Guiness. Lucky Charms. Club Paris. the Peak. Channel Islands.
So as you read this I ask you click on the link below and play the tune. This was our National Anthem - like when we won a title instead of playing the 'God Save the Queen' or whatever.. we played this and went absolutely mental much to the dismay of the French and most of the other teams. Play while you read...It helps give you more of an understanding of how epic this team is!
Channel Islands National Anthem
I have been on so many team trips around SA surfing for Border but wow being given the opportunity to surf for the Channel Islands team in the Euro Surf competition was nuts.
Jersey is like 9 by 12miles or something ridic but there are tons of surfers. And tons of little breaks to separate everyone so before we had all met at the airport, I had barely hungout with any of my team-mates and a few of them I had never even seen before. It would have be outrageously awkward but instead we all meshed together really quickly. It was a quick 55min flight to Dublin and then a 3hr drive to our accomadation in Bundoran. Some of the humans in the team have never had to do anything for themselves or they have just have one brain cell that is being shared between them all so it was a stressful but a classic laugh. (I am not being rude about anyone I travelled with because the guys Im am referring to will be the first to admit this about themselves!)
The first two days in Ireland we went pretty big. Old school Irish bands, litres of gravey and Guinese. I think this really helped the team gel together and for the rest of our time in Ireland we went surfing as a team, ate breakfast as a team, got wasted as a team - pretty much suck together through and through!
When the contest finally started - it was game on. No going out unless you weren't surfing the next day or were knocked out. Having Skindog, who is so experienced defiantly rubbed off on us all. It was rather hard event for everybody because of the stress. We went there pretty much expecting and frothing to surf the perfect Peak but instead they moved us over the hill to this pretty shitty left hand beach break. It was one of the hardest spots to surf as the waves were super unpredictable, there was a rip and when it got big its got big and powerful. at high tide the wave changed and looked like a completely different spot. Also there was nothing else there. no shops. no nothing. so the first few days we were slightly unprepared. but we quick adapted and worked out our strategy. This also met that half the support was at the peak and the other half was at Tullen. A HUGE UP TO ROLEY WHO DID THE 20MINUTE WALK IN ABOUT 5MINUTES FLAT TO BE THERE FOR EVERY SINGLE PERSONS HEAT! welcome to the world of competitive surfing i guess. anyway there is much more to write about - the contest was sick, I came 6th. we came 5th overall (almost beat the poms and will in 2years time), Im still recovering from the parties and I have some of the best friends from this trip. So stoked.
The first two days in Ireland we went pretty big. Old school Irish bands, litres of gravey and Guinese. I think this really helped the team gel together and for the rest of our time in Ireland we went surfing as a team, ate breakfast as a team, got wasted as a team - pretty much suck together through and through!
When the contest finally started - it was game on. No going out unless you weren't surfing the next day or were knocked out. Having Skindog, who is so experienced defiantly rubbed off on us all. It was rather hard event for everybody because of the stress. We went there pretty much expecting and frothing to surf the perfect Peak but instead they moved us over the hill to this pretty shitty left hand beach break. It was one of the hardest spots to surf as the waves were super unpredictable, there was a rip and when it got big its got big and powerful. at high tide the wave changed and looked like a completely different spot. Also there was nothing else there. no shops. no nothing. so the first few days we were slightly unprepared. but we quick adapted and worked out our strategy. This also met that half the support was at the peak and the other half was at Tullen. A HUGE UP TO ROLEY WHO DID THE 20MINUTE WALK IN ABOUT 5MINUTES FLAT TO BE THERE FOR EVERY SINGLE PERSONS HEAT! welcome to the world of competitive surfing i guess. anyway there is much more to write about - the contest was sick, I came 6th. we came 5th overall (almost beat the poms and will in 2years time), Im still recovering from the parties and I have some of the best friends from this trip. So stoked.
MY TEAM MATES
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