Return to Danger Island - Downtime & New Years

it´s been nearly a year since my last trip to the Rock and it´s been hard to keep my mind off it even though we´ve had a great year of travelling in 2011 and unbelievable luck with conditions around the world. Danger Island´s crew consisted of mad Professa Andy Fox & his creative brother Jo as well as hard charging girl-surfers and good friends Eva and Alena. After arriving on the Island everyone pretty much got sick first thing, with everybody stressed out from busy Xmas times and before...   fot that reason we weren´t too dissapointed about some downtime without waves, sleeping, doin a few little excursions around the island and just hangin out. Jo was actually getting his share of Airtime every day and enjoyed the Island´s endless Paragliding possibilities. We knew the surf would be up just before New Years so we dind´t bother much and really enjoyed being a wreck lying on the terrace & getting high on the good Galaos and living off good fresh food. Watched some epic fireworks, which are among the biggest and nicest in the world for New Years celebration and awaited a good 17 sec. 4 m swell in the meantime.

as good as it gets in the Med pt.2

and some more pics of another epic weekend.

also check the footage of the boys going mad on that weekend:

http://www.surfvarazze.it/gonymarlon-frederico-varazze-17-12-2011-roof-view

http://www.surfvarazze.it/gonymarlon-frederico-varazze-17-12-2011-beach-view

as good as it gets in the Med pt.2

Ok, this one was a real different one...   The Forecast was for huge waves, bad winds and maybe at the Tail-End of the heaviest Stormfront of the year in Europe, a good swell for the Med. I drove down Thursday night after a heavy week at work, only to find 10-12ft. stormy madness in the morning. Thy Bouy readings went berserk and reached 9 meters, so pretty gnarly. After some driving around a while I managed to find some superclean headhigh waves which 3 guys shared. After catching up with the swiss frequent Italy travellers Noemi & Alena we caught the best swell i´ve witnessed so far in V-Land and to top it all off fellow Planet Sports Teamriders Marlon & Gony as well as Frederico Moraiis flew in for the swell and simply tore the place apart. The boys spent more time in the barrel than paddling around and in the evening we had another epic session in heavy 8-10 ft. Beachbreaks. The combination of flawless barreling waves and those guys ripping so hard made this trip really special as well as 17 degrees outside while everyone in Munich was freezing their asses off :-)  got to ride my 8 footer again, in the Med out of all the places, and now heading off to Danger Island on Xmas Day. Can´t wait to get back there...

Planet Sports Xmas Bash

Over the Years we´ve had some real fun Xmas Parties at Planet Sports, but that thing topped it off big time...   Simply put the whole company in a couple of Busses, add Alcohol and Snowboards, get them in some nice chalets in the mountains and give them an extra day off to spend on the mountain. Simply put, it was epic, everyone had a ball, and it was great to see all the crew drinking, celebrating, hanging around in the jacuzzi, and most importantly spend a great day on the slopes together. Can´t wait for the next thing they put together, awesome to work with that crew....

Carnage in V-Land - Girls Surf trip

after missing the 2 biggest Swells this year in Europe on 1.11. it looked like a great idea to head down to another Ocean with a promising South-Swell on the rise. I teamed up with fellow Planet teamrider Eva from Innsbruck and off we went, disregarding the gnarliest forecast for rain in the whole year. It hit the area really hard, 7 people died and roads and towns were flooded, but all that carnage brought a good swell as well. By chance we met two of Eva´s hot friends, who surfed / actually ripped as well (Alena being the swiss Girls Champ) so was surrounded by chicks all weekend & must say I´ve encountered worse things in my life :-) 

The swell was epic, the weather pretty gnarly, epic food & vino & some good memories of some quite powerful surf for Med-Standard. Couple of days that felt like a week, heaps of laughter, got in the water first time after my stack at Cloudbreak and am now in anticipation of all that´s gonna come this Winter, yeewww...

(AP Photo/Tano Pecoraro) (Credit: AP)

Octoberfest 2011 aka the Aussie Invasion

how good is it to know people all over the place when you´re on travels, you get to places where you usually wouldn´t go, get to surf the hidden spots, and you´re sure the place where you´re gonna have food and drinks is gonna be epic...  While living in Victoria a few years back I got to know heaps of crew down there and was happy to have them over here now for Octoberfest-time to show them around. There´s always heaps of fun things to do in Munich, and the crew surfed the river pretty much every day in between full-on "Wiesn"-Visits. The Aussies are pretty much made for that fest. Hawaiian Charger Nate came over for a brief visit and one of the highlights for everyone would have to be us renting 3 brand new really quick BMWs and rev it up the whole night on the german Autobahn. If you´re used to doing 60 miles max. or 100ks in OZ, 280 km/h seemed fairly quick for the crew and we pretty much got retarded with those cars...  an awesome week, while I´m still recovering :-)

Festival Time

Coming back from a 3 month surftrip isn´t always the easiest thing, getting back into work & "reality". Anyhow, being back in the midst of a real hot summer wasn´t the worst thing and staying away for a while makes you appreciate home and the things you can do here more again...   Summer´s Festival-time and this was a good chance to catch up with good friend Mad Professor Andy Foxx and head to Frequency Festival in Austria. The Lineup was epic with Foo-Fighters, Rise Against, Stereo MCs, Nneka, we´ve had sooo many drinks and unhealthy food and weather couldn´t have been better...   can´t wait for next festival season to do a few more trips :-)

California - good times on our last stop

after all we encountered in Fiji we were pretty much done with the trip in more than one way. I was properly f*#$d up by the Reef at Cloudbreak, couldn´t go in the water anyway and had trouble flying out of Nadi anyway with all the cuts and shit. But also we had witnessed maybe the best ever swell to hit Tavarua, had an epic run of waves all over the southern hemisphere so we didn´t bother about anything after that. Happy to arrive in Northern Hemi summer, we just cruised along Highway #1, listening to cheesy country music, enjoyed some great food and just chilled out for the whole stay. Santa Cruz was great where we got the chance to hang with Local Christl and get into the awesome local reggae scene a bit. Next stop was Vegas. It´s great to be there and see all the craziness but we didn´t go full throttle I´ll admit. The last week we got the chance to hang in Oceanside with Teamrider Jay Bottle Thompson and friends and had a blast just chilling out, having some good food, a few little surfs and a really funny Marines Party. That´s the end of the trip and we we`re going back home with mixed feelings. However, these 3 months showed us again how awesome life is, the world is a great place and there are some really good people out there... It´s epic to have a place like Munich to come home to, but hey a trip like this reminds one to never rust and always explore and look forward to the next trip. Over and out for now, cheers...

most Pics by Birgar Olsen: http://www.birgarolsen.com/

Fiji Part 2 - best swell ever @ Cloudbreak

Well, there´s not much to say about that Swell, people called it: „the 2 best consecutive days in Fijian Surfing“, „the 3rd biggest Swell ever at Cloudbreak“, „the longest time over 8ft. in a row ever (9 days)“ and so on. Kelly did miss J-Bay for it, that means something for sure as well. All crew were there and there were going really hard. I saw Jamie Sterling, Bruce Irons and Mark Healey get awesome ones as well as Dave Wassell and a couple of others get the shacks of their life. We spent the days in the boat watching the whole show unfold, and with 15-18ft. Hawaiian size it was pretty serious shit, the biggest barrels I´ve seen for sure. I was tempted but since I broke my boards except the trusty 6´7 anyway, there was not even a chance of trying on the 2 huge days, since even Kelly and all the crew switched to serious Guns 8ft. upwards. Maybe it was good for something as well, since on those 2 days so many people had 2-Wave holddowns, which is a pretty serious thing on any break. Cloudbreak at this size will just shake the shit outta you, and more than a handful of crew were about to drown.

The swell just didn´t stop and four days later I still surfed solid 8-10ft. Cloudbreak and could enjoy the Kelly Show every day with my own eyes, which was pretty amazing, having him next to you in the water and surfing this wave like it´s a 2ft. Beachie. On the last day I took an unlucky bending One, surfed it too far to the Inside and got smashed on the reef so violently that I pretty much had serious cuts all over my body and ended up with a torn ligament as well. Since then I dind´t surf on the trip, which sucked but all wounds healed pretty well so far. Well, I can´t really say it was all worth it, but this week has been a pretty amazing one, for sure the biggest barrels I´ve seen and surfed and the World´s greatest show in the water happening...

great shots by travel-buddy Birgar Olsen: http://www.birgarolsen.com

Fiji Part 1 - Frigates, the Board-Eater

NZ was definitly great times, but landing on Fiji was a kind of relief since I picked up a flu in our last days in the Land of the long white Cloud. We had a couple of relax-days without doing much, having a few surfs on the beachbreaks and visiting town and the local markets.

Last time I was in Fiji we stayed on this tiny Island south of Viti Levu and surfed Frigates every day, a wave I really liked back then. It´s a Open-Ocean Lefthand Reefbreak that packs a punch and there is no land as close as 12 ks, so you really feel that you´re in the middle of the Ocean.

We went there this time again, since it´s a beautiful little Island, staying with the local family having the freshest food (Fish, Coconut, Veggies) every day, so you couldn´t ask for more. The left turned on from Day 1 and so it happened that we never saw it under 6ft. And I had it to myself every single day. That, actually was a bit funny feeling, knowing that the reef drops down straight away to sheer dark blue sea and paddling out there alone in the middle of the ocean. Also, you never see the sets coming, because they come out of such deep water, so every now and then you´d get a teahupoo-shaped freak set on the head. The wave itself is so vicious that I broke every board except one, which was a bit of a bummer, but hey in the end it´s all fun&games. When we discovered that the swell of the year is about to hit Fiji, we had a last look at Frigates, which had turned into a 12ft. No-Back below sea-level monster and was pretty much unsurfable but awesome to watch. Off we were to Cloudbreak, hearing that Kelly and all the Hawaiian Big Wave Crew rocked up for the Swell...

most Pics by http://www.birgarolsen.com