Tips & Info

Still no sign of the promised Indian summer  but at least the waves (accompanied by howling wind) are with us.
This is proving to be good from a training point of view allowing me to get at least two surfs a day and because the surf is so lousy I can pretty much guarantee I’m the only one in the sea.

The wave where the competition is due to take place is a beautiful reef in County Donegal called Bundoran Peak. I’ve managed to surf there on previous trips to Ireland and it has always been well worth a visit. There are no waves in this area of Cornwall that offer the same kind of ride so finding something to practise on has been tricky but I have at least managed a few surfs at Porthleven. ‘Lev is also a peaky reef break but that is where any similarity ends – it tends to be short and sweet but at least the bottom surface is the same. Reefs tend to be more powerful than the beach breaks that Cornish surfers are used to and by my reasoning anything that is even vaguely similar has got to be helpful. I’ll keep my fingers crossed there!
The other more humdrum aspects of preparation for the comp involve filling out indemnity forms and letting the relevant authorities know that any asthma medication I take is not performance enhancing! It certainly doesn’t help me breathe underwater.
Five days to go.

Summer is well and truly over but the waves are making a welcome appearance. We have had a load of swell in the last week or so and the weather seams to have settled down a little bit. The odd shower here and there but by and large dry.

We managed to run the No pro on Saturday 10th (full right up here) and young Adam Bayfield, 15, from St Ives  won the junior and open categories – a first in the 17 years that we have been running it.
We also ran a Masters (over 35’s) for the first time and local boy (not really a boy at 36 but whatever) Pete Williams was the victor. Meanwhile Maisie Marshall took out the womens. One massive talking point was the prizes generously provided by Hurley. Oh my God, they were unbelievable. Wetsuits, clobber the lot. Better yet is that they are keen to sponsor the event again next year. Can’t wait.

Staying with the theme of competition surfing I have been invited to surf in the European Surfing Champs in Ireland. Im in the Seniors (over 28’s) so I could well be up against some comparatively young guys (sadly I am 37!) but I can’t wait to get amongst it. I’ve been training pretty hard since I got the invite so who knows. I managed to get 3rd last time around so I’d be delighted to get around that mark again. My goal is to get the final – if I do that I’ll be stoked.
If other fat-bloke related news I snagged a quick surf with Gwithian surf school pioneer (among a million other things) Graeme Bailey down at Hayle. He had the first surf school in this area in 1995 but stopped to run some phenomenally popular flats. Good on ‘im!