WHHEEEEEEUUUUUUUUU

HAPPY NEW YEARS!

Here is a toast to a new decade filled with friends and waves!

Happy New Year from The Gold Coast

Lets hope 2010 holds a few more positives and we can all move on.Thanks for your support and I hope to see you on Sunday 14th March at The Alley. The Fish will be schooling once again.

Happy New Year from Grant and Jackie.

And the Band Played On

This was the last waltz for Gary Stachan in his role as a California State Park Ranger, including a long running gig as head ranger at Año Nuevo State Park. After 34 years of service, Gary is retiring. To celebrate he threw a classic shindig full of music, food, and good friends. As a hardcore surfer and accomplished waterman, Gary has been outstanding in his field. He has always stood tall in the forest of bureaucrats and has embodied the meaning of stewardship of our state's wild places. During his tenure, the parks along the North Coast have been transformed into real gems of stunning beauty that are well planned, accessible, and most importantly, still natural and wild. Gary was profiled in the summer 2006 Surfer's Journal. It's a good glimpse of a waterman's life as a California State Park Ranger.How many rangers do you see in a surfboard print button down wearing a lei? Even though Gary will no longer be the front man at Año, rest assured that he has found his voice and will continue to hit the right note in more ways than one (more surfing and kitesurfing!)I know that for my family, his work along this coast has made our lives richer. Let's hope that Sacramento and the people of California follow his tune and the song remains the same.Feliz Año Nuevo

Aaron at Blackies

A quick video clip of King Rat on his 9'3 Log Rhythm model.

Filmed by Bob Torrez

Garrett McNamara at 2nd reef pipeline on the Future Primitive 13 footer

Here's Garrett onthe 23rd of December at 2nd reef pipeline. Thanks for taking the big log out for a ride Garrett. Thanks also to Joli for taking the picture and posting it.



We suggest that Garrett move forward to the middle of the board, as it looks like he's standing way too far back. . . ok for his regular boards but this board is designed to be ridden from the middle, like a 70's singlefin.









Here's the Captain of the Swaylocks SOUR GRAPES brigade claiming that Garrett is actually riding a 6 foot thruster in the picture. We suggest that he contacts the photographer ( Joli ):

" Cmon, now, guys. That's photoshopped and utterly bogoid. I mean, after 40 years in the business I found that surfers will believe just about anything, but this kinda pushes even that.

Ask yourself this, if that's a 13 foot board at that angle from the vertical, where is the eight-foot-deep trench in the water behind it? 'Cos there's only five feet sticking up out of the water. What you got is somebody surfing a 6-something thruster with a little bit of woodgrain substituted in. Look at somebody from back in the day cranking a similar turn on a 9'+ board and you see about 8' of board up there like King Kong's tongue depressor.

It's not even an especially good job with photoshop. F'rinstance, enlarge said image and look where the board actually contacts the water. Or, the white line around the right side.

Bogoid."

Wake's too small  ??



Obviously Doc old sport you don't understand the displacement tail design !!



Here's Garrett during a previous session at Pipeline, again he's standing too far back, unless he's stalling of course:

LEFT RIGHT LEFT

YAZZY

Where do I start? Well, I can start with the fact that his photographs are Crip. Thanks to this good friend of mine, I've explored areas of the world I would have never even known existed much less where they were on a map. It's really been a prevaledge to have these charished memories documented by such a talented individual. Yazzy is one of the hardest workers I know and I really look up to him. He is an artist, an impeccable writer, an ex tennis pro, and all around funny ass dude!   Thanks Yazzy for your friendship, hard work, greasin' tips, dedication and memories!

Sincerely,

Christian Wach

Please visit if you have a moment.

YAZZY PHOTOS

.COM

Vintage Tour

Kyle Lightyear shot a brief video tour of the shop today on his iPhone.

Easy Rider

Allyn makes his annual migration to the warm waters of Puerto Rico and wanted a serious Fun Gun for cruising the bigger waves at places like Wilderness. We set it up with 5 boxes so he could try it as a quad and also gave it a heavy glass job to deal with the strong winds and bump that come with bigger waves in PR.

It's Good To Be Loved

Leslie, the SwimArt open water swim coach, had her surfboard swiped recently. But she wasn't without a board for long thanks to these amazing speedo clad polar bears who banded together and had me build her a custom board complete with business logo. The next time you're out surfing Fort Point and you see a few bright colored swim caps bobbing around, you might have to reassess your definition of "hardcore"!

Trouble in Paradise

Steve sends this photo and some insight into what folks living in paradise are faced with when things get rocking in the big pond (and being a surfer, he also took note of the surf potential and local customs)."I recently went to survey the damage caused by the tsunami in American Samoa. It was my first time working in a disaster area and it was kind of heavy. Some of the villages were completely wiped out. The Samoan people were unbelievably friendly and were quickly cleaning up and rebuilding their homes and lives. Everyone had an incredible story to tell about their experience with the tsunami. I attached a photo I thought you might be interested in, tsunami damge and a perfect wave in the background.Unfortunately too much survey gear to bring a board!! I know, hard to believe. Plus there are basically no surfers on American Samoa. No surf shops. No boards to rent. Not even a surf sticker anywhere. But there are plenty of spots and we saw alot of perfect set-ups. Most of the spots appear to be high tide only shallow reef ledges. There was quite a bit of wind at the places with the most swell as well. The wave in the photo was a few feet overhead, spitting and makeable. At low tide, every wave ended on dry reef. Respect is key in Samoa. You can't just pull up and surf. You have to find the village Chief (Matai) and ask for permission to basically even just hang out. The people are super friendly and there are no problems, but you have to ask."

M&Ms

Tasty treats from one of my favorite photographers and new friend, Morgan Maassen at Bogus Media. Check out his incredible work at his Bogus Blog if you get a chance. It will blow your mind. I'd say for a kid who just turned 19, he's pretty damn talented, but in reality, he's pretty damn talented for any age group. His work compares to some of the the best in the world in my opinion.

I'm up here in Santa Barbara at the moment hangin out with him and his friends Trevor Gordon, Brandon Smith, and Travers Adler. These guys all throw down super hard when it comes to shredding. Trevor's been a real stand out in the line up everywhere we've surfed.

Day One : ConTent

Day Two : SandBarSpitSand

Tasty.

2009 Sunset

Rebecca and Buell sent this photo from their recent Baja adventure and it reminded me that the sun is setting on 2009. Where has the time gone? This past month I've had a full plate. The blog got pushed to the back burner as board orders, holidays, and family fun time began to boil over. I feel at times that I haven't done justice to all the great feedback I get from my customers. So for these last few days of 2009, my hope is to share a few of the great stories and photos from the year.

Musica Tonight

Tonight we're having 2 live performances at the shop!

- Levi Prairie on piano (with special guests)

- Mikey Selbicky strumming the guitar.

6:00 p.m.
Almond Surfboards
367 Old Newport

The White Stuff

New England Dispatch: currently it's snowing, raining, foggy, and below freezing simultaneously. Not sure how this can happen, but there it is. Every time someone opens a door to the outside my California born-and-raised daughters start crying.

The weather does inspire a few of my favorite things, though (alcohol, sweaters, and beards), so I'm all for it.

Ironically, it's not so different from my shop in Northern California, where white-out conditions descended after a dust-collection snafu (Dustgate '09). When I appeared inside after the incident my week my three-year-old said, "Santa came!!!"

And perhaps she was right, especially if your name is Sean and you ordered yourself a spiffy new quad fish this holiday season.

Sean ordered it clear, perpetuating a seasonally-appropriate white-out theme.

Although unglassed quad fish photos aren't really cutting-edge in the surf blogosphere (as recently pointed out to me in an email by gentle reader Tony from North Carolina), these pictures celebrate the last gasp by my beleaguered point-and-shoot, another victim of Dustgate '09. RIP.

Happy Holidays!

The Baron 12 foot wooden surfboard project part 8

Here the underside of the deck is having epoxy and paulownia dust wood glue applied to the rail area and to the frames with a squeeze bag ( ziplock bag wth the corner cut out ) A slow resin has been chosen because of the warm weather.Lowering the first frame panel on to the deckNow for the palletload of bricks, and couple of clamps for the nose.

Vintage railway surf posters

Fancy splahing out some cash this January ? Probably not say most of you since we're usually skint after Christmas. Tempting but still in the £200 - £300 price range are these original railway posters from the 1930s and 40s advertising the stoke of bellyboarding in Newquay. Bellyboards have been ridden on these shores since early last century and these great posters show the early history of Cornish surfing. The auction is run by Morphets in Harrogate and starts on 15 jan. Bellyboarding is still going strong on these shores among the older population who started doing it back in the day and a few new fans like John Isaac , see www.pronetobelly.blogspot.com .

1967 Bilbo skateboard

Gavin has sent some shots of his rare 60s Bilbo skateboard along with its original how to skate leaflet. Gavin got it from the original owner who says he bought it in around 1967. Bilbo started to make skateboards in 1965 after first importing Roller Derby models from the USA. With deck by Bilbo and wheels by Hobie, this is thought to be the first commercial European skateboard, and because of it Bilbo's mail order business soared.

Its great to have the original leaflet with photos of skaters above Towan beach in Newquay.Note rule no 14 - Parents act your age, skateboarding is for youngsters !