Moods of the bay

Over to DRIFT

noreply@blogger.com (Niegà) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:34:00 +0000

I've decided that it doesn't make any sense to have two different blogs in English and as I'm VERY happy with Drift I've decided to let this blog die.

So if you want to follow my ramblings in English, you'll find me HERE. I hope to see you there!!

S.M.A.S.H. @ Wallako

noreply@blogger.com (Niegà) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 11:12:00 +0000

Do not miss it if you are around!!!

Where were you on September the 4th?

noreply@blogger.com (Niegà) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 22:01:00 +0000

Artist Pablo Ugartetxea was somewhere on the Mediterranean Coast and took these snaps of a couple of local surfers having the best waves in a while.

Drifting (2)

noreply@blogger.com (Niegà) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 22:01:00 +0000

If you want to read the story behind this two pictures -or the one I posted last Friday - click HERE.

Good banks...

noreply@blogger.com (Niegà) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:01:00 +0000

...somewhere north of Hossegor. Picture taken the other day after a 2h session:

Drifting

noreply@blogger.com (Niegà) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 22:50:00 +0000

But not drifting away. Or at least not just yet. While I keep working on my new blog that will, eventually, replace this one in the future, I've managed to convince the nice people at Drift to let me post (in English) on their site. Here's a direct link to my first post. I hope you enjoy it.

Back @ home

noreply@blogger.com (Niegà) — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 22:01:00 +0000

Just back from two weeks tramping the NW coast of Spain in the van. We had good waves, nice beaches, amazing food and spent quality time with some friends. Now back to work on several projects.

Fall is right around the corner and that means the best time of the year in terms of waves and weather. Let’s keep our fingers crossed!

A shot from the very first day of our trip.

And a shot from the very last day of our trip. Enough said!!

Last week’s highlights

noreply@blogger.com (Niegà) — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 18:44:00 +0000

Hossegor on Thursday morning. Courtesy of Jeff Ruiz.

-meeting Tyler & Jennifer and surfing with them at Guéthary and taking them out for tapas around Donosti. Glad to meet you guys.

-surfing for my very first time a wave I had heard quite a lot but never surfed before. It’s a reefbreak, not too far from home and it’s more of a winter wave (requires big swells), but it worked on Wednesday (on-shore) and now I know I’ll get there more often.

-trying my Bing Synchronizer as a quad. It works much better than as a bonzer in “not so fast and hollow” waves, and can provide for a good alternative until my new quad is ready as an everyday board.

-checking the forecast and seeing that we might be in for a whole week of waves and light winds.

Stoked.

Kurungabaa... THANKS!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Niegà) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:00:00 +0000

It was a huge honor already to be invited to submit one of my stories (the English version of Dino’s Left) to a publication I admire as much as Kurungabaa. But when I saw my name next to Drew Kampion, Nick Carroll or Jamie Brisick (who I met for the first time recently) among other notable writers I had to wonder: can it get any better? Stoked!

A little break

noreply@blogger.com (Niegà) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:30:00 +0000

Yes, that's what I'm taking right now; pheeeeeew!!! Since my last post (a month and a half ago) I've been very busy first with THIS, and then with THIS. And right now I'm working on THIS one (due in a month's time). AMSTEL asked us to run their surf campaing this summer -first time they ever go into surfing, at least here in Spain- and we are stoked to be organizing some stuff for them within long stablished events as the Cosmic Children of the Festival Internacional de Longboard de Salinas...

In between all this the new 3sesenta came out with the Mediterranean Special Issue, something that is very close to my heart because it is the very first time it's done... and after all that's where I come from. Can you imagine if Carve mag, o Surfer magazine US, published an issue dedicated entirely to the UK's -or US- East Coast? Well that is what 3sesenta managed to do and I'm very happy to be part of it. Check the cover of this issue on the right column.

And as for the waves it seem like we missed spring this year, and swell, weather and wind wise we moved from winter straight into summer. Right now we are enduring one of the worst flat spells ever (along with a heat wave) that just got broken by a rainy episode with on-shore dribble. Not stoked... specially now that i have some time on my hands!!!

Thanks God, there's been a few classic days... but only a few. Courtesy of Esnifa Salitre.

Where's my time?

noreply@blogger.com (Niegà) — Sun, 10 May 2009 22:46:00 +0000

When I went freelance last November I thought that, free from 9 to 5 constraints, my surfing would take a leap forward as I could plan my daily chores around the tide, wind and swell combination. Ok, sure... this has been one of the worst winters ever in terms of on-shore winds, rain and cold... but now we are breezing through spring and I can't really say I'm surfing much either. It seems that working for oneself makes me work longer hours than before... and even during my freetime I surprise myself thinking about work. Will this be the year when I reach the 183 days of surf per year mark? I hope so, but it's going to be close. Sure, the arrival of a longboard in the next few weeks can help reach that mark now that summer approaches, but it's not done deal yet.

La Galea a couple of weeks ago. On one of the last big swells of the season (and one of the few clean ones). Way out of my league. Via El Canelo.

And what work is it to drains my brain so much? Check out the AMSTEL Surfilm Festibal7 - 2009 website, and also its blogs and the DailyMotion channel. I can tell you that although it doesn't look like much, there's hundreds of working hours invested in there.

Mundaka last weekend. If only it weren't soooooo crowded!!

On the other hand I'm really excited about the special issue of the next 3sesenta mag. I can't really say what's the theme... but let's just say that it's something (or maybe... somewhere) that is very close to my heart!!!

Weekend plan

noreply@blogger.com (Niegà) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:01:00 +0000

Last weekend was horrible: raining, cold, stormy seas, on-shore. But I had the perfect plan (see picture). Let's see what's the plan for this coming weekend. Have a good one.

Where have I been?

noreply@blogger.com (Niegà) — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 11:21:00 +0000

Hi again.

Almost two months since my last post here; sorry about that if you -whoever you are- expected more. The thing is that I've been really busy lately: working on a daily post for my spanish blog, setting up the whole AMSTEL Surfilm Festibal7 - 2009 txiringuito (check out the DailyMotion channel and make sure you send your surf clips; the Surf Short Film Competition is closing in 3 weeks time), putting together some nice texts for the special issue of the next 3sesenta mag, and... not much else really. Money is getting tight and foreign surf mags don't seem to be interested in new contributors. I was a bit bummed when a widely-known english mag that had commisioned something from me some time ago, once got the text asked me to give it for free. I said NO and asked to be paid something (I don't even know their rates), anything... but not for free. And all that in spite of the fact that I got them the photos (from a top local amateur photographer) for free. Problem is I'm a long-time subscriber to this mag and I see, issue after issue, some of the stuff they are printing and - I suppose- paying for and... no comment. Anyway, the text has not been published and sits -bored- in a file somewhere in my laptop guts.

On the other side the good guys of Kurungabaa asked me to send some texts and they selected one. It's going to be printed for free, but in this case I don't care as Kurungabaa is the closest thing to an NGO. And being printed next to some great surf writers such as DC Green, Nick Carroll or Tim Baker is worth more than the couple hundred € that my text would get in another rag. Kudos to them!!

Last Friday smwhere North of Hossegor. Courtesy of Surfing Biscarrosse.

On the surf side it's been a wet and stormy winter, very unlike the last two ones. And spring is doing what's supposed to do: offering a couple of glimpses of what might summer be in between showers. Wrong winds and lots of weak swells. I can't say I've been very happy with my surfing lately but I hope the best is yet to come.

Over & out.

Saturday

noreply@blogger.com (Niegà) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 21:09:00 +0000

First warm day since... October!!! Blue skies, south wind (dry and off-shore) temps in the high 20s (centigrades) and a nice little groundswell. All the pencil pushers -along with some paper shufflers- were out there today but the intense rip in the main peak kept things interesting for everyone. A one hour surf that felt like a three hour surf to my arms courtesy of that rip. Stoked nevertheless!!!

On a more bitter note when I see stuff like THIS I feel like flying to Baja California, map all the good pointbreaks (GPS, “hot to get theres”, Google Earth maps, etc…) and post them on all the wannabetravelsurf.com sites out there along with links to cheap airlines, rentals, etc... I actually even feel like financing someone to open surf camps for beginners in every single one of those Baja pointbreaks…

Like… did you really need to mention the names of the places and the Google Earth maps? People @ Surfline, would you have published all this info if it had been somewhere in Baja California? Not nice…

Over & out.

Sigh

noreply@blogger.com (Niegà) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:47:00 +0000

One week ago today in the Canary Islands:

Click here to see what we've got at home right now. Sigh indeed!

Big again!!

noreply@blogger.com (Niegà) — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 22:56:00 +0000

The usual suspects were towing-in at Playa Gris today (Sunday). Too much wind for Belharra aparently. The peak of the swell is due for tomorrow morning and some classic XXL conditions are expected. I think there are a few nominations among the waves surfed today but there was only one set (IMHO) that could be a contender and the crews were way too deep to give it a go. Next time folks. I'm sure in the next 24h. we'll see lots of photos/videos from the session of today and tomorrow on the net.

(The first team checking a set wave from the jet-ski. Click to enlarge).

(One of the first rides of the session by Axi Muniain. Click to enlarge).

(Karramarro just before nightfall. A nice spot when the rest of the coast is way too big.Click to enlarge).

I'm flying off to the Canary Islands tomorrow. Hopefully I'll find a sheltered corner somewhere to surf. Cheers!

Amazing day...

noreply@blogger.com (Niegà) — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:22:00 +0000

...for some... and I mean that special breed of big wave riders. Today (Friday) Belharra, the big wave that lays dormant almost a mile off Saint Jean de Luz, in SW France, was surfed without the help of jetskis for the very first time. Sure it wasn't huge-gnarly-hollow Belharra... or rather it was huge but not humongous. Axi Muniain (first European surfer ever to reach the final of the XXL Monster Paddle Award), Yann Kazandjan (first European surfer invited to the Mavericks contest ever) and Pilou were the pioneers floating among a waltz of noise and jet ski fumes to catch a few elusive liquid monsters. They only rode a few waves, with Axi getting the biggest and Pilou getting the worst beating, and I'm sure we'll se the photos soon all over the media and the screens.

My hat's off to them!

(left to right: Yann, Axi, Pilou and Luc).

(In order to avoid getting blown out by the offshores and to stick the board down to the surface during a bumpy drop Axi has installed a system of mobile leads -2.200kgs. in total- along a curtain rail on the nose of his boards. Today was the first test and he is more than happy with the results).

(12'6'' and almost brand new. Check the leads rail system).

La vie en rose...

noreply@blogger.com (Niegà) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 15:46:00 +0000

Go South, waaaaaaaaay South young man!!!

four

noreply@blogger.com (Niegà) — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 23:05:00 +0000

Last Friday, when I got home after a little surf in France, my body was in the shape of a "4". The cold got me -it had snowed some 20cms on Thursday and the air was like 2ºC when I was surfing- and blocked my lower back so much I could barely stand upright. All it has taken for my lower back to heal is to rest in the warmth of home and some gel.

This reminded me that I had seen some warming kidney belts in some mag and I managed to find them on the internet. They are the poor man’s version of Rip Curl’s heated wetsuits… which, if I’m not mistaken, comes with a price tag of some 1,000USD in the US (ouch!). As we still are in early winter I’m seriously thinking of buying one of those heated kidney belts.

Have any of you tried them (or do you know someone who has)?

Cold water is also known to produce another effect on our bodies, as George Costanza found out in this Seinfield episode:

Nothing a hot shower can cure though…

First surf of the year...

noreply@blogger.com (Niegà) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 12:04:00 +0000

Not for me, but for these blokes. Very tiny waves at home this morning but at the low tide you could get some funny lefts at La Zurriola, especially on a mal. I walked the dog on the beach for a couple of hours instead. There'll be plenty of other opportunities to surf this year, i'm sure.

Here's wishing a Happy New Year to everyone!

Merry Xmas - Comic Strip # 7

noreply@blogger.com (Niegà) — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 19:23:00 +0000

Merry Xmas to all from Scotland!!!

(click to enlarge)

Over & out

Back home

noreply@blogger.com (Niegà) — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 21:23:00 +0000

Brrrrrr.... Cold, windy, rainy, grey!

The surf was going off this morning at home, but way too crowded and cold for me to be interested in after 3 weeks of surfing in Southern Portugal. This trip has been good: not epic as last year, but good. Crowds are becoming a problem during weekends and whenever surf camps decide to go for a drive and arrive at former "secret spots". Seriously, the attitude of some surf camps in the area are calling for an active boycott.

On one of the last days I had some words with an Italian surfer at Arrifana. After every wave he'd paddle back and sit on my left, getting preference for the next wave that would come our way. After the umpteenth time I politely (no euphemism) asked him not to do it anymore. He smiled, apologized and proceeded to paddle somewhere further up the beach.

Fifteen minutes later and while I was getting changed he walked to his car, which turns out was parked next to my van. He then realized that I am not Portuguese (car plates) and without looking at me he shouted something (in Italian) at no one in particular.

Whatever, dude, whatever.

Sorry

noreply@blogger.com (Niegà) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 17:34:00 +0000

Sorry,
If you are that British longboarder
-mid twenties, tall, well built, blond flattop, rainbow sunnies, the looks…-
that i’ve met twice in two days
in SW Portugal with 5 or 6 friends.

Sorry,
I didn’t talk back to you
When you talked to me.

Sorry,
I didn’t laugh at your bad jokes.

Maybe i should have made my discomfort
With your presence
More obvious.
But you looked like a bouncer.

Sorry,
But when a group of six or seven mal riders
who can hardly surf
but get a lot of waves
invade the break I am surfing at
-twice in two days at two different beaches-
And proceed to take every single wave
With no exception.
When one of them –You-
Tries to be chatty in the 30 seconds
it takes him to take another wave
And only because he’s on a mal.

When this happens
I feel like not saying much but…
Sorry
One day (you and your friends) will be.

WAVE POOLS – AGAINST

noreply@blogger.com (Niegà) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:11:00 +0000

Marco points out to our right, sighs and - with a sad voice - says: “my favourite wave used to break right there”.

Marco (his real name is Made) is a Balinese surfer from Tuban, near Kuta, who makes a living by taking surfers on a boat out to the outside reefs by the airport. But the wave he is talking about is not one of those legendary coral reef breaks where hordes of surfers have had their first surf in Bali for years. It is (or rather “was”) a small fast peeling sand bottom shore break wave that would only happen for a couple of hours at certain tides. Only the local kids and the boat drivers used to surf that wave on their old beaten boards, normally in between trips to the outside reefs, displaying a performance level and style that many of us will spend our whole lives trying to match. Now, where that wave used to break there is a brand new T-shaped rocky pier, one of many along this stretch of coast. Their purpose is to keep the sand of the brand new man made beach - that runs the length of several kilometres in front of fancy hotels and resorts- in place.

Many of you will wonder what this has got to do with wave pools and with Tenerife’s Siam Park. For plenty of surfers (me included) one of the most appealing things in surfing is to found ourselves immersed in nature: the light, the colours, the textures that the breeze draws on the wave’s surface, playing with our own shadows on the sand bottom… or the opportunity to spot some wildlife. For many of us surfing is more than just a quest for adrenalin; depending on our mood we might even prefer a surf in crap waves, but in a breathtaking scenery, than one in perfect waves in a grey and dirty industrial area.

The human being has not quite gathered –yet …and let’s hope it never does- enough scientific knowledge to duplicate nature’s features at its own will. To this day several wave pools have tried to bring a solution to the ever growing problem of overcrowding and/or the lack of surfing conditions… only to fail. Some have shut down and disappeared altogether, and some reconverted themselves into mere wave pools for bathers. In some cases the lack of business has been the cause, like Myazaki’s Ocean Dome, which produced the best man-made waves by far. To try to duplicate the perfection and randomness of a natural wave in a chlorine pit – albeit with an intense turquoise-painted bottom- is something we haven’t quite managed to learn. To do it somewhere like Tenerife, an island blessed with high quality breaks but where several of those waves disappeared not too long ago and some more are endangered because of human development, is an insult to our collective memory. If we accept wave pools as a valid alternative –especially in those places where real surf spots are in danger of disappearing – they might be offered to us in exchange for taking away a natural surf spot. We shouldn’t be taking this risk, especially when the whole world is trying to clean its energy production and, no matter what, no wave pool engine will ever be as clean as the winds that create the swells we hope to ride in the ocean. Let’s just hope that we shall never be Marco and point at a pier to say “this is where the best right hander I have ever surfed used to break” while walking to the nearest wave pool.

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A new 3sesenta has come out (issue #131, check the cover on the right hand side column) and it features this short text (above) in which I express my views regarding wave pools. In this same issue there is a large feature on the brand new Siam Park wave pool located in Southern Tenerife; hence my rant.
I’m off to Southern Portugal for a couple of weeks …or three, but I shall be updating the blog regularly. Cheers.

Why Europe will never win the XXL Big Wave Awards

noreply@blogger.com (Niegà) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:10:00 +0000

With winter just around the corner and the big wave season about to start, the time has come for a wake up call: this year, once again, no European will win a XXL Big Wave award! You think I’m being too harsh? Well as I see it, it’s just the plain truth.

No matter how hard we keep trying year after year, cold winter after cold winter… it’s all to no avail: the big wave award always ends up going somewhere else. As a European surfer, the realization that we are never going to win was not enough; I wanted to know why not only we haven’t won, but we never will. And here are the only four reasons why they will never give us the awards, no matter how big and gnarlier than everybody else’s our waves are:

1) Sorry, but what’s your name again??
Picture it, the typical host at the award-giving ceremony, up there in Anaheim, just about to announce the winner of the Biggest Ride of the Year. He smiles at the audience, opens the envelope, reads the name on the paper and then slowly glazes his eyes over as he tries to figure out just how the Hell he’s going to pronounce… Ibon Amatriain.

Try it, it’s a little challenging, isn’t it? And yet, with a little bit of practice it shouldn’t be that hard. Read my lips: Eebon Amatree-ine. Ok, maybe it is that hard. And it could be even worse: Hugues Oyarzabal, Indar Unanue, Axier Muniain or… Ok, I think I made my point.

So maybe, and only maybe, in order to avoid hiring a multilingual host for the night… or the extra cost of simultaneous interpretation for the guests and other nominees, it is much better to give the awards to more familiar names. Such as the ones we read –month in, month out- in the surf tabloids. Names we know so well that they feel like family: Long, Parsons, Baker, Dorian, Gerlach, Knox... Good ol’ names that any North American can pronounce safely without feeling lost in translation at his own party.

2) And where in Hell are you saying you caught that wave?!?
I honestly believe there’s more chance of a European surfer winning an XXL award for surfing an American wave than for surfing a European one. In the US, European waves are the stuff jokes are made of. They are the center of endless discussions regarding whether they are good enough for a WCT or not, never mind for an XXL award. They rank just above Brazilian waves (minus the babes but with mellower crowds), and the Japanese ones (sushi is good, but endure a cold flat winter spell in Japan and you’ll know what I mean). Some Hawaiian badass even went so far as to say that one of Europe’s biggest waves –no matter how big- was safe enough for his little kid to go and play with (I have to agree with him: better his kid than me to face a 50 foot Belharra monster). And those tides: since when can a wave only be surfable for –like- three hours per day? It shouldn’t even be called a surf spot at all, it should be called a… hoax.

And by the way… where exactly are those waves? Most of the time they are found at the bottom of endless, spooky cliffs, or rather far out at sea… Even the average European surfer hardly sees them going off due to their remote location. On the other hand everyone knows that Mavericks sits off Half Moon Bay, not far from Santa Cruz, and has a great vantage point from up the hill by the aerial. And that Ghost Trees is plainly visible from one of California’s most famous golf courses. And that you can check Waimea from the road on your way to the most expensive supermarket in the world. But… Belharra? Aileens? Playa Gris? Isla Pancha? Jardim do Mar? Obscure names for obscure places that hardly anyone has seen but for a couple of times in the media every ten years. No chance of winning anything there, pal.

3) Is that water or mud?
Now, now… there is something our photographers need to work on: color and light. A photo of a wave from dark Mordor will never win an award in the sunny Shire. And if the XXL Judges have to spend the whole allocated 10 minutes just trying to figure out where the black suited surfer is on the wave’s face because everything looks brown, bleak and gloomy… well, that makes our chances of winning even slimmer. Now, bringing a few spotlights on the cliffs’ face and throwing some liters… -excuse me- gallons of turquoise paint in the line-up, that’s not cheating; that’s cosmetic surgery, dude. And have you checked just how close Anaheim is to Hollywood?

4) Have I seen you somewhere before?
And that might just be our biggest problem: European big wave riders are mainly an unknown bunch outside their own neighborhoods. No current or even former pro WCT surfers; no free surfers with paychecks in the mail at the end of the month; no Amex stars. They all have jobs; the lucky ones have jobs within the industry, which allows them to leave their desks when conditions are right. The rest are just a bunch of survivors with no jobs, no paid trips to the Mentawais and –thus- no exposure in the media apart from the local European mags after the winter season. It is very hard to win the judges’ favor competing with guys who have been in the media almost since before the media was born. It’s like Rick Kane wanting to get a set wave on his first day ever at Pipe: it’s not about the skills, but rather about being well known enough so the locals let you have one.

So what can be done?
There’s always the possibility of an Irish surfer nailing the award on behalf of all of us. You see (1) most Irish names are normal-sounding by American standards (since lots of north Americans have Irish origins); (2) thanks to John F. Kennedy and John Wayne all of America loves Ireland; and (3) although the Irish are full members of the EU -and even gave up the punt to embrace the €-, most Americans ignore this fact and think of them as half-euros (just like the British), so they won’t feel like they are giving us an award.

But that is a long shot. On a more realistic way, the only chance Europe has to win an XXL award is to go the Australian route and set up our own XXL awards.

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This text -in this very Lewis Samuelesque tone- was submitted to Surfline as they were interested in some European content. Apparently they didn't like it. Their loss and this blog's readers win.