Fishing the nose

Imagine, if you will, that your entire attention is centred on a tiny float, its bright red top swaying this way and that in the breeze as the current seizes hold, then sends it swiftly past the rock upon which you are sitting waiting Anticipating.  

Anticipating

Garfish are great sporting fish though, sadly, not to every body's taste, due to their green bones.  They fight hard on appropriate tackle and oblige throughout the summer and autumn often when other fish decide that they are not going to play!
It was time to leave the boats in the harbour and head out to the rocky coast line of the north coast to try our hand at shore fishing for Garfish known locally as a "Long nose", or as we call them Pokey Nose.
I love fishing for them with a float rod and a small sand eel or strip of garfish. A simple sliding float set up works best, with your bait set from anywhere from 3 metres deep to right up near the surface at about a metre or less. Winter time can be a hard time to get sand eels for a spot of early session flattie bashing out on the banks, so these Gars were destined for the freezer for bait.


Last Sunday and Monday Gaz,Tuc and I went for a few hours.  
Our timing was a little off, and our walk from Fontenelle Bay to Fort le Marchant coincided with a high tide and strong gale force winds combined with torrential rain showers.  Normally a high tide is a good thing as it brings the fish slightly closer to shore, however a high tide combined with a reasonable swell and a strong breeze isn't a safe combination when fishing on an exposed rock.

 For a second or two the float shudders and jerks, held back as if restrained by some invisible force. Then, with a sudden surge, it shoots from the surface and keels drunkenly over on its side. Nor is it alone. A second later a long, silvery body erupts from the water, spraying water in every direction as it lashes the surface with its tail, then abruptly standing on its head it burrows underwater, the line trailing in its wake.
FISH ON...................And that's how we played for the next 3 hours

Fishing the nose 

Float Fished at the end of the the Fort using sand eel and Long nose strips,bites were plentiful and fun and resulted in us catching 16 Garfish....

Pokey Nose

New Wave Toys

Despite what everyone says...and despite those nice images of guys windsurfing pristine waves of cold blue liquid...THERE IS NO SURF OR WIND IN GUERNSEY so I thought this would cheer up a few friends.
It would be a shame to let them hang in my garage forever so no-one else gets the chance to enjoy them.
 The latest addition's to Vazon's waves.

There are some great looking new boards out there, and many interesting designs, but I absolutely LOVE the new Fanatic boards, they look amazing!

New wave 91

Quad 87

Free wave 85

4 wheel drive
4x4

Cant wait to see them unleashed into the liquid playground.

Will write more when I have time...just wanted to share with all who follow my inconsistent ramblings the new range of 2012 boards. 

Down at the ol' fishin' hole

Hands full with filleting

Miss Connie
GU85

What a great week of bass Fishing!  The fish are here, they are big and hungry. The Bass are starting to come in massive schools blitzing bait from the sand banks.  It's time to think Fishing.  
  Most days seen catches of 10+ fish ranging in size from 3-6 lbs. Saturday saw limited action for Captain Tuc, the crew on the other hand, did manage some fish towards the end but had to work extremely hard for them. You could not ask for a better day to be on the water as it was just as calm as could be. It was a great day to drift as the gentle SE breeze made for comfortable conditions and by the end of the day Gaza had his hands full with filleting.

 I popped in a picture of Gaz with a nice 5lb er.
  
 Till next tide.

Blade Sailboards, GBSA and the 80's

With the revival of windsurfing over the last few years, lets take a look back to where it all began in Guernsey. Windsurfing equipment has been progressing in development throughout the 80′s, 90′s and now within the last 10 years the advancements in windsurfing technology, high tec materials & growing understanding of how to maximise what can be done on a sail board has really pushed the sport forward into the world of extreme sports! Waves that were thought un-ridable are now ridable, a whole new discipline of speed sailing, windsurfing freestyle has been created and learning the sport is much, much more accessible to all.

But it wasn't always so easy to pick up a manufactures brochure or browse the Internet for a choice of boards or sails when I started sailing way back in 1980 at the age of 13.

It was too calm, the ocean was flat. No surf. Even when there is no wind or waves there is always something you can do involving the sea. It was early June and at this time of year it was great for snorkeling. I was just a small whipper-snapper, out snorkeling for spider crabs with my dad at the time. It was one of those classic summer days and in no time we had the net bag full of crabs for tea and heading back to shore when dad spotted something that caught his eye, laying on the seabed covered in seaweed and sand. Diving down to take a closer look it turned out to be an old windsurfer regatta rig complete with mast, boom, sail and universal joint that someone must of ditched whilst getting into difficulties and had sunk to the sea bed. It didn't take us long to retrieve it off the sea bed and to our surprise it was in good condition, looking like it had only been under water for a few days.

This is it. From there we began windsurfing and my love for the sport grew. Dad had bought a second hand Windsurfing International one design board off Eric Powell of the windsurfing association club. After spending countless of hours sitting on the beach looking at dad windsurfing I finally had enough and decided to give it a try myself. I was hooked straight away and from that time I spent all the time I could on the water. We self taught ourselves to sail that summer. Coming from a surfing back ground it didn't take long to get to grips with the sport, by the end of the year we had mastered the basics. I'm still amazed and struck by the simplicity of the concept in those days when wooden booms were still being used, sails looked like a lettuce leaf being washed under a dripping tap and board design was just crude injection moulded plastic in the shape of old Windsurfer one designs, Mistral Super light or Dufour wings. Now that's Old School Windsurfing.......
After the pioneering "Golden" years of the 60's, the 1970's saw a gradual change of attitude to organised surfing and the return of " I just wanna go surfing" movement, which saw a decline in many surf clubs. So it was an ideal time for the spin off sport of windsurfing to come of age
Dad used to shape surf boards back in the day and thought he could make a sail board better than the one he was riding at the time. Blade Surfboards was re branded to Blade Sailboards.......

The blank
in this case a brightly sprayed waveboard
is brought into the surfboard glassing room
and is ready for glassing/laminating

Surfboard design is the art of hand shaping a surfboard from a foam blank or piece of wood and making it into a vehicle for riding waves. The finished surfboard design is radically different from the crude materials that windsurf boards were being made of at the time, so dad put his surfboard shaping skills in practice and started shaping sailboards using polyester based urethane sailboard foam blanks from Clark Foam, fibreglass cloth and polyester resin.
Windsurfing is often recognised as an extreme sport that provides limitless thrills and excitement in a range of disciplines. However, windsurfing took on more RYA rules-based environment of sailing and it might be considered a minimalistic version of a sailboat in those days. It was time to establishing a whole new style and direction in windsurfing that redefined the sport by shaping costume boards that could be taken out in the surf at Vazon. Shaping his first few sailboards in 1981 for Richard Fox, Phil Nicolle and one for himself. The dawn of wavesailing had began. The three boards were still 12' long but with the introduction of foot straps and much improved shape meant a vast improvement over the production boards you could buy. By the next year (1982) Clem Brouard had arrived on the scene and asked Blade to build a radical 10'6" wave board which again was way ahead of it's time when all that was available from the pop out market (as we used to call it) was a rocket 103 or Mistral Take off.

1982
Clem Brouard on his
10'6" Blade wave board 

At about this time the Vazon crew decided to break away from the windsurfing association club with it's RYA rules and triangle racing and form a new club dedicated to the waves.
 

The G.B.S.A (Guernsey Boardsailing Association)

with Richard Fox as the first President.

The GBSA held the first wave jumping championships on Sunday October 1982 the first of it's kind in the Channel Islands, sponsored by Barclays Bank. Taking place in gale force winds Clem Brouard (Blade) and Mick Middleton (Mistral Take off) were the men to watch. Clem coming out the overall winner on his 10'6" Blade.

1 Clem Brouard (Blade)
2 Mick Middleton (Mistral Take off)
3 Bob Warry (Blade)
4 Richard Fox (Blade)
5 Simon Lovell (Mistral Take off)

My first Blade was a 9'6" tri fin pin tail. Entering my first GBSA Guernsey Championships I placed 5th in January 83, 2nd 84 & 85 with a 3rd place in the European Championships and then winning the  Channel Island Champs 86, 87 and 88. The European Championships was supposed to take place at Pembroke for long board triangle races for Mistrals, but due to strong winds on race day they cancelled racing and decided to have a wave comp instead. I can remember Peter Hart running up and down the beach and shouting to the British team that they had to pull their fingers out because they were getting their butts kicked by the local's

Yours truly... European Championships
This shot made the inside cover of Windsurf magazine
titled the Best of British

You have an experience like that in your life it rings forever. There have been times where I wanted to shed windsurfing because I couldn’t stand missing swells, waiting for perfect conditions and this and that, I just got fed up with it in 2000. “That’s it, I am stopping this. I can’t deal with this obsession.” The early 80s were one of those times ,then, like many of us, we began reading windsurfing magazines and in reading those pages, it created this fantasy and we wanted to sail in the conditions they were sailing in Hookipa or Diamond Head. It was then that true frustration came into the sport for me. Living in Guernsey all I had was less than perfect conditions. I concluded that I was wasting my time because I would never experience the extent of the fantasy that was fueled in me.
But right when I gave up for a few years, a new work colleague started at my work and we got chatting over a lunch time brew about things we did on the weekend and got on the subject that he went windsurfing. That lead from one thing to another with me heading down the beach one weekend and taking out his slalom kit for a blast. I'd been out the scene for nearly four years and had taken up my other passion scuba diving, I eased myself back into windsurfing in September 04, spending a couple of weeks on flat water and then almost immediately got back into the waves. Feeling a little out of practice after so many years out, I had the bug again thanks to Stu Martel. My water spirit came back again. It wasn't easy, but I came back to it with more desire, drive and passion than I could ... and never stopped believing I could get back to the top level of the sport. ... It didn't take me long to get some new wave kit on order and get back on the water.
Still mad for the sport three decades later......................................

                                                            OLD SCHOOL DAYS

Clem Flying high Vazon

Me as a young
whippersnapper

The Blade man
himself

The Blade Boys
Phil, Barry and Bob

Phil Nicolle started "glassing" surfboards and sailboards for Blade in the late 80's early 90's

     

8'6" Tri Fin 

8'6" Double Winger
Squash Tail Tri Fin

8'4" Single fin pin tail

Digging my windsurfing gear out

of storage and 

easing myself back into windsurfing in

   September 04

                                                                

Memories of how and when surfing started. Part1

Guernsey Team 1967 (Bob bottom right) Inter Insular team between Guernsey Jersey held at Vazon Sunday 4th June 1967. The local team that comprised of Allen Bichard,Bob Warry, Barry Johnson, Kieth Ogier, Richard Browning, Brian Corbet, Terry Le Pelly, Ryall le Tissier and his brother Dave. They thrashed the opposition, as they were unable to master the slow 18" Vazon mush on the day! The Jersey team consisted of A Wightman, R De Louche, Dave Bull, Steve Harewood (Freedom surfboards), Tom Bates, Mick Crawford and Jeff Huson

Blade Surfboards Before my time

Surfing was started in Europe by Joel de Posnag in Biarritz, France, in 1957.
Eight years later the Guernsey Surf Club was formed, making it one of the earliest surf organisations in Britain, Jersey started their club in 1959.
  The club was formed primarily to protect the needs of surfers in Guernsey, to provide them with designated areas in which they could surf and other beach users and to develop the sport competitively and socially.
  In the 60's the pioneers of surfing, Dave Fletcher, Roger Blanchford, Tom Woodford, George Head, Barry Hughes and Paul Burtwhistle among several others all used 10ft long boards.
But by the mid 60's boards were rapidly reducing in length to 7ft and then down as small as 6ft and under as everyone started making their own boards. In the 1960's surfers had started building their own boards, using polyurethane foam and fibre glass cloth and resign. The Islands first efforts at making boards was by Max Gaudion and George Warren Ex members of the Centre Steps Mob. They built a few boards under the label Gaudion, Warren Electra Surfboards. Pastel pink and lilac coloured Groves Foam blanks proved unreliable after long exposure to the sun and it's ultra violet light soon made them go brown.
Everyone has their own idea's about surfboards and from time to time ideas, like fashions, change and a surfer would acquire a new board. Barry Hughes was the same but could not afford a new board, so with the use of my dad's (Bob Warry) cellar at my child hood home "Douhallow" in the Villa au Roi, they stripped the glass off a Rodney Sumpter Competition Model longboard and rebuilt it. With dad's help the board turned out a really neat little board and that's how "Blade Surfboards" started some 40 years ago.

Bob Warry, Guernsey surf champion
1966, '68 and '71.

Their first customer was Pete Hart. Dad and Barry built him a spear, which was the fad at the time and soon had other guys by for them to build whatever they fancied. Initially using Groves foam and Simplex fin system, they progressed to more reliable foam and waveset fin systems. Blade Surfboards went from strength to strength and even sent boards to "Joe Morais Surf Shop" in Biarritz. In today's commercial world their major success would have been Willy Wilson's winning of the European Junior Championships in Jersey on a Blade Surfboard. Working evenings in dad's cellar to the sounds of "Led Zeppelin" and "Deep Purple" brought many surfers calling by just to check out what they were doing. Juniors would sweep up shavings and tidy up the workshop to help pay for their boards and the order of the day was shoulder length hair and coats that came down to their ankles. Levitation, meditation and the writings of Lodsang Rampa were their meat of conversation. Whilst shaping, glassing, sanding and polishing for three to four years most evenings a week helped the two surfers towards a deposit on a house. It was work but also fun.

Old Advert from 1970's surfer magazine

Dad's boards that were made and in regular use were generally ahead of those in use in the UK and on one trip to Bournemouth his short board was laughed at. By the following year they were all using similar boards. Guernsey was put on the surfing map by Peter Dixon of Malibu Beach California, in a book entitled "Where the Surfers are" which covered in main the top surf spots in the world. On the three pages devoted to the Channel Islands he reported that ''the surfers of Guernsey are the best organised in the world''    

The pictures above and below
are taken from an old advertising campaign in the early 70's

In the cellar







Last two boards made by Blade 2010

Old Contest Program

It's impossible to mention everyone by name but all those involved in surfing during the last four decades can take into the future some great personal memories of waves and time shared, of good days at Perelle, T'others and Portinfer