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Jan 29, 2025 | 
coastalview.com | Christian Beamish
It’s a strange feeling going surfing when just down the road people are losing their homes. Not, of course, that there was anything I could do to affect the outcome of the Palisades or Eaton Fires a couple of weeks ago, but still, relishing the offshore wind and good swell felt somehow even more self-indulgent than usual. I’ve often questioned whether surfing, with its inherent and intense focus on the self, has a negative impact on one’s spiritual development.
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Nov 20, 2024 | 
coastalview.com | Christian Beamish
I put some miles on two weeks ago, driving down to San Diego on Saturday to sell a stack of surfboards and then out to Joshua Tree the next morning to join an old friend for a desert overnight. And a buddy called last Monday, saying I should be on standby for a trip in the opposite direction up to Humboldt County this Thursday (today) to surf a spot up there that we love. But the forecast looks good right here at Rincon, so I think I’ll just stay put.
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Oct 10, 2024 | 
coastalview.com | Christian Beamish
Back in 1997, fretting about my future after earning a degree in creative writing from UC Santa Cruz (job offers were not forthcoming), I remember trying to get clear about what I needed to do. “What do I want?” I asked myself, sitting in a windbreak in a keyhole at a low-tide reef on the North Coast.
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Sep 11, 2024 | 
coastalview.com | Christian Beamish
Not to be a complainer (no one likes ‘em) but I can’t think just now of any particularly special surfing moments from this quickly fading summer. A couple of South Swells was all we got, and none that really seemed to do much (although I heard there was a day at Backside Rincon, very well attended). And I’m a guy who can find a lot of joy in pretty average waves – all it takes is a quality of light, or maybe some unique ocean display, and I’m astounded all over again.
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Aug 14, 2024 | 
coastalview.com | Christian Beamish
When the kids’ grandparents offered to spring for a two-week camp for Miles in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado last month, I saw a rare opportunity for a one-on-one trip with Josephine. I called my buddy with the surf shop in Brooklyn to see if I could use the shaping bay there and do a few boards to defray the cost of a one-week stay.
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Aug 6, 2024 | 
sbmag.com | Christian Beamish
Collector Wayne Babcock’s quest for totemic surfboards Written by Christian BeamishPhotographs by Dewey NicksSurfboards embody the cultural mores of their time; the chemical composites of today no less than the great olos of Hawaiian chieftains, selected from sacred forests. But what thread links the cultures of the Polynesian voyagers and the surfers of today?
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Jul 17, 2024 | 
coastalview.com | Christian Beamish
Iain Oughtred, the recently deceased boat designer, included a Viking proverb, “Bound is boatless man,” in the opening page of his building manual. Yet I also recall hearing in Mexico that “bote” is slang for jail, and is also used for the word “boat.” As with many things, two truths can stand side-by-side, and my experience with my boat “Cormorant,” is that freedom on the water is just about equal to the amount of work I put in on land.
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Jun 19, 2024 | 
coastalview.com | Christian Beamish
Having transferred four or five of my best surfboard templates to plastic sheeting, then rolled these into a cylinder which I placed in a suitcase-style rolling toolbox with my planer, screens and other shaping tools, I set off for Rhode Island last month. A knapsack on my back and tool case rolling behind me, I had an exhilarating sense of freedom and possibility as I strolled through LAX.
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May 8, 2024 | 
coastalview.com | Christian Beamish
Iain Oughtred, a boat designer on the Isle of Skye, has passed. He was 84 years old, and one of his obituaries mentioned a neighbor lady, a friend of his, who had insisted that hospital staff move him to a room with a view of the water in his final days, so he could look out over the sound where he had sailed and rowed his many good boats over the years. It was said he died peacefully, of cancer, and that he was not in pain.
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Apr 10, 2024 | 
coastalview.com | Christian Beamish
A young guy who transports shaped blanks and finished surfboards back and forth between our shop at 500 Maple Ave. in Carpinteria and the fiberglass shop in Costa Mesa stopped in with a delivery the other week and we got to talking. He related a harrowing tale from last October, when he’d landed a gig on a fishing boat up in Washington. Fifty miles offshore, in deteriorating conditions, with an ailing, alcoholic captain, the boat goes broadside to the waves, and capsizes.
