant based foam.

 

This is the way forward for surfing and I don’t even mind if a big corporation comes in and ties up the market! Well, that’s a lie, I do really, competition is healthy for the industry, we need surfers and shapers in lots of different countries doing their own thing, shaping boards for the waves they ride, pushing boundaries.  Utopia would be having access to foams and resins that were totally environmentally friendly, and match the performance and simplicity of the traditional Poly/ PU construction.  Maybe this is possible in my lifetime, maybe not, but if we are to take the speed of progress since Clarke closed as a guage of things to come then I would say this is definitely possible.

 

Just a thought……

Bertie Ahern

Please Read

Hey, sure we dont know what we are going to do with this yet but it could be something cool.