shaky windows

It’s kind of hard to sleep when all the doors and windows in the house are shaking; it took me a few minutes to work it out, as outside there wasn’t a breath of wind. The strange thing was it was incessant, not just a one off rattle or shake. A continuous noise, a constant reminder that in the morning I would possibly see the biggest waves I’ve ever seen. Bizarrely though I slept really well.
With a small window of opportunity everything was pretty much prepped days in advance, what boards were working, safety, flotation, all we had to do was put the skis in the water and head out. We’ve surfed here so many times now it was just another day. As we left the harbour at first light and my first glimpse of the waves the reality hit, it was huge. At first I wasn’t even sure about surfing; my mission was to put Garrett on the biggest wave possible.
Some opportunities only come once and when I had a chance to grab the rope I wasn’t going to let it pass, I’ve been wanting this so much for years and I feel truly lucky to be in this situation. The waves were dangerous, giant, fast and incredibly hard to read, I didn’t want to make any mistakes or take any silly risks but I also wanted to try and get to the bottom of one of these waves and try and actually surf it (which is surprisingly hard to do believe it or not,) rather than just hop down the shoulder.
I got a couple fun ones like this shot from Jose Pinto above. Thanks to Garrett for the tow and inspiration, Hugo Vau who drove safety and all the crew I’ve had the pleasure of hanging out with and made me feel so welcome.
Thank you Nazare, you have the biggest, scariest most beautiful waves I’ve ever seen.

AG Board short test 1.

When I got invited to a board short test I jumped at the chance as to be honest I was thinking like a week in the Caribbean or maybe Indo surfing, wearing boardies. So I’ll have to admit when I found out that it was a day in Bedford and at a Flowhouse I was slightly disappointed and also worried for my limbs as I’ve heard the odd horror story about these things and with my luck wasn’t prepared to take any silly risks. Being the switched on sort of person I am I came up with a plan which involved inviting young Alex Baker along to do my side of the testing and risk taking, he surf’s pretty good, can do airs and shit so this flow rider thing should be a walk in the park for him I thought.
Well it isn’t as easy as it looks and I can honestly say it’s nothing like surfing, skating or snowboarding but when your natural show off like myself, faced with a small crowd I did manage to lay down some turns and generally impress, although I think the highlight was just messing about on the body boards. As for Alex, well it didn’t go exactly to plan, although he did meet all the crew at Analog he wasn’t as natural as I thought he might be which was slightly annoying for him and quite amusing for me.  

Szczepan comes to Croyde for the first AG coffee morning.

This is Szczepan, he’s from Poland and has been travelling round the UK for a year and 7 months, nice bloke and I’m guessing that when he said travelling he means sleeping rough and boozing shit loads as he doesn’t look like he’s been working much over the past year and when I met him at 7am on Saturday morning he was surrounded by empty cider bottles, although I could be wrong about the work comment as I didn’t actually ask him that. He speaks perfect English and couldn’t really understand what the hell I was doing down the beach on a rainy, windy Saturday morning so early, armed with piping hot coffee and fresh donuts which I’d just picked up from the bakers in Barnstaple, but he was pretty stoked to see me.
Just started doing these Analog coffee mornings you see, the idea is to just rock up down the beach put up a gazebo and just give out free coffee and donuts to whoever passes by and have a little chin wag and hang out. Unfortunately on Saturday the weather was horrific with wind and rain and Szczepan was the only bloke down there for the first 30 mins but it did pick up and by 8am the word had spread and everyone was digging the free refreshments courtesy of AG. Luckily for me I persuaded my mate A Blake to come down and help so I wasn’t too suicidal when I was struggling with the gazebo in the rain, nice bloke, big features generally.
I’m hoping Szczepan will be down there when we do the next one as we got on so well, I said I'd let him know so he can make another appearance but he's a pretty hard guy to keep in contact with as he's not on facebook yet.