Rip Curl Pro 2009 - perfection!

Here's hoping it soon turns on again this year!

Teahapoo in Slo-mo............lovely?

Kinda looks ok in slo-mo with some nice music. Well, this is what it is really like and I cannot believe what it must be like not to make it!

.

Slo-mo monster tube - sensational!

You can watch it directly here, but I would recommend you double click on the vid to go to YouTube and choose the HD viewing option for an even greater viewing experience.

I just love the end of the sequence where the wave wells up in front of the camera in crystal clear focus.

This was shot using a $100,000 Typhoon HD4 and is the first digital highspeed camera with an underwater housing - allowing breathtaking slow motion pictures from underwater.

The housing was custom build by ScienceMedia (Dr. Rudolf Diesel) and can be operated like a standard underwater video camera housing. There is a monitor with a live picture on the back of the housing.

All camera features are accessible by push buttons, including reviewing the shot for evaluation while under water. The trigger and the buttons for iris, zoom and focus settings are on the left and right handle.

The camera is battery operated and up to four shots can be stored in the internal memory.

The camera may be used with different lenses and dome ports. The wide angle lenses 14mm and 17mm are used with the 240 mm wide angle dome port, which provides excellent pictures and delivers very interesting perspectives. Remote operation of the underwater housing & camera is also available.

Many thanks to The Endless Bummer for this one. Sorry mate, but I just had to pinch, elaborate and post!

Oh Shit!

I wish this was a bloody great cannon pointing out in front of me, rather than just the end of a paddle, so as I can blast my way through!

Surfing is fun?

I was reading an interview with DH in the latest Surfer's Path and I was tickled to note the conversation that evolved around the word "Fun?" apparently the commonest word to be found somewhere in the first bemused response of many surfers on hearing DH rides a finless board. His comment?

"It says a lot about where surfing isn't and where surfing should be"

Well it is in fact fun and DH clearly believes that is the missing ingredient for many "Surfers" today but not for us "Waveriders" of course as we understand that riding waves is fun!

Getting back to finless wave riding. Last year I bought myself a bodyboard, which I used to use prior to learning to ride waves standing up, to further enhance to the opportunity to get in the water and have fun.

Well, what a revelation that has been as I have had some hugely fun sessions on it even when the waves were pretty average.

As DH has discovered along with alaia riders and body boarders, who have understood it for many years, there is something fundamental about sliding across the face of a wave on a craft without fins.

I also like that one is closer to the surface of the wave, seemingly surrounded by all the energy and really being required to go with the flow. The face of the wave looks all the more impressive when you are lying/crouching down and looking along it.

I note that DH spends a lot of time crouched and I understand this is a trimming requirement as much as anything but he would be experiencing something similar especially at a break like J-Bay!

I also tend to take it out if the swell is big and the break crowded as it affords me the opportunity to get more waves as I can get into them way earlier than the stand up surfers. I am constantly amazed at how resistant small board surfers are to the notion of riding any other type of craft other than what they ride. Longboard? No way. A bodyboard? %*#@$ are you serious? But you know there is an upside, while they are struggling away on their ridiculous choice of wave craft, the rest of us, who know, are getting wave after wave after wave! Thank God for short boarders!

And 8 working days later.................

my new wetsuit arrived and it fits - yay!

I took a bit of a gamble and went for a large, as this is a better quality wetsuit than I normally wear, which is a medium in Rip Curl's Dawn Patrol. I hate when the legs fill up with water and I swapped my original large Dawn Patrol for a medium as that is exactly what it did.

Anyway, I can report that the new E-Bomb fits very snugly and that there is minimal entrapment of water in the legs.

So, if you happen to need a wetsuit at an excellent price then do consider Boardridersguide.com in the UK.