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Surf.NolenElam.com . Nolen Elam ... that's my name! Thanks for visiting my surf page! How's it goin'? Named for my dad, I'm also known as "Ned," a childhood nickname still used by family and friends. For those of you who don't know me, I'm a 50-year-old "commitment-free divorcee" living in Costa Mesa, California. Surfing is one of my great passions and "The Point" at San Onofre State Beach is my favorite place to surf locally. This page is just a place for me to share my love for the ocean and surfing with whoever might be interested. I last updated this page Tuesday, 5 January 2010.
My surf photos ... This first shot was taken of me way back in November 1992 (age 33) making a "cutback" on a small day at a surfbreak named "Killers," which is located on one of the Islas de Todos Santos, a group of small islands located about eight miles offshore Ensenada, Mexico. Matt Thomas, the photographer, used a telephoto lens to get these shots from about 200 yards away on the bluffs of the island overlooking the break at Killers (click image to view full-size) ...
The image shown below is a close-up of the same image shown above (click image to view full-size) ...
The same image with the glowing edges filter applied in Photoshop is shown below (click image to view full-size) ...
The shot above was taken by Matt Thomas back in November 1992 at "Killers." In this photo I'm way out in front of a wave that is small by Todos Santos standards; this was one of the few waves I rode that day -- an easy, makable wave I could see coming early enough to set up and get in without getting worked. The bigger set waves coming in that day were some of the largest I've ever paddled through -- maybe 16'-18'+ on the face. While the wave in this photo may be small by Todos standards (~8'-10'), photographs of Killers breaking at heights of 50 feet have been featured in most of the popular surf mags. Only three other breaks on the West Coast rival Todos in size: Cortes Bank, Ghost Tree, and Mavericks. My favorite surfboard for the past 12+ years now has been my 10'6", 24" wide, 35 pound, custom-shaped round-tail by Mike Minchinton! [Yes, I'm stil lriding the same board 12 years later!] (Mike Minchinton has also shaped for Robert August Surfboards.) Anyhow, this board is huge! Big as it is, it's a blast to ride! The board was custom-shaped for "Captain Casual," a man unknown to me, but who reputedly weighed in at over 300 pounds! Being 6'1", 215 pounds myself, I wanted a board that would make me feel small -- like a little kid -- something I could easily knee-paddle and walk around on. I found my dream board while describing it to a friend I met at Surfer's Chapel in Huntington Beach: Bill Staggs. Bill had a surfboard repair/restoration business on Beach Boulevard in Midway City, California. (Check out Bill's new business: VWSurfari.com!!!) Getting back to the story about my board, for the second time I had dropped off my modern longboard at Bill's, a 9'2" tri-fin whipper-snapper (another busted rail fin), when I began tellin' Bill about my dream board. Apparently the board I had just described was The Minchinton -- and Bill had it sitting right there in his shop! The board has beautiful wooden nose and tail blocks with multiple wooden and glued stringers; it even has the extra-heavy Volan fiberglass I wanted to help protect it from all my abusive surfing habits, like ridin' waves all the way up onto the beach at San O'! What an awesome board! Here are a few photos of me at San O' with The Minchinton. In the first pic I'm luggin' The Minchonton out for a surf at The Point (it weighs 35 pounds!) ...
In this second photo I'm riding a very typical wave at The Point ...
Here I am crankin' a big bottom turn (woo hoo!) ...
And last of all -- the end of the day -- San O' Mano!
Way back in the summer of 1996 I switched to riding longboards after riding shortboards almost exclusively since I first began surfing the Gulf Coast surf of Texas back in 1969. I did have an old, green Hobie (a 9'6" Gary Propper pin-tail model) back in the '70s, and I brought it with me when I moved to California in 1977, but it was stolen and I soon returned to riding shortboards. The first surfboard I ever rode was back in 1969 when my then-best friend Wade Bush and I teamed up on a longboard he had and we rode the puny surf at West Beach in Galveston. Within a year I somehow scrounged up enough money to buy my first surfboard, a home-made twin-fin about 5'6", from one of my brother's friends, Barney Trees. The board was so poorly made it had hardened resin droplets hanging from the rails that would dig into my hands whenever I grabbed the rails too tight! Yikes! CLICK HERE to go to my home page ... That's all for now! See y'all in the white water! |
