Beautifully shot Peter.

He’s currently living with Rusty Long in San Clemente, California, taking pictures and getting in the water when he can and if not doing this, you’ll finding him spending time with guys, who are either building our industry, or have built our industry – it’s always nice to take the hat off and pay a compliment.

Al Mackinnon writes:

“Greg invited me along to the Big Wave World Tour awards ceremony to be held out on a gin palace somewhere near Newport.

Pete Mel won this years’ tour and the ceremony was a beautiful one, intimate due to only a select crew being invited and emotional for many with a huge amount of humility in evidence – as always with the big wave chargers.

This years Big Wave winner – Peter Mel

Turned out Dick Brewer was going to feature heavily in the proceedings (he’s great mates with Gary Linden who organizes the BWWT) and Tom Carroll was also present, no doubt as a result of Quiksilver being Mel’s sponsor. Linden and Carroll are two absolute legends in surfing and so I was delighted to get the opportunity to meet and photograph them. I can’t tell you how cool they both are, just wish I’d had more time to chat to each of them. Greg kindly snapped a couple of pics for posterity!

Al Mack with the immortal Dick Brewer.

Al Mack looking not nearly as hard as Tom Carroll

We’ve been doing little bits and pieces with Soph for a while now and we dig her. Her surf career started at the Westward Ho surf club when she was 14. She lives opposite of Instow beach, where she walks her sister’s dog Nessie. Her favourite waves are in North Devon and when she’s not surfing, you’ll often find her throwing strikes (in the children’s lane – only playing Ms Sophie) at Bowlingo, where the pins are held up with strings.

As she prepares to throw yet another strike, she stands focused during her pre-throw routine and kept warm in a spring weight Cirrus – they’re so hot right now.

You rock Ms Sophie!

For the record: we’re a cold water surf company, but after watching what we all agreed ‘was the best surfing we’ve ever seen’, we had to post.

Chris writes:

“About 6 months ago Nick Rozsa was a unemployed surfer. A year prior to that he was a highly paid professional surfer with tons of sponsors and big contracts. Nick lost all interest in competing full time and as a result, lost all of his sponsors, they eventually dropped him about the same time his girlfriend was pregnant. Everything went from good to bad real quick. Nick and I used to film together a lot, when we were roommates in 2007. Long story short, I ended up getting other jobs and had other opportunities to work, so filming Nick took a back seat for a while. Nick had lots of other things going on and it just didn’t work out. When Nick was at his lowest in late 2011, we met up and just started talking about the past and how close we were to making it in the surf world and the thought of it all being over was slowly creeping in. Nick had no sponsors, no budget, no job and a kid on the way. I used the last of the little bit of money I had saved took out a credit card loan and bought a rad camera. Nick and I gave the whole surfing thing one last shot in October of 2011. We made a 6 minute wepisode called Homegrown. It was our last thing we were ever going to put out for people to see again. The video blew up. everybody saw it and things started turning around. Late November we filmed another video over a 4 day holiday weekend around home. Put it out on the web and the thing blew up again. Kelly Slater even tweeted that Nick was “the best unsponsored surfer”. That led us to our next video. We decided to make a part 3 of our now famed “homegrown project”. While we were shooting, I got a random phone call from Kelly Slater himself asking to come hangout with us and surf. We were blown away. Now everyone noticed Nick and wanted a piece. That led to being re-signed by former sponsors and revamping his whole career. Later that month we dropped Homegrown EP.3 and the rest is history. Fast forward to April 2012 and we now have a large audience full of surf fanatics stoked on our every move. Just launched the website this week and our latest video Homegrown Ep5. Stoked!!!”

Chris Papaleo

Peter Robinson is the man behind the Museum’s making, for the last 15 years, he’s researched the British Isles involvement in surf and through it all, has begun to unearth this countries depth in the history of surf.

We’re proud to be backing Peter and his dream and the Museum’s launch brought out some of the UK’s surf industries finest players – it was honour to be a part of it all.

“I’ve just finished an awesome two-week work placement at Finisterre, met some brilliant people and some manic and gorgeous dogs. I’ve left here feeling inspired, positive and excited, these three things are constantly in the air down in the St Agnes workshop.

The main thing that I have learnt from these two weeks is not how everyone takes their tea or how to work the photocopier, but that you’ve got to be a doer. You’ve got to ask questions and get involved, not just in the office, but out the office too. It has been great being part of a team that is so enthusiastic and have the perfect balance between work and play.

I’ve loved watching Tyler constantly trying to fulfill his mission of escaping the workshop, the weird topics of office conversation and of course the opening night of Mama Africa!

There aren’t many workplaces that you can walk down the beach for lunch or get greeted with a kiss from everyone in the morning! This place is seriously special and I feel privileged to have been a part of it. Thank you so much for being so welcoming guys, I really have enjoyed myself!

Lots of love, Georgia”

We loved having Georgia, she had the appetite of a horse and an eye for good copy writing, so good, that she totally picked ours apart and put it back together again – thanks to Georgia – Finisterre now has a ‘house style’!

Super rad Georgia, love from us all! xx

You were right about loads of things philosophical Mr Aristotle, but we reckon you’re a little off the mark with this one.

We won an RSPCA Award a couple of years ago, it was rad to win it and something we’re very proud of. We found this little video they put together, highlighting the workshop, the people, the place and we’re pretty sure there’s no minds degrading here.

- Open up relationships and keep them.

- Lend some time to furthering innovation, innovation that has no financial gain and instead improvement at it’s heart.

We’ve tried to do these things, sometimes not perfectly, but we’ve dedicated many days, and have done, since bringing a company like ours to the market place years ago.

A little story:

James Bowthorpe called us up 4 years ago, he said he needed some product to go around the world on a bike. Months later, he broke the cycle around the World Record – this is dedicating time to something and doing it well.

A year later, he became one of our ambassadors and has been for the last four years – this is a relationship opened and kept.

A year and a bit ago, he told us that he was going to go on another adventure. That he was going to make a film, one about a man who makes a boat from New York City’s waste, the detritus of a modern megalopolis, and takes it to the source of the Hudson River high in the Adirondack Mountains, at Lake Tear of the Clouds.

He rows the boat back to NYC, through wilderness, countryside, farms, towns and industry, all of which rely on the mighty river that flows past, all of which are threads of the river’s story.

He said that he needed a suit, one that he could wear for the soul purpose of this adventure – kind of like a space suit to an astronaut. Although the suit itself would never really go into commercial production, it would push innovation – this is improvement at it’s heart.

In the end, we made the suit, James has begun his adventure and it’s one that has amassed the interest of Mogwai providing a soundtrack, Anthony Crook powering the visuals and a small little workshop – has once again put improvement and innovation at the heart of things. Down below you can get behind this adventure, kind of like how people get behind companies and buy shares, this is kind of like getting behind a man and sharing a dream – it’s called the Hudson River Project.

If you want to get behind the dream, that’s done here with kickstarter

A bit from the boys below:

When we set out to make this documentary back in May, we were most excited about documenting the winter months. However, this winter was historically warm and brought only a few Noreasters, which are the strongest source of swell for New Hampshire. Luckily, a decent storm brought a number of inches of snow to the coast and solid waves for the first weekend in March and we filmed as much as we could. In this video, we are just trying to give a glimpse of the winter surfing experience. It’s hard to really understand, unless you put on a wetsuit and paddle out, but we hope the video gives a taste of the cold, the beauty of coastal winters, and the passion these surfers have.

Thanks again, we really appreciate your kind words. If we ever make it out to the UK, we’d love to pay you a visit.

Dylan Ladds and Ryan Scura

Salmon Theory from the Granite Stoke on Vimeo.

When we came across Cody’s work, it only took a moment or two, to know what the guy was going to be like and after a very rad conversation with him yesterday, I can happily say – that Mr Caldwell ticks all three adjectives above.

Once we lay some brick over a conversation, we then follow things up with some product, of which, an Anabatic and Cirrus are making their way to California – as I type.

Enjoy some slipping and sliding on the left coast of the states – stoked to have you on board Cody.

Windy Warbles from Cody Caldwell on Vimeo.