Friday 9th Spetember saw one of the biggest North Sea storm surges in 50 years. There was a dramatic rescue when three surfers got into difficulty. The waves weren't particularly big due to the North westerly angle of the swell, but due to the storm surge tide together with the notorious Joss rip and cross offshore winds resulted in 3 surferes being dragged out of the bay and round the North Foreland towards Stone Bay. With no way out they had to be brought up the cliff by the coast guard rescue team. More Photo's and story here. Download flash photo slide show.
Check the BBC local news they had some great footage from the Police helicopter, this ones going to be played around for a while.
Next year will be 40 years since the formation of the east kent surf club, this was one of the country's 1st surf clubs with members competing nationaly and intenationally in those early day's. The club only lasted a few years, then the founder members started moving away from the area for better surf. There have been a number of clubs over the years in kent but for one reason or another they fall by the way side. It may be a good idea to slowly build something up again, this may start as just a drink and surf movie in a local pub, see Dan's comment below, email Dan or thebigchill with ideas sugestions.
Some great colour photos have just emerged from Sue Trewin
(nee Crews). Better known as Suzie she was a student at Nonington College 1967-1970. She was originally from the Devon/Cornwall area and was already a keen surfer before going to Nonington having also competed in the UK surfing championships. She met up with the Joss bay surfers and spent a lot of her free time surfing with them. She later went on to spend a year in the early 70's surfing France, Spain, Portugal, Morroco.
In this photo taken at Joss Bay in the summer of 1970 are some of the regular surfers of that time. Left to right Ian Stevenson, Fin looking over Ian's shoulder, Sitting is Bruce Clements, Paul Knowles (Red boardies),
Next to Paul is Stuart Puddifoot from Australia, he is sitting on Phil Smith, the guy in the black shorts we think is Des Patty he made Hats in a family business in London. The guy on the end is Gerry Lopez .
These pages tell the stories of how surfing and skateboarding got started in Kent in the 1960's, these were the days when surfing was a totally new way of life, not just in Kent but across all of Europe. The surfers back then were all young with little money, Kent might not have had the best waves in the UK but what it lacked in quality waves was more than made up for by the sheer enthusiasm and dedication of the surfers, these pages set out to tell the story of this pioneering group of surfers.
Bang up to date now, the surf diary is an attempt to keep some sort of record of the better surfing days. So if you wondered what the surf was like last week check in here there might be some pictures.
There is an extensive gallery of pictures of surfing at all of Kent's most well known surf spots. This gallery is continually being added to as there are many photos waiting to be scanned in.
There is a rad video clip of some of Thanets surfers at the wall.
We also have a Video clip of surfing at Joss Bay in 1968. The conversion has been made from old 8mm cini film to a cut down an edited version of about 8 minutes for the web, quality is not that great on the web version. If there is any interest I might eventually have these available on DVD with the full 40 minutes of footage, which includes Portugal, Spain and Cornwall from the same era.
The write up from surfs up magazine of the first Kent surf contest TheBigChill surf classic in 1989, has now been added to its own section together with a gallery of previously unpublished pictures from the contest.
Where Is Kent
Just in case your not familiar with the UK
If any one wants to help out on producing this site, has technical advice or any other general comments contributions or suggestions contact
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I will not be held responsible for any
mistakes or wrong information on this site to the best of my knowledge it should
be correct, also I can not be responsible for the content of any external links
on this site or anything else that might go against me.
Will be at Whitstable Windsurfing for a demo on Saturday the 31st May. More info
