good morning, 6:30 am saturday. the waves came down all around the island. north shore is 1-3′ and town is super small. the winds are light now but going to get strong out of the north today. that means not so good surfing conditions on the north shore and pretty good diving conditions in town. it’s raining and dark now but not dark enough to get my new speargun ready. don’t forget the big red sea ocean adventures party tonight. i heard from kyle that there’s going to be a lot of fish. see you there!!!

mike and i wanted to experiment with something different this winter. so we came up with a funky gun. yeah, a TSSC 6’6 that paddles good and works like a 6’10. the nose is wider for easier paddling into waves, and the tail is narrow enough to do some ripping. wide nose, narrow tail.
6’6 x 18 5/16 x 2 3/8

i will test this board out at big haleiwa. the next time the waves are 6′ or over, i’m paddling this board out and hopefully take off fast, and turn easy. sounds good yeah? sounds easier than said. wish me luck…

look how wide the nose is. with a board like this, i could probably paddle into waves at big sunset…

and with this narrow tail, the board should hold like a gun. gosh, i can’t wait to try it out!!! i’ll let you know how it goes and by the way it looks, it’s going to work for sure!!!
**by the way, maki-san sent me some classic photos she got from mark liddell. stay tuned…

good evening, pulled up to backdoor/pipe early this morning and it was perfect. 6-8 and as good as it gets. the contest was on so everybody was out practicing. should i go out and hassle with everybody? no thank you. instead, i headed over to haleiwa and….

scored!!! not too many guys out, 3-5′ and long rights. matchi and i were taking turns going wave after wave for 1 hour. then everybody else came out and it got crowded. so i headed back to pipe to watch the contest and….

ugly!!! the waves were small, onshore, and ugly. i couldn’t believe how fast it went from good to bad. lunch time came and….

we all headed to romy’s. yup, i ate there 4 or 5x so far this year and i’m not finished yet. i love it there!!! remember to order the #1 with prawns instead of shrimp. awesome!!!

speaking of good to bad. pipeline is a tricky wave and even the best pro surfers can lose at any time out there. last week, shun and i paddled out to 4′ shitty onshore junky pipe in the evening for a surf. what a lot of surfers don’t understand that you can’t only be a barrel specialist to win contests out there. you have to be able to read the ocean, swell, and be able to do turns to make heats. how do you think taj burrow won the pipeline masters last december? by turns. the waves out there can get good to bad in a matter of minutes so you better be prepared. and preparing yourself is pretty easy. get out there on the shitty junky days and surf it. just by shun surfing that shitty evening out there, he learned a lot more than the surfers that just surf it when it’s good.
the point i’m trying to say is that a lot of parents ask me how can their kids get better in surfing. the answer is pretty simple. surf, surf, and surf. go the the beach before the sun comes up, and go home after the sun goes down. just by surfing and hanging out at the beach all day, you will learn a lot about the ocean, weather, tides, waves, and also make friends. i call it “hands on experience” and you can’t get it sitting in your room and taking naps everyday. do you think kelly slater did that? heck no… so for you young kids, go down to the beach in the morning and go home at night. i guarantee you will be ahead of the rest of the competition…. don’t read books, read the ocean. don’t take naps, do snaps…. hope that knocks some sense into you….

Going OFF!!!