If you would like to be included in the BBG group emails please let me know by emailing This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Keep it short and simple and let me know if you would like to be added to the database. We don't email loads as we are mindful not to clutter your in-box, however if you would like to be informed of upcoming trips away or of other events or news items that I'd like to bring to your attention, then pop your name down and you'll receive an e-mail every so often.

Keeping in touch with the Brighton Board Girls

Just keep an eye here on the website and also on our Facebook group. Occassionally you'll find us in your in-box, too!

AND YOU THOUGHT "GROUNDSWELL FRIDAY" WAS CROWDED AND BUSY???

We're busy updating the website here at BBG Towers, working on developing a special page for members only to upload their own surf photos, as well as developing a forum that will allow paid-up members to chat with each other. All very exciting. It's taking a while but it will indeed happen......

In the meantime, just a reminder of some dates for your BBG diary for the rest of the year:

First meeting for the new year!!

This will be Thursday Jan 8th though this will not be hosted by me (Louise) as I will still be away....in Oz, (Sorry!!!) 

Any volunteers to host that meeting, please shoot me an email.

February 12th 2009: Happy 1st Birthday BBG's!

The second meeting of 2009, Feb 12th, will see us celebrating one year anniversary. Wow, time flies! The celebrations will be taking place at The Brunswick pub and will be in the form of a massive pub quiz with all questions related to the subject of: Surf .  There will be great prizes up for grabs. I'll let you know more over the next few weeks,but start thinking about your quiz-teams, start brushing up on your surf knowledge and don't forget to hold that date!

March 12th 2009,  The BBBG Evening: YES, that's 3 B's!

The Balancing Brighton Board Girls Evening 

Our third meeting, March 12th, will be a fun night as the guys from Indoboard are coming down to pay us a visit. This will take place at  either Ocean Sports or down at The Brunswick with Kevin Hubble from IndoEurope braving an evening with us. After his initial dun demo, he'll have us all on the Indoboards, balancing our little hearts out! The INDO BOARD balance trainer is simple, stable and user friendly, so don't panic - it's going to be a lot of fun. After a few basic instructions from Kevin, the learning curve is a mere 10 to 15 minutes for most. ....well, that's what they say, anyway. We'll soon see! Ultimately it's an important tool for all surfers to be using in order to build up and retain strong abs and maximum leg strength. A stable core and strong legs are absolutely key for our surfing skills as we all know that standing up on the board and remaining perched on that board aren't the easiest of things to do when you're just a learner surfer.......

As Ocean Sports are our local retailer for the Indoboard, March 12th is the night for you to buy. They'll be able to offer us BBG's a special price on the night PLUS....there'll be a competition with a grand prize for the best mover and improver.

Get indo-rockin!

April 2009: We are heading off to Tenby, Wales on a BBG trip  at the beginning of Wales and we are also hoping to go away for our first ever BBG trip abroad, I am currently trying to find the best deal. 

OTHER, approx late Jan or early Feb'09: An evening at the Stormriders Beach Cafe in Shoreham, with BYO booze, fresh home-cooked food, surf movies and....a Surf Bring 'n Buy Sale. More info to come..... Meantime, don't forget to pop down the Beach Cafe, say "hi" to Jon and start collecting your BBG Friend points for your free coffee's.

A VERY MERRY XMAS AND A HAPPY AND HEALTHY NEW YEARS TO ALL THE LOVELY BBG'S XXX

Big thanks to Chris Thain over at Thain Leisure who recently sent us over a couple of pots of SURF GEL which not only smells like cocnut paradise-in-a-bottle, but it's also rather good at doing exactly what it says on the bottle!

BBG's Emily and Tanja were armed with the samples and they'll be giving us their feedback tonight at the December meeting. I took one for myself, too, as I suffer badly with wetsuit rash across the back of my neck where the velcro strap eats right into my skin. Ouch! Sure enough last week as I squeezed and heaved myself into a new winter wetsuit, rubbed the Surf Gel onto my neck and I enjoyed 90mins in the water without so much of a scratch. Water, swear nor wind was able to resist this gel - it full stayed on and made my surf out there so much less painful and much more enjoyable.

Basically, the way it works is, it forms a smooth, lubricated barrier between your skin and the trouble spot. You just rub it on directly from the applicator so no greasy hands causing you to slip off your board! And it doubles up as a lip-salve too - tropical coconut lips in the water. Tasty!

Ocean Sports aren't stocking it at the moment so if you want to buy some I suggest you head to the online retail store at www.A1Surf.com and stock up. As soon as Ocean Sports have it in, I will let you know.

FINALLY!

Am thrilled to announce that those guys down at brighton's very own Ocean Sports store are finally stocking Surf Girl magazine.

So, if you can't afford to or even don't quite fancy signing up for a year's subscription of the fab mag at http://www.orcasurf.co.uk/surfgirl, you can always pop into our favourite local surf shop and buy your own copy as and when you fancy it. Don't forget your 10% discount if you're a paid up member!!

p.s If you DO suscribe annually via Orcan publishing, you still get a 10% discount if you're a paid up BBG member. Just check the special code in the "Friends of BBG" section here on the site.

Hi there,

I'm pretty sure most of you read the article in the Argus newspaper on 24/9/08 that was plastered all over Page 7. If you didn't read it, you know where to go now!!

It's a very unfortunate article that was meant to be a positive and celebratory piece supporting and promoting the exciting Roxy / BBG event that we have got coming up this Tuesday at Ocean Sports. The aim of my meeting with the journalist and my talking to the Argus newspaper was to tell them how well the BBG's are doing, how much we've grown since they last reported on us back in February, how lucky we are to have the Roxy event being held in our honour and how pro-team riders will be descending upon Brighton turf AND how good surfing life is down here for us, specifically how supportive the guys are all being and how well everyone's getting on.

Ha!

As someone told me in their email to me today after reading the article, "Well Lou, if you dance with the devil (ie the press)..."

I guess you live and you learn.

I would like to point out that the male surfers in Shoreham have been nothing but supportive and friendly to the BBG's and I've had a very positive response to their being so many women in the water now. OK, so there were a few bad comments on Sharkbait a few months ago and they were totally unacceptable. However, this article has portrayed a lot of male surfers in a bad light and I sincerely apologise to the male surfing community for this.

There is a serious case of misreporting going on here. I guess the journo needed to make the press release a lot more juicier and cause a bit of a stir. The TRUE story is this:

I was chatting to the Argus in order to discuss and promote the Roxy night. He asked how things are going with the club and I told him all was good. He wrote a piece on the club back in Feb and asked how the male/female surfer relations were going. I said things were all good now, but mentioned, in jest, the story of when someone wrote "GO HOME" in the dirt on the side of my car and "GIRLS DON'T SURF" on the other side of the car. **(see below) I got very upset by the messages on my car, especially given that only a few days before this incident, there had been some foul messages directed specifically at me on the Sharkbait forum entitled "Nasties." The messages on my car were the icing on the cake and it really distressed me. It wasn't until later that day that a friend's boyfriend owned up to writing those messages as a practical joke. This LAST part of the story was omitted from the article as, I guess, it just doesn't make the story quite so exciting. I'm very unimpressed. The rest of the copy - I can't do anything about as the journo clearly redearched and found sharkbait.co.uk, browsed the forums and found what he needed. I have no control over that.

This sort of press DOES put us in a horribly unfriendly bad light and I'm fully aware that this article is not going to do anything to help us. More importantly, I'm fully aware of how WELL things have been going for us and what great relations we've been enjoying with the all of the local surfers, both male and female.

I hope you'll take the time to read and digest this and understand that what you read in the paper is by no means what I had imagined to have been printed. I am waiting for a retraction and an apology to be issued and printed but it's proving harder work than I had ever thought.

I hope that all of you have the common sense to realise that the media will make a story out of NO story because good news sadly doesn't sell. Forums are notoriously bad for people who simply want to cause trouble - I hope you'll ignore anything written about us on these and believe me when I tell you how truly shocked, sad and worried I am about what has been written and about what consequences this will inevitably have.

Thanks.

Louise x

** Moral of the story: always keep your car clean!!!

Set up by Louise Lawrence in February 2008, the B.B.G's is Brighton's only girls' surf club, now with over 115 fans on Facebook. In fact, we are actually the ONLY all-girls surf club in the country! So, we're pretty unique and we're totally dedicated to one special sport, one special lifestyle and one special feeling: SURF

We surf together locally, we head off on discounted surf trips in the UK and abroad as well, we head off to fun music / surf festivals, we hold fun events throughout the entire year and we have loads of amazing discounts at shops and services both locally and nationally that are all totally exclusive to BBG members. Our founding sponsors are Ocean Sports Board Riders who have supported us and believed in us all the way from Day 1 - thanks guys!!

Annual membership, including photo ID membership card, bespoke BBG rash top and exclusive BBG car sticker is £20.00