Bennetts Blog - Board Bible Bali Style

Words and photos: Adam Bennetts

Good thing ASL avoided Qantas and the strikes ... otherwise all you would have seen in the ASL Board Bible would be photos of the crew sipping beers.

It's that time of year again when, the boys at ASL start putting together their annual Board Bible to give their readers a review of the most popular boards that get surfed in Australian waters. Most years, they do it down in Forster on the New South Wales Central Coast, but this year they thought they’d do something different and head over to Bali to give these boards a real test.

Seeing as I was already over here, the man leading the show, Nick Carroll, put me in charge from the Bali side of things. So I organised the boys a villa 100m from the beach at Canggu and the plan was put in motion. Timing seemed to work in ASL's favour, as I had to fly home to the Gold Coast last week to do a few things, so on my way back to Bali, I filled a coffin up with six of the test boards and off I went.  

So the board test team consisted of myself, Tai 'Buddha' Graham, (who already was in Bali), half the Wright family (Tim, Mikey and Tyler), who arrived two days later and finally, my brother Ibis Bennetts. Shield-man was on photography duties and ASL's new whiz kid, Sam, was behind the lens shooting video.

The two Board Bible families ... oh, and Buddha. Reckon he feels like the odd one out?

The swell forecast wasn't looking too good for the week we had to test, but luckily we had the Bali Buddha as our surf guide. It's funny, I've spent heaps of time here and I feel like I know a lot of the 'secret' spots, yet somehow, Buddha always seems to take us to a new spot, and this time, he saved the day for the ASL board test.

The first day we had super fun Canggu and naturally, all the 'good' boards were surfed and everyone was frothing.  This year's test seemed to have a lot more great boards than usual so everyone was stoked.

Boards at the ready for a quick-fire change. Photo: Andrew Shield.

The swell was on the decline and like I mentioned before, Buddha saved the day when he took us to the funnest little A-frame reef break. It had a short little right that bowled up on the outgoing tide and the left was a longer, wallier wave with a couple of different sections. The best thing about this spot was that there were non-stop waves and no one out, so as you can imagine the team was like a pack of grommets catching anything that moved. Without this little spot, we would have found it very difficult to give the boards a good testing as it was basically flat everywhere else.

This was the first week this whole season that we were struggling for waves, but where there is a will, there is a way, and the test team was stoked to have fun 2-3 foot waves all week.

My favourite boards that I surfed were the RMS, the DMS and the Maurice Cole. Check out ASL's Board Bible issue, hitting shelves before Christmas, as it will be full of details on all the boards surfed, along with a bunch more shots and video interviews.

Bennetts testing one of his favourites. Photo: Andrew Shield.

We finished up the test yesterday and everyone peeled out back to Oz. Now I had one last weekend to party it up before I head home for the summer next week. It's still super flat over here and has been raining a lot so I really am looking forward to getting back into the swing of things on the Goldy.

I hope you've enjoyed reading these blogs over the season. I guess its time to say: Sampai jumpa lagi!

Bennetts

If you want to catch up on the charmed life of Bennetts - all the surf, beers and babes you could imagine - check out the ASL blog page to see what else he has been up to in Bali.

Ibis and the crew's driver, Brandon, with a boot-load of boards. How did they get through testing them all?

ASL's new film guy was getting so serious with the behind-the-scenes filming that Buddha couldn't even crack a smile.