Fishermen Find Ancient Boat In Black Sea

Nov 29th, 2008 SOFIA, Bulgaria -- A well-preserved ancient wooden dugout canoe has been discovered at the bottom of the Black Sea, scientists said Saturday.

The vessel was discovered by fishermen trailing nets along the sea bottom some 15 miles off the coast, said Dimitar Nedkov, head of the Archaeological Museum in the port city of Sozopol.

"The dugout is 2.6 meters (8.5 feet) long and 70 centimeters (27.5 inches) wide, and it is made most probably of oak," Nedkov told The Associated Press.

Bulgarian explorers have found four ancient vessels in remarkably good condition in the Black Sea, whose oxygen-depleted deep water preserves wrecks without the worm damage and deterioration that normally affects wooden vessels.

"Nowhere else can you find similar dugouts, as well as any kind of wooden vessels over 300 years old, because water rots the wood away," said Bozhidar Dimitrov, head of the National Museum of History. "In the Black Sea, however, there is dissolved hydrogen sulfide below a certain depth which preserves all organic materials."

Mat Master Manuel -- Have His Followers Gone Too Far?

It all started on the Cuban Coast in 1957. Manuel Jose Ramone went for an early morning mat surf, and two of his schoolmates on the beach couldn't contain their enthusiasm...

Eventually, the following started by those two little friends grew to six!

As they matured into adulthood, more serious matters consumed their thoughts. "The Sacred Six," as they were known, began to dress is white robes, as a sign of Manuel's purity of spirit...

The "Cult Of Manuel" spread across the sea and onto the shores of the United States. It stretched as far west as the Playboy Mansion in Beverly Hills...

(Photo: Jarrett Adult Entertainment)

Hef and his inflatable buddies started to stage "Floating Bunny" swimming races...

World leaders would kiss up to anyone for a chance to touch Manuel!

A-List Hollywood celebs abandoned their own personal cult responsibilities to join in with the Manuel worshipers...

Nasa astronauts, madly in love with Manuel, schemed to smuggle him on board the Space Shuttle in a tiny inflatable biosphere...

Even Tom Wegener's blank supplier abandoned his delivery run up the Gold Coast and joined the Manuel craze! :-)

B.B. King's chauffeur, an affable chap named Eric...

...took to the streets and started tagging his hero's name all across Londontown!

But what of Manuel himself? How did he cope with the surrealistic pressure of becoming a full blown genius/cult hero? Some say he turned to smoke, drink, and public debauchery with friends. This photograph is a point of great controversy. Is it the real Mat Master Manuel, caught in a moment of weakness? Or is it a viscious, photoshopped attack generated by a twin-fanged media devil?

Only time will tell!

From Tom T...

Here's me taking off in my "trike," or motorized hang-glider.

Hi Paul,

I hope you're having a good Thanksgiving. Now that you're talking seat-of-the-pants aircraft and mat surfing, I have some comments on that!

Like on a hang glider (and a mat!) change of direction is controlled by the pilot shifting his weight. Climbing is accomplished by pushing on the engine accelerator pedal. Flying one of these things is a lot like mat surfing, except, unlike riding an ocean wave, you can't see the bumps and chop in the air you are flying through. You respond entirely by feel.

The control bar is attached rigidly to the wing, so all wing movement caused by thermals or other turbulence is transferred directly to your hands. Steering a trike is just like grabbing the front corners of a mat and subtly steering it across a wave face. Turning a well designed trike wing is mostly just thinking about which way you want to go. It takes very little effort to shift your weight under the wing, and start a turn.

I started flying to replace surfing in my life, and not long after I quit flying I started mat surfing. Only the vehicle has changed, it seems to me.

Tom

Three Things To Be Thankful For Today...

"Mike" from Hamilton, Ontario...

"Captain Beefheart" from Lancaster, California...
...and Youtube for bringing them together!

Have a great holiday weekend, if you're in The States! Have a great normal weekend if you're not!

(More of Mike here...and here. More Captain B. here and here and here.)

Off Topic ... So Sue Me!

I stumbled across these shots, and have no idea what aircraft this is. But I've always felt that mat riding was seat-of-the-pants surfing ... and this is seat-of-the-pants flying if there ever was such a thing!

Update: Plane is a de Havilland Hummingbird! Info here ...

When Dolphnis Take Up Golf...

...then maybe I'll get interested in it too! :-)

http://surfermag.com/features/onlineexclusives/kelly-slater-loves-golf-interview/

Sea and Land... and Real Estate?

Man-made structures are a common occurence where the land meets the sea...
Particularly in east coast beach communities, houses are built precariously close to the ocean.


Sometimes your backyard is paradise...


...and sometimes your backyard disappears...

...and occasionally you might walk out the back door and think you've died and gone to Puerto Escondido. It's just a shame 99% of the oceanfront homeowners on the Outer Banks wouldn't have a clue what to do with the waves in their own backyard.

Sea and Land

Shots of empty waves are great, especially if the waves are good. But there's nothing like a shot of the surf and land together...both sculpting each other as the millennia pass.

Ancient Voices

(Not sure who took this photo. The great Clarence Maki maybe???)

I remember when I first saw this photo in the mid-60's. It seemed so right. A board with no fin. A rider with no name. And a pretty neat level of fun/performance/excitement for it's era. Or any era. The moment captured probably only lasted a moment. But it foreshadowed the aspirations surfers the world over would soon embrace.

The current interest in Alaia boards is a leaf falling from the same branch of surfing's family tree. An ancient voice directing us out of the darkness. So cool this is all coming back.

Update: Bongoman (ever vigilant, ever true reader of this forum) has forwarded this link. The rider is Val Ching, and his Paipo did in fact sport a fin! Great footage.

Update II: Now that I've had time time ruminate, I'm thinking that maybe I first saw this photo in "The Complete Book Of Surfing."

Mat Max, who's father authored the aforementioned tome, could maybe look that up...

Variable Inflation In The Natural World!

The wily porcupinefish!

"Porcupinefish are medium to large sized fish, and are found in shallow temperate and tropical seas worldwide. A few species are found much further out from shore, where they can occur in large shoals of thousands of individuals. They are generally slow swimmers.

Porcupinefish have the ability to inflate their body by swallowing water (or air) and become round like a ball. This increase in size (almost double vertically) reduces the range of potential predators to those with much bigger mouths.

A second defense mechanism is provided by the sharp spines, which radiate outwards when the fish is inflated. Some species are poisonous, having a tetrodotoxin in their skin and/or intestines. As a result porcupinefish have few predators, although adults are sometimes preyed upon by sharks and orcas. Juveniles are also preyed on by tuna and dolphins."

--From Wikipedia.

This reminds me of an old idea, which I never tried ... partially inflate a mat with water, and then add some air. The mat would be heavier and easier to duck dive. How it would ride, however, is a mystery!

Duck Diving 101 !

For all of us maladjusted aquatic wannabes ... here's how its really done! (Warning: terminally cute video content. Not intended for the criminally insane.)

Jonathan J, The Early Years...

Hey Paul,

Wow! I almost fell out of my chair when I saw those Fiat pics! In yet another bizarre parallel of mutual interests, I owned a '76 128 (4-door sedan) for almost 5 years! Man, I loved that car! (Despite the mandatory breakdowns!!!)

Me and "Citro" could be seen jamming all over CdM, Newport Beach, Costa Mesa during the early 80's. It had a bright yellow paint job so, the Italian word for lemon seemed appropriate! It caught on fire in front of my mom's house once. By the time I ran back to it with a can of flour, it was totally engulfed in flames...ciao baby!

I dug around and attached the only pic I could find of my beloved Fiat ... just one with me, looking for the ladies, circa '84!

Here's a neat old clip! Remember that commercial with Remy Julienne, Europe's most famous stunt driver? I dug this as a kid!

Jonathan

(And here's another neat clip ... featuring JJ himself. This dude rocks! What a Renaissance man! PG)

Fiat Fantasies

How fun that PG brought up our mutual Fiat fixation. I'd forgotten about those good times. The last of the eight cheap and cheerful Fiats I owned was a '74 X1/9, which had the same engine and major parts as a 128. I had similar delusions of grandeur with that $400 car. At least it came with mags:

The Reality

The Dream

Had I won the lottery, the above trasformation would have occured. As it was, I thrashed the poor thing half to death, and ended up giving it away to a fellow hitch-hiker. The X1/9 was ideal for matting dates because there were only two seats, it was a red sports car, and there was insufficient space for bringing along even a shortboard! Someday I'll get another Fiat...

An Almost Interesting Story!

Reality went one way...

...while the dream went another!

One of the odd coincidences about my friendship with Mat Max was the fact that when we hooked up in Ventura back in the 80's, it turned out that we were both obsessed with Fiat 128's.

When you consider how few people drove those cars, and almost nobody actually liked them...it was pretty funny. It turns out we both harbored delusions that some day we would win the lottery, turn our humble Eye-Talian tins cans into rally cars, and jet off the Europe to take on The Continent's creme de la creme on their own turf. (Next stop, an F1 ride.) Max, in fact, went so far as to collect aluminum cans off the beach in front of his house, then bought lottery tickets with the recycling money. There was so much karma flowing in his direction, I thought, how could he fail??? But somehow, he did. At least the beach was clean!

The coolest thing about having a fellow 128 enthusiast who also surfed was that, once or twice a year, we would spot each other coming the other way on the Coast Highway and start waving a half mile before we passed.

During our "128 Era," Max would conveniently forget to re-register his car with the California Department of Motor Vehicles. To circumvent any issues with the authorities, he'd peel off the old stickers on the rear licence plate until he got down to the same color sticker as the current year. To my knowledge, he never got booked for driving an unlicensed vehicle. (He can confirm or dispute this claim in the comments section.) I played it straight and did the whole DMV deal every year. Boy, do I feel like a fool in retrospect.

I had three Fiat 128's over a 6 or 7 year span. They made great mat surfari vehicles. Super stingy on gas, with plenty of room in the boot for a wetsuit, fins and a stack of mats. And I never bothered the lock the car when I left it to go in the water. Who was going to steal it? Everyone knew they were guaranteed to break down at least once a month.

I never found out how Max broke his addiction to 128's. My last one was hit by an "impaired" driver at 2 AM while parked on PCH in Malibu. Totalled. By then (1990?) the little Fiats were getting harder for me to justify driving. I was pushing 40, and wanted a bit more reliability. I got $400 from the drunk's insurance company. Add another zero, and I might have been happy.

Gloria and I lost contact with Max for a couple of years in the mid-90s. He was off mountain biking in Europe or something. One day, Gloria was driving home from work through Beverly Hills. Stopped at a light, she glanced over at the sidewalk and there was a guy in a t-shirt, boardshorts and 99 cent flip flops hitchhiking. There are over 3 million people in LA County, but only one who radiated enough confidence to be hitching on Rodeo Drive while rocking bottom end surf gear. Without even confirming that it was indeed Max, she picked him up.

It's a Dog's Life...

PG,

Good surf on the Banks today. Freezing cold though. I was in boardshorts in early October, and today my hands went numb and i was cold in a hooded 6/4. I surfed for 3 hours in the morning, went to the dentist for a bit of oral surgery, and had another long session after I got out of the chair.

Waves had great texture and shape, good speed lines, makeable barrel sections. I'm getting more control over 3rd gear, partially by letting a lot of air out of the Fatty, and by lessening my pressure on the outside rail.

The afternoon session I surfed the Nags Head Pier with a small local crowd. It's an a-frame bowl with a short, pitching left into the pier and a longer right, but the right peeters out after 30 yards in a deep trench and reforms into the inside peeler. No one on a surfboard could make the "Huntington Hop" thru the trench to the hollow shore break lines. I ended up making this section on nearly all of my waves, legs up, letting the Fatty hover across the fishin' hole.

Here's the days pictures from Hatteras...as shot by Matt Lusk.

Jamie M.

Couch Surfing?

The perfect hot mat date makeout spot.

Jeff C. (revisited)

The photo of Jeff C. a few posts back bears comment. Flopped so he's going "right," see how his "left" fin is in the same position as the lower shot of GG, and how little spray is moving outward from his inside rail. The wave he's riding isn't half as good as the wave George is on, but he can still leave a clean, efficient track across it.

Share Your Tips For Scoring On That First Mat Date!

(Photo: Jarrett Adult Entertainment)

Insiders know mat riding's dirty little secret ... nothing turns a rueful, frat boy geek into a suave chick magnet faster than buying a new surf mat and heading down to the shore!

But what's next? How does our transitional geek-to-stud close the deal?

Let's hear from the experts ... you, the mat blog reading public! Throw the stray lovers out of your swinging bachelor or bachelorette pad, fire up the laptop, and start sharing your tips in the comments section! (And let's keep it light-hearted, clean and humorous, 'K?)

From Jeff C.

Photos: Frederick Holmshaw

Hey Paul,

I'm amazed to see a question that I asked you this morning answered on the surfmatters site... with photos too! (See below.) Thanks a lot.

I'm forwarding a few photos to you that a friend secretly took when I was out screwin' around. Actually at the time he took them he was just someone who was wondering what is that thing and why? He has since become a friend and has had a few fun waves on the mat too. I bet he'll be hooked soon. I send the pics not because they're that great or because my technique is anywhere near what it could be, but rather to give thanks for the good times so far. I actually got a bug in my teeth on a wave yesterday.

Jeff