News

Some absolutely colossal waves coming through at Godrevy today. It wasn’t a great day for surfing, just far too windy and way too much swell for Gwithian to be anything other than a mass of bubbling, foaming mayhem. A good day to catch up with paper work and sneak off to Praa Sands for a quick high tide surf though.

Its looking like there will be a fair bit of mayhem on land this weekend with the ‘We are One’ Festival taking place at the Sandsifter this weekend. The big marquees are up and it should be a busy one.
Meanwhile in Peru Paddy Daniel has been dealing with some hefty waves too. Sadly he has been knocked out of the comp now but he took a few scalps while making his way to the fourth round. By my reckoning this makes him about 40th in the world for Under 16 surfers and that ain’t bad. A few Brits are still left in the comp with Jobe Harris in action later this evening. Keep your fingers crossed for him and the rest of the British Team. A 10th place or higher finish, and therefore better seeding, would make things a lot easier for next years team.

Its taken a long time but the new website is finally online. What began with a trip to Jon (a really good St Ives surfer) at Fuse2 8 months ago for a cup of tea and a chat about a ‘few minor tweaks’ mushroomed into a full scale revamp that involved the designers at Dis-similar and a month hunched over a keyboard, eyeballs bleeding and a severe case of repetitive strain injury from date input.

I have to say I am pretty pleased with he results so far but its clear that I am going to have to devote a bit more time to keeping this baby up and running – more time out of the water but I reckon its worth it.
The plan was to make the site a little more interactive rather than just be an advert for our services and to have more interesting video content for our customers to look at. There will be loads more videos getting posted up there in the coming weeks.
It ain’t Facebook but it ain’t bad either. I hope you enjoy it and if you have any ideas on how it could be improved then send me a message.
In other news Paddy Daniel, our young aspiring surf coach, has been sent to Peru to compete in the World Junior Surfing Games and we wish him the best of luck.
Go Paddy!

The Godrevy Pro Junior was completed earlier today in obscenely poor conditions. Howling South winds smashing the rights to bits and making the lefts, to my mind, all but un-surfable – but the groms proved me wrong.

They took to it with gusto and I have to single out a young chap called Jobe Harris who tore what remained of the waves to shreds. He won both the Under 16’s and Under 18’s (no mean feat for a 16 year old) and impressed anyone who watched him – except the other competitors of course. He’s got a really mature and powerful style so I reckon he could be one to watch.
He’s off to Peru in mid May with local lad Paddy Daniel to compete for Britain in the World Junior Surfing Games so keep an eye out for them in the coming weeks.
Well done to the National Trust, Robyn Davies and Nick Holden for putting on such a great event. Can’t wait till next year.

Under 18 Girls
1st Tassy Swalow
2nd Emily Currie
3rd Peoni Knight
4th Flora Lawton

Under 16 Boys
1st Jobe Harris
2nd Miles Lee Hargreaves
3rd Paddy Daniel
4th Max Payne

Under 18 Boys
1st Jobe Harris
2nd Miles Lee Hargreaves
3rd Harry de Roth
4th Taz Knight

I am gutted because April will never be the same again. It was that good.
The best run of swell, sandbanks and good weather and all at the beginning of the season when the place is still relatively quiet. So much so that I am now pretty much surfed out and when I check the waves they have to be pretty good for me to bother! A very rare feeling.

The surf went off the boil for a couple of days over the Easter weekend but the wind has swung offshore again and it looks like it will stay that way for the rest of the week at least. More sunshine is predicted but they reckon it may be a bit cooler. Thats just the way it goes with Easterly winds normally but if thats the sacrifice I have to make for good surf then I guess I’ll have to take it.
Meanwhile Gabbi (surf school manager and my right hand man – its short for Ian Gabbitas) and I have to go up to Padstow in the week to do a course that will allow us to teach the new Academy of Surfing Instructors surf coach awards. They are a super high standard award so it will be a hard day I reckon but totally worth it. We have always prided ourselves on keeping the standards high with our surf coaches and the ASI is the gold standard of surf coaching in Australia – as good as it gets to my mind. The Australians certainly take surfing seriously and the surf coach awards are properly backed up by quality infrastructure and a decent support network. It can only benefit us to work more closely with them.
In other news my wife (and by association, me also) has re-homed a tortoise called Ged. It broke out of his pen in 2 minutes so we had to strengthen that straight away. Apparently he was too aggressive for its previous owner. I’m not too sure how this aggression manifests itself but I’ll keep you posted. Ged already hates the cat, perhaps recognising that he is a fat, lazy, feckless (though loveable) gadabout and hisses at him whenever he come nearby. If nothing else at least he is a good judge of character.

I know we’ve been open for a while now but I’ve just got around to sorting out the accompanying video. Check it out.