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November 2005 Issue
On The Road, Portfolio: Joe Curren
Words by Chuck Graham, Photos by Joe Curren
Of course surfing sewed the seeds, but eventually Joe Curren evolved into a travel photographer, documenting his sojourns while surfing offbeat locales like the Galapagos Islands, Norway, Sri Lanka and Lake Superior.
Everyone knows his older brother Tom, the 3-time world champion, but Joe's his own person, always surfing at a high level while following his vision, inspired by veteran lensmen Rob Gilley and Andrew Kidman. You won't get the younger Curren to say a lot, but his images speak volumes, his humble approach serving him well at home and abroad, and at the age of 31, has already traveled to 25 countries. "Norway is the most beautiful place I've been to," said Curren. "Everywhere you look is a perfect picture."
Currently, he fires away with Canon equipment, but recently he purchased a Pentax 6x7 medium format camera. His images are making the rounds of galleries in New York, Aspen, Colorado, and Japan. His stories and photos have also appeared in Surfing, Surfer, The Surfer's Path, TransWorld Surf, The Surfer's Journal, and surfing publications in Japan and Europe.
"I was inspired by documenting my travels," recalled the soft-spoken Curren. "But I wanted to document the
creative side of travel. Fortunately I have friends like Gilley and Kidman who have given me good advice on equipment, film and use of light."
Although he'll continue to travel and work on editorial assignments that span the globe, Curren's biggest project on the horizon will stay within the family name. "I'd like to do a book on my dad," he said, referring to his legendary,
big-wave-riding father, Pat Curren.
"It would be most important to me."
Visit www.joecurrenphotography.com to see more of his work.
Posted November 2005 Blue Edge Magazine. All rights reserved.
Next Generation
By Grey Lockwood
Name: Matthew Gilbert McCabe
Age: 16 years old
Home: Pierpont
Local spot: Dredge
Sponsors: Volcom, Electric, Roberts Surfboards
School: El Camino High School
Boards: 5'4", 16'11 1-7/8"
Music: Tupac, Single Frame, Deftones, Eminem
BE: Who do you usually surf with?
MM: My brother Mike, Cory Arrambide, Spencer Reegan, and Big Matt.
BE: In your opinion, what's the best wave in California?
MM: Definitely Rincon. There's no other wave like it.
BE: What are your best contest results so far?
MM: I've won five contests so far, but the most recent was the Volcom "Butterfish Series" contest at Mandalay a couple weeks ago. I won the Men's Division.
BE: How many trophies do you have?
MM: I've got a bunch, but they're all just pieces of plastic. I don't care too much about contests. I just do them for fun and for my sponsors.
BE: What kind of car do you drive?
MM: I don't have a car yet, but I'm getting my first one in a couple weeks. It's a beat-up old truck. As long as it gets me to the beach, it's fine with me.
BE: Who is the one guy you can't seem to beat in contests?
MM: That's Cory Arrambide for sure! He's just like a machine when it comes to contests, he hardly ever falls.
BE: Who is the gnarliest guy you've ever been in a heat with?
MM: I did a contest in Australia this past summer and I had Asher Pacey (Australian aerial guy) in one of my heats. That guy lands pretty much anything he tries.
BE: Do you have a job?
MM: No, but I've been trying to find one for awhile.
BE: What happens when you go to apply for a job?
MM: They tell me I look 10 years old and to come back in a couple years.
BE: Where has surfing taken you so far, travel-wise?
MM: I've been to Australia, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Hawaii.
BE: Andy or Kelly?
MM: I have to go with Kelly. I think he's still got one more championship in him.
BE: Do you have a girlfriend?
MM: No. But, there was this really cute girl in Australia and . . . Actually, I don't want to talk about that!
BE: Who's helped you out with surfing the most so far?
MM: My parents, Carl Holm and Troy Powell from Volcom, and Roberts Surfboards.
BE: What do you guys do when it's flat?
MM: We don't really do too much. We go tubing sometimes and we have Airsoft Gun wars around the house. I try to do all my schoolwork on the flat days, so I can surf all day when the waves get good.
BE: If you could invent your own air, what would it be and what would you call it?
MM: It would start out as a frontside or backside roundhouse. Then, instead of rebounding off of the whitewater, you would go up and do either a double-grab flip or a barrel roll in the opposite direction that the wave is moving. I think I'd call it a "Monkey Roll." I'll let you know if I ever land one (laughs).
BE: What are your goals in the next five years?
MM: I just want to keep surfing as much as possible. I am going to try and move down south in a couple of years to be closer to everything. Eventually, I would love to work for Volcom or one of the other companies in the surf industry.
Posted November 2005 Blue Edge Magazine. All rights reserved.
Quieting the Self, Primeval Mystic of Indonesia's Savu Sea
by Michael Kew
Back to nature. Divine the future, consult the past. Allure five senses with geographical isolation. Adapt to life in ancient, immortal lands oblivious to modern lifestyle, where an eastern Eden of culture taints any mirage of Western theory. Squint into the glare of an Indian Ocean sun, departing all mind, thought, homespun memory. And so on.
Early afternoon. A cooling sea of blues unwinds to vast, parched pastels of scrub, bush and palm as we dip and deplane into Waingapu. A rough overland bus journey follows, terminating at a desolate beach on the isle's southeast shore. At sunset, Captain Alwi extends his hand to mine in a cleansing dose of liberty in our ad hoc port of embarkation. Exit from the swell-flanked anchorage segues the halt of civilization into a compelling, introspective outpost sojourn.
Spice Islands. Irian Jaya. Timor. Roti. Bali. Nusa Lembongan. Lombok. Sumbawa. Sumba. Java. Panaitan. Sumatra. Asu. Bawa. Hinako. Nias. Mentawais. All names you've heard before. Yet the concept of combing clandestine Indonesian territory devoid of crowds and surf charter boats requires that you likely have not heard the names - hidden words printed in micro fonts on the map or not at all.
Swell clairvoyance points our course, primarily at night. Settling into the stuffy bunk with soothing ironwood hull creaks, dreams ensue, disturbed only with anchorage beneath a sea of starlight leading to the cosmic dawn, good morning, starshine. Awakening to Indonesian idyll manifests essence of surf search.
Hence the voyage: Lesser Sundas and reefs between. Corals and sands. Rocks and cliffs. Harsh crossings and stark beaches. Reconnoitering favored yet unknown nooks aboard the Indo Jiwa is a savory affair: gunkholing along Nusa Tenggara's enchanted coasts scarcely viewed through blue eyes and rarely (if ever) surfed.
Inshallah.
Historically, Indonesia's archipelago complex required that its denizens knew their way around boats. Many texts suggest the European Age of Exploration as the pinnacle of mankind's seaborne expansion, yet these tales must fade next to those of southeast Asians, who colonized Indonesia 6,000 years ago. Likening our solitary passage to these ancient marinersâ ideologies of seeking the new, Indo Jiwa serves its purpose. Stone megaliths where spirits dwell. Ritual objects. Tropical desert.
Primordial mountain ranges alternate with classic white sand, rimmed with palms and bush and turquoise lagoon. Far drier than Indonesia's more equatorial expanse, cool evening winds press heat from afternoon into the following mid-morning, mimicking the arid clime of northwest Australia. The island is a rugged paradise, an exposed, remote slab of rock, where human life manages to blossom with greater success than on the more fertile islands nearby. Its earth is stony and barren, yet because of the lontar palm economy, the locals enjoy an organic scheme of health.
Buzzing shorebound from the mother ship, an escape. Two fishermen with throw nets float near shore in a tattered wood In blinding midday sun, canoe. Our Mercury-powered fiberglass skiff is dragged onto the scorching beach, utterly Arabian if not for gangly lontar palm fronds, Christian church, seaweed harvest, or Asian eyes.
the beach is wide and perfect, littered with colored pebbles and bleached shards of coral.
Lore and romanticism saturate wooden boats. Retro glancing, Indo Jiwa's loom strategically in the back bay between two reefs, imitating a pirate ship circa 1946; it is a traditional Buginese pinisi, zenith of the southern Sulawesi shipwrights' also infamous pirates. Built of ironwood, an increasingly limited resource found only in eastern Indonesia, she spans 110, feet bow to stern, allowing substantial elbow room and certain degrees of creature comforts found in several Indonesian surf charter boats.
A rough trail from the beach. We stroll into the village. Sweating profusely, foreheads lift when immersed in a palm forest; falling coconuts can harm. Further in, a pig ambushes our lethargic ensemble, coconuts drop inches away from point-blank crania. A clearing appears in the dense brush; a child cries, his sister grins. Sideways breeze folds her black hair while father scales a palm tree. Frail shacks surround a modest firepit/communal area soaked with betel nut spit. Sustenance, subsistence, survival, ah, this is a picture of an island maintaining a culture's society on stilts, if you will, hovering beyond status quo and momentary awards, existing from and for the long-term. Primitive? Only to us.
The interpreter, Indo Jiwa's chief mechanic, filters our intent to the puzzled villagers. Anomaly exists in pale skin: They are brown, we are white. They come from cloudless land, we come from sunless outer space. Invading in slaps and trunks, this is the sect of foreign diplomacy familiar to Captain James Cook, who sailed here in 1770, a milestone for westerners visiting villages and assessing the ikat and lontar economies. Here, the drought-resistant lontar palm provides everything from house-building fibers to syrup.
For several hundred years prior, the island shunned colonial interest with great simplicity. A 1676 Portuguese war expedition seeking slaves was slaughtered deftly by the natives; the Portuguese and Dutch kept their distance thereafter. Lucky for us, Cook made a good impression.
The islanders saw us coming, pondered the mother ship offshore, anchored since Tuesday. Our interpreter initiates and, immediately, cold faces crack with handouts of lontar syrup, smooth as silk, offered as a formal welcome. Raw and boldly sweet, we chase it with coconut flesh and thank the natives with smiles and sincere handshakes.
In the end, I wander off toward the chickens and pigs and piles of coconuts to feel the island sans humans, which remained cloaked from the outer world until 1860, when Christian missionaries arrived with smallpox, inadvertently killing nearly half of the population. The missionaries mustered meager success against a staunchly Islamic population; today, besides Christianity, many embrace animism: (1) doctrine that the vital principle of organic development is immaterial spirit; (2) attribution of conscious life to objects in and phenomena of nature or to inanimate objects; (3) belief in the existence of spirits separable from bodies. Tradition flourishes.
We step into the hub of the island's animism, the kampung, or sacred house. Exposed to unwanted foreign magic, visitors were once exorcised by the kepala adat before being allowed inside. Three sets of megaliths and a complex ritual structure, the place is bounded by taboos. A common vernal ritual has food and living animals shoved to sea bound in lontar palm boats, veiled in ikat, as an offer to the gods. Puppies and premature goats are especially valued, as they exemplify feeble victims who will suffer the penance of the gods in place of the villagers. When a priest dies, a fresh acolyte must quaff an elixir of the dead priest's blood blended with the venom of a poisonous fish.Those who survive are ordained; this last occurred in 1997.
Off the beaten track. Extreme isolation; flat, hot, mute. Random sessions in mysto lineups equate to a complacency found only in this sea. Here. Another island comes into view, Indonesia's driest, even the lontar palm wilts. Reputed hub of local human ancestry and its spiritual passage from Asia to India. Home to what some famous folk consider to be the nation's best lefthander. On an island with no roads or airport, rarefied pleasures spawn with access: nearing sunset, we drop anchor and observe. Two paddle out. Four waves ridden, none conquered. Detonating top-to-bottom, bending below sea level, one false move and pay the price. A beast of a wave.
"Ahhh, yeahhh, it's heavy out there, mate." Isolation is equidistant from relaxation. Between? The wave: ndonesian exotica perfection, treacherously shallow. Unseen. Unsurfed. This is where a realization of wild Indonesia raises its wings. Redoubt of cerebral peace exists on a trackless sea. Book a flight. Board a boat. But don't ever say it doesn't exist.
Because it does.
Posted November 2005 Blue Edge Magazine. All rights reserved.
Shaper Spotlight: Gabriel Loyd
Words and Photos by Vincent Shay
First impressions are everything. Walking into Gabriel Loyd’s shaping room gave me a first impression that I will not forget for some time. Vivid blues and greens under fiberglass give his boards a life of their own. A living, breathing entity that almost begs to find that perfect wave on its own. No rider needed. Central Coast board shaper Gabriel Loyd is a surfer and has been all his life. Born and raised around surfing, his philosophy has always been centered on the joy of the ocean and the form of a wave as art.
Not a particularly competitive surfer, Loyd would rather be known as one to give a wave than to take one. He is the son of legendary photographer and board shaper Aaron Loyd. He learned early on that quality and the final product is the most important component to the art of shaping. Every shape begins from a raw blank and ends with the final polishing. Gabriel does everything and enjoys being in control of every facet of his shapes. Learning every aspect of the final product is his goal.
“A lot of people don't know that I do everything! From shaping, to glassing, to doing my own airbrushing!” he said.
In Pismo Beach his shapes stand apart not only because of the quality of his boards, but his unique airbrushing. Each board is a piece of art that seems to breathe, but even more than that, the creation seems to have a soul.
Loyd learned from the best. He credits his development to working with his father who shapes for Al Merrick and PJ Wahl, local Central Coast shapers. Both role models have been pivotal mentors in not only his personal life, but also for his passion for shaping surfboards. “When I go into shops, I check out every shape. I truly believe Al Merrick designs are the best. The quality of the boards and consistency of the shapes are what I model my own shapes from.”
Equally important is the feedback he gets from surfers who regularly surf his shapes. Always evolving and learning, a shaper fine-tunes his art form. This is the destination of every shaper and Loyd is no different.
None of Loyd's boards are pre-shaped digitally. He believes in the art of finding the shape. Like most of the artists I have met, Loyd truly believes the perfect shape is already in the blank; it‚s just up to the shaper to find it. Not to say that Loyd is against computer shapes, he just wants to truly learn and hone the art of shaping before he starts to utilize the computer.
Loyd's specialty board is his 'Miss Piggy‚ model. Not just the average short board, but also more of a high-performance hybrid model. He believes that boards in general are getting shorter with increased width and more curvature in the templates, especially in California. This philosophy is what drives his board designs.
Loyd is very excited about the future. Creating a business and working with his father is his goal and his passion for the industry is driven through his dedication to the art of creating a quality surfboard design. Loyd believes in hard work and a 'never give up‚ attitude' Loyd is here to stay.
“I am a shaper, but I really want to be a ‘company.’ I don’t want to be just a ‘backyard shaper’! Everyone starts somewhere, but my goals are set very high.”
If you are interested in surfboards that ‘breathe’, check out Loyd Surfboards at Solutions in Pismo Beach, Shell Beach Surf Shop, and Azhiaziam in Los Osos. Loyd Surfboards also has an exclusive dealer in Cayucos at Cesmat Surf. You can contact Gabriel at gabrielloyd@hotmail.com or 441-5103.
Posted November 2005 Blue Edge Magazine. All rights reserved.
November Calendar
Thursday November 3, 2005
Yoga on the Beach
Practice yoga while outside in nature. Yoga on the Beach is taught in an Ananda style and the class includes exercises that energize and strengthen the whole body while directing new blood to heal aching muscles. To attend, please contact Tali beforehand at 448-2619. Visit groups.msn.com/DewdropYoga for more information and more class times.
Saturday, November 5
Stream Team
Come out to the Stream Team this Saturday at 9 a.m. Be a part of water quality testing in the Ventura County area. The testing will later yield results to be released to the public. Pizza and drinks are provided afterwards. The group meets at 239 West Main Street in Ventura (across from Patagonia). For more information, contact Paul Jenkin at paul@matilija-coalition.org.
Walk for Life
Participate in the aids benefit, Walk for Life. The walk begins at 9 a.m. at Santa Rosa Park, San Luis Obispo. Contact the Aids Support Network at 781-3660 to sign up.
Surfrider Foundation Conference
Calling all California Surfrider Foundation members, one and all. Every last one of you are welcome to attend the Surfrider Foundation's California Conference going down in Seaside on November 5th -6th. Learn how to become a more effective activist, rub elbows with other wave savers, and find out what the other chapters in the state are up to.
Coastal Guide Book Debut
The first volume of the California Coastal Commission’s series of coastal guide books will be available today. Each volume is devoted to a portion of the coast and includes a comprehensive list of more than 300 beaches and parks on or near the coast. It features 49 detailed maps, information on hostels, 300 full–color photographs and lots more. To order, visit www.coastal.ca.gov.
Sunday November 6, 2005
Yoga Hike
The Yoga Hike takes place three Sundays a month and entails hiking different trails, and practicing yoga at various scenic points along the trail. The experience also entails lessons on yoga philosophies. Meet at the Bank of America parking lot at 3790 State St., Santa Barbara at 10 a.m. Visit http://groups.msn.com/DewdropYoga for more information and more class times.
Saturday, November 12
Geology Walk
Join a local geologist for a walk along the beach below the Douglas family Preserve to look for faults and fossils. This free event is great for the entire family. Meet at the Watershed Resource Center, 2981 Cliff Dr. (at Hendry’s Beach) at noon. Email kdeluw@cecmail.org for more information.
Monday, November 14
2005 Surfer Poll on TV
Fuel TV will feature this year’s Surfer Poll and Video Awards at 9:30 pm. Tune into www.FUEL.tv for additional airdates, times, video clips and more.
Saturday, November 19
Gaviota Coast Geology Walk
Come out for a geology walk along the Gaviota Coast. Meet in front of the state park campground store at 1:30 p.m. Bring a hat, water, jacket, and old shoes. This event is free to CEC members, $20 for non-members. Advanced registration is required. Call 693-5683.
Sunday, November 20
Ventura Surf Club Luau
It’s Luau Time at the Ventura Surf Club! This celebratory 2005 end of the year luau promises lots of fun with dinner, music, raffles, slideshow, award presentations, and more. Bring your cash/checkbook for some great raffle prizes; they will be raffling of 2 surfboards and assorted surf items. The event will take place from 3–8 p.m. at the Poinsettia Pavillion at 3451 Foothill Rd. Please turn in your form and payment no later than Friday, November 11th. Visit www.venturasurfclub.org for the form and more information.
Monday, November 28
O’Neill Coldwater Classic on TV
Watch Fuel TV tonight to watch Northern California’s premier surfing event, the O’Neill Coldwater Classic. Visit www.FUEL.tv for additional airdates and times.
Posted November 2005 Blue Edge Magazine. All rights reserved.
