Day 14 - Home

Well the trips over, we managed to get the Britz campers back to Auckland in good nick, and everyone went their separate ways back home.

We got fun waves everyday and I can't decide if we were lucky, or if we're just lucky to live in such an amazing country. I think if you're prepared to put in the miles you could score good waves somewhere in NZ on any given day.

We condensed the trips footage into one little vid section, so if you're too lazy to watch them all, just check out this one. If you are sick of watching pixelated youtube vids you can download a better quality version by choosing your format.

click here for quicktime (34MB)

click here for ipod or itunes (21MB)

or watch the youtube version

Day 13 - Salami Reef

Well it's our last surf of the trip and Salami Bay is a little smaller than yesterday, but light offshore and looking super fun.

Lefts and rights going un-ridden again at Salami bay

You can almost see a tear in Zennor's eye as he puts his fins in his board for the final time

The Big Salami himself - Zennor Wernham

Kara gets one last right in before returning home to Raglan

Mikey really stepped it up a level on the last couple of surfs, I guess the fact he was no longer throwing up might have something to do with it?

You can see that Mikey is looking forward to cleaning out the bathroom of the camper before we give it back this arvo. It smells like Rotorua vs wetsuit bin.

Tairua's most eligible bachelor Wayne Norman (ladies you can leave your numbers for Wayne in the comments)

Zennor gave the lefts a good workout

Day 12 - Salami Reef arvo

After such good waves this morning everyone is amped to get back to Salami Bay to session the reef again as the tide comes in. When we arrive it's still a little low but Zennor can't wait and although there are a lot of close-outs there are some dredging rights coming through.

As the tide pushes in, it starts to pump again and the rest of the crew get out there to join Zen. Unfortunately just as it starts to get really good it begins to rain, so not much in the way of pics or video this session.

Back in the camper tonight, Mikey discovers Alex's phone which he "lost" yesterday and threw a little tantrum about. Alex sends something ridiculous like 1500 texts a month (I'm not kidding) and we noticed his phone was brimming with new messages. We thought we'd help the little guy out by answering a few for him. We had to get Mikey to translate the retarded text language kids use these days.

One girl asked "Hae r u bak yet oi?" to which we replied "yeah, just been having a feed off mums teat oi, she's tucking me into bed and is going to read me a story oi" (but we had to get Mikey to write it in that crazy txt code and made sure to add a couple of oi's in there). Another girl asked "Hae wot u up2 oi?" to which we replied "I'm as randy as a rampaging walrus on heat oi, wana come round oi?"

Mikey oi, smaks th bak outa it oi, wat u up2 oi

Wayne got pretty excited with all the texting of girls from Alex's phone, the only girl he's had text messages from in the past has been his sister!

Day 12 - Tui Bay

As the tide drops out Salami Reef stops breaking so we drove over the hill to Tui Bay. It's a little exposed to the strong offshore but there is a super fast right running down a shallow sand bar at the southern end of the beach.

Even though they have only just come in from Salami's Mikey, Wayne & Zennor are straight out there. There's some bombs coming through, but it's a little inconsistent. What the fellas don't realize is a couple of random guys are sitting 30m down the beach on the inside section and are getting barrel after barrel.

Those roofers have got the life I tell ya, Wayne is forever bunking off work to get fun waves like this.

Zennor with a lot of wall ahead of him

Random guy gets another sick bazza just down the beach

I hope Wayne isn't getting too tired out there catching so many good waves, or no doubt he'll be snoring like a buffalo on heat again like last night.

Kara preferred to sit this one out and have a cup of tea while reading a magazine under a nanna blankie, then she backed it up by going to have a little nap

Day 12 - Salami Reef morning

Yesterday arvo we decided to take a gamble and shoot up north. Alex's mum was keen to have him home, so we had a spare spot in the camper again. Wayne Norman was still lurking around and he was super keen to join us for our last couple of days of surf adventure.


We pulled up to Salami Bay and were stoked to see the reef in the middle of the bay was peeling left and right. Even though it was only 8am, as the crew were paddling out the only 2 guys in the line-up come in, leaving us to it. I guess they had to go to work?

Where is everyone?

Kara making the most of her school hols

The reef was breaking both ways and Zennor was blowing up on the lefts, but the light was only good for shooting the rights, luckily he was throwing down frontside too.

Laura was not keen to get out of bed this morning, but when she saw the waves she sparked into action pretty quickly.

Even though the water was possibly warm enough for boardies, Mikey is still rockin his 4/3 steamer cause the only other wetty he bought was another 4/3 steamer.

New Tiki Tour replacement Wayne Norman ate a ridiculously huge plate of baked beans before this session, anyone would have thought he was trying to replace Silas, not Alex.

Day 11 - Lego Land

We decide to split from Raglan and check a seldom surfed bay called "lego land" a little north. A bunch of sand has built up near the rocks in the corner of the bay and a fun right is running down the bank and there is no one out.

We throw down a solid session, but when the tide turns the rip makes it near impossible to stay on the peak.

There was a fun end section to boost off, Mikey is always a starter for a tail waft.

Mikey not impressed after getting caught in the rip, coming in, running up the beach then getting sucked back down the beach by the current without catching a wave.

After a couple of days going left Zen-dawg was keen to get some rights (although at one point he did paddle over to the other side of the bay and snagged a couple of lefts)

Alex landed a couple of nice punts this session

Lego-man gives lego-land the thumbs up.

Day 11 - Manu Bay

With such good waves yesterday it's hard to leave Raglan so we stick around for one more session this morning. It's lost a fair bit of size but it's still over head height and nice and clean.

With waves like this why wold you leave?

Laura throwing a power fan

Richie Rimmer with a unique drop-in style

Kara feeling close to 100% and stoked to be back in the water finally

Alex was keen to stay out there all day

Day 10 - Manu Bay Arvo

It got crazy windy during the day, the dreaded Raglan nor-easter was howling, but late arvo it backed right off and there were some epic waves coming through. Unfortunately Raglan in the afternoon is a terrible place to shoot and the glare was intense so we just shot a couple of waves on video.

Kara is still not feeling the best and Mikey is suffering from a relapse from his St Kilda sewage sickness, so only Laura, Zennor and Alex get out there. Luke Cederman took off pretty much in front of jump rock on a solid set wave and got barreled across the entire ledge section before getting clipped on the way out 10 seconds later. The kid is a freak!

Day 10 - Manu Bay Morning

Manu Bay is smoking, the offshore is a little strong, but apart from that it's flawless. Kara is still feeling sick, and even though it's pumping, she sits this session out. We gave our buddy Wayne Norman from Tairua has a habit of sniffing out good waves and turned up to surf with us.

Yeah Alex, we know it's not quite as good as the Mount Reef, but it's all we've got on offer today

Zennor has surfed Manu Bay more than anyone, and he knows what to do out there

Mikey happy to be doing a floater, not bathing in floaters like he was at St Kilda

Alex was forever losing stuff in the camper. Where's my wallet? Where's my phone? I wouldn't surprised if right after this turn he misplaced his surfboard.

Laura is planning on moving to Raglan soon so she's be getting plenty more fun walls like this in the future.

Wayne Norman aka Indo legend Wayan Nyoman

Some inconsiderate bugger ruined this line-up shot by parking that campervan in the way! Oh wait, that was us!

Day 9 - Raglan VQS Champs

Well a couple of days of serious traveling have put our blog updates a bit behind, but hopefully we'll catch up soon.

Silas had to split to Australia first thing this morning so we traded him for Rocky the wiener dog, everyone is pretty happy with the swap, Rocky takes up way less space, doesn't smell as bad and also doesn't have the ability to tell terrible jokes.

Volcom put on a sick circuit of comps called the VQS, they had 3 qualifying events around xmas time in Taras, Gizzy and the Mount. If you made the semis in any of the qualifiers you got a start in the Raglan finals and a chance at being crowned NZ VQS champ. The winner of the open and U18 get a free trip to California to surf against the winers from all the other countries.

All our crew have qualified, with Alex winning all 3 of the U18 qualifiers. But contests are funny things and it looked like Alex was feeling the pressure as he fell several times and was a shock elimination in the first round.

The surf was super fun, 3-5ft Manu Bay and there was some sick surfing going down. But no one was ripping as hard as Luke Cederman, check out the video footage to witness his huge turns. Kara and Mikey both dipped in the semis, while Zennor came 2nd to an in form Billy Starimand in the open division and Laura came 2nd to Misha Davis in the girls.

Owne Barnes was a round 1 stand out

Hambo on the other side of the lens for once

Luke Cederman was blowing minds, but just missed out on the finals

Kara was still really sick, but soldiered on & made the semis of the girls

Chris Malone was ruling on the ledge

Zennor finised 2nd for the 2nd year in a row

Day 8 - On the road

Well we didn't end up getting to Kaikoura until 1:30am this morning. Kara is feeling terrible and was throwing up most of the way. We wake up at 6:00am and check the surf, which is 2ft and glassy, but as the NZ VQS champs are on in Raglan tomorrow, we decide to push on and get there asap.

Stoner art style Kaikoura sunrise out the window of the moving camper

Silas convinces Zennor into letting him take creepy portraits of him on the Interislander. He also ropes Laura into being the reflector girl.

With Kara out of action, the only eligible drivers we have left are Hambo and Silas. Hambo ends up driving all the way from Dunedin to Raglan in the Britz Explorer. This shot was taken in Bulls and shows exactly how many red bulls were required to keep him awake, what you can't see if an ipod full of Metallica classics which when played at high volumes is also very helpful.



With nothing else to do than snooze in the back of the camper all day, Mikey and Alex got their own footage shot by their dads and made a little video section. Mike vs Alex. I'm not sure who's surfing the best, but I can definitely say that Mikey's dad has the superior skills on the vid-cam

Day 7 - On the road

After packing up at Aramoana we had a massive drive ahead of us, we wanted to get to Kaikoura incase there were waves there in the morning.

But the cool thing about the South Island is there is all sorts of epic stuff to check out right by the side of the road, so we did the full tourist day and it is taking us forever to get there.

For some reason all these paddocks were on fire? Silas thought it would be a good idea for everyone to get their boards off the roof! But all we ended up with was this cheesy boy band style photo.

We stopped in Omaru for Lunch and everyone was blown away by how old the place is. Coming from Mt Maunganui where anything older than 5 years is ripped down to build apartments, it was cool to see whole streets with buildings that looked like you had stepped back 100 years in time.

Just about anywhere along the coast road you can stop and see hordes of seals lounging around on the rocks and if you are the groms, annoy the heck outa them.

We met up with RPM sales monkey Mark who was traveling in the opposite direction. After driving the length of NZ on his own, he was pretty stoked to have some company.

Mark trying to convince Alex and Mikey they should get a bit closer to the seals

These rocks at Moeraki are incredibly popular with the tourist types. An annoying Euro lady got all pissy at us for dominating this set of stones too long while taking photos, even though there was another bunch of boulders exactly the same about 10m further down the beach.

Word is these boulders formed in a similar way to process of how pearls grow, which is why they are perfectly round. Zennor was way too cool, and thought the boulders were lame!

It was full tide so access was a little tricky but no problem for Kara with her long stilts!

We were waiting in the camper for Silas who was taking forever. I thought he was probably taking some more dorky portraits, but he was actually in the cafe giving the manager a lecture about charging people $2 to access the beach.