March 12th, 2010

Sea Wall under Scrutiny Again

I believe the responce by the DCC to defer any 'work or maintenance' until a report is back over erosion at Middle Beach (due to be finalised by the end of 2012) is too long to wait to address simple issues of maintenance and public safety. When in fact there is already an independant "St Clair Seawall Peer Review" published by OCEL consulatnts in February 2006. This covers failures of the sea Wall since its construction, its structural capacity, failure of function, solutions and responses to the public and a city councillor. Why wasn't anything heeded from that review?

Waiting to address issues this way is incompetent. This is exactly what the DCC did with the Sand Sausages adjacent to the Sea wall. They put off doing any maintenance work on them as they became exposed, although it was allowed in the consent conditions. To ensure they "be maintained in a state of operational repair to ensure their effectiveness without the need to apply for additional consents". Instead they did nothing and opted to wait for a potentially lengthy public consultation process over sand mining at Tomahawk.
In the mean time, the sand sausages were completely exposed over time, contributing to increased erosion events right along the dune area to middle beach and St Kilda in 2007.
It was only the 'sabotage' of these sand sausages that allowed them to do the necessary work to bring the due system back in to some kind of equilibrium.
see related post here: phoam.blogspot.com/sand sausage deterioration over 18months

I seriously hope that the DCC will take action sooner, now that the public has been again informed, thanks Mark.

If you are interested please check out related posts on Sea Wall Issues, The failing steps and Ramp here: phoam.blogspot.com/search/label/Sea Wall Steps & Sand

March 11th, 2010

Don't let the sun

March 7th, 2010

Majestic Mansions SOLD

March 3rd, 2010

Seaweek - Dunedin Coastal Cleanup

Meeting at 10am, we will be setting off into groups to clean up the Brighton Domain, Ocean View Beach and dunes, and down along the coast towards Taieri Mouth. If there are enough people we will send a group off to Blackhead as well. Please register your support by emailing me or leaving a comment to this post.
Meet at: Sunday 14th March 10am at the top domain carpark at Brighton. Anyone else from town is most welcome to join us.

Rubbish collected will be taken to Hancock Park, St Kilda (corner Victoria Rd and John Wilson Dr) from 12.30 to 2.30pm for rubbish weighing, recycling and disposal. Or to the Greeen Island Landfill.

Please bring: Water bottle, sturdy shoes preferably gumboots, sun hat, sun-block, raincoat, warm clothes. Rubbish bags and gloves will be supplied. We hope you can join us.

Prizes: At the weigh in at Hancock Park, there will be prizes for most rubbish collected and strangest item found. There will be Seaweek 'Fish for the Future' displays & activities, videos, Free sausage sizzle, prize giving and Rocky Shore Guide launch!

Hancock Park Festivities start at 12.30pm, prize-giving from 3 to 3.30pm. Hosted by the Dunedin City Councils' great Dunedin Coastal Cleanup.

Other Seaweek Activities:
Dunedin City Council Wild Life of an Estaury Seaweek Poster Compeition
Young marine leaders competition
Short stories from young people
Otago Changing Seas Symposium see here
More information on events during Sea Week, please follow this link
or go to http://www.seaweek.org.nz/
Heres looking for a better turnout than we did last year ( see previous blog post here)

March 1st, 2010

:: VID :: Tsunami Warning

On the 28th of February 2010 an 8.8 magnitude earthquake hit Chile. This generated a tsunami wave that raced across the Pacific Ocean at 700 miles and hour. Here in Dunedin, New Zealand J and I set off for an early 7am surf and photo session. The sunrise was gorgeous and the surf was clean and peeling with only J and two others out. Perched on the edge of the rocks at 8am I was told by a local clubbie that a Tsunami was on its way over from Chile, and to vacate the water immediately. We did. From a vantage point on the hill above the break we watched and waited, listening to the radio and watched others hovering close to the beach along with police patrolling the beach. After 90 minutes realising that there would be negligible effect on our part of the country the surfers went back in the water. No tsunami event was experienced by any of the surfers in the water, and no tide events of any significance were recorded on film.

Music: Echophonics Workshop by Dunedin Musicians -Junk Shop Star With recordings from NZ radio stations as I filmed.

See previous blog post with images and other coverage of the event at the link below:

February 28th, 2010

Otago Tsunami Warning

Current national modeling information indicates the risk to the Otago coastline of a wave height of less than 1.00 metre.
However, strong currents and unusual tidal effects may continue over the next 12 hours.

Below, At 9.45am about when the Tsunami was supposed to Hit the Otago Coast, clean sets still peeled through, with only a slight receding of water at the shore, and without noticing the tide was back to normal. A police officer stood at the edge of the Domain with members of the public watching the sea. (?) while another officer calls in a local surfer.

As a precautionary measure people in Otago are advised to:

1. Stay off beaches

2. Stay out of the water (sea, rivers and estuaries, including boating activities)

3. Do not go sightseeing

4. Listen to the radio and/or TV for updates

5. Follow instructions of your local Civil Defence authorities.

MCDEM and scientific advisors are closely monitoring the situation to determine the likely severity of the threat to New Zealand.

Police are patrolling Dunedin beaches as they are able to ensure people are out of the water and away from the coast.

Staff from Otago Civil Defence Emergency Management (CDEM) Group have been closely monitoring the situation through the night.

February 26th, 2010

The Dunedin Forest Fires

A spark from a logging truck around Mt Allen outside Dunedin created an out-of-control fire which burned for over three days. These images were taken on the second day, first one (above) mid afternoon from Andersons bay Rd South Dunedin of the smoke plume hovering over the suburb of Mornington. Below sunset about 8.30pm looking over the Kaikorai Estuary.

February 25th, 2010

Day 2 - Hyundai Longboard Pro Dunedin

February 23rd, 2010

Phoam Surf Blog is 4 years old today!

With 981 posts and 1765 commets, there has been thousands of hours on the beach photographing free surfing and surf competitions. Extensive travelling and thousands of hours in front of the computer photoshopping, editing film, and joyful labour at the easel painting. Not to mention the four other blogs I have launched.
Save Ocean Beach 13foot of Wood Friends of Blackhead Contributions to the Big Rock Boardriders blog. And my photo contributions to my partner's blog at Boardriding Scooter Trash
Currently the www.phoam.co.nz website is down, due to technical issues around changing domain registry garbage. Hopefully it will be back up soon.

Thank you all for your support over the years, keep stopping by, I know things have been sparse the last three months, but I'm pretty much back on board now.
If you are so compelled, please leave a comment, input, criticism, raving love etc .. I'd love to hear from you

Namaste Nic Reeves

February 25th, 2010

Day 1 - Hyundai Longboard Pro Dunedin

February 19th, 2010

Hyundai Longboard Pro this weekend

St Clair Dunedin will be turning it on for a host of longboarders and paddleboarders this weekend.
I sat at St Clair for a short while this afternoon watching to see if any of the crew here for the weekend comp would paddle out, and was granted a sneak preview.

February 14th, 2010

Villa Rustica - Surfers Retreat

February 11th, 2010

New Artwork - Blackhead Bliss

February 7th, 2010

Sunny St Clair

February 4th, 2010

Swans in the Eve

January 29th, 2010

Full Moon Tonight

Tested out a Canon 1Ds tonight, the pohutakawa pics taken at about7pm, the top one is a closeup of the same photo below it, amazing resolution, the lens I used was my 100-400 4.5-5.6, so not that sharp
The surfing at about 8pm, light was failing by then.

January 24th, 2010

Growing out of Control

Above: garden is growing out of control especially the mizuni lettuce, courgettes and the sugar snap peas. In the foreground are Nasturtian flowers for the salads, with a selection iof herbs in front in the orange pots. Below, a closer look at the garden.
Above: last week, one of the brocolli held in front of my green pepper growing on the kitchen windowsill with Basil. This week the brocolli is twice the size, along with the cauliflower.

So good to walk out the back door and pick all the fresh salad leaves and herbs right there.

January 15th, 2010

:: VID :: Seven Sessions

The Story behind this Video
A debate on a New Zealand surf forum late 2007 led to the creation of the 'Olo Hikoi'. At the centre of the Hikoi (Journey) was a 13foot hollow core wooden surfboard shaped by Roy Stewart. The forum debate was over previous claims in another surf forum by the board's shaper that it would outperform other longboards at Pipeline.

The nine month Hikoi covered the length and breadth of New Zealand and was shared, surfed and delivered between members of the surf forum.

This video covers the 5 week Dunedin leg of the NZ Hikoi. Although there were 14 sessions in total, only seven were visually documented. Dunedin surfers were Jay, Beano, Shayne, Caity, Nic, Homa, Jono, Jimi & Hayley. Images and editing by Nic Reeves of phoam.blogspot.com - Thanks to Junk Shop Star for the use of their track Aria for Aria. myspace.com/junkshopstar

All of the NZ Hikoi sessions and most of the Hawaii sessions were blogged at 13footofwood.blogspot.com - Each surfer sent in words, photographs and videos sharing the stoke with their travels, experiences surfing the board and board reviews.

The board is now (Jan 2010) in Hawaii in the possession of Garrett Mcnamara and has indeed been surfed at 2nd reef pipeline.
Thank you to Roy Stewart for making this Hikoi possible by allowing your board to tour.
Unfortunately due to communication issues, the UK tour has been canceled.

January 13th, 2010

:: Boart Art :: The Joker

Above: Caity with her Joker board art, and behind her on the street her new car ( she sold the 4WD she bought, chewed too much gas)

Caitlins scuzzy old fish, which had a revamp last year during a party at home (left) was getting a bit manky because we didn't seal the design on properly ( just used a clear enamel spray from a can).
So she decided to remove the previous work.. and asked me to help her put on a spanking new design. One of her favourite symbolic images.. The Joker, from the deck of cards.
Why The Joker? She likes the Joker because of its dual use. In card play it can either be the trump card & highly regarded, or it is of no use at all and discarded from the pack. This to her represents her feelings of her own duality and usefulness of her place in life depending on outer rules and circumstances.
How we did it
We started off by scanning the playing card, and then printed it out to A4, Caitlin then drew a grid over it, and scaled the grid up by 2x to a large piece of tracing paper. I then transferred the design over to the tracing paper using the block grid method. Next Caitlin hung it against a window, and reverse traced it with charcoal. After that she laid it over her board charcoal side downwards taped it into place, and rub transferred the image on to the board. I then freehand drew with black Poscas over the charcoal. Caitlin then took the board to Carsey at Quarry Beach, who clear spray coated the design.

Below Left: a closer look at the boart art, and Right: a real cool painting that I picked up at the tip shop last week. Its an original oil, probably an old chinese production line artwork. I loved it not only because of its composition and colour, but because it was the day I decided to start Chinese acupuncture to help me get back on board with life. Weirdly too, that that night on TV, every programme or movie we watched had a tiger in it.

January 13th, 2010

Big Rock New Year Comp & 2009 Prizegiving

POSTPONED TILL NEXT WEEKEND DUE TO WEATHER AND PREDICTED SWELL
From the Big Rock blogsite
http://bigrock-boardriders.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-year-comp-2009-prizegiving.html

Yeah we've been lazy, but it's summer there's been waves around and Andy sends his love to everyone!


First Comp of the 'Summer' series is to be held on Saturday 16 January 2009, with Sunday 17th as a backup in case of poor conditions.
Planning to kick off at 8:30am sharp!

Meeting at the top car park at Ocean View, if no parking is available, there is a car park at the bottom of the hill.
We will be taking entries for open shortboard, open longboard and possibly woman's as well - depending on numbers.

Fees are also now due and it would be helpful if these were paid at the comp, as follows:
Student/Retired $5
Adult $10
Family $20
Following the Comp, there we will also be a prizegiving for the 2008/2009 season.