Hi everyone!

We hope you had a good Christmas and New Years and have had the opportunity to get into the sea for a surf or a dip. We thought we’d share a little bit about what’s been going on and is going on with Yonder currently. Get comfy, put the kettle on…this is an overdue mega-post.

First off, we went on a surf trip out of the UK in late Nov/December. When we first arrived there was swell for a few days which then dropped off, giving us time to explore away from the reefs and for the last few days a big European swell hit and we got some amazingly powerful, long period waves at some intimidating surf spots. Not one to usually spin surf yarns but one day I paddled out on a 6’7 (for big waves I should have been on a pointy 7-8ft board called a gun) and whilst hesitantly trying to establish myself in the line-up, I looked around and saw another girl out there. I realised it was famous big wave surfer Justine Dupont on a gun with a crew of big wave surfers like Greg Long and filmers in the water. Seeing Justine Dupont out there was absolutely rad, she was really showing us all how it was done. Being seriously undergunned, I decided it was probably time to get in and watch the pro’s.

One of the most intimidating waves I’ve surfed at size. Straight onto boulders and no safe entry or exit.

Fifteen years into surfing, I constantly hit my own barriers and try to work out how to get past them. Surfing is forever a challenge and after five days of surfing these waves I was exhausted, bruised and aching all over but ear to ear smiles from the experiences. We took one more trip in the UK before Christmas too and scored some really fun waves on home soil.

When it all lines up, the UK is a special place to be a surfer.

We came back for our Pop-up shop over the Christmas period and had a busy couple of weeks with that and Christmas with family. We wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone who came in the shop to support us, we really appreciate it. The atmosphere in the shop over the festive period was lovely.

I’ve been trying desperately to put on as many lessons as I can (with daylight, tides, wind etc) since January started. I know so many of you are keen to get in the water and I really want to facilitate that as much as possible before the next chapter, which I will get to in a minute…

It’s cold and dark, most surf schools are seasonal, their doors have been firmly shut for a couple of months and will re-open in early Spring. You Yonder girls are tougher than that and I want to get as many people in the water developing skills and confidence as possible but generally, conditions are pretty hostile and we need to re-charge and score some waves of our own before we start another busy year of camps, clubs and lessons.

Do keep an eye on the WhatsApp broadcast as there will be lessons popping up whenever possible from now until the end of January.

Baja after 15,000 Miles and 10 months on the road.

Many of you might know that Tom and I rode dirt bikes from Chile to California once upon a time. We took a year to do it, rented out our flat, sold a lot of possessions and lived cheap, camping most of the way up through South and Central America. We always swore we’d revisit some of the places we fell in love with and we would do it as a family. In February we are heading back to California to re-trace our steps south of the border into the Baja Peninsula of Mexico.

Baja is a 1200 mile long, thin peninsula south of San Diego with the Pacific Ocean to the West and the Sea of Cortez to the East. It’s largely a hostile, arid desert with remote waves littering coast, some of which are easier to access than others. The water’s cold, the roads are bad, the fuel is scarce but Baja is synonymous with the spirit of true adventure and has some incredible right hand point breaks.

We are going to work on a short film to document the journey and the process of adventure surf travel as a family that we can’t wait to share with you all in the Spring and when signal allows, we will try to offload some of the adventure onto Instagram when we can.

We will be back mid March and straight on with lessons, clubs, camps and some other exciting events and some longboard clinics.

This was our camp set-up on the south east cape of Baja the first time around. We never slept in the tent though, it was too hot. We slept under the stars with the local wild dogs for company.

That about covers our Yonder update - to summarise, lessons are happening until the end of January and picking up again Mid-March. Thanks for sticking with us, that was a long email.

Hope to see some of you in the water before we leave and a few of you on some lessons too!

Love Sally, Tom and Billy.

January Update