The JP SX - Board Review

Four years in the making, the SX has proven to be one of Swansea-based John ‘JP’ Purton’s most popular models. The boards range from 5’0” to 6’6” and are available in a swallow, square or round tail, depending on personal preference and ability. The board was originally designed for surfers who are competent with performance surfing but are looking for a board which will handle mushy summer waves. It is a board design with versatility in mind, supposedly being able to handle waist high beach breaks up to head and a half high reefs.

 JP is a well-known name not just around the South Wales area, but across the UK and abroad, and John has been making boards for a long time, a very long time, in fact since he was 13. His two sons, Tom and Louis, are now part of his shaping business and since 2002 they have owned and operated their own DSD shaping machine from their Penclawdd workshop.  

They’re known for high performance, good quality boards and honed through years of experience and expertise. JP has some impressive sponsored riders, such as Llantwit local Nathan Phillips, Tom Lowe, Fergal Smith, the Gower’s Gwen Spurlock and Porthcawl’s Chris Seage.  

The true shortboard is experiencing a decline in popularity at the moment, especially in Britain, with many surfers favouring the old school, retro vibes of a fish or the combined qualities of a hybrid shortie. People with full time jobs who don’t live near the sea don’t have the option of surfing every day and want a board that they can just jump on and get waves, that still maintains the responsive snappiness of a shortboard but with the added buoyancy and volume of a larger board.  

So, with this in mind I borrowed a test JP SX (a 6’2” x 19 ½ x 2 ½ squaretail to be exact) from the guys in City Surf in Cardiff city centre and gave it a couple of tries. I surfed it twice at Rest Bay in Porthcawl and once at Ogmore in the Vale, and also once at a secret reef somewhere on the Glamorgan coast.  I tested it in a variety of conditions as well, between hip and shoulder high on the beachies and head high on the reef. 

The SX performed well, its super fun to ride, easily manoeuvrable, responsive and rides well. Contrary to the fuller plan shape, it’s easy to get a good lip smack out of it and works well on the rail to rail. The relaxed rocker contrasts well with the single to double concave towards the tail, meaning that the board is easy to catch waves on yet snappy and sharp. 

However, on the smallest day when the waves were around hip high, I found it incredibly hard to maintain any speed and found myself sinking wave after wave. Despite the 6’2” length and elevated volume, I still found it hard to surf in the conditions and would have been better off with a retro fish style board, of course this would mean compromising the manoeuvrability. The SX is said to work in waist high beach breaks and above, but I’d say that this was the absolute limit for this board.

In the reef break it went really well – easy to keep the speed up and was really easy to catch waves on. The board definitely benefited from the added punch of the reef and I had a super fun surf, it feels a lot thinner than it actually is and even I got some good spray off my top turns.

Me surfing a different board, on a different day...

I would buy this board to add to my quiver as a good all-rounder, volume for the smaller days and concave for the bigger days yet maintaining responsiveness throughout. Although I wouldn’t go throwing away my retro fish or high performance shortboard just yet, as where this board seems to work well in the middle of the spectrum, it isn’t prepared for the extremes on either end. Saying that, the SX’s fat older brother the SX5, with its 5 fin set up and wider deck, would be perfect for the smaller, weaker waves. Or even the RX5, which is in the same family and yet again has a wider plan shape, and is more akin to an original 80s thruster.  

In a nutshell, I would buy this board. I want this board. It’s a good addition to any quiver.

The Endless Winter - Review

Top professional Cornish surfers Mark ‘Igor’ Harris and Mitch Corbett are on a mission, a mission to discover the roots of surfing in the UK. Along the way they meet the iconic locals who went on to become legends and get to grips with what makes British surfing so special. The product of this journey is ‘The Endless Winter’, and what a journey it is.

“We wanted to make a film that British surfers could be proud of,” says producer Matt Crocker who, along with James Dean, is responsible for the movie.  And that they have done. The film is both interesting and informative, avoiding the Cornwall-heavy bias of many British surf films by including many spots such as the Gower, Brighton and Thurso East.

 

 

The film’s tagline is ‘A very British surf movie’, and it certainly goes to fill a gap in a market oversaturated with footage of warm water barrels in exotic locations. British surfing has evolved on its own terms and in its own time and the resulting eccentric characters and hardcore surfing community is covered well. 

Igor and Mitch come across as genuinely nice guys and connect well with those they are interviewing, such as surfing icons Pete ‘PJ’ Jones, Spencer Hargraves and Nigel Semmens. They reveal what UK surfing was like at its birth, such as the ridiculousness of surfing in a woolly jumper in January, whilst tackling more sensitive issues, such as the suicide of promising young surfer Nigel Veitch who dived off the cliffs at Tynemouth after losing his sponsor. The story is handled well and goes to show that getting British surfers on the map, not to mention the rankings, was not all plain sailing.

 Memorable scenes include when Igor and Mitch join ‘The Muddy Brothers’ by surfing the Severn Bore tidal wave in total darkness, and the section on Sennen’s legendary Skewjack Surf Camp. The film also reveals some surprising facts, such as surfing’s link to Agatha Christie, King Edward 8^th and Captain James Cook, as well as the effect of the World Wars on the surfing community.  

It’s had a positive reception, it won Best British Film at the 2012 London Surf/Film Festival and enjoyed outdoor premiers all over the UK.  The soundtrack isn’t bad either; featuring the obvious, but still good, Devonshire surfer Ben Howard as well as others, such as The Fairport Convention and the imaginatively named Hotel Flamingo (I’d never heard of them either). It also includes black and white film footage as well as animations, courtesy of Simon Ball.

But there are problems. The in-water footage leaves a lot to desired, it’s shaky and unsteady and a couple of times during the Badlands section it even gets jammed into the sand, leaving viewers with an invigorating few seconds of Cornish seaweed. The film could have also done with some more footage of women surfers and groms, of which Britain has many, and excellent ones at that.

 

However, my main bugbear is that the production team are not surfers. Let me reiterate that, these guys don’t surf. In fact, in ‘The Making Of’ section, they admit that they found it hard when filming to anticipate the surfers’ next move on the wave, their lack of knowledge being so. It seems strange to have outsiders documenting and commenting on a community which is so notoriously insular and close-knit. Those of us who were not lucky enough to grow up surfing know how intimidating it can be at the beginning– the language, rules, hierarchy, etiquette, not to mention the sometimes aggressive localism. The well-worn idiom of ‘Only a surfer knows the feeling’ seems to be tested by this DVD.  

But they do make any effort to stick to just the main spots and don’t reveal any that viewers wouldn’t know about already. I wonder how much of that decision was based on the surfers’ code rather than the risk of getting their windscreen waxed or face the backlash from revealing a secret spot. Plus, when they approached and met the featured local surfers, who are legends in the surfing world, I wonder if they had the same deep-set respect and admiration that a surfer would have.  

On the flip side, it means that even those who are not surfers can understand, appreciate and be inspired by the film. And along with the 30 minutes of extras, the film is definitely worth a watch. It really does encapsulate what makes British surfing unique, the history and evolution surfing in the UK, and the fact that the never ending search for the perfect wave has been with us from the very beginning.

The Endless Winter trailer

Man, it's cold!

It is cold today. Super cold. Super duper cold. Super duper cold with hundreds and thousands. Super duper cold with hundreds and thousands and a glace cherry. Sup- well I'm sure you get the idea.

Today I wore, 2 pairs of socks, fleecey-insidey boots, thermal (Icebreaker don't you know) long johns which I pulled right up and tucked my vest into, jeans, knickers (of the sensible variety), vest, cardigan, coat, scarf, bobble hat (awesome) and wooly mittens (which were a present from Rachel - thanks Rach!). And by no means was I overheating! Oh no! Aside from the frankly exhausting task of hiding the fact I was wearing nipple-high thermal leggings from people in uni, I remained decidedly tepid.

So yes, in conclusion, it was cold today.

Professor Barnabus von Chocolate is doing well, a lot less growly since the last update. Now,  he occasionally he wags his tail with me in close proximity (!). However, if I look at him too long he slowly skulks behind the nearest chair/nestle of tables.

                                                         However,

There is something that unsettles me and I must admit, I do feel rather deceived...

When we talked about getting a new dog, I had two specifications:

1. Nothing too small and/or yappy. We want something you can take up a mountain. Also, as an aside, have you ever noticed the generally the bigger the dog, the thinner the owner? There's clearly something to that.

2. Nothing with an uppy tail. And by uppy tail, I mean a tail that goes up (try to keep up with the confusing terminology here). The reason that I don't like uppy tails is simple - I do not like looking at dogs bums.

It's bad enough as it is but it's even worse when you're taking them for a walk and they go trotting off ahead and you're left there with it bang smack in the middle of your field of vision. So, to summarise, me and uppy tails don't mix.

Now, at the kennels, Barnabus has an admittedly twisty but ultimatley non-uppy tail. In fact, it appeared more corkscrewed, like a pig. Little did we know that he was in fact hiding a dark and horrible secret. Yes, you guessed it, Prof. Barnabus Von Chocolate has an uppy tail. An an uppy tail of the most sensational variety in fact, it actually spirals up. As if just bending skywards wasn't enough, he has to flaunt it by saying 'Yes, my tail goes up. In fact it goes so up that it has to go down before it can go back up again!'.

I would get a picture of it but as his tail automatically drops whenever I enter a room, it's kind of hard. But I will endeavour and I will succeed, eventually...