Emotional week.

What a week A.I. passes away and slater wins his 10th world title. It was my mates birthday yesterday and all the boys piled up his house to watch the finals of the Rip curl search somwhere in Puerto Rico. Then we hit the town.
What we saw was Kelly Slater win the event and world title in style.
It was also rather emotional the fact that Andy passed away last week and Kelly dedicated his triumphant win to Andy and his family.

Legend!

R.I.P. AI :0(

Its rocked the surfing world and has come as a huge shock to everyone who closely follow professional surfing and the A.S.P. world tour. Andy Irons passed away 2 days ago suspected to be under the influence of Dengue fever which is caused by bite from an Aides mosquito (a mosquito that bites during daylight hours).

Andy Irons was my surfing idol when I was learning as a grom.

Hands down he was one of my favourite surfers, not just to watch in the water but when he spoke or had interviews he was either hilariously funny or just really blunt when he was pissed off about losing! That's what made Andy so exciting, he was one of the best competitors ever!

I was lucky enough to surf with him at Lakey peak in indo and share some waves with him. I will never forget those awesome memories.

The surfing world wont be the same without Andy and personally I think they should cancel the Rip Curl Pro in Puerto Rico to pay respects to A.I. and his family and friends.

It sucks that it has all ended at the age of 32.

R.I.P. Andy a surfing legend.

Better quality!

I should have been more patient and waited until some professional shots were published from the weekends Tiki National Interclubs. Instead I was bored yesterday and ended up blogging shots from my small digi thingy!

These pictures are way better and are taken professinally by local photographer Rob Tibbles.

Respect.

Team Effort!

This weekend saw the highly anticipated interclubs surfing competition at Croyde. It was cool as I had organised a team from Westward Ho! Surf Club to come and have a crack at this event. As some of you already know I cant remember the last time the Ho! entered a team into the interclubs which is crazy because we host some proper shredders from the right side of the river! It was also a really nice social competition as at least one competitor from each team had to judge during some duration of the contest, with that in mind created some great banter between clubs.
The usual rivals i.e. Croyde and Woolacombe surf clubs competitors love a bit of social banter. These 2 clubs usually finish 1st and 2nd if not visaversa.
Not this time, this was the ho's! year.

Conditions on saturday were solid and lumpy which made competing difficult as a lot of luck and skill were needed to get some decent scores on the board. I had a bit of a shocker on saturday as every wave I wanted to hook into seemed to close out or go fat, then I spent 10 minutes trying to battle the set waves right on the melon! Luckily the rest of the boys had a stormer on saturday all claiming high scores respectivly.
After day 1 (saturday) we were in the lead by 2 points so we wanted to try and maintain that lead all the way through to the bitter end.

On sunday the swell had dropped off considerably, I surfed a really good heat and fully improved my scores from the saturday which fully helped us win the event!

Better than that I managed to win a free wettie for scoring the highest heat score over the 2 day event, I think I posted a 16.00 out of a possible 20. Stoked!

The contest was obviously a huge success and I hope the swell is good for it next year as the Westward Ho! surf club boys will be all over it again!

Cheers.