Surfing

Save The Wave In Iceland

/ Organikos / Leave a comment

Surfers believe that construction work at Þorlákshöfn could ruin conditions. Photograph: Sigga Ella/The Guardian

Female surfer and business co-owner from Reykjavík, Elín Kristjánsdóttir Photograph: Sebastien Drews

Protecting waves from the effects of development, for surfing, has featured in two previous posts. Those were in locations more commonly associated with the sport. Iceland has featured in our pages many more times over the years, not once in relation to waves or surfing. Until today:

Improvements in wetsuit technology mean surfers can enjoy the waters in Iceland all year round. Photograph: Sigga Ella/The Guardian

Icelandic surfers fear port development will ruin ‘perfect point break’

Volcanoes, northern lights and midnight sun are all on offer at this haven, which locals want to preserve

Look at this wave,” says Mathis Blache, pointing to the sea from the shore’s black rocks as a swell rolls in. “It’s just perfect.” Despite air and water temperatures in the single digits, the 27-year-old student and surfer points out two other surfers – and a couple of seals – delighting in the conditions at Þorlákshöfn in south-west Iceland.

This spot, where surfers can enjoy either the midnight sun or the northern lights depending on the time of year, has in recent years become the heart of Iceland’s rapidly growing surfing community. Continue reading →

Save The Waves @ Arroyo San Miguel

/ Organikos / Leave a comment

The young man who we met 15 years ago is going strong. Save The Waves Coalition has pulled off another small miracle:

SAN MIGUEL SURF BREAK PROTECTED WITH LANDMARK CREATION OF BAJA CALIFORNIA’S FIRST STATE PARK

Save The Waves Coalition and Pronatura Noroeste achieve approval for Arroyo San Miguel

In a historic moment for environmental and surf conservation, the first state park in Baja California, Mexico was officially approved, providing long-lasting protection for the iconic San Miguel wave alongside 67 hectares of green space.

The local initiative spearheaded by Pronatura Noroeste AC, and joined by international nonprofit Save The Waves Coalition (STW), has been in the works for years. Today, the campaign to legally protect San Miguel becomes a reality. Continue reading →

The Only Virtual Reality A Surfer Might Enjoy

/ Crist Inman / Leave a comment
181217_r33425.jpg

Slater has spent a career searching the world for waves, adapting to tricky conditions with unparalleled intuition. Now his Surf Ranch, in California farm country, can produce a perfect wave on demand. Photograph by Ben Lowy for The New Yorker

I have surfed, but I am not a surfer. I have surfer friends, including some who have travelled the world searching out the waves described in the story below, and family friends of ours have an adult child ranked in the top ten in the world. I do not care about surfing as much as any of them, but because of them I care deeply about surfing. Evidence of that is the fact that surfing is the #1 metaphor I use within my own family to describe the pivots we make from time to time, explaining a move to France, Croatia or India or back to Costa Rica is due to a new wave of opportunity that we might catch. Below is a story I appreciate for other reasons as well, because it is about a man-made replica of the ultimate pleasures of a real-life experience. This is kind of what we do for a living. But it is really about surfing. And even non-surfers can enjoy this. William Finnegan’s story is complemented by two interactive features, the first with the author himself and the second a remarkably clear explanation of the technology.

Kelly Slater’s Shock Wave

The best surfer in history made a machine that creates perfect conditions on demand. Will his invention democratize surfing or despoil it?

The first few hours I spent at the W.S.L. Surf Ranch, a wave pool built for surfing in the farmlands south of Fresno, California, were for me a blur. I was fine on arrival, hiking through a little forest of scaffolding, eucalyptus, and white tents with a publicist from the Kelly Slater Wave Company, which built and runs the place. The valley heat was fierce but dry. House music rode on a light northwest breeze. We passed a bright-red antique row-crop tractor parked on wood chips. Then I looked to my right and felt my mind yaw. The wave was probably six hundred yards away, a sparkling emerald wall, with a tiny surfer snapping rhythmic turns off the top. I had come expecting to see this wave, out here in cotton fields a hundred-plus miles from the coast. Still, my reaction to it was involuntary. Kelly’s Wave, as it’s known, seems designed to make someone who surfs, which I do, feel this way: stunned, turned on, needy. Surfers spend much of their lives looking for high-quality waves. Now a machine has been invented that churns out virtually flawless ones on command. “We call it the smile machine,” someone, possibly the publicist, said. I had trouble paying attention. Every four minutes, I had to turn and crane to watch a wave make its way the length of the pool. Continue reading →

Boca del Tule, Kayak & Surf

/ Seth Inman / Leave a comment

img_9395_zpsmfqybqon

The shore down below Villa del Faro is known as Boca del Tule, since the Tule arroyo –– a seasonal river in the desert –– runs into the ocean at that point (boca means mouth in Spanish). The beach is public but very few people are ever on it, partly because we’re an hour away from the closest city, San José del Cabo, via dirt road. Now and then you’ll see a couple fishermen, or if the waves are good, some surfers. Last week, Jocelyn and I tried surfing both here at Boca del Tule and also at a better-known surfing beach just twenty minutes south called Nine Palms.

Both spots offered fair surfing for either experienced or newbie surfers, since Continue reading →

Embracing Surfing

/ Jake / 2 Comments

Photo Credit: Surfingindia.net

Oftentimes I find myself daydreaming of the saltwater breeze that accompanies the rolling bass of the heavy waves in the ocean — and I imagine those perfect waves… blue, crisp, clean and glassy, and the hollowest of tubes; peeling along the coastline in an epic demonstration of nature’s power.  This is a common dream for those who understand the absolutely humbling experience of surfing; it is a burning desire and need to envelope one’s self in the soothing serenity of the water.

Continue reading →