Great Pacific Northwest

Posted on by Bluebird Surf

Made a trip out to the Oregon coast to see what I could see.  First time I had been on the coast north of Lincoln City.  Wasn’t much swell and I didn’t have any of my gear, but took the trip anyway to just poke around.

Traveling to the coast was beautiful and the closest thing to it in California is probably up near Crescent City and Del Norte.  On arrival was awe struck by the sheer scale.  The roads to some of the neat little coves had full on coastal rainforests that looked Jurassic or like something out of a movie.  Really incredible. Big ferns, and moss hanging off trees like spooky halloween costumes, green green and more green everywhere you looked.

We found some empty beaches that looked like they could keep me busy for hours.  Driftwood treasures, unique shells and who knows what else.

The local surf shop told us that it’s often just too big and gnarly.  The summer they just get windswell since the souths don’t make it all the way up there, but the fall, winter, and spring it goes off.  The types of boards I saw reinforced that it can get pretty serious.  The locals in these parts have quite the reputation as well.  We ate at a killer little joint called The Relief Pitcher up there.  I highly recommend their albacore sandwich and burgers.  Some of the friendliest people around…but who knows how that changes when you start taking waves.

This summer has been the foggiest I can recall in years here in SF and so I felt right at home cruising the coast up north.  It was 80 degrees inland and as we came within ten miles of the coast the temperature started to drop and got down to 52 by the time we hit the beach.  Came across beautiful scenes like the one above.  I plan to go back in September or October to sample some of the spots I stumbled upon.  One in particular reminded me of a set up you’d see in Taiwan, a real thigh burner, except a lot colder and more consistent.

Topped it all off with some local brew.  Looking forward to getting my real session in.

Melali

Posted on by Bluebird Surf

I didn’t see The Drifter, but was more interested in seeing the sessions that surrounded making that film.  Was pleasantly surprised to see this new movie and so I picked it up last night.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=13470868&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=00ADEF&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0

Melali : Drifter Sessions – Music Trailer from vas entertainment on Vimeo.

While wandering through Indonesia filming the award-winning surf movie The Drifter, Rob Machado met up with various friends for surf sessions on the best waves the Islands had to offer.

Set across the vast Indonesian island chain, Melali: The Drifter Sessions features Rob Machado — one of the most stylish and skilled wave riders of our time. Melali returns to the fundamentals of surf cinematography by focusing on the surfing experience, the artful relationship between man and surf, and the sharing of this experience with good friends.

Spearheaded by Machado and director Taylor Steele (the godfather of modern surf film), this two-disc set contains two versions of the 35-minute surf film, an audio CD of the original score, and a short film documenting the recording of the soundtrack. Joining Rob at the finest surfing locales Indonesia has to offer is an eclectic and world-class cast of wave riders: Dane Reynolds, Kelly Slater, Kalani Robb, Shane Dorian, Dan Malloy, Mike Losness, Marlon Gerber, and Rizal Tanjung.

Set to an original score written by Jon Swift, Todd Hannigan, Fernando Apodaca, and Machado (The Melali Sessions Band), the music complements the imagery of the synergy born from long-standing camaraderie. “When we premiered The Drifter across the country, the best part of the night was the live improvisation with the band to the surf bonus footage,” Machado says. “That inspired us to make another movie with the unreleased surf footage and record some music as the score.”

Swift, a fellow surfer and Machado’s friend of 25 years, led the intense creative push by this team of accomplished musicians, who recorded the score in a barn in rural southern California. The result is a diverse mix of musical compositions ranging from simple ballads to full band improvisations that captures a broad spectrum of moods tailored to the soulful and dynamic surfing.

Good Surf Days

Posted on by Bluebird Surf

Got a few nice images from Taiwan this week.  Thanks Gazza!  Looks like some fun little in between Typhoon action.

Show Jays in the water…I swear that’s Gazz in the shorebreak eyeing the honey as he bodysurfs it up.

These photos are making me want to go on a warm water surf trip.

I’ll go right you go left!

New Ride

Posted on by Bluebird Surf

Ooohhhh yeaahhhh!  Finished my first hand shaped foam board yesterday.  A whole lot of sweat, fiberglass dust in the eye, and toxic fumes…but well worth it.  It was so much fun to make and I learned a lot through the process.  I wanted to go pretty simple on my first one…used a fish blank and put together a template and got to work.

I had been riding this single fin from Kauai shaper Topper Driggs.  It had a big wide squash tail and the most volume of any shortboard I had ever ridden.  Was like 3 inches thick at least, and has these sloped down super low hard rails.  Completely unique stringerless epoxy that rode absolutely insane once you could figure it out.  You could take off and ride way up front so long as you didn’t turn…it you wanted to turn you had to be all the way back on the tail, but then you could throw the tail if you wanted…well if it weren’t for the 12 inch skeg normally in it.  Anyway, that board was a bit of the inspiration for my own.  I figured if you can combine all those weird design elements to create something special then whatever I put together should be equally unique.

Well I watched a ton of videos to try and get some ideas and see what people were doing.  First I went through my personal collection checking out Litmus, Glass Love, Musica Surfica, Single Fin Yellow, and others that had little shaping parts.  Then depending on where I was in the process I’d look up in YouTube or Google glassing a board, installing Futures, etc etc.  There is a ton of good stuff online.

Picking up the blank with tools in hand I reflected on all I had learned from the internet, like how to mow foam from Abe Toke and  how to laminate the board from Kimo Greene so yeah, you can say I had some good help.

I wanted to make a super wide squash like the Topper board I had been riding, but then half way through I figured I’d try something a bit different and throw a little mini bat in there.  Figure it might act similarly to a swallow or allow it to go rail to rail a bit easier…I don’t know.  Just wanted to do something different.

First time to make a board from start to finish and so it’s inevitable that you are going to have some funky blunders.  I wanted to put in five skegs so I could switch it up from a thruster to a quad to a twinnie to a thruster with small center fin….you know, make it as versatile as possible so I can learn what works and doesn’t etc.  As you can see I messed up the right inside skeg on the quad set-up.  It turned out ok…I filled it with resin and it ended up sinking a bit so it may not be a perfect 4 degree cant, but I actually think it gives it a bit more drive.

Putting my own logos on the board was one of my favorite parts.  I always liked really clean boards, all white, the kind Curren, Lynch, or Hynd would ride.  Actually Lynch had a sick all yellow one in the sequence I’m thinking of, but still, same concept.  Logo free.  I also love photography and imagery and so I landed somewhere in the middle.  I had some images that I had been thinking about over the past years and felt my first real board would be the perfect canvas for them.  One of them is the Aloha Brahdda from Ando and Friends.  He just makes me happy every time I see him.  The others go way back.  The one I placed on the bottom near the skegs is a drawing my mother did of me when I was in her belly.  Riding a dragon and as she says ‘achieving willing submission, obedience, and all that power’.  I thought it to be very fitting for our act of taming the wild beast that is the ocean, and namely Ocean Beach.

The main logo on the deck is a family logo.  When I was growing up my parents had big medallions with that logo and all the kids had little ones.  We would only wear them on special occasions.  The dove is from an old Russian Orthodox book that my grandfather gave to my mother.  He passed away when I was 6 or so.  It is the symbol of the holy spirit, which she has explained is the same in theology as the principle within our world of divine Grace which translates to…are you ready…enlightenment, freedom, truth, goodness, beauty and redemption.  How amazing is that!!  I actually wasn’t aware of all of that until I showed my finished creation to her and she gave me the back story, which made me appreciate it even more.  I’m certainly not religious, per se, well I guess I am about some things, but being that my grandfather was an Episcopalian priest and I was baptized Russian Orthodox and my mother was his youngest and most rebellious daughter I’ve got the concepts of ritual and connectedness in there somewhere while also being exposed to all kinds of belief systems.

Speaking in religious terms, I took it to my own brand of church and christened it down south yesterday at a spot that was protected from the south winds and was sunny with a cool fog bank just sitting on the surrounding mountains and about a mile offshore.  It was only about chest high on sets, but I got one of my best lefts on my new board at this particular spot.  I got a really fun right and nearly bust the fins out on a lay back which I didn’t make, but it still felt good.  I rode it as a quad and it was super fast and really responsive.  I surfed for nearly three hours and still feeling it out, of course, but it was so exciting to not only wax a new board, that I made, but to escape the fog and wind and get some nice little shapely fun ones to test it out on.  I’ve already got a bunch of ideas for my next few.  I’m going to take a break though and enjoy this one.  Can’t wait to ride it at big Nori Rolls out front.  I’m hooked!  See you in Church!