Travel and waves in Northland New Zealand with Hunty, Ghost and friends…

Here's James 'Hunty' during the 2008 'Olo Hikoi' of New Zealand reporting from from Kaitaia about his time with the Ghost 13 footer.

Hunty reporting from Northland:

Hi every one the olo board is now in Northland.This is how the day’s events went down: it was up at 3 am for a 4 am departure from Waihi beach. After beating the Auckland  city traffic my wife and I arrived at Jabes’ house not long after 6am to pick up the board(sorry for the early morning ambush Jabes, cheers for being rather sporting about it) and then we pushed on North.After hitting Whangarei I could contain myself no longer and had to stop at the information centre for a toilet stop and to pull the board out of the bag and admire its beauty, as well as giving my roof racks the once over which had been put through their paces by the board, and had developed a rather disturbing rattle which seemed to get a little bit louder the further north we went.

We carried on North and all went well until the south side of the Mangamuka gorge where old Bessy the Nissan developed an out of control shudder, pulling us up on the side of the road to find an distorted rear tire with a large bubble in it.
So it was out with the jack and into a Bathurst pitstop styled tyre change and away we went again,until I realised my sunnies were on the side of the road still (doooh).

Eventually we arrived home at around 1pm, and i was straight on the blower to two mates(Ali and Thompson) who had been anxiously awaiting my arrival in preparation for a surf mission with 13footofwood.They were straight around to check it out and we all took a moment to marvel at its stunningly good looks.We made the plans and set the wheels in motion for a surf on the west coast(90 mile beach) for the high tide, synchronized our watches and went about our daily chores until the time was right.
Okay before I get into the thick of it, unfortunately I must inform you all that I had no one to take any pictures of us in the water (which is probably for the best as the board has a bit of a learning curve) so you will have to wait till next time. I do have a camera that should get some ok shots, but after waking my wife up at 3 am to get away early, spending ages hunting for sunglasses in the gorge and a long trip. asking her to come and be photographer was pushing it a bit I thought.
Also from here on in I wont be directly naming places just generalising in the general area, this is not because I’m all secret squirrel, most of it’s in the guide, but I don’t believe it is my place to advertise places that other ppl who live here use and enjoy, and may or may not want advertised in any way shape or form. I hope people can understand that, and no doubt you will all know most of the places anyhow.
swell map was showing about a 1.5 meter or so swell with just over a two metre set wave face height and Easterlies so we were up for it. The only problem was how we were going to share the board amongst ourselves, naturally since I picked it up I was going first and we set a time of around 1/2 to 3/4 of an hour each on it.

Ok, so into my initial experience with the board. By my eye the waves were averaging around chest height with the odd bigger sets coming in, as usual the banks weren’t all that crash hot with some waves closing out but picking the correct wave could see you getting an ok ride before it shut down on you. The first things I noticed were how tight it felt paddling out in regards to turning, that big fin holds it in a straight line, and the other thing I noticed initially was how much the board flexed going over the top of a breaking wave on the paddle out and slapping the other side as it dropped over.
I had real trouble finding the correct sweet spot on the board and its looking as if it is a bit further forward than what you think in your mind it should be.

I was having my doubts before I caught my first wave about how well it would turn but they were put to rest once I got a wave, once on the move it seems to turn easy enough just not as tight a turning circle as what you might be used to on a short board but easy enough. Once the board jumps into life it seems to accelerate along the wave face and has a nice positive feel, just seems to extract what it needs…. I particularly enjoyed the acceleration of the board as you were coming into a close out section, as the face gets steeper the board seems to get a long set of legs and accelerates. I thought I would be  a lot more nervous than I was catching the waves but that part of it didn’t seem to be a problem. I even took a couple of straight close out waves and it didn’t seem to me to be a problem, dropped down the face and straightened out as it shut down behind me. I did come off a couple of times and made the decision that I would go and get a helmet tomorrow.
Well today I really felt good on the board, had an absolute ball on it. Again with the close out factor on a few waves I decided to just go for it and straight lined down the face which was a bit nerve wracking on the first one as instinct was telling me I was heading for a spectacular nose dive with 13 feet of wood coming down on top of me.

But I put my faith in the board and she didn’t let me down in the slightest racing directly down the wave and straight out in front of it letting it explode behind me.
I made a conscious effort to try not to boss the board around too much and went with it and things just went smooth as ever, also I didn’t seem to have as much trouble manouvering the board today, I found that by sitting right on the very end you can spin it just that much easier that its a lot more effortless.
And another trick that I cottoned on to was sitting in the line up parallel with the incoming waves so you only had to turn 90 deg to paddle out over a set or go for a wave. Any how we had a blast and its looking like we could be going for a morning session tomorrow.

Well it was a 6 am wake up this morning in preparation of another surf, I didn’t even bother to check the report we were out there no matter what. Ali picked me up with his wife Jessica (who generously drove the camera for us, giving up a surf) and their dog Tess.

Thompson(not being much of morning person) had sternly advised us not to contact him in the morning, and that if he woke up and was keen he would meet us out there in the shit box.

We arrived, suited up and were just about to walk to the beach when the shit box came blazing through in all its glory with Thompson’s long board on the roof, we had a bit of a team meeting before we hit the beach and all agreed  that I could be Mcgreedy again getting 13 feet of wood  for the whole session today without too much opposition once we realised we had left the stack hat behind.
We walked down to the beach to conditions that had slackened off some what and were just not as good, but that didn’t deter us and even Tess was sharing the stoke thoroughly enjoying running around us with our boards as if to say “yeah you guys are gonna have so much fun”.
We hit the water and I got out the back with hardly any trouble with impeccable timing scooting out on a lull. Roy had dropped me a tip on how to turn the board easier which worked rather well so I was feeling good. Everything was going well, I caught a few waves and really started to feel the boards vibe.

I was having so much fun I started to forget my surroundings and just cruise on the board enjoying life, when I was snapped back to reality almost running Thompson down who had caught a wave before me and was heading back out, I narrowly avoided him seeing the whites in his eyes as I flew past and bailed.
After that I kept my mind on the job and the board started to show me bit by bit little subtleties that it could do, one of which most impressed me. Again I was on a wave heading for Thompson flying along the face, immediately taking evasive action crouching down into a rail grab. Before I had even realised it the board was swinging into a nice slow wide arched turn burying the tail into the wave and going a full 180 deg before accelerating along the blue again toward the breaking wave. This I did not expect at all and was very impressed with. I couldn’t help but think how much I liked this board, it just has its own special vibe and style.
Anyway I had a great surf, and the board got some attention on the walk back to the car with one guy even asking me “is that a Roy Stewart board” having a hold of it and admiring its craftsmanship.

Wax-on-wax-off the Ghost surfboard

“Had the board for three months in Northland and damn near ran away to Mexico with it. Roy, the board is Bitchin’ “