I hope you have all had an epic Christmas break and scored yourslef some good weather and waves!

I have had some awesome surf’s recently with my brother inlaw who is over from South Africa. He rips, and surfs all over SA, but he rates some of the NZ spots we’ve surfed so far!

I wouldn’t dear say where this is, but I will just say this… It was pumping all day

It’s back to the office now, but heading up to a conference in The Mount at the end of the month so will hopefully get some waves there! Until then I think I’ll save this shot as my screen saver!

The schools principal and teachers had a lot of fun celebrating these students success for 2010, and we really enjoyed spending time with the young people who were so stoked to be out there! Fun times!!

We were cruising in style (with Sam’s parents people mover) stocked with Code Red to keep the energy levels charged!

Being a Monday, we rocked up and the beach was empty with no one in sight! The East Coast has some classic coast line set ups ay…

When we paddled out it was a bit windy and onshore, but being a reef break the waves still peeled off nicely! We surfed from 4pm till dark with the classic glass off of the wind on dusk, trying not to think about the fact that it was feeding time, we hooted as the four of us got perfect wave after wave!

But on the way home I got thinking about it… and Im wondering if any other surfers agree?

If I was super rich, I would pay for some dude to come on all my surf trips and just capture every wave on film! Would you? I dunno ay, its just not the same to try explain to people how good your wave was… or if you really did get that barrel

Any way, loving that the wave drought is over for me, and loving that I’m back in my Gordons 3/2 short arm wettie – summer is definately nearly almost potentially hopefully here…

The reports were saying 9/10 but even so, you try not to get your hopes up. But we rocked up at 10am and sure enough it was PUMPING! Glassy 3-5ft conditions with only about 15 guys out (not too bad for a Saturday).

I was surfing my shortboard for a change and loved it ay! Who knows that after surfing a longboard for a couple of years, that once you jump on a shortboard again all of a sudden you can throw it around a whole lot easier

Anyway, I paddled out at 10.30am… and with a 30min lunchbreak in between, I surfed until 8.30pm… making for a 9 and a half hour surf which is a personal record, and a serious sunburn!

This is usually the part where I would upload epic photos to show you how good it was… but i’d probably get my car keyed or smashed if I gave all the Wellington secrets away     Im sure you can imagine it, or Google image Indo – it looked like that!

I hear the rest of the countries pumping too, glad to hear we’re all getting our wave fix!

Before we even got there these young people were frothing on the stuff and going crazy in the back of the van!

On the way to Lyall Bay it’s tradition to Toot in the Mt Victoria tunnel, toot toot

You’ve gotta take every opportunity you get to give away Mountain Dew, dunno if it’s legal or not but at every traffic light you gotta offer it…

We finally arrived at the beach with plenty of ice cold Dew… before sending the troops out they had to have another…

and then off we went, spread out across all of Lyall Bay beach with a couple hundred bottles and cans of Mountain Dew ensuring its the only drink people require on the next hot summer day Wellington provides

The plan was to go to the Wairarapa and 4WD around the coastline and go diving, of course one of the boys thought his 2WD ute was as good as a 4WD and the result was:

But the winner of the morning was the trusty little RAV4 – it flew through every river and the sand was no trouble at all.

Anyway, we ended up bailing on the diving because good old Wellington was blowing a gale and we would have been swept out to sea! So instead we found a spot, lit a fire and cooked some damper (bread) like true bushmen ha ha

And when you’re roughing it out in the bush, the one thing that you need to accompany your damper is a nice cold Mountain Dew… But how do you get it icy cold out in the bush I hear you say… well only the most natural and extreme way

So what do a bunch of guys do when you can’t go diving but you have a whole afternoon to spare? The most obvious answer to that is of course… build a dam!

And yes, it will always turn into a competition of who can be the most manly and lift the biggest boulder

After successfully building a dam that no one will ever find or use, we left feeling very proud of our dam building skills and reminisced about how we moved rocks to build something incredibly awesome but with no photographic proof, only the memory. Next on the agenda for the Stag was to go clay shooting which is wicked!!

Being my fist time it took a while to get it, but I managed to hit 5 out of the 10 clay pots. Here’s Marty the stag, epic weather ay!

We all know that when a group of men get together, a BBQ needs to be involved somewhere in the mix…flame grilled!

As for the rest of  night, it remained fairly mellow out in Martinborough… bit of Poker and plenty of good times!

A bunch of the FITE YOUTH from The Rock Church got together and went out into the streets of Johnsonville to find some Fathers on Fathers Day! If your a father, your the Man!

Postponed due to ugly conditions the day before, competitors took to the challenging yet contestable conditions at The Bend, Lyall Bay with a positive attitude.

Although I couldn’t enter cause I was at church in the morning, I went down to the beach in the arvo to watch the finals and give out some of the much loved Code Red!

Congratulations to all competitors and especially those who placed first in their respective divisions. The next contest is on Saturday 11th December, and will be followed by a metal concert that night to celebrate.

Register for the 11th December contest here: http://tinyurl.com/2db39xf

1st Place Open Mens, and 1st Place in the Juniors – Ethan Burge

1st Place in the Over 40′s – Russel Millar

3rd Place Open Mens – James Whitaker

1st in the Open Womans – Hayley Rogers

3rd Open Mens – Darryl King

Here are the official results:

In fact yesterday I was even considering getting rid of my booties in preparation for summer

I found this shot of me in Lyall Bay doing a bottom turn on Racoonprojects.co.nz you should check out their blog its got some pretty sweet surf shots from all over!

I remember this wave well, I waited out the back for it for ages… but as you can see, it was a beautiful wave that was well worth the wait!

Im getting excited to see the movie which will be released in March next year! but I think I’m allowed to show these bad quality shots as a bit of a preview for ya gona be such a sweet movie… watch for it early next year!!