Paudies Photoblog

Beach Walk

Ferg and Damo

Danny Boy back in the mix after a long time dry docked.

Sponsor Love,  Damien Conway.

John McCall

Alex winding up

Damo, half way through a barrel I mostly missed because I got bored and caught a bodywave.

McCall hack.

Stef, should’ve gone left.

John again

Would have been so sweet.

See, end section of above wave.

Head in the clouds. Dan Skajarowski.

Stef Baz.

The boy wonder returns from the land of boardies and brah’s.

Didn’t take him long to get back into the swing of things.

Isn’t physics fun.

It’s keeping me busy anyway. Lots of swell but lots of wind.

Backlit Beauty.

Why do we prefer people to be humble? What’s wrong with promoting yourself . The best way to get jobs/sponsorships/media is get to meet as many people as possible or build a good profile for yourself. So why do we knock people who are trying to do this.

We want people to be brilliant but talk like they’re not. Is it because we don’t them shoving it in our face? Is it because we’re jealous? Do amazing things but don’t mention them, act like it’s nothing when others mention it to you. Fuck when I do something I’m proud of I like to talk about it. Sure I want peoples admiration, but then because of our nature I also feel bad about thinking what I did was special.

The human mind is a messed up place.

Ok well not really a bonanza, but there were some barrels.

It took a while to get there but some waves were had last Sunday. I’m not sure what I expected really, but it was mostly sunny, with good winds and a bit of swell, and that sounds like a pretty good day to me.
Most of my trips recently I’ve gone expecting absolute perfection, and, as usual, have been disappointed.

This time I just cruised up, I didn’t even speed, that much. I’d only been to this spot once before so maybe that’s why I didn’t have many expectations. Which was good because it looked awful. Everybody was sitting around wondering why the hell it was so crap. Around the corner the swell was booming, but in this little bay it just wasn’t quite doing it.

“Maybe it’s the tide”

“No it needs more wind to hold it up”

“Hang on let’s just see what this set does”

A lot of excuses were made everybody was itching to get wet, and it was a couple of groms who eventually got my hyped up enough to jump in. Unfortunately, one of them snapped his board straight away and I didn’t get to hook up with the other on any decent ones. Although the kid with the snapped board got his pieces together dropped them back to the van then went bodysurfing for about an hour, getting more barrels than anyone.
Find the stoke where you can.

Barry slotted, who cares about the close out.

Was having a chat with a guy last weekend and we got talking to about the level of local surfing, how good it was to have all these guys around pushing themselves on these new slabs, as it would have a great knock on effect for all the younger guys. He basically just said that none of it counted as they weren’t Irish. I couldn’t believe it, he was just making one sweeping statement that dismissed a huge portion of the waves ridden in the area based on the completely random chance of where a person was born.

When I started to challenge him on it he went nuts. Started shouting about them “coming over taking our waves”, “fuck them, they weren’t born here they can fuck off”.

I just don’t get people like that, it’s straight up racism. To be honest I just felt sorry for the guy, the poor stupid fucker. Why does the place you were born have anything to do with anything? How is it relevant?

Like everyone else I get pissed off with travelling surfers who just show up, hog the waves and then leave again. But that argument has been made plenty of times before. Respect is what it’s all about.

But this guy wouldn’t even acknowledge a “foreign” surfer who has been living here for years and contributing to the local community/economy. Apparently it doesn’t count because he has a different accent. Fuck thinking about it now gets me fucking annoyed again. The guy I was talking to actually wanted us to not use the foreigners business and wanted me to “not take photos of any of them either”. Moron.

I do love Ireland, I love living here. It’s an amazingly beautiful place with great uncrowded surf, but the fact that I’m Irish means pretty much nothing to me. I’d be happy saying I was from any country. I don’t see how it matters at all.

I do hate the fact that it seems to be a little bit ingrained in all of us though, probably because of our surroundings growing up. I’ve definitely said “fucking English” before and it annoys me that I have this completely unjustified feeling in me. It’s some stupid left over feeling in our country that has nothing to do with the current generation of people who just happened to be born on the bit of land on the other side of the Irish Sea.

Anyway here’s a number of shots of surfers from all over the place.

Tom Doidge-Harrison (Not from Ireland)

Dan Skajarowski (Not from Ireland)

Tom Wimmer (Not from Ireland)

Glen Hall (Not from Ireland, but does he count because he has a passport?)

Liam Joyce (Not born here)

Silas (Not From here)

Tom Lowe (Get out of it)

And again.

Model: Glen Hall (he’s Irish ye know)

Sorry for the lack of postage.

There has been waves.

More B-roll to come in the next few days as I get through the shots.

Stef Skaj above.

Strange that, but true.

A couple of months ago I headed North randomly with a few mates just to catch a swell hitting that part of the coast.

As it so happens there was a Gravis team trip happening at the same time, and I’ve just been watching the video over at the transworld site. Just reminded me of some shots I had left over from that weekend.

Gabe

Pascal

Ollie

Joycey

Gabe

Liam Joyce busting his fins out.

Ollie bustin’ some spray out, Owen Murphy, and ollie again

There’s some clips of Ian Walsh on a short right hand slab, that would be this.

Pascal from the water.

Photog on the left of the frame is Damea Dorsey

Sharpy also appears in the video a few times and I remember seeing some of his shots from that day, but could have been in Fins.

There’s an older post with photos from this trip. Including a shot of Pascal from below as he’s about to get shacked, which also appears half way through the video.

The ocean has some set of lungs on it.

Here it is trying it’s hardest to blow Lowey over.

That’s Mickey filming their Power of Three movie in the water. It’s out in next months Carve (as far as I know) and should be crazy good if last years video is anything to go by.