Sloppy tsunami seconds March 11, 2011

As we were driving down the mountain after fearing for our lives the day before, getting to higher ground and sleeping in the car all I wanted to do was surf. We headed back to Trezzo and a few of us crashed out but two of my buddies and I grabbed our boards and headed to Cemento to score some tsunami leftovers... I should go back and explain so you don't get lost.

got to Baler the morning of Friday March 18th 2011 and slept for a while in Trezzo because it took 5 hours to get there. Nothing really special about the day when it started. When we all woke up we dicked around for an hour or so trying to decide what to do. Baler is a super quiet place on the weekdays. Oh and I should mention that I brought my dog Banzai up so it was exciting for me to introduce him to his new home which was bigger and cleaner than my little apartment garage in Manila. Anyhow, Mia and JB decided to go surf the beach break slop out in front of the lifeguard tower in Sabang beach and I took our caretaker to the local computer store to buy some parts for the computer we have there. While in the computer store, I get a Phone call from a friend of mine in Subic bay telling me that Japan had just had a 8.9 mid ocean earthquake and that there was a tsunami slamming into the coast of Japan as we were talking. He was verbally describing the live footage that he was watching from the police helicopter and I all the while thought he was joking or that it wasnt such a big deal.

We headed back to the resort and I received another two txts telling me about the Tsunami warning and that it was headed for the Philippines as we spoke so I turned off toward the beach to see if Mia and JB were still in the water. They were. I called them out of the water telling everyone that I passed on the way that there was a tsunami warning and that they should go home and check with their families on what to do. Mia and JB were calm and actually wanted to keep surfing because the gravity of the situation hadn't hit them yet. We went to Trezzo to check the internet where we saw crazy footage of whole cities in Japan being wrecked by the wall of water so we decided to head out before they announced it and before the traffic got crazy. Almost out of the town and the traffic got really bad. People were lined up for gas and buying food and the local store. And were about to start heading up to Ermita monument site.

Baler is not a stranger to Tsunamis. In 1735 a huge one came through and wiped out 500 families. Only 7 survived because they climbed up to where the current Ermita monument is. There is a bronze cast of 7 people climbing the side of the mountain in memory. When the warning hit on this day, everyone knew where to go. Funny, its a bit of a boy who cried wolf scenario because Baler had two Tsunami warnings last year so people are starting to get comfortable. I know of personally around 20 people who didnt heed the warnings and stayed in their houses. They would have died had the Tsunami actually hit.

So we were in the mountains of Maria Aurora where the wife of the first President of the Philippines Manual Quezon and her daughter (for which the area was named) was ambushed and killed by the Hubalahap. After meeting up with some friends who's bus had stopped in the stopover that we were sleeping in and after monitoring the situation over txt all night we decided that it was safe to head back down to Baler, dropped off the ones who wanted to sleep in Trezzo and we to Cemento to surf. It was 8am by the time we got there and we were the last to hit the lineup. Already surfing was Hiroshi Yokohama, Mako, Django, Chris Watkins and a few others. It was a good session with average 4 foot faces with an occasional 6 foot. It was kinda freaky cuz the tsunami had only hit less than 10 hours before but it was small. I kept thinking that there was gonna be another one or like an aftershock that would send a wall of water toward us and us to our deaths. What an experience.

Building surfboards 101: Note about brushes when doing your hotcoat

Ok so I'm in Subic right now working on a classic Lis fish for a friend Mio. There are many types of fishes when talking surfboards. The earliest came about during the early 70's in the form of short stubby boards with twin keel fins. Steve Lis was the first to combine the swallow or split tail (no its not called the "fish tail" but more on tail design later) with the short, fat twin fin to give you what you know today as the classic twin fin fish.

Its an EPS Epoxy stingerless fish. I'm through the shaping part of the building process and I've laminated both sides already. Now its time to hotcoat the board so I head to the local hardware store to get a three-inch brush. The hotcoat is step three in the process of making surfboards, the step after you've already put your fiberglass skin on the foam core and it's bumpy where the fiberglass overlaps and you can see the weave in the hardened fiberglass cloth. To get these bumps out and to get a smooth surface, you need to put a layer of resin over the fiberglass skin essentially filling in all the little weave grooves- This is the hotcoat.

Anyway, back to the brush. I have my own suppliers in manila, in fact I like to get the brushes available at Polymere products because they have soft bristles to give you a good even hotcoat and the handle is bare wood so if you're working with solvent based resin, there is no paint that will melt and get all over your beautiful work. I didn't have the option of getting in Manila so I went to the local hardware and bought the only available 3 inch brush. By the way, 4 inch brushes are better for hotcoat. The brush I bought had a thick yellow painted handle with a red tip and nasty thick plastic bristles. The oposite of ideal for hotcoating. I mixed up a batch of my own recipe of hotcoat epoxy and let it sit for ten min so that it heats up. It hardens quicker that way and wont flow out onto the floor as much.

During the hot coat you pour out all your resin along the middle of the board and use your brush to do figure eights working the resin into the grooves of the weave wetting the whole board. Then you brush the resin diagonal to evenly spread the resin to both sides of the board working your way from one end to the other and then back the other way. I like to do it 4 times total, two each way. then you do a final, light run (meaning you just let the brush sit on its own weight) from nose to tail and back as many times as it takes to long-stroke the whole board. let the resin sit and it will flatten itself out and if you do it right, you have a great hotcoat with little sanding to do on the next step. Do it wrong and you add hours onto the process as well as lots of weight. With this shit brush that I bought, the bristles started falling out all over the board and the resin thickened which is a pain because then I had to go back with a blade and pick them all off. The bristles were so thick that it took more work than usual to get a good flat coat but I did it eventually and the hotcoat looks good.

Bottom line I guess is to make sure you use a good brush for your hotcoat.

Respect locally, Surf Globally

This is my blog on surfing in the Philippines. Anything surf related, Philippines.

There are so many times I find myself bewildered by someone telling me how surfing started in the Philippines in 2006 or 2003 or in La Union or in Siargao or how the first surf shop was this or that. Come to think of it there are so many Godfathers of surfing in the Philippines that I cant count! This is a blog that will be aimed at trying to set the history of Philippine surfing straight with everyone's help. As a student of history, (not figuratively speaking, I really studied history at UCLA and UP Diliman) I expect everyone to contribute to this blog so we can construct the true history of surfing in the Philippines.

This blog will also cover travel tips and must-know information about surf lesson and hotel prices, food, travel. Ill include site that should be visited in certain destinations as well as things to watch out for. These will all be based on my own experiences of being apart of the Philippine surf industry since 2001.

Some of my posts will be about the art of making surfboards. Shaping, painting, design and different materials that are being used around the world. Ill try to explore the history of surfboard construction and post on current projects that I'm working on to give a real-time experience on how people's contributions from the past effect the surf world that we live in today. Ill post about past projects and early experiments that we conducted here in the Philippines in 2001 as well as the journey to develop a system of making surfboards here in the Philippines that still continues today. Ill also cover diy repairs and give you the knowledge you need to fix your own boards. 

I expect this blog to be fun but dark at times as I get pissed on occasion but I will also keep it as bullshit free and as informative as possible. My name is Lui Tortuya and I make surfboards ATBP. I thought it important to state that right from the beginning so you all know who I am.

  Years ago a good friend of mine Kage Gozun and I were having breakfast, or lunch (I cant remember cuz it was all the same in those days) at Cloud 9 and we saw a sticker put there by some Brazilian guy that said- Respect Locally, Surf Globally.

Welcome to my blog.