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Wednesday 10 December 2014

Discontinued...

THIS BLOG HAS BEEN DISCONTINUED.

To continue to follow Mark Boyd please visit his Facebook Sportsperson page:

http://www.facebook.com/markboydsurferscotland


Here was one of two spreads of Mark in the latest issue of Carve Magazine - this one a double page spread of him on the contents page of the magazine.


Monday 1 September 2014

Passenger Clothing

Stoked to be part of the Passenger Clothing team as an ambassador.  

 Passenger Clothing

NZwaterman


Stoked to get a shot in the latest issue of NZwaterman magazine.  Click the link below to view the mag online for free.


 NZwaterman

Friday 18 April 2014

Scottish National Surfing Championships 2014

The Scottish National Surfing Championships took place on the last weekend of March 2014.  As forecast the swell would pulse on the Friday and become easing into the Saturday therefore there was only a 1 day window to run the contest.  Early heats were held in small, inconsistent yet perfectly shaped Thurso-East.  The conditions proved fun for competition surfing with some tubes and high scores going down, but heat strategy was key with few set waves per heat.  Early rounds and other divisions were completed and the culmination of the event was held at the Brimms Bowl with the Open Semis and Finals.  

The longboard final was held on shoulder high mid to low tide Thurso-East.  This year has had the largest turnout of longboarders for some time and some of the young guns such as Greg Millar and Max Hook were standouts in the category.  Greg showed power and control in his semi final and was keen to make a tuberide on his 9'4"; had he exited one he may have caused some upsets.  Ian Masson and Sam Christopherson as per usual were silky smooth combining traditional and modern longboarding on the fast glassy faces, and Max Hook's wave choice was impeccable.  The final would have a short flurry of waves at the beginning and would slow down as the kelp became more and more exposed towards the end of the final.  Fortunately for me the judges liked the top to bottom style of longboarding I was attempting and I had kept busy during the small flurry of waves at the beginning. It was a hard fought final against the cross stepping skills of Sam and Masson.  I caught Masson off guard to snag which was perhaps the winning wave of the final leaving Ian perhaps a 'keeper' short.

LONGBOARD RESULTS:

1st Mark Boyd
2nd Sam Christopherson
3rd Max Hook
4th Ian Masson

The tide was still a little lower than ideal for the bowl for the semi finals and turns were key to progress.  My semi final against Hamper and Chris Noble was a hard fought victory, with everyone posting reasonable scores.  I snagged a wally one in the last minute to take out the heat, Chris narrowly defeated Hamper to progress to the final.  

The final was a different story - the Bowl was pumping to say the least.  Mark 'Scratch' Cameron opted for turns and snaps, with impeccable timing held the lead for the majority of the heat, throwing buckets on each well executed manoeuvre.  Ian Masson as always consistently posted scores to the board whilst Chris Noble had only one 'keeper' on the board well into the heat which came from a snap in the pocket.  My gameplan was to go all out and try to win in style by making the most of the tubing conditions on offer.  Unfortunately it (again) wasn't to be my year and despite seeing the exit on a couple of deep tubes I was either clipped or pinched on each.  I tried to get a couple scores by doing turns towards the end of the heat but on one particular wave Scratch was caught inside right where I needed to set my line.  I managed one turn on a wave near the end but that alone wouldn't be enough to take the win without having exited one of the bowling backdoor tubes I so eagerly had been attempting.   40 seconds from the end of the heat Chris Noble would take the victory by snagging a wally wave, powering through a great setup snap and being drained along the inside section of the Bowl - not the usual tube section but this man seems to find tubes anywhere leaving us mere mortals scratching our heads.  It seemed like it would have been Scratches final but full credit to Chris Noble for taking out the victory again and keeping his cool and executing that final wave at such a critical stage in the heat - sign of a true champ.

OPEN RESULTS:

1st Chris Noble
2nd Mark Cameron
3rd Mark Boyd
4th Ian Masson

 Prizegiving - 3rd Place in the Open for the 6th time, 1st place in the Longboards, retaining the Longboard title for the 4th year running

Friday warmup

Saturday 22 March 2014

2014, the beginning.



After leaving Raglan (pictured above) I went on to the Gold Coast in Australia for 3 weeks and checked out the area between Noosa and Byron.  I stayed in Currumbin with my good friends Rick and Jenny Willmett and their family and surfed Snapper and Dbah on most days.  The crowd was immense but I still snagged a few fun waves and it was inspiring to watch world champions past and present surfing on most days.

I spent a week at Keramas in Bali during my stay in Indonesia after I had spent a week in Aceh with my friend Yudi and his Scottish wife Sarah.  Check out http://www.yudisplace.com for waves November - March in the North of Indo.

One of a few really good tubes I had at Keramas, you can see my silhouette inside the wave before it spits me out.

A shot of me surfing Keramas made it onto the homepage of Baliwaves.com 

I spent the majority of my Indo trip at Lakey Peak in Sumbawa.  There were waves every day and a few pumping days.  On my last day I had 3 good tubes before 6am and about 10 good ones before breakfast, which was definitely a personal record.

Before returning home I decided to make a visit to the Wadi Wave pool in Al Ain, UAE as my flight went via Dubai anyway.  I was very impressed with the pool and its 'closeout' setting and I had set myself a goal to learn air reverses during my 3 day stay.  Unfortunately for me my first evening would be the only time I would get to surf the pool functioning at 100% due to broken pumps, therefore no more closeout setting and only a weak righthander available.  I would definitely consider returning to the wave pool with friends to book private sessions if the pool was functioning properly and next time I would take a wetsuit if going in winter as it was uncomfortably cold in boardies!  The offshore winds also were a bit strong during my visit reducing the quality of the waves - so all the factors I had thought would be eliminated by an artificial wave pool were more present than ever - winds, waiting for swell…well in this case hydraulics.

Back to Scotland now and the Scottish National Championships next weekend check out http://www.thessf.com for updates.




Thursday 19 December 2013

Wavelength December

http://www.wavelengthmag.co.uk/issue-231-on-sale-now/

Go out and grab yourself a copy of Wavelength Surfing Magazine Issue 231 to see a 6 page article featuring my recent travels.




Thursday 5 December 2013

New Zealand November

I placed 3rd in the Raglan Point Boardriders contest in November, congratulations to Chris 'Bugsy' Malone who took the win. See video below:
Raglan Point Boardriders from Mark Boyd on Vimeo.

And I finally made it down to the South Island of New Zealand for a trip and had a couple of fun surfs before a skateboarding injury ended my trip.  En route back to Raglan though I stopped in Queenstown to visit a friend from Portsoy and do a Bungee jump.  Videos to follow…

South Island Sunset, Dunedin

Friday 25 October 2013

New Zealand

Been trying to do a few trips to surf some other waves other than Raglan this last month or so.  So far I have made it to Gisborne, Mahia, Taranaki, the Coromandel and Ahipara.  Below are a couple of shots from those trips:






New Zealand Home Loans Pro Series - Taranaki


Results Men's Open Final:

1st Conan James
2 Sean Kettle
3 Mark Boyd
4 Jarrod Hancox




Wednesday 9 October 2013

Living the Search - Cruisy Days


Follow the link below to read Andi Ahlm's latest blog entry featuring a trip we did over to the Coromandel Peninsula:

http://shapelab.ch/trendlinger/?p=253


Saturday 7 September 2013

Instagram

Follow me on Instagram.  Username: markboydsurf

Instagram

Fiji

Few good days of barrels at Cloudbreak but only managed to get a couple of air shots





Sunday 11 August 2013

Sunday 19 May 2013

Thursday 16 May 2013

Scottish National Championships 2013

Won the Scottish Longboard title for the third consecutive year in pumping north swell Thurso-East.



Tuesday 12 March 2013

March 2013

Been preparing for the Scottish National Surfing Championships this last week.  Had a run of waves for a few days just as I got back from work although not much to speak of the last couple of days.  Fingers crossed for waves at the weekend.  Been playing around with the GoPro too (see below). Also had an Alder ad featured in Wavelength Magazine.