July Issue :: #21

a magazine for surfing females.

#21. JULY ISSUESO much fun sliding action this month it’s crazy. Here, we have tried to bring as much of it to you as we could squeeze in to this month’s issue. - Gemma, Editor.

10 BOARD CHALLENGE / / VINTAGE SURF MEET // IS SURFING RULING MY LIFE? // CHICKS ON WAVES // THE FIRST WAVE // ...Enjoy!

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Godrevy, Cornwall played host to this year’s Ten Board Challenge – an all female surf contest focussed on providing serious amounts of fun. The principle is brilliant. Take a bunch of girls and give them all a surfboard they have never ridden. Numbers are placed in a hat, pulled out before a heat, and the number corresponds to one of the boards in the mixed assortment of wonder-ful shapes – long, short, fat, noseless, twin fins, quads, and single fins. Riding a board you’ve never been on almost equals every-one to a level playing field, with the more skilled being able to ride most boards well, but perhaps not feeling hugely connected with their craft, and those who are just set-ting out on their surfing quests feel they are in with a chance! The other upside is that you get to ride boards you may never have imagined riding...

10 BOARD CHALLENGE

10 BOARD CHALLENGE

Everyone was pretty happy with the small, cleanish surf, and the sun shining on the wonderfully blue sea. Halfway through the quarter finals however, the sea turned from blue to brown where the river flows out, and with the northerly wind, soon spread down to the contest area and beyond. A short sharp burst of rain in the morning fell on baked hard ground. Not allowing the water to soak into the earth meant it ran off into the water courses, and proved too high a volume for the local sewage treatment plant, where it was released into the river flowing on to the beach. Sewage put an end to the fun. The contest was put on hold until the next day, which saw Allannah Brown crowned as champion.

An unfortunate incident to stop a wonderful surfing event in Cornwall. There has been much media coverage of the sewage outfall on that day, which will hopefully increase awareness that sewage spills occur around our coast at an alarmingly frequent rate, and possible actions may come out of it, to make our seas a safer, cleaner place to enjoy.

Words: Ellie Woodward.

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Photo: Ryan Maddocks.

Photo: Ryan Maddocks.

Photo: Stephane Joly.

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The Annual Vintage Board Collectors Meet gathered for its 4th year on Sunday 15th June at Lusty Glaze car park. Greeted with amazing weather and an array of legends from the surfing world including Gwyn Haslock (who is current-ly featured in the Land Rover advertising campaign) Roger Mansfield, Martin Geary, Tony Cope, Dave Farrow and Dennis Cross, collectors met to share their stories and experiences of riding boards from this unique & diverse treasured collection.

Brainchild of one of the UK’s leading authorities of vintage surfboards, Alasdair Lindsay, the event saw collectors from as far afield as the South of France, with a staggering display of well over a hundred boards. This free event is an opportunity to take a step back in time, or relive your youth through the memories of the boards you once rode, or wished you’d rid-den in the past!

Amongst this years exhibits was an immaculate and rare collec-tion of 6 Bickers Longboards, crafted in Newquay by Fred Bickers. These, along with oth-er important boards from all over the world, some dating back to the 30’s were also featured.

With the happy memories and stories drifting off into the after-noon, we’re already looking for-ward to next year’s event, with more boards and tales of vin-tage wave riding to share.

Words: Helen Piper.

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Photo: Alex Williams.

Photo: Stephane Joly.

Many of the treasured pieces have been lovingly restored and collected from across the world and have stunning variety of artwork, logos and tints which truly represent their era and provide a trip back through surfing history.

Are vintage boards your thing? Fancy writing us an article? Email: [email protected]

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Photo: Stephane Joly.

Ever since I stepped foot on a surfboard and had that instant feeling of exhilara-tion, my life changed for-ever. Since then, almost all of my decisions in life have been made from a surfer’s point of view.

After getting hooked by surfing I could no longer live in the city, so decided to move to a small town on the beach in Ecuador, something that no girl in her right mind would do, according to Ecuador’s soci-ety’s standards. Who would want to leave all the comforts and luxuries of the city to move to a muddy, rustic little town, filled with donkeys and chickens? But in my mind I could only imagine waking up ev-ery day with the sound of the ocean and perfect uncrowded waves waiting for me to surf them. Putting my career on hold, I moved to the beach where I opened up a small bar, with my partner at the time, which was the perfect job because I was able to surf all day and work only at night. But life, ike the ocean, is constantly changing, so after six years my relation-ship ended and I was suddenly faced by

another set of decisions to make; what to do and where to go next. I immediately thought of continuing my education in a place where I could study and surf at the same time and Australia seemed like the perfect place to do that. My cho-sen degree was Ecotourism and the best place to do it was in Townsville, North of Queensland. I soon found out there were not that many good waves close by, so instead of doing the responsible thing and just accepting the fact that I had to surf a little bit less until I graduated, I decided to change my career and pursued a Masters of International Tourism on the beautiful coast line of the Gold Coast.

I was 25 and thought I was moving to paradise. Even the name of the place where I was going to live at had that word

Is surfing ruling

my life?ruling

in it, and not any paradise - Surfer’s Paradise. After a few months there I realized that it wasn’t the right place for me, too many parties and noise so decided to move further south to the real surfer’s paradise, Coolangatta. It didn’t matter that I had to drive half an hour or longer to get to university or work but at least I was living close to amazing waves. For a girl coming from a small place in South America where surfing is considered one of the weirdest things to do, it felt good to live in a country where surfing is like a national sport. I felt I was in the right place.

After a few years, Australia became my home. I was enjoying my life and I had settled in with the country’s culture and lifestyle but I still hadn’t found what I wanted to do with my life, career wise, and that was something that was bothering me. I had finished my Master’s but hadn’t been able to find a good job.

my life?Is surfing ruling

Three years passed and I had experienced all kinds of jobs mostly in the hospitality industry, some good, some horrible, all part of being an immigrant in a new country I suppose. But it didn’t matter how bad the job could be, I could always rely on surfing to pick me up, I had a way of escaping reality in a good way, a place where I could go and forget about everything that was happening in my life and that was a blessing.

All those years of hard work and sacrifices paid off, when in 2007 I became an Australian resident and saved enough money to make one of my dreams come true: travelling around the world. The list of countries I visited all had something in common, good waves and good friends. My first stop was Hawaii, where I spent two amazing months of non-stop surfing and living life to the fullest. I didn’t know then, but on one of those weeks staying at the local backpackers on the north shore I met some-one who was going to be my future husband. During that year, I surfed places like Ecuador, Brazil, Norway, France and visited Spain and India. At the end of 2008 I returned to the Gold Coast.

Since then, life has improved for the better. I finally found what I wanted to do as my profes-sion and went back to university to study Edu-cation. I became a teacher and had a full time

job for almost three years. I got my Australian citizenship, found my life partner, someone who shares the same love for the ocean as I do, and we got married over a year ago. All the things that I had longed for over those first years, like stability and a steady and fulfilling job, I had finally achieved, but something was missing. Surfing had become secondary to a busy working schedule and I didn’t like that. So, in December last year, we sold all our unnecessary things, quit our jobs and left

Australia. We’ve been in Ecuador since then, spending time with family and friends, surf-ing all the good waves this country has. In a few months we will go to the Caribbean to buy our new home. It’s a home that we can move around and will help us to strengthen our connection with the ocean; a sailing boat which will lead us to find great new waves.

In my life so far, my biggest decisions have been guided in one way or another by my desire for surfing. I don’t think my life is any different from anyone else’s life, because in the end, we all have one thing in common; we all want to be happy. Surfing has been a great source of peace and happiness for me, so when I think about that, and see what I’ve left undone or what roads I’ve taken to be able to surf, I realise that after all, I have probably been making the best decisions I could. Because when we are done with this life what really matters is how happy we were and how good we were at enjoying ourselves and I think I get all of that thanks to surfing.

Words: Isobel Romero.

my life?Is surfing ruling

An insight into the Algarve’s l a d i e s - o n l y surf school.

Photo: Katrien Kegels.

Katrien Kegels, founder and own-er of Chicks on Waves tells us how it all began...

“During my travels in Morocco five years ago, my friend who runs a surf school asked me if I wanted to organise a girls-only surf & yoga week. First I was little skeptic about the only girls part as I am not the girly type at all but it turned out to be a great week with only good vibes and a lot of fun. Chicks on Waves was born and many weeks for surfing girls have been organised since. I started in Morocco but moved the lessons soon to Portugal where I caught my first wave 10 years ago and where I fell in love with surfing and the Algarve; a little piece of paradise which has it all: sun-shine, friendly people and great waves for all levels.”

“Spending a lot of time as the only women in the water made me wonder where all the other girls were? In Australia half the surf crowd is female, Hawaii and US are following, but what about Europe? With Chicks on Waves we try to get more girls in the wa-ter and give lessons according to each individuals abilities.

Our usual clientele are women with a passion for surf and/or yoga. The Chicks on Waves team con-sists of surf teachers Concha, Marta, the owner of the local ‘Freeride surfschool’ and Pushpa. Also Camilla our Yogi and Anina who prepares delicious healthy meals with organic and local products.

Concha our main surf instructor has been teaching surfing now for over seven years, “We are girls, we surf and we have a lot of fun. Every Chicks on Waves week is special and unique. The focus is set on surf-ing and developing each individual’s skills, which is carried out through a holistic approach. Spending a

Photo: Katrien Kegels.

Photo: Nicolas Keruzec.

lot of time with the girls helps me to understand their way of learning and understanding as well as it al-lows me to push their limits to a healthy grade. Most important is that each girl feels comfortable and con-fident in what I ask her to do; the rest usually works by it self.”

[email protected]

Words: Katrien Kegels & Concha Rossler.

Photo: Katrien Kegels. Photo: Katrien Kegels.

Stay in a beautiful ocean view eco-lodge in the middle of a natural park surround-ed by the sea. All rooms have amazing ocean view and accommodate 2-3 people. A small path ieads to a stunning beach with turquoise water just a few minutes walk from the lodge.

Chicks on Waves still have spaces on the next dates: from 13/09/2014 till 20/09/2014 (8 spots) from 04/10/2014 till 11/10/2014 (8 spots) from 01/11/2014 till 08/11/2014 (8 spots)

[email protected]

Words: Katrien Kegels and Concha Rossler.

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The First Wave

There I stood feeling a mixed bag of emotions – pride, excitement, anxiety: mainly anxiety. I had suc-cessfully bigged myself up enough to warrant taking out an absolute beginner surfing.

As confident as I felt having taught lots of friends, and friends’ children to surf, I was dealing here with a grown man, and a self-confessed weak swimmer at that.

Phase one was the wetsuit, your boots go inside the leg, though that was very easy – thankfully there was no why’s the zip at the front moment. Next came the foamie walk to the water: seemingly painless.

I must at this point paint the picture of the scenery: our local break (relatively mushy swell once in a blue moon) is Bournemouth; it was rainy, grey, pretty nippy, and almost to the minute, low tide. We were unsuccess-ful in catching any waves, let alone having

the opportunity to stand up; we’re dragged across the groynes and tumble turned by heavy breaking waves.

Fast forward a few weeks, and we are heading back to my stomping ground, North Devon. I’m hit with the same sense of awe driving around to Croyde and seeing Saun-ton again for the first time in months. It is warm, sunny, and though not clean at Wool-acombe, there’s plenty of ankle biters to get Sam on his feet.

Despite the glorious weather, the currents are strong and Sam’s quickly swept along towards a rip. A little disheartened, we have a good pep talk and get him back out, and guess what? He’s up on his first ever wave.

The rest of the session in Woolacombe was spent honing our skills, and having a good laugh, whilst developing a symptom of the British Surfer, awkward hand, feet and neck tans.

Buzzing from our session, the next morning we were straight across to Saunton: we’d been told the surf had died off and it was a duck pond: rubbish! This time armed with a 9’6 log, a 6’4, and Sam’s camera (he is a budding commercial photographer), we set to work for round two. Plenty more waves were had on both the log and 6’4 and we have some photographic evidence for a certain someone to boast about when we got home.

The trips we made meant something more than teaching someone to surf: it was about bringing someone special into your sphere, and showing them what you love. The fact Sam enjoyed himself as well and is keen to hit the water again soon, just goes to show what a rewarding sport we partake in.

Words: Eleanor Deanesambentleyphoto.tumblr.com/

The First Wave

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