He's Ba-ack - Team USA - Happy Fourth of July!

Kelly Slater (USA), 37, reigning nine-time ASP World Champion, has claimed the 2009 Hang Loose Santa Catarina Pro over an in-form Adriano de Souza (BRA), 22, in clean three-to-four foot (1 metre) waves at the main site of Praia Vila.

Event No. 4 of 10 on the 2009 ASP World Tour, the Hang Loose culminated in a dramatic finale with perennial ASP World Title threats all pushing one other towards the finish line.

Despite the Brazilian smashing his way out to an early lead, Slater found his form mid-heat with a 9.27 out of a possible 10 for a series of high-risk maneuvers, exhibiting a near-perfect variety of repertoire. Not satisfied with only one high score, Slater nailed the coffin shut with an 8.67 in a dying minutes to secure his 41st ASP World Tour victory.

Go Kelly! I've been drinking as much Big Surfco's Ruined Surfing Kool-Aid as the next guy the last few years, but still can't avoid keeping a corner of my eye on the tour since Kelly came back for win #7. I think it would be great to see him win 10 World Titles. Why not, compared to other sports greats, I haven't heard anything annoying enough about his personal life to warrant any hating. And besides, other than Taylor Knox, I hardly know who any of the other guys are. Taj seems cool enough, but I just can't get excited about many of the others.

Magic

click pic for a better view

I used to shoot a fair amount of film. But I also used to have access to a great dark room to develop and print my own B&W shots. Then I moved to a new town and started a family. This roughly coincided with the avalanche of inexpensive and relatively high quality image producing digital point and shoots, and the need to document nearly every day of early childhood moments. Soon I was spending as much on batteries as I did on film. OK, that's an exaggeration. It didn't take long to realize the limitations of digital point and shoots, but I told myself I really didn't have enough time to shoot anyway these days. And I loved being able to fire off fifty frames in five minutes and not care if they all failed. Last year's resurgence of film (and plastic cameras) amongst surf blogger photogs, as well as meeting some young and exciting talent who never dropped film in the first place, led me to get off my ass and order some stock from B&H. Stay tuned, I'm still in the one-to-two keepers per roll stage. Actually, I never left that stage the last time around.

around 7PM tonight, looking East.

First Thing In The Morning

Mini Simmons Interpretation #2. This one will be my summer funboard. 6'0" and outrageously wide. Glass-on fiberglass Gary Hanel Lowboy template single foil keel fins.





I still have one blank left from my bulk purchase, I may make another mini-sims out of it. Contact me quick if you want to make it yours.

Surf Rig Friday

Finally caught up to this guy the other day and snapped some pics. Not technically a surf rig since he doesn't surf, but what the hell, it's definitely a rig. A 1951 I believe he said.