I am stoked to be back in Tamarindo. I took my kids to school today and then picked them up afterwards. We hung out at the pool outside of our apartment and then caught up on some sponge bob square pants videos. It was really cool. I missed my boys after being gone the last five days in Orlando Florida at the Surf Expo.

I ran down to the surf camp to my office so I could record the surf report this evening: radio2-surf-report-january-16 The reality is that the waves are quite small in Tamarindo. Hopefully waking up tomorrow morning and going surfing down south with Phil will bring some bigger surf. The wind is definitely howling offshore hard these days, and there are waves out there if you know where to look for them.

I was stoked to spend the last few days traveling with Robert August, we literally hung out the entire time in an airport, on a plane, in a hotel room, or at the show. Robert is a true friend and a mentor, I am very lucky to have the opportunity to hang out and work with him on so many different levels. I get to live behind the scenes so to speak, talking story and enjoying the life that comes along with working in the surfing world. Tomorrow we finish the new 5’9 we’re shaping, as well as start glassing a few boards here on the beach.

I guess people really like our beer. We’re selling everything we’re brewing, its hard to keep up. Volcano Brewing Company is completely blowing up. Its one of those “I knew it would happen” feelings mixed with a “holy shit its actually happening” kind of feeling. It was a big risk, but we knew the reward was huge. The adrenaline that comes with not knowing what might happen but going for it anyways feels really good, especially now that I realize that this thing really has legs and can go huge.

I’ve got my mind on the Caribbean side right now, the waves have been going off over there, and I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to bring the sailboat from Bocas del Toro through the Panama Canal and up the Pacific coast to Tamarindo. Since the Zori sank I have a free mooring in Tamarindo and I’m missing those overnighters up at Ollie’s. The boat is 30 feet and well equipped. If you are a captain and interested in spending the next few months bringing this boat from Bocas del Toro down to the San Blas Islands, then through the canal, then exploring the islands off of the NW Pacific coast of Panama, then bringing the boat to Tamarindo by the end of summer 2012, surfing the whole way, please let me know. I’d love to have you do it, and to be able to meet up with you throughout the trip. Email me at joe AT witchsrocksurfcamp DOT com

BY THE WAY: the skunk smell has all but disappeared, the snake is working out very well.

Lately I’ve been sitting on my deck, sipping a pale ale or staring at the waves or the stars or the chicks playing volleyball or whatever else I happen to be doing at the time and then, out of nowhere, a skunk runs over my feet. A family of skunks apparently moved into my house without permission. This is no bueno.

The main problem here is that I hate skunks, especially how they smell when they spray their skunkiness, and I’m worried that one of these days that little critter is going to blast me with it’s skank. Or worse, start cruising into the restaurant downstairs and spray someone down there. Living on the beach surrounded by the zona verde means that we get all kinds of wildlife wandering into the surf camp compound, and thats totally cool. Snakes, raccoons, parrots, monkeys, armadillos, even crocodiles. But fuck those skunks!

So, about a week ago, we started  a search for a boa constrictor that could live in the floorboards and be on skunk patrol. In a country filled with snakes, its amazing how difficult it is to actually find one when you want one. But we can all thank Berny Chavarria, the care tender of our finca in Alemania, for coming through for us and finding a boa on the farm. It isn’t huge, but it will grow bigger as it eats more and more. Another example of how mother nature is fantastic.

Right now, as I write this blog, I can hear a skunk in the floorboards of my office, letting out little skunk squeaks to his little skunk friends. I’m willing to bet he’s saying “holy shit guys, we gotta get out of here, a snake just moved into the neighborhood!”.

Maria Mendoza, Patrick McNulty, and myself, snapping a pic with our new pet Sam the snake, right before we let him go into the floorboards to do his job. Good luck Sam, I declare a skunk war!

I spent the last hour and a half watching the sun go down over Playa Tamarindo. Justin James was rocking it at El Vaquero, delivering a great acoustic set to the crowd. I had a couple pale ales, sat back, relaxed, and watched the first week of 2012 wind down to a close. It was an epic sunset. Very happy to be where I’m at, surrounded by great family and friends…

Hello world. As you probably heard by now, Witch’s Rock recently launched a new project: a microbrewery, eco lodge, and brewpub overlooking Lake Arenal, with the awesome name Volcano Brewing Company. I wrote a blog about it on the WRSC website, you can check it out here: http://witchsrocksurfcamp.com/blog/volcano-brewing-company-now-open-a-message-from-joe-walsh

Brewing beer has been something I have wanted to get into for many years. I love beer. I love how it tastes and how it makes me feel. I used to drink a lot more of it than I do now, which is a good thing considering I’d rather be surfing multiple hours each day and I don’t want to die of a pancreatic attack! But beer will never get old, and everyone including myself just loves a good beer. My dad used to own a bar in San Diego called the Red Wing. His uncle used to own a bar in SD as well (but he lost it on a bet in a pool game). As of 2012 I now run 3 bars in Costa Rica. I guess you could say that the bar business is in my blood. The desire to make a beer besides the standard Imperial and Pilsen was the main motivating factor for opening a microbrewery. When I tore my MCL last year and was out of the water for 6 months, I finally had the time to put the pieces together and help make it happen.

The first beer we started brewing was a pale ale, which we named Witch’s Rock Pale Ale. It is Costa Rica’s first pale ale, and it tastes AWESOME. We have it on draft at Volcano Brewing Company and Eat @ Joe’s. Within a week or so we’ll also have the pale ale on tap at El Vaquero. Witch’s Rock Pale Ale is a hoppy pale ale that suits the beach climate very well. It is a surfy pale ale if there was one.

VBC is brewing a wheat beer, though we haven’t figured out what we want to call it yet. We sell a ton of it, so I know that people are liking it. It is currently available at Volcano Brewing Company and will be available at Eat @ Joe’s within a week or so. Once we have a name for it I’ll let you know, and if you have any ideas please feel free to let me know.

Our third and most recent beer is Gatito Malo, a dark ale that is currently fermenting and should be ready to drink within another day or two. Here’s the artwork that we’ve got thus far, but I think we’re going to redesign the cat to be more of a “Cheshire Cat on LSD” kindof cat.

If you’re looking to get out of Tamarindo for a little getaway, or if you’re in Costa Rica on vacation and you want to check out the Arenal area, I highly suggest checking our Volcano Brewing Company. You can stay in our hotel with a great view of the lake, eat some awesome farm-to-table food direct from our farm, and drink some fine beer, all while hanging out with really good people. I’ll be writing more blogs about Volcano Brewing Company over the next couple of weeks, in the meantime check out our website www.volcanobrewingcompany.com

I’m pretty amped about this new 5’9 quad that RA is shaping for me. Its sitting in the shaping room, half finished, waiting for me to stop surfing long enough to stay in there with Robert and work out some final design details. We’ve decided to put a deepish channel in the tail, and to give the tail some extra rocker to help with those fin wafts. Our goals are to develop a line of surfboards that are ideal for the local conditions: Tamarindo, Avellanas, Playa Grande, Witch’s Rock, Ollie’s Point.

The board we are designing is inspired by a 5’9 Von Sol by Sean Mattison. The Von Sol has been super sick for me and became one of my all-time favorite boards. When Sean gave me that board, it opened my eyes up to board and fin design and allowed for me to see surfing in a new light. The combination of design elements Sean brings with his approach to the sport truly allow for grace and fluidity on the wave, without sacrificing the progressive snaps and hacks that replay in one’s head again and again. I have a lot to be thankful to Sean for, as his style of surfboard building pushed me to begin shaping surfboards on my own, when has led me down a rabbit hole I’ll never crawl out of. You should seriously consider talking to Sean and adding a Von Sol board to your quiver if you have the spare loot: www.vonsol.com

Life is great. Today I took my boys to my hideaway reef. They boogie boarded the shorebreak and wore goggles, looking for fish in the super clear water. Waves were decent, not epic. Then I got back to Tamarindo and the surf was going off. As it was the case, we had a Witch’s Rock manager meeting that lasted three hours from 12-3. It was a great meeting, lots of good stuff, but I’m not going to talk about that. Just rest assured that things are kicking ass and we have a lot to be stoked about. 2012 is going to be unreal. But I’m thinking about the second session I scored out front after the meeting, from 330pm to sunset. Right tubes, long screaming waves, tons of bottom turn – top turn hacks. So sick. Thats all I can think about for the last two hours. Even though I got dropped in on a couple of times, and the crowd was heavy, it doesn’t matter. The waves were insane. I’m grinning. Life is great. Time to go home and chill with the wife and boys.

Blazing hot sun and fierce wind howling offshore all day long today. The swell had been dropping the last couple of days, so Phil, the good doctor Andrew Illig, and myself all headed south to my favorite little reef hidden away in a tiny beautiful little cove that has no name. The waves there were a bit bigger and pretty fun, you just needed to remain mindful of the rocks. The water was super clear and turtles were swimming everywhere around us. Nice rights peeling across a rocky shelf, rippable. As the tide dropped it got a little sketchy, with sections of reef coming closer and closer to the surface. We surfed for over three hours until the tide was too low, but even still there were waves coming through. I am totally fried, but of course very stoked!

Today was day #2 of looking for a boa constrictor. I took Holly, Otis, Happy, Maria, Pira, and Eddie, all in my Dodge, all of us cruising along the back road from Portegolpe to Hatillo, for over two hours hoping that one would cross the road, or that we could find one near the roots of the mango trees or down by one of the creeks. But no such luck. My boys sure seemed to enjoy sitting in the bed of the truck, though, and I’m sure they’ll remember the evening as the day daddy took them snake hunting. And I enjoyed it too, except that my truck is making an awful sound from the brakes or the suspension somewhere, I think… just a reminder that the roads down here are awful. I was also reminded that, when you’re deep in Ticoville, the liquor stores rarely sell Bamboos but they always seem to have Rock Ice.

Just now I got off of the phone with Evan Luck, the DJ from 99.5 Radio 2. I always laugh when I talk to Evan, because I’m talking to the same voice that has brought us so many classic 80s hits I’ve heard on the radio for so many years now… Evan is a good guy, and he wants to host a monthly show live from Witch’s Rock Surf Camp starting next month. There are still a lot of details to work out, but they are getting worked out. Hopefully soon I’ll have something concrete to announce, in the meantime I’m still doing the WRSC surf reports every Monday/Wednesday/Friday on Radio 2 at about 6:50pm.

So its a new year. 2011 was pretty significant, now that I think about it. Otis and Happy are no longer babies. I started making surfboards with Robert August. My company opened a microbrewery in Lake Arenal. I spent six months not surfing because I tore my MCL. Lots of other shit happened, both good and bad, but in the end all good because it helped form a better me. And as I reflect on it all, I want to make sure that in the future I take the time to write down the micro details. So, in 2012 I’m going to do my best to keep this blog going strong by writing a blog every single day.

I woke up with a New Year’s hangover and found myself yelling at Otis for stealing my pillow and hitting me in the head with it while I was still not quite awake (not the best way to start the new year), but I got over it and tried my best to recalibrate the day in the ocean, healing things with some micro rights in the rivermouth on the longboard. The wind was howling hard offshore, sand was flying everywhere. The wind got too strong mid-day. I took Otis and Happy surfing after the tide dropped out, they both impress me with their comfort level in the surf. They inspire me to continue my passionate love affair with the ocean, as I see myself in the things they do. Life is very good when your life is spent on the beach surrounded by those you love.

Besides surfing, I took a drive with Pira south of town looking for a boa constrictor. People look at you funny when you ask them if they know where you can find a boa, like you’re crazy or maybe they heard you wrong. But then we tell them that we need a snake to help remove any rodents or skunks or other animals that find their way off from the beach. Its mother nature’s way of taking care of things. Over the years we always had a boa cruising around in the rafters above the bar, but I took the last one out when Happy was an infant because I was worried that the snake was too big and Happy was too small (and we had a lot of holes in the floor). But now Happy is big, and I’ve got a family of skunks that are living under the deck outside of my office, and thats not OK. A snake should take care of things, as soon as I can find one.  If you’re reading this and you live nearby and you have a decent sized boa that needs a good home, let me know!

It had been a long time since I’d ridden a longboard much. When I was younger I rode a longboard all of the time, but in recent years I progressed to a shorter board and forgotten the log. At times I would ride the pink Walden 9’0, sitting in the rental cage, repaired 101 times, with a glassed on (at an angle) fin, somehow riding better than most any other board in the WRSC quiver… it wasn’t until RA made me a new 9’0 longboard three weeks ago that my surfing world evolved to include the longboard as a go-to board in my own quiver.

Let me pontificate about this board. It has a scooped out nose, super wide and full, fully able to keep me hanging toes over the nose for what seems like forever. Although the board is quite thick, with full rails until they sharpen along the tail, it forces me to take an old-school approach to my surfing. Long, drawn out bottom turns. Sweeping cutbacks from the shoulder into the foam and back out again. Stability while puling into the lucky tube section. I appreciate all of that. I have experienced rides in recent days that are etched in my memory, making me smile. This is what surfing is all about.

No matter how busy life becomes, no matter what giant obstacles stand in the way, a day I can share waves with my family is a day well spent.  Today, even though I was so incredibly overwhelmed with trying to upgrade to our new admin office, staff the brewery, expand the WRSC classroom, prepare for high season, taxes, the holidays, etc, etc, even still, I took a break to push little Happy into some waves on his surfboard and went swimming with Otis out past where we couldn’t touch, just treading water and talking about life and being so incredibly content doing just that. That short break to spend some quality time with my family, doing what we love, made all of the stress and everything else (almost) disappear.