Recent Happenings

A few weeks ago NewportSurfShots.com held it's first ever slide show. 711 slides over 42 minutes. The goal was to try and represent every surf spot in Newport, and include as many different people in it as possible. In late August, when I was offered the opportunity to do the show, I thought it was to late to get record company's permission to use the songs that I wanted in the show. So we came up with the idea of using a live DJ. I think the DJ did a pretty good job that night.

Next year I hope to have the opportunity to showcase everyone's surfing again, and to put together a sound track to go along with it. If any surf companies or clubs would like to use this year's slide show at one of their events, let me know. Thanks to those that were able to attend, I hope you enjoyed it.

A Newport local... enjoying the slide show.

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Hawaiian female power surfer Kealea Kennelly had never surfed Newport before. But a couple weeks ago, after losing in the quarter finals of the Malibu WCT event, a heat she said she lost due to poor wave selection... she ended up in Newport at a friend's house. And the next morning she paddled out and tapped into the power of 54th St... well ok so maybe it wasn't that powerful, but it was playful.

Her impression of Newport's famous sandbar... "it was ok". Hopefully one day she'll return, and catch"The Point" when there's double overhead bombs or "The Wedge" when there's dredging death pits... there's plenty of power in those waves.

Kealea Kennelly... playing in Newport

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Da Water Update

During this summer my boards often sat in my garage growing cobwebs, while I instead spent a lot of my surf time figuring out how to shoot from the water. You don't know how many times I envisioned tossing my camera, wrestling someone's board away from them, and using it to grab a few waves of my own. My efforts however are starting to pay off, as I'm now spending less time swimming in circles, and more time lining up ok shots. When I told a professional surf photographer last spring that I was going to add water photography to my mix, he just laughed, "you poor guy, you have no idea what you're in for"! As I've found out, shooting water takes a lot of preparation, is a hell of a lot of work, and 2 hours of floating around with a box strapped to your arm, taking waves on the head, and dodging people, often results in only a hand full of good photos. Yea I've got a ton of photos of people going straight down the line and and what have you, but that's not what I'm looking to get. Because the number of good photos from each water shoot is minimal, I'll be putting water shots in albums only when I get a decent amount of good ones.

Eric, toying with the tube... @ 54

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Three years ago this week, long time Newport surfer Steve Webster was killed in a terrorist bombing on the small Indonesian island of Bali. If you look on the 52nd St. jetty you'll see a plaque embedded into the rocks in his honor. Recenlty 3 additional bombs exploded on the small island, killing 25 and wounding 100, numbers that are sure to rise. My wife and I have kept in touch with a local guy that was our driver when we visited the island years ago. This father of 3 reported that over the last year the tourist dollars that the locals depend on were beginning to return to the island. Saturday's bombings is sure to be a blow to their businesses and Bali's economy. For info. on Bali's surf, and news from the Bali surf community, click the link below. Crazy fricken world we live in.

The Wedge

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In the 70's there was a free skate park in Irvine that we used to skate, but after a similar city's skate park was sued by a skater that hurt himself, they shut it down, fearful of a lawsuit. This drove us to be creative and look for other places to skate. The Orange Coast College pool when empty was one of them, as was a reservoir near the top of Margaret in Corona del Mar...

Recently a skate park opened to the public in Costa Mesa, and NewportSurfShots.com's Kiefer is in tune on what's happening up there. Look for him to post some skate albums in the future.

Volcom team rider "Maddog" busting concrete air... in Costa

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NewportSurfShots.com's 15 minutes of fame came and went... Thanks to Laylan Connelly at the Orange County Register for all her hard work in putting the article together.

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The Quiet is Shattered

An incident occurred nearly 30 years ago in front of the small Balboa Bay beach in which I grew up that I will always remember. A couple of vans pulled up one weekend next to our house, and a group of kids and their chaperones piled out for a day of fun in the bay's calm waters. The bay was clean back then, and to us kids in the neighborhood, the channel in front of the house was our big swimming pool. We knew every nook and cranny of every seawall, dock, boat and bridge in the area.

In the early afternoon we heard sirens screaming down the street, stopping at the foot of the beach. Apparently one of the teenage boys had been swimming in the bay, when he suddenly gasped for air and went under. The guard that manned the beach tower was alerted to the incident, and was in the water frantically looking for him. He was soon joined by other guards. Unfortunately they did not find him, and the objective turned to retrieving the body. The lifeguard deptartment asked all the locals watching the ordeal to get their mask and fins and assist in the search. No way your saying to yourself, they would never ask that! Well this was 30 years ago, when rules, regulations, policies and procedures were a lot different.

The age cut off to participate was in the mid teens and those, including myself, that were to young ran to Bay Island to watch the search. All of the "divers" lined up across the length of the channel, 2 blocks north, under Bay Island bridge. On command from a lifeguard everyone dove to the bottom of the shallow channel, scoured it for a body and resurfaced. The line of divers then moved up a few feet, and repeated the maneuver. The group did this for the length of the channel and found nothing. I remember some of the guys being pretty freaked out by the experience when talking to them afterward.

The city then brought in the O.C. Sheriff's scuba divers, and they soon found the young man under a Bay Island dock, in eel grass. Our house was the command post during the ordeal, and sanctuary for the victim's friends. We learned from them that the teenager had a history of Epileptic Seizures. So it became evident that a seizure most likely occurred, which resulted in him engulfing water, and drowning. The chaperones of the outing were in total shock, absolutely devastated by the mishap, and my parents did what they could for them.

A couple weeks ago sirens sounded throughout the lower jetties area, and the rescue vehicles turned up 27th St.. If sirens turn up a 100 block, it usually means something is occurring on the beach. When I arrived the paramedics were securing an IV, airway and performing CPR . The 48 year old male had been pulled from the water and was reportedly a suicide attempt. The telling photos shot I don't think should be posted. Suffice to say the police, fire dept., and lifeguards where on the scene immediately, instituted heroic measures, and the victim was immediately transferred to Hoag with vital signs, but later died. Ironically at approximately the same time, a woman leap from one of Newport's bay bridges in an unrelated suicide attempt. NewportSurfShots.com will not make a habit of reporting similar events.

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Wheels 2 Water

Laylan Connelly has always been extremely close to her older brother. Tragically a few years ago her brother was shot while on a motorcycle at a stop light. The shooting was without motive, no one was ever apprehended, and it resulted in her brother being paralyzed.

Laylan is a reporter for the Orange County Register newspaper, and has the monumental job of covering any and everything that occurs in the Newport area. If something is happening in our town, you can be sure she is digging up the facts on it for the paper.

Last Fall Laylan became aware of the Wheels 2 Water event held at Blackies. She subsequently contacted myself, and the founder of the organization Travis Tremble. Which then lead her to write a compelling, in-depth article on the newly formed organization. It is an article she was very compassionate about writing, given her brothers paralysis. Read the story online by clicking here

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The Eland is not ONland anymore.

 

The dredge support ship, the Eland, was being passed a line from shore Sunday morning near Orange St., when the vessel nudged the sandbar. Those that live in the Shores said the captain gunned the engine so hard attempting to prevent the ship from running aground, that there were huge clouds of black smoke in the air, and they thought there was a fire. One of the lifeguards who watched it happen, said 'that when the ship began to become stuck, it swung around perpendicular to the beach, and waves started hitting the side of it". This pushed the vessel further towards shore, and up onto the sandbar. The tide dropped throughout the day, and there was little chance of freeing it up and getting it back out to sea.

On Monday the crew of the Eland choose to try and free the ship without the expensive assistance of a tug boat. The 158ft. ship with 20,000 gallons of fuel rocked a bit, but remained embedded in the sand. Mid morning when the skipper of the vessel looked out from his perch and saw the Fire Dept., Police, Lifeguards, a City Councilman, the Contractor, and the Dept. of Fish & Game gathered in a circle along the side his vessel, he must of known his company's checkbook was coming out immediately.

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Growing up on the Balboa Peninsula, our crew used to surf the dumping shore pound around 7th St during windswells. The wave was garbage, but it was cool for us to say we surfed in front of our houses. At the age of 13, I was surfing the thumping walls, and was hit by my board so hard that it broke my front tooth off, and imbedded it into the fiberglass of my board.

Kip A. was out surfing Blackies recently when his board hit him in the mouth and chipped not one, but both of his front teeth. It was pretty surprising how cool he was about it, considering he was looking at spending some quality time in the dental chair. How he avoided a split lip during the accident is still a mystery. Word is his smile has already been repaired...

It's always better to smash the lip, than be smashed by the lip.

Will A. smashing through the lip... @ 54th St.

NewportSurfShots.com's archive section has only been around about 6 months. Prior to the archive a "Hotshot" of someone would be up one day, and down the next. Often the person in the photo never found out about it until days later, and missed out on seeing it. It is for this reason that once a week NewportSurfShots.com will present a "Hotshot" feature from long ago. It might be the first time you've seen it, it might be one you don't remember, or it might be a photo and feature of you that you never knew existed.

 

The big storm during Jan. woke up another one of Newport's secret surf spots. Mike L. surfed fun ankle high lefts at 39th and Balboa Blvd. yesterday, with the occasional waist high set coming through when a bus drove by. I also heard there was a top to bottom right off of a raised curb at 48th and River. If the high tide along with rain persisted, look for both of those new surf spots to be extremely crowded. As of now Newport lifeguards have no plans to blackball either place during rush hour traffic. Mike L. signaling a left lane change @ 39th......... and Balboa Blvd.

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The Clean up

The City of Newport Beach can be a difficult place to reside in. The parking regulators at times seem to institute covert tactics in order to nail a ticket to your windshield. The growth a few of the City Council Members try to institute, often seems absurd. And then there's the building dept. Try getting their stamp of approval on anything the first time you present it, it's just not going to happen.

But there is one dept of the city that deserves kudos, especially lately. The beach maintenance department. When the large chunks of lifeguard ramp broke off from the Newport Pier last month and ended up on the beach, they removed it the next day. When the recent storm washed tons of debris onto the beach, they were out the moment the weather cleared to start the long process of cleaning up. And when 500 large squid washed up onto our sands last week, even though all the squid somehow mysteriously vanished by the next day, the maintain crews had prepared to rid the beach of the creatures the following morning.

The end of January a few of us were walking the beach and commented on how fast it was starting to look like it's old self. We noted however that the large amount of kelp and debris that had filled in and blanketed the rocks of each jetty, would have to wait and be washed off by the next large swell and high tide combo. But sure enough, the next day the maintenance crews were out in full force digging, scooping out, and shoveling the debris and kelp from the crevices of each jetty.

Those guys are awesome!

Sean M., solid hit in front of what is now a clean 28th st. jetty.

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Blah, blah, blah, the River is still flowing. Blah, blah, blah the water is still brown and Upper West Newport beaches are still closed. Blah, blah, blah the beaches and jetties are still littered with debris. Blah, blah, blah there are hundreds of large squid scattered on the beach... Large Squid?

Jan 19th the beaches of Newport were littered with squid up to 6ft. in length. Strewn on the beach in front of the small walled surf in the lower jetties on Wed. alone, there were nearly a hundred of the ocean creatures. The Register Newspaper is reporting that they may have been chasing bait fish and got washed up onto the beach.

On another note, a crew of surfers racing off of Newport in an Aluminum boat hit the 32nd st. jetty a little after dark on Jan 19th. Word is no one was seriously hurt, except for the boat, a few surfboards, and the boat driver's ego.

Contaminated Water, Giant Squid, A Ship Wreck...

Remember when the only exciting thing that ever happened along the coast of Newport was a big air.

Big Air @ "The Point

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I hate to say it, but if you have been surfing only Newport the 3rd week of Jan, you missed out. Sure you got that one barely head high wave, after waiting 20 minutes, that raced down the beach. But the word is everywhere else on the coast was overhead and perfect. I too am guilty of staying put, and have had to endure reading emails, and listening to people tell me how good Rincon, Trestles, Swami's, Sunset Cliffs... and every river mouth up and down the coast was.

To much West, to long interval, not enough sand, to much sand... whatever, Newport missed out on the meat of the swell. But then again, when Newport's beloved " Point" was double overhead last summer, how good do you think Swami's or Rincon was?

Oneill team rider Nick J., taking off ... @ 28th

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