Big Sunday

Jono Jimi and Nathan drop into some bombs rolling through on Sunday

Readers Waves - Simon and the Sealion

Hi my name is Simon, whilst out in my car one day i saw some dudes paragliding so i went to get a picture or two it looked cool.
Down on the boat ramp at St kilda life guard station, i came across the seal that had been chasing the suffers off the beach a few days before. In true form the seal took one look at the paparazzi and gave chase, i was getting pics all the way. This seal was one heck of a dude he chased me up onto the footpath, sitting there like he owned the turf so to speak.

He watched the scene, cars, people walking their dogs and others just cruising along. He watched the dog really closely and seemed to think it was fun to sniff cars.

This was a tiring affair for this young seal so he had a bit of a sleep, only thing was it he choose the middle of the road at the back of Kettle park.

Steve Churchill local cop, arrived, stopped in the middle of the road. Our seal friend took acception, to his rest being disturbed and attempted to charge the cop car. So we had a face of The law of the Land vs the law of nature. The match did not make it into the first few seconds the bell rang at it was an immediate KO,

Steve retreating to direct traffic and the seal with his head held high, sat there for a few minutes in the middle of the road, before strutting victoriously back to the sandy shore line of His domain.

The thing for me, is that people may fight over who owns what and who is indigenous to the lands and seas of creation but nature in all its beauty is beyond our control, we cannot ignore it because we are subject to its power, but we can be caretakers respect and value the privilege of what we share.
~ Simon

Rip Curl GromSearch Results

Concrete poured, path looks great, and asparagus patch dug & planted. Sunday was my sons 22nd Birthday. Cant believe it! Happy Birthday Shane :0)
Above: morning of the Sunday St Clair.
Pics from the finals day of the Rip Curl grom Search!

Above: Left - Peri Matenga. Right - Gabe Marriott.
Below: Left - The esplanade decked out. Right - Tane Wallis


Above: left- Johnny Hicks. Right - the 5 under 12 finalists paddling out. Below: Left - A lull through the Judges tent. Right - Elliot Paerata-Reid.


There is also a slideshow of my images from the weekend at the KIWISURF website here as well as their results & writeup , and while I'm linking the writeup from the SISA website.

Below, a few more free surf pics from the days before the weekend too

Grom Search Day1

I arrived literally at the crack of dawn.. it was high tide or close to it. The sky was blanketed in a thick layer of grey cloud.. the sun managed to peek through briefly a few times during the morning.. between light rain showers. It wasn't a day for crisp surf shots, so I went for the 'mood shots' instead.

Sorry I can't give any progress results, was too far away from the speakers to understand what was being said clearly.

Rip Curl GromSearch Set For The South

(below copied from surf2surf.com)

"The third leg of the Rip Curl GromSearch will take place at St Clair Beach, Dunedin this weekend (4-5 October) with sixty of New Zealand’s best young surfers taking to the water. The event has not been held in the South Island since early 2006 and the young South Island surfers will relish the chance to take on the rest of New Zealand in their own waters. While surfers travelling down from the North Island make up the majority of the draw in the five divisions to be contested, it may well be the local surfers who have the upper hand surfing the often challenging St Clair Beach. Local knowledge of the St Clair waves will be invaluable but it may be the southern surfer’s ability to withstand the frigid waters that will give them the advantage." .

St Clair has been steadily filling up with new and old faces all week. Comp starts 8am Saturday morning with some good swell predicted looks like a great weekend. .. see you down there!

Golden Glow

I was filming late this evening when Luke Grubb asked to take some shots on my stills camera.. there wasn't much light left, but what did cast over Clair was a magnificent orange gold glow. here are a few of his shots. The last sequence quite photoshopped to make up for the lack of light.

Above leroy and below hayley

Below.. geordi.