Filmed over three months “West is Best” features the UK windsurfers Tom Pidden, Ollie Pidden and Finn Mellon. Tom and Ollie grew up in Western Australia and love to come back to this place and ride the challenging waves of Margaret River’s mainbreak. Margaret River was also their inspiration for their “Chook Journal” project. Tom: “The logo and name of The Chook Journal, which is what we call ourselves, was inspired by the ‘chook’ that is silhouetted in the sand dune opposite rivermouth beach, inside of the mainbreak, Margaret River.” 

Tom: “This year we headed back to Margs with a full quiver of Sunova windsurf boards. We have been working with Sunova Surfboards to test their prototype wave boards since May 2018. We have been using Sunova surfboards and Sups for 10 years, and about 3 years ago emailed them asking if they had thought about using the same technology they use in their Sups in a windsurf board. It turns out some of the management and glassers of the new Sunova factory came from Cobra and had already started working on some Sunova sailboard prototypes with American shaper Jonah Lepak. We got one and tried it. It was alright but a bit heavy and had too much rocker, and things went quiet for a bit. Then in early 2018 they saw a couple of last years Chook videos and invited us to Thailand to view the Sunova factory at the dealer meeting. We met Jonah and the factory staff and brought back a few new boards to test. The boards in the video are the latest revision of the prototypes and they go pretty good even for amateurs like ourselves. They weight less than production windsurfers, are extremely tough, and also look unreal! This year we also had Finn Mellon out to share a few waves and show him around which was great! Ollie also stayed on for a couple of months to make the most of some time off and had some help filming from a good friend George Bellinger.”

 

West is Best – Windsurfing in Western Australia

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