The Tripod from the Dump.

The day before leaving Raglan I was spinning out trying to find a video tripod for the trip to Tasmania.
In the end I drove up to the village dump and asked them if they had any old ones. The guy behind the counter produced a rusted, dirty old thing that had a wobbly head and cobwebs hanging off it.
The pricetag said $10, I bargained him down to $5.

Once at home I set about trying to fix the abused, rusted piece of junk using a drill, my trusty leatherman, some epoxy resin and a spirit level I achieved a decent enough pan and stuffed it in my boardbag hoping it would do the job once I reached my destination.

Fast forward two days and Eliz and I are jogging through the Eucalyptus forest at the bottom of Tasmania, trying to catch up to the rest of the guys. We were late arriving to the carpark and I had to screw in fins and wax my 6'6. The guys were amping to get out there and bolted down the trail, shouting back to us that we'd find our way.

The trail splits and forks a few times along the hour and a half hike and the only way we found our way was to follow the footprints in the mud when we came to forks in the path.

Eventually we arrived in the bay sweating, thirsty and scratched to pieces, the waves were pumping and the boys were already out there and I quickly looked for a vantage point for Eliz to film the session from before I paddled out. A ledge on a cliff face looked promising and we followed a faint goat trail up there no doubt left by another photographer in the past.

I pulled out the tripod and set up the camera lent to us by good friends Manu and Greg, and whilst I was showing Eliz how to pan on the jury rigged tripod a serious set started to stack up out the back. I hit record and watched Marti Paradisis paddle into his best ever paddle wave out there.

It was only days later whilst chatting to Marti on facebook that I said I filmed the wave and thought I nailed it. I sent him the clip and he replied saying that the other photographers there had missed it, or didn't have the right angles and could he use it.

Talk about beginners luck! Or maybe, as my dad always says "You make your own luck in life" and my fixing the decrepit tripod in a barn in Raglan was the catalyst to making this happen.

Anyway, today I got a mail from Marti saying surfline.com were keen to use the clip for a feature. I had to smile, if only they knew the chain of events that went into capturing it and the shitty tripod that was used!