So long, old friend

Warning: this post is only of the remotest interest to surfers. Everyone else, move on please; nothing to see here.

It’s a poignant thing when a much-loved surfboard leaves you. Surfers and their boards go through a lot together. Nightmare sessions when you couldn’t catch a single wave, or the locals were ganging you, or your leash broke and you had to swim in and see whether the board had come to rest on rocks or sand. Epic sessions where you seemed to hoover up everything that came through, or you caught just that one wave that made it worth paddling out, and which stuck in your mind for a long while. Most of all, those regular go-outs – onshore, crunchy, too small, closing out, dirty, cold, rainy, foul-tasting, shivery, aggro – which make up the median life of a British surfer.

The Fat-Assed Wombat and I experienced it all. It was a pretty short board for me at the time I bought it – 6’4”. No one ever believed it was that short though, because it was so, well, fat-assed. It looked more like a longboard than a shortboard, and latched on to waves like one, too. I took it to the Outer Hebrides for the best-ever (so far) surf trip. It endured many skunky sessions huddling away from southwesterly gales in the lee of Brighton Marina (and once got blown along the undercliff path by a wicked gust). I lent it to my friend Bonga, and he dropped his microwave oven on it. Portugal and Morocco both saw the Wombat making me look a much better surfer than I really am, by virtue of its design. And now it’s gone; gone to the second-hand rack at 58 Surf in Baleal, though probably not for long. Someone will snap it up, and André’s immense turnover of boards will continue.

Disloyal to say it – but I’m glad. The Wombat, you see, had become a bit of a crutch. It worked in just about every kind of surf, from knee-high to a little bit overhead. It always caught waves, performed reliably, resisted airline baggage handling’s every attempt to crush it (I once saw it being thrown nose-first to the ground from the top of a teetering luggage stack, then having a load of prams and golf carts chucked on top: not a mark). But if it did everything well, it didn’t do anything brilliantly. It was slower down the line than my twin-fin; harder to turn on steep faces than my 6’7”; didn’t ride bigger waves as well as my 7’6”  – all in all, a bit of a Ford Focus.

So, we’ve both moved on. No hard feelings, on my part at least, only gratitude for all the things I learnt while we were together. The Wombat will find someone new: a neo surfer from one of the schools in Baleal, perhaps, keen to change up after an intensive couple of weeks learning. It’ll be a bit much at first, but they’ll grow together. Ride on, Fat Ass – ride on.

The music of life

Three days of good, head-high waves out here on the far western tip of Breizh. This country’s very like Cornwall: windswept open moors or fields, tight little valleys with trees huddled in the bottom, granite coasts, low houses.

Just down the road is a beach with at least three names. An attempt by local surfers to keep its identity obscure? More likely the product of being somewhere with two languages, and an uneasy relationship with the rest of France. The local Mairie has a plaque outside, noting that two deputies from this region voted NON to Pétain’s accommodation with the Germans in 1940.

The surfers here are the usual mish-mash: kids practising aerial 360s in the shorebreak, older gentlemen on larger boards (more and more, stand-up paddleboards), everything in between. You couldn’t, in your wildest dreams, say the surf was busy. I haven’t seen more than 20 people in the water, in conditions that would have an equivalent British beach looking like a sea of fibreglass.

I’ve been riding my 6’4” Bear Wombat. It’s a board that has a particular feel to it. The soundtrack in my mind when I’m riding it is always the late, great Michael Petersen in Morning of the Earth: all pivoty, jangly 70s fun. Though obviously there's less hair, less style, less speed, and quite a lot less heroin involved in my version than MP’s.

In an attempt to give the board a different soundtrack (Sure Feels Good by Brian Cadd wears thin after a while), I’ve been experimenting with different fin setups. (Apologies to non-surfers reading this: just skip to the photo of the food, if you prefer.) The results so far:

1) Single-fin only: slow, boring, ponderous – some Wagnerian overture, or one of those mind-numbingly endless guitar solos by Lynyrd Skynrd.

2) Full-size FCS side fins, but nothing in the middle: unreliable, frivolous, you shouldn’t like it but you do – it’s got to be Middle Period Kylie, some time around I Just Can’t Get You Out Of My Head. Or maybe the Pussycat Dolls' Don't You (Wish Your Girlfriend Was...). 

3) Proper Mark Richards twin fins: fast, zippy, snappy – no-brainer, it's Acid 8000 by Fatboy Slim.

4) Thruster setup, made possible by Ade Keane, a well-respected former shaper who got tired of the toxic fumes of board manufacture. I was telling him how I wanted to try a thruster setup, but couldn’t because an FCS centre fin wouldn’t work in the longboard-style finbox. Two days later, a thing of great beauty (albeit to a very specialized audience), shown left, turned up on my doorstep: a handcrafted fin. Merci beaucoup, Ade. I haven’t tried this fin combo in good waves yet, but I have high hopes the opening chords of The Ace Of Spades will start to play as I paddle for the first wave.

Meantime, yet more beauty. Yes, my Glamorous Companion – but also, look at that fish supper! Without going into detail, it tasted as good as it looked – apart from the cockles. Why do they always have to put in a bum note like that? An Islamic stitch?