Where the f*** has the skim gone?

Where the f*** is the skim? If you know, please tell me, coz i haven’t found it yet this season.

The 2008/2009 autumn & winter season has been one of the worst ever for skim conditions in the south west.

Since September i can can count the number of times i have been skimboarding on one hand – and that sux.

For those of you not in the know, the prevailing wind direction for the UK is south westerly, which means that most of the time the wind should come from the south west. This SW direction means a lot of good skim spots will work in Cornwall and Devon.

So when you get nearly 2 months of north or north west winds, it puts the whole of the north coast of Cornwall & Devon out of action for skim. Follow that up with nearly a month of easterly winds, and low sand levels on Torbays beaches, it means no skim here either, so things start to get a bit desperate! Ok, fair enough, we do get to surf, but i would much rather skim.

A few years ago the seasons would work like clockwork: summer would be flat, and autumn and winter would go off with all our favourite spots working nearly every weekend. Now, its all screwed around.

Last summer was great for skim at all our major spots, which is unheard of during the summer months, but when autumn arrived everything shut down, sand disappeared, and skim was non-existent.

Lets take Challaborough for example, it used to be skimable all through the winter a few years back and would produce some epic sessions – not so now, with sand levels really low and no slope from October through to March.

I guess some people would say i should have got in the water and done some flatland skimboarding, but i really want to progress my wave skimboarding. I can only skim flatland so much – if you have ever wrapped Iveys and tucked into a cover up you will know how addictive it really is.

Then there’s the matter of skimboarding media. I really need to get good quality footage and photos of the team, and so far this winter season has not co-operated one little bit. This has added to the frustration, as there are a number of projects in the pipeline which need this media, and the time frames are going to have to be pushed back.

I dunno what i am trying to get across here, i spose i am just using the blog as a way to vent my frustration at the lack of skim that i (and the rest of the Sandskater crew) have had over the autumn and winter months.

Here’s hoping that the last couple of months of winter, and the start of spring will bring something useful to the south west and we can all get out there and enjoy the sport we love: skimboarding.

So how’s your winter season been?

Cheers for now – Matt