go pro

the fine folks at go pro cameras replaced my hero5 board mounted machine. turns out the water proof housing suffered a hairline crack when my board slid out from under me while i was sitting on it and hit my upper leg. speedy and friendly service that deserves a good plug. thanks go pro! i'll add pix when i get them...

glassy bliss

el triangulo, a quirky spot in lima that only breaks when the waves are super big, was so glassy this morning that the sea looked like a reflection pond with a wave machine underneath it. i went there last week when we had 9 foot swell, but it was high tide so it wasn't working. this morning i went out, was one of just two people in the water, and the swell said 10 feet, somewhere in between high and low tide. wow. just absolutely amazing. i've never had such a nice surf in lima. so empty, so much space, every takeoff just so relaxed. the wave has a nice speed, plenty of walls that you can carve on and just the tiny little beginnings of a barrel as you move close in to the shore. curiously nobody was in the water this morning at any of the other breaks, mainly because most of them were closing out and terribly sloppy. but el triangulo is hidden away, and you need a big swell to wrap around a piece of peninsula and then refract into a little bay. when that happens it's just about as perfect as surfing can be...

finally got the video to work, on a very mushy day

gopro camera is finally working from inkawaves on Vimeo.

dolphins or circus tricks?

back when i was a young thing, skateboarders used to argue about whether a given move had integrity, whether it was communicating something and genuinely challenging, or whether it was just a cheap, superficial show off move, which they would deride as a "circus trick." i thought about that when i saw this video below. the landing is the most impressive part for me, and the timing is unreal, but the flip in and of itself amazes me less than the reentry. it also got me thinking about where i surfed on saturday, at puerto viejo, and how a dolphin popped up out of the water and dropped in on me just as i was paddling for an 8 foot wave. he was so close to me, cruising head on at me on a big, powerful wave, that i shouted "oh my god!" -- but he was a good enough swimmer to avoid me. he then circled back and surfaced next to me and blew water out of his blow hole, as if to say hi. dolphins are the coolest creatures on earth, and they do back flips too, which they are expected to do, unlike the guy in the video below.

steep to fat in nothing flat

surfed again at punta rocas yesterday afternoon. like saturday and sunday, it was 6 feet, but it was very tough to catch a wave. the takeoffs were super steep, and then fattened out almost immediately, becoming so fat you couldn't hitch rides or stay up once you had popped up. the only difference from saturday, i think, was that the tide was a foot or two higher, so the waves couldn't wall up as nicely. and i went out on a much floatier board. on saturday i used a skinny 6'8" thruster, which i was afraid wouldn't float me, and i caught plenty of waves. on wednesday, i went out on a fish of the same length which is extremely wide and barely caught anything. nature is fickle.

punta rocas

nice waves at punta rocas this weekend, with 5-6 foot waves that are about the ideal height for the break. anything bigger and it is too much for most riders. 9 feet forget about it. at 5-6 feet, it's forgiving enough so that if you drop in late you don't get pounded, and still the waves are fast enough to be challenging and fun. i saw a brazilian guy do a floater that went on forever. it was gorgeous to watch. went out on a an old 6'8" thruster that a friend of mine left here. kind of a mini-gun shape. i was worried it wouldn't do well but it caught plenty of waves and was incredibly responsive. this week i should pick up my new board and my repaired fish. woo-hoo!
photos coming soon of big phil at the beach with his life vest on!

back in the water

surfed this morning for the first time in two weeks. lots of big, mushy, blown out, fat waves. it took me an hour to catch a good wave, which lasted a long time and felt nice but a bit slow on my 7'2" beater that weighs a ton. i'll take out a lighter board next time that a friend left with me. i'd come back to lima thinking i could pick up my new board, and my repaired fish, which lost two fins, but my shaper is sort of missing in action. so patience is required.

waves in slo-motion

an insane surfing video from wired spotted by a friend who reads the huffington post

back in town

got back into town today and hope to surf soon, but in the meantime check out one of my favorite blogs, which always has amazing photos

big swell

i surfed caballeros yesterday morning with a couple of friends. a big swell with 9.5 foot waves that were too much for a lot of breaks. it was a challenging day. heavy fog so thick that you couldn't make out points of reference on the shore to position yourself on the break, peaks that were shifting left to right, a current that kept pulling us outside and over to the rocks, and every few minutes a huge set would roll through and you'd have to duck dive three times in a row, hope you didn't get stuck on the inside and then start the process all over. i was paddling out at one point during the session and looked up to see a breaking wave and my friend looked like an ant relative to the all the water behind him. once the sun came out, about 2 hours into the session, i finally caught some waves. but on the last nice wave i caught, just as i was standing up, my board felt slippery and twisted in a strange way. i looked at the underside and saw that i'd broken two fins and two hole plugs during the session. i think my leash tangled around them in a wipeout and they snapped off. most days aren't that challenging.

early morning session

woke up at 4 a.m. itching to surf and made it down to the water by 5:45 a.m. first ride was the best, a nice left down a line that was walling up and lots of fun. it flattened out later on but still is a great way to start the day. wednesday is supposed to bring 10 foot waves.
here's a blurb from an old friend, and a photo he took, i love the imagery: "went out the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean and spent a week fishing with a couple of local guys. We'd take a dhow out a sunset and sail over to where the waves would break across a coral reef and fish from the back side of the wave, throwing big lures into the white water and pulling them out like injured bait fish. Caught a ton of fish, little bit of everything. The guys didn't speak a lick of english so we'd gesture about what our game place was; troll for sail fish, jig for grouper or cast for trevallie."

heading into the water

 

big, high-frequency closeouts

 

sunset sesh

 

the wife's flipflops

 

and the seasons they are a changin'

scooby doo fog blanketed lima this morning, from the coastline to a few kilometers inland. that means summer is over and winter has started. normally, there are 5 months of sun in lima and 7 months of fog. there's no in between. it mainly depends on currents. on saturday the water was warm, but on monday it was cold and had dropped about 5 degrees celsius. cold water currents interact with tropical sun to create fog. so there you go. peru is all about microclimates. the good news about winter surfing is that fewer people are in the water. lots of whimps, and you need to say that by accentuating the h and holding it, stay home in the summer, thinking it is too cold to surf. that means bigger waves and fewer people. the waves yesterday were big and full, but it was high tide so they fattened out after the thick and mushy breaks. i've surfed here in fog so thick that you couldn't see the line up from the shore, and the only way to navigate was by listening for voices or the sound of breaking waves.

sunset session

a nice, peaceful sunset session at caballeros yesterday. fairly high frequency sets, but a bit mushy for the first 45 minutes. just as the sun was setting the next swell started arriving. it is producing 8.5 foot waves in peru right now. it was high tide at caballeros, so the take off spot furthest out was fat, along with the section that links it to the other take off spot on the shoulder. but i realized that if you take off on the shoulder, you can pretty much just go down the line and not worry so much about trying to stay on the edge of the whitewater to generate speed. so lots of fun. and here's a link to a revolutionary board builder, full of the best of what the californian spirit is all about. i think surfing without fins would be akin to riding super hard skate wheels on a masonite ramp. or a slip and slide. finless boards

glassy and big

this morning was smooth gliding and glassy. takeoffs were especially slow at pampilla because it was high tide, but the 8.5 foot waves gave you lots of space to play on. it was a wee bit early for hard charging and i would have gone to a faster wave if i weren't alone. but it was fun. once you got up you could pick up nice amounts of speed. twice i cut back thinking i needed to get near the whitewater, only to end up not making it through the next section. i should have just gone down the line, but it wasn't walling up enough to convince me. no complaints. i'd really like to start surfing herradura in the morning, but it only works when it's big and it's not a place you can surf alone.

crazy photos

so i found another cool link on the quality peoples blog, with photos from one of the guys behind the motorcycling and surfing across australia site. the photo on the right in this link required genius to dream up and execute

steel horses and boards

click here if you want to see some amazing surf photography . don't know how new or old the site is, but the quality of the production is astonishing. here's a teaser image from the site...