Surf Nation

Future Positive

Many surfers are environmentally aware, but wider community issues often seem to slip out of focus. One more perfect Indonesian barrel can be just another reason to forget that there are plenty of people whose backgrounds may pre-condition them to lives whose absence of stoke is their everyday reality. Fortunately, one initiative in Penzance is helping to ensure that the surfers' term of art, being stoked, is not a description of a feeling confined to an exclusive minority. The Home Office funded Positive Futures project is, according to its website, a “national social inclusion programme using sport and leisure activities to engage with the disadvantaged and socially marginalised young adults.” Positive Futures workers use a variety of sports, and in West Cornwall have found that surfing – for those who would never normally be exposed to it – is working wonders.

Painful in Perranporth

By Andy Cox

As an exercise in masochism, the Perranporth Triathlon takes some beating. Even entering the event, which this year took place on 10 September, can be hard work, given that registration on race day begins  at 08:00. Those with a weakness for a lie-in on the week-end can understand the pain that comes with being up for a check-in quite so early on a Sunday.

Riders on the Storm

By Andy Cox

If hurricane Gordon had the decency to stop at customs, after storming across the Atlantic and arriving on these shores, it would definitely have passed through the “something to declare” channel. About 6-8ft of pumping surf to be precise. British Surfing Association (BSA) contest director, Tony Good, needed just one look at the forecast. Noting the imminent arrival of the storm swell, he gave the green light to the Gold Rush Big Wave Event for Thursday 21 September. As he put it: “Everyone is fed up with seeing the guys grovel in one foot slop. I'm really stoked to be holding a big wave contest, and this competition gives the soul surfer a chance to shine.”

Faith is not Belief. Belief is Passive. Faith is Surfing...

By Tom Anderson

Surfing has always had a spiritual side, from the beaches of California to South Africa, from Hawaii to Brazil. Even if surfing's own brand of spiritualism can tend to the nebulous, it is comes as little surprise that the word has spread to the UK. Indeed, Christian Surfers UK (CSUK) represent a huge movement within the sport here, and, since the beginning of the nineties, have hosted an annual contest - the Jesus Surf Classic - at Croyde, in North Devon. Oddly enough, the event has never been greeted by flat conditions. Which is the reason why it was with little more than pure faith that I decided last weekend to attend the 14th Jesus Surf Classic, despite all the usual online swell prediction tools advising sternly against it. And "faith," in all its forms, duly became the theme of the weekend."We’re still praying," said CSUK Director Phil Williams the evening before the contest, as we stared out at a two-inch, perfectly moonlit shore-break. "And I have faith."

Penetrators and Swans Win Shootout at the Harbour Wall

By Andy Cox

As any cowboy with a sense of history will tell you, next month brings the 125th anniversary of the gunfight at the OK Corral: Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, the Clantons, the McLaurys et al going toe-to-toe to settle once and for all who ruled the roost. Portreath, on Saturday 9 September, witnessed a shoot-out of its own. No gun-slingers this time (and happily, no body count), just sport’s equivalent of the ultimate showdown for the surfboat rowers who rolled in to town to contest the final round of their league season. The Porthtowan Penetrators and Perranporth Tigers had been locked together at the top of the table for the past month. A winner had to be determined. Something had to give in the Portreath showdown.

View from the Line-Up

What makes a surfer? I am pondering this two days after surfing the Severn Bore, and two days before the private view of Susan Bleakley's latest exhibition at the Plymouth Arts Centre, entitled Eighty per cent of bird song is non functional. The connection may not immediately be obvious, so let me fill in some facts. Susan is the mother of one of the UK's top longboarders, Sam Bleakley. She lives and works as an installation artist at Sennen Cove in the far west of Cornwall, an area renowned for its artistic heritage as much as a once-thriving tin mining community and now-embedded free surfer ethos. The Severn Bore is one of Britain's most spectacular natural phenomena, and duly arrived last Friday in accompaniment to the Autumnal Equinox. I hooked up with South African big-wave charger and O'Neill team rider Duncan Scott - a Bore devotee - and, after a couple of days' observation, found myself in the river at Newnham-on-Severn nervously awaiting the Bore on Monday morning.

Surreal on the Severn

These surreal images hail from Newnham in Gloucestershire. Not, for many people, a well-known surf spot. But thanks to the Severn Bore, there is a hardcore surfing community whose lives revolve around the River Severn, lunar cycles and equinoxes, one of which just happens to be this weekend. Cue the kind of camaraderie rarely seen at beaches, as surfers paddle out into murky brown water to take their place in possibly the weirdest line-up in the world. Branches of trees, oil cans and assorted debris jostle for position with Bore devotees ranging from South African big-wave charger Duncan Scott, Porthleven tube-rider Dan "Mole" Joel, and Saunton regulars James Golding and Trevor "The Whirlpool" Stephens. "Once you've surfed the Bore, you'll be addicted," says Golding, who is part of a crew of regulars who include Bore legends Steve King, Tom Wright, Stu Ballard and Matt "Buffalo" Hammersley.  On Friday morning, Scott and co rode three spots with a tidal surge measuring nearly two foot, and the whole thing looked wonderful.  Work took me away, but I'm hoping to join them tomorrow morning or evening. More soon.                              

Penetrators Australia-bound as Swans Soar

By Andy Cox

It was impossible not to feel for the organisers of this year’s final of the national Surf Living Saving Association (SLSA) Championship. One of the hottest summers on record became a long distant memory as the surf forecast duly delivered waves of 6-10ft with a howling south-westerly and driving rain. Surfing's contest curse usually means that the swell will disappear come the merest hint of a competition, but the surfboat fraternity faced a conundrum of different proportions: they had managed to pick the wildest weather for months for the showcase event of the season.

Fresh Hoodoo at Welsh Nationals

By Tom Anderson

There are times when Freshwater West in Pembrokeshire would not be top of anyone's must-go-there list. Last weekend, with 10-ft surf registering at ten seconds on the wave buoys - the waves nicely worked into a lather by thirty-five mile-an-hour southerly winds - was one of them. But this was the weekend of the Welsh Nationals, and after time out for various reasons I wanted to make a mark on an event that, for me, has never been anything other than jinxed. It was time to banish previous reasons for distraction - academic study, travel, basketball, and, more recently, writing my first book - and exorcise my West Wales hoodoo. And, into the bargain, try and realise the early promise that my competitve surfing results had seemed to suggest.

Plester in Plaster as Title Showdown Looms

By Andy Cox

Perranporth beach on Cornwall’s north coast hosted round four of the UK Surfboat Rowers League on 19 August. As viewers of BBC 1’s Seaside Rescue will know, Perranporth can be a treacherous place, particularly for the unwary tourist. The waves crashing on to the golden sands were to prove just as inhospitable to the experienced crews who gathered to race, giving a dash of spice to preparations for the League finals next Saturday.