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!

Progress for Ocean Policies/Awareness

Posted on by Bluebird Surf

The disaster in the gulf, if nothing else, has shown how fragile our ocean ecosystems really are, how the repercussions can be felt by all that are dependent among its resources, and the importance of measures to protect it.  Nice to see that there is heightened awareness and steps being taken in the right direction.  Hope this momentum continues in Washington and beyond.

Typhoon Daze!

Posted on by Bluebird Surf

Well its that time of year again for our folks in sunny Taiwan.  The water heats up and you start to see those little flare ups here and there that intensify as the season goes on. The typical season lasts from about July-October but can extend out to as early as April and as late as November in some cases.

When you ask the locals about the best months for surf you’ll see their eyes light up as they say Jo Yue, or September for us haoles.  When the waves start to come in, the long flat spells between the steady winter winds ‘long feng san’ and that first typhoon are easily forgotten.

Last week the boyz got a little taste of what they’ve been waiting for after a slow start to the season.  Reports of waves all up and down the best coast came in.  With not the biggest of waves, but certainly a nice warm up.

I believe last week was just a Tropical Storm headed for Hainan.  This guy has a front row seat for the action about to unfold.

This shot below is of one of my personal favorite waves.  It’s a fickle one that only breaks this time of year, but it offers a lot of variety when it does and can be punchy, which is always fun.  Check out the grab rail technique of that lucky one…he’s got it all to himself and about to get  little head dip.

The nice thing about Typhoon season in Taiwan is that it really opens up the scope of possibilities.  All sorts of nooks and crannies light up and it really tends to thin out the crowds considerably.

Best case scenario is when the storms just skirt the island and hang out or cruise by really slowly.  That is when you get some seriously good surf.  Here is Tha Meystro pulling in on one of the remnants of last week’s swell.

July is when the action starts to heat up and the frequency of storms really starts to pick up pace and so he and the rest of the boyz won’t have to wait too long for the next little bit of action.  As I write this, Tropical storm Chanthu is sitting in the South China Sea kicking up another round of goodness.

Tropical Cyclone Track at 05:00 HKT 21 July 2010

They are just getting up on that side of the world and I bet someone is pulling in right….NOW!  Taiwan Pi Jo all around cause Typhoon Daze are back.

All Photos Courtesy of the Gazza!!