Sweet Pea Solar Powered Boat

Mark and Pete from Yamba Yacht Services spent the past 4 month knocking up this newly designed boat completely powered by the sun which has local sailors marvelling...

The lightweight vessel sleeps five adults and can travel 200 kilometres on a single charge.

Merry Xmas, Happy New Year!

We just found this right hand point break on the North Pole! Its perfect, its cold and its just out the front of Santa's house. The big fella has been surfing this wave on his own for a life time. No wonder he only gets out once a year...... Happy New Year friends we hope you enjoyed our site for 2011, thanks for your support and we look forward to 2012 being the best ever........

John Witzig new book release...

These are (mostly) pictures you've never seen... By John Witzig

'I had privileged access to some of the great of Austrlalian surfing from the mid-1960-s until, maybe about 1978. I was working for surfing magazines through much of this period, and many of the people in these pages were then, and remain, my friends.

The photographs here are the ones that haven't made the cut previously, or that I've noticed in the meantime... pictures that didn't seem important when they were taken but have attracted my attention some 40 years later. Mostly it's because they seem to capture the spirit of those times.. times irrevocably gone.
The pictures that I like most now are the ones around surfing. I recognised most of the major surfing pictures that I took back then, but I never saw the picture of the barbecue in the backyard of the Wilderness factory at Palmerts Channel, and I should've. Or the one of Baddy and Owl in the car park at the Bower while the Coke contest was on one year. That's pretty funny... I never noticed them on a proof sheets, and I didn't anticipate the significance that they seem to have acquired with the passage of time.
Most of this stuff was shot for a tiny sub-cultural world that was called 'surfing'. No one else saw it. No one. It's interesting (to me anyway) that it's now being viewed through a social history prism. I have to admit that we were pretty terrific (joke).'
JOHN WITZIG
   
    First Published in 2011 by John Witzig $35

Greener Pastures Official Trailer...

Patagonia skate charger and friends in a taste whats on the other side of the fence...

1% MUSIC HOLIDAY GIVE AWAY - 50 free downloads...

1% For The Planet has provided its Ambassadors 50 free downloads of the 1% Album thus festive season.

The 1% Album is a truly inspiring collection of 41 original songs from amazing artists like your fellow 1% Ambassador Jack Johnson and others like Grace Potter, Jackson Browne, and G-Love.

Go to http://music.onepercentfortheplanet.org/

Enter code: StuBowen

Enjoy and have a happy and safe festive season...

Peace

Ben Ross is back...

Tattoo artists, shredder and older bro of Dan Ross has made the pilgrimage back to Yamba from the deep freeze of Toruay and can be found behind the curtain at the ledge or Tattoo Shop of Coldstream Street...

Click below to see Rossy inking action on Mick Fanning during a flat and wet cabin fever session in Hawaii 2008...

Handmade by Sol...

Handmade by Sol from Pukas Surf on Vimeo.


Handmade with love - she says. Christmas, winter, warmth, feeling cozy... it's time for all of those things. Handmade with love, by Sol, limited for Pukas Surf Shops only.  http://www.pukassurf.com/

Check out some of the range, ideal for the start of our Australian summer...

 

 

& my favourite

Laurie Towner, One of the best surfers in the World.....

Laurie Towner has had an amazing year....Please watch the clip and let the big relaxed cat they call Lozza blow your mind!

Laurie Towner Through The Eyes Of Joel Parkinson from Laurie Towner on Vimeo.

Quench your fire...

Is That Flame Retardant In Your Soft Drink... Or ya just HOT to see me.. ?

Brominated vegetable oil is patented as a flame retardant and it's banned in food all over Europe and Japan, but it's on the ingredient list of about 10 percent of sodas in the U.S. It's not in Coca-Cola, but is in Mountain Dew, Fanta Orange, and in some flavors of Powerade and Gatorade.

What brominated vegetable oil (BVO) does to soda is, Coca-Cola explains, "prevent the citrus flavoring oils from floating to the surface in beverages." The fruit flavors that are mixed into a drink would otherwise settle out. What BVO does when it's acting as a flame retardant is not much different: It slows down the chemical reactions that cause a fire.
Safe For Consumption?
The FDA established safety limits for the substance in the 1970s, but Environmental Health News reports about growing concerns that the limit was informed by reports put out by an industry group containing outdated and, as industry-generated information tends to be, less-than-comprehensive data.
EHN has the details:

After a few extreme soda binges — not too far from what many gamers regularly consume – a few patients have needed medical attention for skin lesions, memory loss and nerve disorders, all symptoms of overexposure to bromine. Other studies suggest that BVO could be building up in human tissues, just like other brominated compounds such as flame retardants. In mouse studies, big doses caused reproductive and behavioral problems.

EHN explains that BVO was pulled from the Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) list for flavor additives in 1970, "bounced back after studies from an industry group from 1971 to 1974 demonstrated a level of safety," at which point the Flavor Extract Manufacturers’ Association (which actually exists—not to be confused with the government agency FEMA) "petitioned the FDA to get BVO back in fruit-flavored beverages, this time as a stabilizer, which is its role today."
Interim Approval -- For More Than 30 Years
Today, more than 30 years (and much animal testing, including on pigs and beagles) later, the approval status for BVO is still listed as interim. EHN reports that changing that status would be expensive and quotes FDA spokesman Douglas Karas saying it "is not a public health priority for the agency at this time."
With BVO banned in so many countries, there are feasible alternatives. And that brings us to the unsurprising but disturbing note on which the EHN story ends:

Wim Thielemans, a chemical engineer at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, said since the alternatives are already used in Europe "their performance must be acceptable, if not comparable, to the U.S.-used brominated systems." That means "the main driver for not replacing them may be cost," he said."It is a North American problem," Vetter added. "In the E.U., BVO will never be permitted."

WCT Final Day 2011...

From Quarters all the way to the Final, it was pretty intense. Check out the video highlights with all the action from the last day of the epic 2011 Billabong Pipe Masters...

Trent Mitchell Book Signing Launch...

Patagonia - Don't Buy Our Jacket...

Not content with encouraging potential buyers to check out eBay for pre-loved products or resoling their shoes before purchasing new ones, outdoor clothier Patagonia recently took the audacious step of telling their customers simply to not to buy their jackets.

During the recent Black Friday, (America’s mad buying frenzy that somehow denotes an “official” start to Christmas shopping), Patagonia placed an advert in the New York Times, requesting of readers; “Don’t Buy This Jacket.”

As we noted about their eBay initiative such an exhortation is highly unlikely to decrease sales of their outdoor and lifestyle clothing and footwear. Such a blatant anti-consumption message is more likely to strengthen the bonds with existing customers and make for curious new ones.

Whether or not it actually slows sales of fleece jackets in this “shopping season” is probably of secondary concern. I suspect its main impact is to sow the seed of doubt, to be subversive, to jemmy open some thinking space in the minds of what the market lovingly calls “consumers.”
The core message from the advert is:

We ask you to buy less and to reflect before you spend a dime on this jacket or anything else. [...] Don’t buy what you don’t need. [R]eimagine a world where we take only what nature can replace.

Naysayers will rightly argue that Patagonia didn’t get to be a $400 million USD company by NOT selling clothing. True. However what the pundits might not be aware of is that Patagonia is a still family business owned by Yvon and Malinda Chouinard. Yvon wrote in the introduction to his company’s autobiography (Let My People Go Surfing):

Patagonia exists to challenge conventional wisdom and present a new style of responsible business. We believe the accepted model of capitalism that necessitates endless growth and deserves the blame for the destruction of nature must be displaced.

Read more about the Black Friday advert at Patagonia’s blog, The Cleanest Line. Along with a follow-up opinion piece by The Story of Stuff’s Annie Leonard, and Rick Ridgeway, Patagonia’s Vice President of Environmental Initiatives

Patagonia

More Patagonia
• Patagonia Says, “Buy Our Stuff On Ebay”
• Patagonia Say: Resole Worn Shoes, Before Buying New
• Patagonia Launches Groundbreaking Sustainable Wool Program In Argentina
• The TH Interview: Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia (Part One)
• Patagonia to SIGG: We're Finished!

Hawaii 64 Style...

We found this Black & White newsreel with a mental sound track.. Enjoy!

Patagonia 20% Off..!

Patagonia Burleigh Heads are having a VIP Night on the 2nd December 5.30- 7.30pm with 20% off store wide...

DAn Ross Photography :) .. Sunset

good skills haha

Island Hop for thanksgiving.

not a bad breakfast view!

Was one of the nicest places i've seen, we had big thanksgiving dinner on a friends farm, surfed and hiked. Loved it!