Carve Magazine Issue 185

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Carve Surfing Magazine

Carve Magazine Issue 185

New issue is in stores this week and available on the app now for you iPad folk. For next time how about letting the postie take the strain and subscribe?!

FROSTY FUNNELS

Getting up in the dark is no fun. Scraping ice off your windscreen isnít either, especially when youíve misplaced your gloves. Once the confusion settles over why the frozen shut car doors wonít open you can get on with firing boards and suits in the motor.
The car dash display smugly telling you the temperature is somewhere south of zero is no bother. You have a steaming travel mug of sweet black java, a few inches of windscreen to see through, full thermals on and an appointment with some waves.
Eventually the windscreen clears, miles pass, the first light worries the eastern sky. The trees are still, the few flags you pass listlessly try and wave the joyous news the wind is indeed a light kitten sneeze of an offshore. Miles pass. The froth builds.
Forecasts have gone from long-range magic 8-ball predictions to ‘this is happening’. No last minute weird outs or wind spins. No ghost swell. Once the spin of the earth reveals the sunrise it’ll be a bluebird sky. Frost paints the world in swirls, rivers and streams gently steam, all is still apart from the birds soundtracking the dawn. The benefit of being up in the dark is scoring a good parking spot on the day of the year, so far, hopefully. The hardcore crew already there in the dark confirm it’s solid. It could be an all time day.
You pace it. No point peaking too early. Especially when it’s effing freezing. Wait for the tide to get right. Figure out which board is the go to. Finish that coffee, wish you had another one, and maybe a bacon sandwich. Talk shit with the crew.
The ball of fire that rarely graces our British skies in the winter saunters above the horizon. A somewhat showy display of golden rays takes the chill out of the dawn world. It illuminates every breath of the crew that would rather be a bit cold, but be able to see the line-up, than hide in their vans. Feet stomp. Gloved hands are rubbed together. You curse your missing five-fingered friends. It’s all pleasing detail on crisp winter’s mornings.
The sets are elusive but pulsing. It is so on. Finally you can resist no more, the thankfully dry and warm wetsuit is on. Your strongest leash and a board with a bit of paddling meat under your arm. Days like this are rare. Days when everyone who craves tube time drops everything. Some years it might not happen at all so when it does you’ve got to be there.
From the second you hit the cold brine the day is yours. Memories seared into the grey matter. Waves ridden and missed, a front row seat to one of nature’s finest shows. Amusement at that misjudgment that left you knee deep on the reef with nowhere to go but cop a pasting to the delight of the onlookers on the cliff. You survive. Your fin doesn’t.
It’s days like these that make being a British surfer special. It doesn’t happen very often but when it does you wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world. Even somewhere with warmth…

We’ve had some days like this already in 2018. Dive in to the mag to see home doing its thing. Enjoy.

Sharpy
Editor

 

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Carve Magazine Issue 184

Carve Surfing Magazine

Carve Magazine Issue 184

New issue is in stores this week and available on the app now for you iPad folk. For next time how about letting the postie take the strain and subscribe?!

SOLAR THOUGHTS

The end of every year is a period of reflection. We review everything that’s gone down in our own little worlds as the planet completes another loop around the sun. It’s easy to forget that we get our waves from the sun, especially in December, when it’s scraping the horizon, taunting us with weak, but beautiful golden light. It’s the energy from the sun, waves themselves, heating our atmosphere that is the mixing spoon that stirs storms into life. A vast, impossible to comprehend, nuclear inferno 93 million miles away, affecting weather systems hundreds of miles out in the ocean is why we can slide around in the sea. You’re riding solar energy every time you ride a wave and we’re all just a bunch of cosmic dust temporarily stuck together for the ride. Which is something to ponder next time you’re sat out back at your favourite spot … or not. Whatever nonsense goes on in your life, in the news, especially in the increasingly baffling world of politics, it’s all temporary. It will all pass. I think that’s why surfing is so addictive. It is, in the main, bullshit free. The solace you can enjoy while bobbing around on your board, filling your lungs with fresh sea air, being one with the environment, is unbeatable. The cleansing beatings of winter duckdives are invigorating. Riding solar energy on a board is ridiculous in the best way, it’s impossible not to smile, your mind glows. Just being in the ocean connects you to something it’s hard to describe, no matter how good or bad the waves. As much as the nonsense of daily life is soothed by time in the sea one thing isn’t: the damage we’re doing to our spinning orb and we are all responsible. Any review of 2017, surf poor as it was for most, but thumbs up for WWIII not starting, so that’s a bonus, has to conclude that the outlook for the ocean is not exactly positive. We’re murdering it slowly with our plastic obsession, in ways we don’t even realise. Geologists millions of years from now will strike a layer of plastic rock. Our indelible mark on our home. The ’20th century started here’ line viewable all over the globe. Plastic has reached the deepest parts of the ocean, is ingested by the smallest organisms and is now so prevalent it’s hard to see a way back. But a change is happening. The majority of us have taken the easy action of giving up plastic shopping bags, it should’ve happened years ago, but we’ve done it and other countries are following suit. Now we all need to continue to work towards a plastic free future where possible. How nice would it be to walk across a beach that is only made up of sand, rocks, seaweed and shells? A beach like it’s meant to be. Not a half plastic one. Sand between your toes not cotton bud sticks. It’s on us to fix this. Let 2018 be the year we make a difference…

Sharpy
Editor

 

Carve Magazine Issue 183 new

Carve Surfing Magazine

Carve Magazine Issue 183 new

New issue is in stores this week and available on the app now for you iPad folk. For next time how about letting the postie take the strain and subscribe?!

EVOLUTION NOT REVOLUTION

Been a funny old week here at Carve’s palatial downtown Newquay penthouse bunker.
On the Monday I interviewed one of the key, legendary even, guys in surfing’s timeline, Simon Anderson, the chap who gave us the thruster. And the following Sunday I was sat down with the current world number one, who we know as Mr Smith.
Now Jordy is tall, even when sitting down he towers over me. But the affable Saffa has grown into his own skin over the years and the witty but shy kid is now as confident, carefree and full of smiles as you’d expect the current best surfer in the world to be. Simon Anderson equally is a funny old bugger and warms to interview questions that tickle his shaper’s mind.
It was odd because I interviewed South African Jordy in North Wales and Australian Simon in the Walters shaping joint at Wheal Kitty in Aggie. So surfing’s biggest and brightest have been gracing the UK’s damp shores recently. Which is nice.
One point that couldn’t be avoided in either conversation was wave pools. And you’ll see the vibe in the articles deeper in the mag but the takeaway is the same: they’re here, they’re happening and you can have a blast in a freshwater lake or never darken their doors.
Having spent a week in Wales working on a couple of shoots one thing is apparent from all the regular punters laying out hard earned cash for their brown waves: the stoke is the same. Surfing is surfing whether you’re doing it in the shadow of the sublime Welsh slate mountains, the stout granite of Cornwall or anywhere else you choose to feel the slide. Hell even in a river in Munich. The rush, the buzz, the good times chemicals flooding your system are the same.
You. Are. Having. Fun.
Which is the whole point surely?
If surfing isn’t fun then what the hell are we all doing here?

Sharpy
Editor

Carve Magazine Issue 181

Carve Surfing Magazine

Carve Magazine Issue 181

New issue is in stores this week and available on the app now for you iPad folk. For next time how about letting the postie take the strain and subscribe?!

PLASTIC BEACH

As surfers we are immersed in the wonders of nature more than most. It’s no surprise then that protecting the environment comes naturally to us. When the ocean is your playground you notice pretty swiftly when that playground is covered in turds, broken glass and plastic bottles.

Thanks to the efforts of organisations like Surfers Against Sewage, and grass-roots local campaigns across the land, the days of poop in the line up are near done. The only floaters to be seen are the rad ones you’re hopefully nailing on the end section.

The menace now isn’t so much King Kong’s finger floating through your spot and the associated health risks that came with it (hands up who misses the days of getting gastroenteritis as a reward for just going for a surf?) but a new disease that’s infecting the whole planet.

It’s just your humble squashed zooplankton and algae from millions of years back come back to haunt us. Those little critters got squished by geological processes over the millennia and became lovely goopy oil. If that process didn’t happen the world would be a very different place. But like coal those compressed sources of energy have shaped our civilisation and none more so than the black gold.

Oil is a mother of so many things. The juice that powers your motor. The foam that your board is made from, the resin it’s glassed with, the neoprene in your wetsuit, the leash that keeps your precious safe. All oil products. All hard to recycle effectively. So there’s a hypocrisy in the ‘environmental surfer’ stance. Especially if you travel frequently to surf.

But surfer debris is a side issue compared to the plastic contagion. No matter where you are on the planet in the ocean odds on sooner or later a plastic bottle will drift merrily past. We’re literally burying the planet in plastic crap. Moving away from reusable glass bottles and more simply recycled aluminium cans to make a slightly bigger profit margin is dooming the environment.

Progress isn’t always a good thing.

Your grandparents wicker shopping basket would’ve lasted decades. But some bright spark decided single use plastic bags were more convenient. They ain’t convenient for the planet. Again they’re an issue that’s been battled and near won. They’re not the scourge they were. Bottles and other packaging are. They’re the next battle in the war on plastic.

SAS and others are campaigning for a bottle deposit scheme. It needs our support. As do many other worthy schemes. And you can vote with your pocket. Support companies that sell their goods in sensible, recycled, minimal packaging.

We don’t want to be the last generation that remembers beaches that were made of more  sand than plastic…

Sharpy
Editor

 

Carve Magazine Issue 180

Carve Surfing Magazine

Carve Magazine Issue 180

New issue is in stores this week and available on the app now for you iPad folk. For next time how about letting the postie take the strain and subscribe?!

WHAT DO FRUIT BATS EAT?*

I did a boat trip for a feature in this issue and it was different to the norm as it wasn’t a boat full of sponsored frothers.

Sure there were a few crew with stickers on the beaks of their boards; but Markie and Josh have full-time jobs and being sponsored is a happy bonus for them because they surf good. So with a shaper, a senior lifeguard, an ex-Brit champ/surf coach/property developer, a boat builder, a lawyer, a ladies QS hopeful and a chap who makes his living selling coffee shops the stuff they need to do coffee (who’s part owner of the boat) it was the very definition of ‘mixed bag’.

The surfing level was from pro to just about intermediate. If there’s one thing that’s good for your surfing it’s sharing a trip with guys and gals better than you. We all get stuck in a rut with our surfing and it takes the trained eye of coaches and pros to point where you’re going wrong. Arm, body, feet, head position make a huge difference and someone pointing out how you might try something subtle but new can rock your world. The main takeaway from the trip, apart from the wisdom that hangovers in the tropics when it’s 36C in the shade early morning suck major ass, was that it doesn’t matter what your level as a surfer if you can stand up and trim you can have a blast in the Maldives.

And no matter where you are in your life. A life that frequently gets in the way of surfing as you get older, as work, family and other balls crowds in; a week away in fun waves is a real tonic for the soul. Also, put a bunch of random Brits on a boat and they’ll take the piss relentlessly for a week. Because that’s what we do. We bang on about travel a lot in Carve. That’s because it’s one of the best things you can do. Be it two hours down to the British coast to get your fix or on a catamaran dream trip grazing the equator.

You’ve got one shot at this life. Do your utmost to make it a good one.

*Genuine question asked on the trip in a brainfart moment of post-surf tiredness. Narrowly pipped by ‘why are you called Sharpy’ as the daftest question of the trip.

Sharpy
Editor