A little over half the guests at Surf Simply are girls, rather than guys, but last week by chance we ended up with an entire cast of solo female travelers joined by returning Surf Simply guest, Howard an orchestral conductor from the States.
In this weeks movie the girls share their thoughts on their experience at Surf Simply and give us a look behind the camera at what goes into the production of all the movies and photos that you see poping up everyday on our facebook page.
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The early morning surf is one of life’s most pleasing dichotomies. The wondering whether it’s all worth it when your alarm buzzes in the darkness seems ridiculous an hour later as you pull into a warm pacific barrel, with just you and your friends.
This morning I met the other Surf Simply coaches, Harry, Kerianne, Jessie and Oli, just after 5am and when we got to the beach there were turtles hatching just as the sun popped it’s head over the horizon.
Luckily Laura, Surf Simply’s tirelessly accommodating photographer, had agreed to being dragged from the comfort of her bed to capture the goings on as we live through the start of yet another of the good old days.
The Surf Simply coaches focusing on work related research from the moment they wake up: (top to bottom) Jessie, Oli, Ru Harry & Kerianne.
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Every week Surf Simply’s resident photog, Laura, spends hours down on the beach shooting video and stills of our guests. She then spends hours more locked away in front of the iMac lovingly molding it all together.
Laura during a rare moment in the water rather than photographing it.
I’ve tried to instill in her the motto that I took away from a recent visit to Facebook’s head office “Done Is Better Than Perfect” they say, but Laura just won’t embrace that idea and each week she emerges from hours in the editing room, eyes red, pale and blinking in the sunlight. And the result? Each week watching the movie she’s made, it’s clear just how much love’s gone into it.
This week though she out did herself, as did our guests. So I hope you enjoy, what I think is the best week’s end video highlights we’ve ever had.
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At Surf Simply we focus on the technical aspects of surf coaching and we try not to bang on about the subjective side of the experience too much. Surfing does tend to cause overwhelming feelings of achievement, frustration, pride, fear or just a sense of gob smacking wonder at the beauty of the ocean but it always seems to cheapen those emotional moments when they are turned into a tag line for a website. It’s the same way that humor leaks away from a joke when it is explained. Like a joke, either it hit you or it didn’t. It’s no substitute having someone dissect it for you afterwards. So we focus on teaching the tangible skills that make the sport more fun and let the ocean take care of the magic.
Now that I’ve said that, I’ll have to contradict myself in order to share with you a comment I heard a Canadian surfer casually drop into conversation a few years ago. He said “I don’t surf to escape life. I surf to stop life escaping me.” It has stayed with me ever since. It’s kind of pithy I know but as I was looking back through the Surf Simply photos, putting together an album of comical wipeouts for our Facebook page, I was struck by some of the magical moments that Laura and Oriana (the Surf Simply photogs) had captured on camera.
These captured frozen moments bring back to me some of the feelings that make me love surfing in Nosara and I hope they do the same for you. I uploaded some hi-res versions of each image in case you fancy having them a desktop wallpaper, just click on each image and it will take you to the 2560X1600 version. Enjoy…
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Some things are a lot easier to explain with a white board and a TV, rather than when you’re down on the beach. So when we try to get across a foundational knowlegde etiqutte, meteorology, wave selection and contest judging among other things, we use our little jungle class room by the pool.
(Above & below) Harry, who has taken over the role of head coach at Surf Simply this season, playfully meanders around the subject of board design.
The idea of course is that all this carefully constructed chit chat leads to waves like the ones we saw ridden last week. We have to admit that Playa Guiones, here in Nosara, probably beats our rancho as the world’s best classroom.
(Above) Christie Mommsen returned this week. After staying with us a few weeks ago, Christie wrote a series of articulate blog posts about the ups and downs of her introduction to surfing. She returned and not only conquered some of her fears but managed to take off on the biggest wave of the week. Hat’s off to you Christie.
The trade winds really started to blow this week too. It made the waves beautiful and powerful (for their size). Level 3 surfers like Sean (above) worked on their carving turns out the back while the level 1 surfers had the friendly white water in which to perfect their functional stance (below).
All the while Laura (our resident photographer) worked away quietly in the background and took some beautiful shots. She also cut together the footage which the coaches had got during the week’s video analysis sessions into another epic little movie (after all who doesn’t love a good ol’ montage). Enjoy…
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