ASL & the Bali grommets

Check out Alex Swadling & Mega and a few other groms in bali from the last few weeks. cheers to Australian Surfing Life for the story. the link is here..
http://www.surfinglife.com.au/cms/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=170

Bali Video

Just a short clip of some of one days waves at Uluwatu and Bingin. an average day in paradise....

Waves board buyers guide

Its Out on the newstands now! with a hot review of our DQ7 and some really cool pics, dont miss your copy! p.s. if your wondering if he gave the board back, the answer is no! the buggers still got it.

Jet pilot makes the local paper

Jet pilots new Factory made the business section of the Gold coast Bulletin newspaper along with one of Drus Quad fin boards

Isaac gets a nice set-up

Heres a taste of winters finest swells. Issac Paddon sets himself up for another tube on his HP7 9’1” longboard. He went on a surfari with Beau Young this last few days down the coast and scored some awesome waves...

Bali is over

All good things come to an end... thats right we are heading home to winter on the gold coast and good waves with Wetsuits on! heres a parting shot of Jason Blewitt at Airport reef on a 5’10” DQ7 quad fin.

Volcom contest

There is always a contest on here in Bali. this was a junior event (under 17). Mega made it thru a few rounds but it was really small and high tide on the beach breaks at halfway.
i was really cool to see a different approach to making the event fun. There was kids painting area and everyone had fancy dress and really crazy costumes on!

Airport reef

Still small waves around. After the boys had a bit of a late one for the obligatory Saturday night at M bar Go, we headed out to score some inconsistent 2-3 footers. we got a couple photos and were in nice temperature water... so who can complain?

Mega flys

This is one of the shots of Mega i took at Bingin. the local boys have the place wired so well. the air shows some nice commitment as there is lots of sharp reef below. Mega is 17 & a Ripcurl Indonesia rider and lives on the Bukit. (lucky fella huh!)

Longboard waves

Well its smaller again...this is Dale trying his hand a longboarding.. He is not too bad either... managed a couple hang tens & a helicopter or two!. The boys had a little tour of the town last night. So it just as well it wasnt 10 foot! The boys are heading back to Bingin or Dreamland this arvo to find a few ramps.

Ulus is on?

The promised swell arrived... but a high tide and long lulls! We got a few waves and a couple nice shots.. then went to Bingin, Dale & Mega (our local teamrider) managed to get a few nice pits and we got quite a few pics...

Small and frustrating

Another small windy day... this is a secret spot that wasnt to crash hot then...

Bali Arrival

Dale Richards, Jason Blewitt & myself arrived to find the waves pretty small on the beachies in legian...

Mike from Globe

Hey Guys,
Just wanted to shoot you all a pic of the illustrious GLOBE surf team manager Mike X getting slotted on Friday arvo during our after work office bonding session at south straddy. As seen on www.swellnet.com.au

Sheridan wins the phillipines

Sheridan won the contest! heres a few happy snaps of her triumphant trip...

Riversurfing video

This is one of our mates at Diverse. Yohannes Terhorst or YOYO as we all know him. his local break is in Munich, Germany...! Thats right he is a riversurfer. His board is a riverboard... he has a double ender with fins on either end! some times he uses a ST model (stealth) with the back fin taken out too. The yoyo riversurfing clip is him in the local town break. the big riverwave yoyo is a “bigwave” spot that only works rarely in the fall. Enjoy the difference and appreciate your onshore sloppy surfs in the sea....

Sheridans off to the Phillipines

Sheridan Shields, our resident Ladies WQS campaign girl, is off to the Phillipines this week to defend her title from her win last year. She just picked her new boards up for the trip this morning and is heading over today! The boards are 2 by 5’9” x 17 3/4” x 2” = 20.2 litres one with a Rounded Square and one with a Pintail. Her other board is a 5’11” x 17 3/4” x 2” = 20.7 litres rounded pintail for the slightly better waves. they look great and will go even better...

Bali's big swell

This is Mega, one of our Bali boys making the most of last weeks big swell at Padang Padang..the pic below is Andy Campbell on the same day at Uluwatu... photo credits to surfermag.com

Krystal clear polishes

I thought i would take the opportunity to introduce one of our staff now and again... Todays pic is Krystal the polisher. She  does all our polishing and wetrubbing in the factory. Krystal has been making her own boards for a couple years now and also studies part time at Uni. We really like her attention to detail and attentiveness when she is being taught something new. Krystal surfs great too... she has a smile on her face here as yesterday she made it too the quarters in the open womens at the Malfunction. I will update this when she wins it today! UPDATE... KRYSTAL  CAME THIRD IN THE OPEN WOMENS MALFUNCTION! one of her first contest’s too!

Amy Hart goes to Portugal for the World Titles

Amy Hart hails from Palm beach, on the gold coast. She qualified for the Aussie junior team (she is 17 y/o)  for the ISA junior world titles. the event is in Portugal, Europe from the 4th May to the 10th May. at the time of writing this she had won her opening heat and progressed thru to the third round.
 Recently Amy has undergone coaching with “Richo” Mark Richardson & has improved her contest skills immensely. Dave has made her boards for nearly 2 years now &
 We have also made the most of the board riding experiance Richo has helping Amy to give us great feedback about her boards & give her the best chances of progressing more... sorry about the quality of pics, i ripped them from Amy’s myspace till she gets me some better ones...

Jumbos BIG board

Talk about big boys and big boards, this is my mate Jumbo’s new board! I Have actually been making him boards since he rode 6’8” shortboards...nowadays he weighs around 150 kilos now (or 330+ pounds for you Americans). the board is 8’6”x 26”x 3 3/4” MONSTER MULLET. i scaled the shape perfectly using our APS3000 software. i then cut the blank from EPS (esky foam), i glued a bending ply stringer in and then cut the shape with the APS shaping machine we use everyday. we glassed it with 2x6 oz on the bottom and 2x6oz ,1x4 oz and a strip of 6oz carbon on the deck. all epoxy resins of course! the fins are foiled from ply and glassed on. i went for a quick surf with him on friday arvo when he picked it up and was stoked to see him catch a couple nice ones in tiny Tugun beach break waves. Jumbo managed a couple of good turns and a cutty too! He commented that he would have struggled to catch those waves on his 10” longboard let alone turn and cutback or throw the board at the lip! i will try and get a couple action shots in the next few weeks and give you an update... CUSTOMS FOR CUSTOMERS. thats what we do.....

Dale Quik

Dale Richards, our junior champion narrowly missed a finals berth in todays Brothers Nielsen junior pro at the Spit, on the Gold Coast. the surf was really crappy and it came down to luck and getting a wave that was ridable. having taken out some of the ratings leaders including Laurie Towner and Julian Wilson in earlier rounds, it was dissapointing to see the ocean not cooperating with Dale, but thats surfing competition isnt it. the photo above is from the recent Quiksilver pro at Snapper rocks. Dale won over an all star cast to win the trials. Then in the Main event he eventually lost out after being beaten by both Kelly Slater and Andy Irons....not many of us can match that performance. Dale showed true promise that he can surf with the best of them and im sure we are going to see many more finals with him in them over the next couple years!

Fishing in the Sea

Time to take the staff for a relaxing day of fishing...as a company we appreciate good staff and like them to enjoy some time together not working too. So we took six of our crew out to the 36 fathoms fishing hole! heres Dane the Sander with the biggest fish! of course as the boss and i was paying i caught the most fish... i took home a really nice Parrot fish and cooked it for dinner fresh. Teena caught a stomachache and Jamie was bummed over not getting anything worth keeping. we wished Blackie our legend Glasser could have joined us, but he is prone to seasickness!

Boost Airshow

Today i took the kids and missus up to see the BOOST airshow. Our Air specialist TEAM surfer DRU ADLER was an invitee! Dru was in the company of Ozzy Wright, Tim Curran, Kelly Slater, Josh Kerr and 7 other world renown air surfers. i didnt take any shots as two kids under 3 and crowds in the sand kinda make it hard to concentrate... it was a contest format based on entertaining the crowd, some of the guys had to do ten minute heats on goat boats and inflatable body boards etc. all in all it was entertaining to watch. my wife Tae scored an inflatable BOOST chair which kept the kids busy enough between throwing sand at Darcy(the shaper sitting next to us) and fighting over the chair to let us see a couple hours of entertaining surfing. the waves were less than ideal to do airs in but the guys were all profesionals so they did well anyway. we had to go home by lunch... but i turned on the news tonight... Dru had come second to Taj Burrows! Taj won $20,000. and Dru got a big LG plasma! pretty nice effort for a sunday’s work