Surf Nation

Laird Hamilton Huck Interview

It’s 2.15 on a Thursday afternoon. I’m in south-west France, the weather’s pretty good, and I’m about to meet Laird Hamilton. I should be feeling stoked, not least because for me as with many from the watersports fraternity, Laird has been a hero for years. But instead I’m walking gingerly from my hotel to my meeting, head pounding, eyes squinting from the glare of the sun, body aching as if I’ve been pounded with a sledgehammer all night.

My condition, as I am about to meet the epitome of health, vitality and masculinity, could be better. The problem is that I was whisked off to a party thrown by Laird’s sponsor, Oxbow, the previous night. This shouldn’t have been a problem at all, but I am to free champagne what Laird is to big waves. Totally fearless. I’ll take on as many glasses as you like. Trouble is that unlike the Hawaiian waterman, I suffer for my art. Laird is apparently indestructible but come Thursday lunchtime I’m barely capable of stringing a sentence together. Worse, the interview – originally scheduled for Friday – has been brought forward by a day.

Spencer, the photographer, calls to tell me this. I groan, tell him I’ll see him soon, and haul myself down to Les Cavaliers beach, the scene of the Oxbow World Pro Longboard Championships. As I’m walking along the well-heeled roads of Anglet I find myself thinking of Al Alvarez’s Feeding the Rat. Alvarez, an acclaimed writer and poet, wrote the book as a testament to his long-time climbing partner, Welsh legend Mo Anthoine. Anthoine explained his compulsion to keep pushing himself, to take ever greater risks, by the notion of feeding a rat that lurked perpetually inside him:

The rat is you, really. It’s the other you, and it’s being fed by the you that you think you are. And they are often very different people. But when they come close to each other, that’s smashing, that is. Then the rat’s had a good meal and you come away feeling terrific.

Just as I’m wondering if Laird’s life is explicable via the same metaphor, the man himself appears.

Animal British Cup

I'm back in Cornwall after a foray to London. My three days in the city consisted of working at The Times and enjoying a convivial time with old friends. Meanwhile, Harry was doing well in yesterday's Animal ASA inter-schools contest (hosted in association with Carve), coming second in his heats and progressing to the finals, which take place today at Fistral Beach. The Animal British Cup is the umbrella, indeed, under which a variety of professional and amateur events are taking place this weekend, including the Men's and Women's Open and Juniors, Longboard and Bodyboard contests. There is also a quarter pipe and a bikini babes contest.

I was stoked see Harry competing in last weekend's British Grommet Inter Club Championships, won by a very fine Polzeath Team with Harry Timson showing what a prospect he is by winning the U12s and coming second in the U14s. My own Harry was surfing for The Sennen Surfing Centre and I'd like to thank Dave Muir and his father Rob for putting in such a great effort to the Sennen cadets.

Likewise, all of those who are putting time into the UK's young surfers. Surfing is a fantastic, healthy and inspiring activity and it's great to see kids involved in it. As for me, I feel mildly disorientated having dipped back into city life and now finding myself back home, a couple of miles from Land's End, a place which is rather quieter than London. No doubt nothing that a surf won't cure, so on that note, adios for now.

Check Slide Instruction

One of my favourite little moves on a skateboard is the humble check slide (though I'm much better going frontside than back). This educative nugget on the fine art of sliding skateboards comes my way thanks to photographer Darren Burdell, a long-time skater and, it is rumoured, occasional pyromaniac (only when safe and legal).

What is a short walk?

A Short Walk or, as it should properly be called, www.ashortwalk.com, is an innovative product design company set up in 2003 by Dan Dicker. Dan left his previous job as a senior designer with Dyson to realise a long-held dream: to set up a business, and live, ashortwalk from the beach. One of the company's first products, a range of wall-mounted tide clocks, was a runaway success - not least among surfers. Now Cornwall-based ashortwalk has launched a new Coastal Weather Station aimed at providing unique weather information for the enjoyment - whether as a visitor or inhabitant - of our rich and varied coastline.

The Coastal Weather Station encompasses a barometer, a tide clock and a conventional clock, combining aesthetic appeal and functionality. It'll set you back £44.95 but I reckon that'd be money well spent.

Surfer-sofa-woman

One of the most striking images at Lucia Griggi's show at The Secret Spot in St Ives is this one, entitled Surfer-Sofa-Woman. The show is well worth checking out so get along if you can.

Paddling to Monserrat

I posted a while ago about Susan Chaplin, a surfer, excellent writer and resident of Tortola in the British Virgin Islands (to which, if I understand correctly, ADR of one of the world's best surf mags is shortly moving). Appropriately enough, given that today marked the beginning of a new (this time it's serious) fitness campaign under the tutelage of Stef Harkon, Susan drops me a line about her latest inspirational challenge. She hopes this October to be first to cross the 30-mile channel between Guadeloupe and Monserrat on a paddleboard.

In flagrante on the ocean

News reaches me of a scandal that raises a smile. It is salacious, so please don't read on if you are easily offended.

A married Lothario d'un certain age had been enjoying intimate moments with a delectable woman some years his younger. Lothario's wife had her suspicions and, far from going to London one morning (as was supposedly her intention), she doubled back to the marital home, there to find the keys to the couple's boat missing. She speedily drove to the said boat's mooring, and, with the utmost stealth, boarded it. She crept alongside the cabin - stepping over Lothario's cherished 6'6" thruster - and peered inside. There she found Lothario and his lady friend at one with each other rather than the ocean.

Like any sensible person, she immediately took pictures of the cavorting lovers with her mobile phone. These will apparently now be used in divorce proceedings.

A friend of Lothario's heard this tale of oceanic intrigue and, herself being a woman of the world, suggested that the pictures be deleted, Lothario end his illicit relationship and the formerly happy couple try to repair their marriage. After all, she said, surely it wasn't as if the duo were engaged in some kind of deviant activity. Wasn't it just a bit of fun, couldn't it be forgiven?

A trusted source said that no, it was nothing particularly untoward. "What, then, is the problem?" said Lothario's friend, evincing notable, and perhaps commendable, liberalism.

"Put it this way," said the source. "She couldn't speak, and he couldn't hear anything."

A sight for sore eyes and, doubtless, a handy mobile phone. To illustrate yet further their uses here are some shots taken by Welsh writer Tom Anderson of swell generated by Hurricane Dean as it hit the east coast of America. Tom was recently in the States researching his second surfing book. Curiously, he used to supplement surf trips by working as a private investigator, but this fact is as relevant to the above tale as Lothario's thruster. It remains only to say that if you ever find yourself on a boat with consensual carnal intent for someone Who Is Not Your Partner, get your mobile phone out and book a hotel room. Quick.
 

"I hate writing. And I'm a better surfer than you."

I'm just back from Lucia Griggi's exhibition at The Secret Spot  in St Ives. This is a tremendous show full of energy, colour and vitality in a great space, and is well worth a visit. Good work by Geoff and Rowena, whose daughter Tassy is, I learn, now not only a decent surfer but also into kick-boxing. While there I chatted among others to Tony Plant, who tells me that Surf Twisted apparel is now available and, just as importantly, that he was disappointed not to see more from Harry on this blog by way of his attempt to earn a Surftech JC.

Harry totally failed to earn this board through sheer negligence (he did next-to-nothing), and enters the comp at Fistral tomorrow on my old Kamikaze. Tony asked him why he hadn't got his act together, to which Harry shrugged and said: "Whatever." This prompted gentle fatherly mocking (as in, "Harry, all you had to do was write a little on the blog, it would have been excellent for your education and I might have bought you a board!"), to which Harry uttered lines that would inevitably plunge any writer-surfer Dad into despair.

"Dad, I hate writing. And I'm a better surfer than you."

We set off for the wild west and there was a silence in the car... Elliot interrupted it to point out that at his school trip today he had been designated the best surfer. "So that's two of you who are better than me," said I, with very little irony. Harry then offered another bon mot:

"Dad, blogging seems pretty pointless to me. If you didn't spend so much time blogging you'd be a better surfer."

Al Mackinnon and the next right thing

A man I have a lot of respect for - surf snapper Al Mackinnon - has got his long-awaited website up and running. Check it out here. Al has led a colourful and at times enigmatic life, and this year became the first European to win the coveted Billabong XXL award for his photograph of the biggest wave ever ridden in Africa.

I've travelled and worked with Al, and two of his sayings regularly occur to me. One, that "too many people have forgotten what surfing is all about - it's about being stoked," and two (uttered in circumstances when I'd lapsed from the straight and narrow), "Do the next right thing and you'll be OK."

I like the idea of doing the next right thing, and tried to get this across to the prisoners at Parc on Monday. It was really rewarding visit and I'm hoping to return soon for a writer's workshop. After the talk, I sped away to Walcot Amateur Boxing Club and trained there for the first time in a while, to mixed results: on the one hand, my upper body strength was undiminished, but on the other (thanks to a series of timed tests and runs), I now know that I am officially the slowest runner in the club.

My lungs felt pretty tricky today in a bigger-than-it-looked swell at Sennen Cove. In fact, for the first time ever, I had a bit of asthma in the water. Anyone else out there bedevilled by this irksome complaint? I had asthma as a small child, then it went and I was an athlete (hard to believe after training the other night), then it came back whenever I had a cigarette (bizarre but true: there is a connection between smoking and asthma). Despite not having smoked for some time and being in reasonable shape, today's paddle out led to wheezing. Quite why this should be so I have no idea, but it was no fun at all in the water. Needless to say my surfing was duly affected, but I did the right thing and came in to catch my breath. Then I paddled back out and caught a lovely long right-hander on a sizeable wave that made the whole experience excellent.

Which all goes to show that if you do the next right thing in life, it does help.

Photo (c) www.almackinnon.com

Surfer's Point, Barbados

Nice to hear from Zed Layson in Barbados. It was thanks to his comments about UK and Irish surfers that I got the idea for Surf Nation. Here are some shots from his place at Surfer's Point. As he says, the sun was hot, the water warm, and only two guys were out... Sounds very, very nice. See Zed's Surf Travel for more info.