Eish, my poor mate Josh McWilliams is holed up in the hospital with a darn sore head - complete with stitches and skull fracture. All thanks to some less than stellar riding skills of a fellow surfer.

Warm water, sunny skies and school holidays means that it's open season in the water. Everyone, their dog (see Latest Shots) and the kitchen sink is out there on a board. Which means high crowds and low skill levels, which is why you see the pics above. Josh just minding his own business having a surf, next thing he's in hospital and being told no surfing for 6 weeks. How's that for bum luck!

Firewire vs head, and amazingly head won - Josh has the tip of the firewire that was taken out of his pip to prove it!

I really think the older guys in the water need to try ensure a semblence of order in the line-ups over the festive season. If you see a clueless kook flailing about and generally looking like an accident waiting to happen, then go over and nicely explain (and I do mean nicely!) why it might be a better idea for them to move out of the main surfing area until they're a bit better.

We all had learn somewhere, but back in the day when I was learning to surf you sure as hang kept well away from the "real" surf spots. Finding an uncrowded stretch of surf with plenty of foamies and no-one to ride into! There's lots of lil rollers both left and right of the main peaks at Pipe, so nudge the beginners in that direction. They're probably totally oblivious to what a danger they present.

So 'cmon you local crews, keep your surf spot safe this summer and be a polite traffic cop to those around you in need of directions. A short friendly explanation as to why you're pointing out they should move off should do the trick.

PS Thanks to Andrew Lenton for helping Josh out and calling his mom. Get well soon Josh. Remember, chicks dig scars!!

Everyone knows the age old adage - you buy a new board.....and the surf goes dead flat. Always happens, every time a coconut. All amped to try out your new stick, with it's fresh wax and new grip. But the ocean just won't co-operate.

Well, Garth took advantage of the Surf Centres great board deal (boards for R1999) and went and got himself a new 7ft8 Seaflight, perfect for Millers. He'd left his other mini-mal in Maldives on our last trip (we'd got sick of schlepping boards over every time - so we left a full boardbag over there. Now we can travel "lighter" - only one coffin bag instead of 2, together with an array of fishing rods/reels and equipment!)

He also picked up a classic Corky Carrol 7ft6 Surftech in JBay on Saturday, as it was a really good deal too. Plus Surftechs are the best travel boards out - they withstand being jumped on and abused by the airline's baggage handlers. Nothing worse that arriving at your destination, ready to hit the surf, to find that your board has got a monster gash in it. Harder for those ou's to kick the crap out of a Surftech than a normal board.

So that's 2 new boards in 2 days. Which means double whammy on the surf disappearing for this week!

Sorry!

Shew, Friday at last. Pity no waves to wash the week's work away. Yet another week of pompin east. Surfer's have a love/hate relationship with summer - love the warm water and trunking it, hate the flipping east.

It's feels like it's been east for the whole of November, so I decided to check out the stats. Funny enough using the archived data from the 1st to the 25th it been a fairly even split. There're been 50% easterly days, 34% west and 16% variables.

So - we can't point a finger at the onshore for lack of surf this month (well, for at least half the month!) - more due to the fact that the southern Atlantic swell machine has packed away it's tools for the summer!

A quick check of these stats against November 09 showed last year was pretty much the same. I then decided to check out the Dec 09 stats - bad idea! If last year Dec is anything to go by, best you all find something to do next month - cos you ain't going to be surfing! Dec 09 rocked in with 60% easterly days - so reckon the Reserve is going to be chokka block! Least your cars should be safe!

Holding thumbs for some wind swell tomorrow - going to be touch and go though, as with the wind easing off all of tonight the swell might have dropped a fair bit by tomorrow morning....

Cool weekend to all.

Eish, call me a fuddy duddy - but hell, the English language is getting mutilated these days. I hadn't been aware of how far we'd plunged into the abyss of contractions - "gr8" and "c u ltr" and "2moro" I can live with in sms-land . But when just about every word on ou's FB pages is in mixit type text or just kakkly spelt, it really gets to me.

Fair 'snuff when you have to fit your thoughts into a 120 character sms and it's gonna (!) cost you $$ to be more verbose; and I guess FB messages also have character limits  - but hey, if you're just penning a sentence there's no flipping reason to not spell correctly!? Are the 0.003 seconds saved by leaving out a few letters and punctuation going to mean the difference between life & death? Geesh, imagine being an English teacher these days - you must rip your hair out! I'm not the world's best speller either, but I still think there's some basics we should try and aim for!

The ou's aren't doff, I just think they're just lazy! The pace of the world is set to mach 10, so 'spose (!) by shortening our prose we reckon we're saving time ("saving you money, putting you first" -wasn't that a Std Bank ad?)

Guess it's just natural that language evolves (although that might be a debatable term) - we no longer sprout Shakespearean English, and good 'ol Will is no doubt writhing in his grave right now. So yah, maybe SMS speak is here to stay. Nonetheless, poor spelling and grammer will still continue to offend my senses like a dude wearing socks with his croc's.

But den mayb im jus n old fart dat hasnt got wid da program....

I eventually worked out how to create a blog. Don't expect pearls of wisdom and deep thoughts - more like what went on outside my window during the day, surf related stuff, randowm pic's, links and video clips and rantings about whatever's bugging me (like SUP's and jetski's and hassling longboarders!)

Blogs are an interesting thing. I mean, why on earth would anyone be interested in someone else's often mundane ramblings - yet they are. We're a funny race, us humans. Love to be flies on the wall.

The blogging story started out around 1997 and then exploded in popularity in 1999. A report from 2009 reckons there's over 126 million blogs out there now. So here comes number 126 000 001!

Stoked cos I've finally fixed the Forum. We now have a user friendly super simple forum - no signing in rubbish and complicated registration processes - just tune us straight away. Post you pics, tell us about your session, ask for travel advice, whatever. Your spot to do as you please - just keep it tidy.

Catch ya later....