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Warmer Days

This is my last weekly blog for Winter! Already!

It feels like the Summer season has just left and now we’re on the very back end of the technical Winter season. I say technical because the weather this year has been nothing short of disgraceful.

This means I’d better get cracking. Spring is typically very busy for myself with skimboard and trying to make sure everything is aligned for the Summer. One thing I have come to terms with in the last week is that I really need to skim more.

So many fun things to do and so little time but it’s happening! Saturdays vlog was all about that and when I cam to this realisation after falling over about 70 times in a row. Check it below

Sunday started off quiet but then we ended up going surfing, doing step offs and shooting Thundercats

I mentioned Thundercats and already have the full edit up so find the blog post by clicking HERE.

See you at the beach!

Pop blog

-Sam

 

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Shooting Thunder

I’ve literally just come back in from my first experience in a Thundercat. All I can say is it has been added to my list of stuff people should experience.

By stuff I mean, really fun shit that you’re stupid if you don’t give it a go at least once! That kind of stuff.

Last Sunday I got the call from Steve, a friend from way back who also pilots one of these boats that they were heading out. I was on the boat ramp about to go surfing but was keen to get amongst it. Our paths collided on the way back in so I shot home and grabbed the drone.

Here’s the clip from my first go at shooting the boats with the drone. Pretty happy with the results!

Here’s a couple of stills which are bloody hard to shoot with the drone so there’s some from land as well.

Air boat blogStones_ blog

It’s a lot like skipping stones.

Thunder 1 blog Thunder 2 blog Thunder 3 blog

On a final note, does anyone want to buy an IRB?

See you at the beach!

-Sam

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NEW SERIES: Alive in New Zealand

How long have you been a New Zealander?

I have been one for 30 years and (almost) 4 months and you know what, it is pretty sweet!

I have done enough travel to very happily sit down and realise that I really love it here. We have tens of thousands people moving to this country each year thanks to our lifestyle and security down here at the bottom of the world!

On a personal level I love this place for it’s outdoors way of life. I can go anywhere in the world to walk into people in big cities but not everywhere in the world has the level of freedom we do in the outdoors. Within a hour for Auckland in any direction you can do pretty much anything. Anything!

Kaitoke Adam tugg blog

With water always close by and an absolute necessity for my own sanity, I can see the focus of this new series be heavily errrrr….. Wet!

For now, here is the idea with this series. A monthly edit of all the fun footage and things we get up to which is what episode 1 exactly is! Check it below then read a little bit about the long term goal is 🙂

OK! Long term and the pipe dream is, to make an ongoing series the will feature activities such as skimboarding, surfing, winching, spearfishing, fishing, boating, camping, climbing and basically anything fun! Think a fishing show but with actual variety. A collection of interesting activities that would appeal to a wide audience. Nothing too targeted, just fun!

I think the monthly format could do with being longer, sort of a cross between a fancy edit and vlogging.

So there it is, episode 1 is live and the August episode is over half filmed. If this sounds like a little bit of you then get in touch, you can’t work all the time!

See you at the beach!

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-Sam

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H2O

You know what they say about water.

It makes the world go round.

Or is that money? Either way I’m all for it!

You can jump in the stuff, be under it and over it at the same time, freeze it, steam it, you can even run a business that heavily relies on it! Without water I would be bored shitless and doing something completely different with my time.

The last week, like usual has been quite… Wet. Saturday we had a winch session that was too much fun. Actually too much. Check it below

Sunday was a day for surfing. No other plans. We set off to Pakiri early and I managed a nice drone shoot in the evening

In celebration of the wet stuff here’s a few pictures from the last week!

Slothy blogMatt Surf blogMatt Surf Hang blog Matt Surf Turn blogScott blogMCB Winch blog

H2O. Without it, we’d be dead!

See you at the beach!

-Sam

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We Tugged The Grass

When it comes to challenging conditions to film in, this is about as tough as it gets.

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Two guys (the minimum you can have when winching), A LOT of rain, wet grass and 150m or area you need to shoot.

Two GoPros and the housing thrown around the A6000 and we were ready to winch the grass, something we haven’t done before! Check the Minute Massacre below

Imagine the fun you could have with a few extra hands? Oh yes 🙂

Until next time, I will see you at the beach!

-Sam

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New Home

I’ve lived at Omaha pretty much my whole life and while the title hints that may change, I’ll let you in on a little secret.

The title has nothing to do with that. It does however have everything to do with the home page changes we’ve made this week on this here site!

I’ve been slacking a little bit on how I want this website viewed but I love the idea of having a homepage that encourages you to click on this here very active blog! Try it out here and let me know what you think!?

The last week has consisted of rain, rain and rain. Last week I touched in sprearing my biggest Kingfish to date at 25kg! I managed to squeeze in an extra vlog featuring it which I don’t suggest you watch if you’re not into the bloody part of spearing fish

Saturday cut up rough earlier than expected and taught us a few lessons on equipment maintenance and how to lose big fish

Sunday the sun managed to come out for a little while so I shot some drone footage which came out pretty clean as well as a freeeezing skim session. Check it below

What a brilliant last week all things considering. Winter doesn’t have to long to go so lets get out there!

I have a minute massacre dropping Saturday from an urban winch session on the grass that had us buzzing so stay tuned.

Horse blog

As always, I will see you at the beach.

-Sam

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Oh July

It’s now August! This means that we’re in the last technical month of winter, which means we’re edging closer to summer.

This is great for some things, bad for others. July was super fun even though it was spent dodging storms and tackling the cold water head on. Here is the month in review

Vlog of the month was this walk to a new and absolutely beautiful spot

Picture of the month which couldn’t sum it up any better

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August is already off to a ripper!

See you at the beach.

-Sam

 

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Hit Or Miss

How much do you enjoy Winter?

I enjoy it a lot! It’s cold, most people are inside (hits) but the weather over all this year has been about as good as a shit sandwich. Not very (miss).

I think it’s the shorter days and even shorter windows of opportunity that I love. For the most part, you miss. I’ve been missing mostly lately, especially in the water. The surf has been mainly off this year, the wave skim has been absolutely terrible, the spearfishing of late has been mainly off.

Flipper blog

There has been two “hits” lately with a spear in hand. One was a couple of week ago with my best snapper and one was today with my best kingy at 25kg. Shallow water and reef isn’t ideal but what matters is that it is now filleted 😉 I have a vlog going up in a couple of days with the action.

I feel I’ve been having a few “hits” lately with the photography lately and am thoroughly enjoying it. Like A LOT! Having a nice camera that I can shoot RAW photos and a nice video codec (nerd alert).

Last Saturday was another slight miss underwater but I scraped together some nice from Goat Island below water

Sunday again was another day of misses with the weather and spearing. Fun none the less

On a side note, Thundercat?

Here’s to more hits. I like hits!

See you at the beach!

-Sam

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Adventure NZ Podcast #2 The Past & Future Of Skimboarding In New Zealand

Waves blog

Straight from the depths of skimboarding in New Zealand, I feel there isn’t two people more qualified to discuss this topic.

The past is very simple to speak on seeing we were the two who first started making boards. As much as I would love to fill you in with all the talk, that would defeat the purpose of the Podcast.

Check the video below

Soundcloud link and download

My love affair with skimboarding is set to continue. As for next months podcast I feel a surfing related one is in order.

See you at the beach!

-Sam

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Smiles For Miles :)

Big wins are what we’re all aiming for in life, eeeeeespecially when it comes to self employment. It’s bloody hard to win big. Hell it’s hard to win small.

The last week I feel I’ve had a few small wins, which is fantastic.

Onehunga 4 edit

Beginning with a shoot for the Thundercat Racing Association last Saturday I was greeted with huge powerlines, partial no fly zones and less than ideal weather. This ruled the drone out as I don’t fly if I’m on the fence about it. Some 500 or so pictures later we were wrapped up. I learnt a lot this day which you can find out about here

You can find a gallery more in full via Facebook here.

Sunday was the fairly standard winter affair but we managed to shoot another podcast (which is edited and set to go soon) and a little solo dive

And of course the barrier. If you follow what I do at all then you may be aware that I’m quite fond of the place. Over the last year or two I have put out A LOT of content from the place. This week my drone video which was shot in April has been my most well received piece of content, to date!

The video and associated blog post went live on Tuesday and has amassed 2200 views on YouTube with the blog post being shared 783 times at the time of writing. This is huge for me and a great confidence booster. I feel I may be doing a few more aerial specific shoots from now on.

Find the blog post here.

Awana glow blog

That’s it for the week, I’mm off to get a fish or two (hopefully).

See you at the beach.

-Sam