Hello everyone, and especially the SurfHive Community! It's Jasper, the musical-surfer dad from Cape Town in South Africa.
I am a mediocre surfer, so at the beginning of the year I made a challenging New Year's Resolution where I want to surf or bodyboard a wave I've never tried before every month of 2023. I've been able to pull it off in January, February, March, April and May, although February, April and May were all close calls where I got desperate in the last few days of the month!
This was turning out to be the case for June as well. Luckily, it was my birthday on Wednesday 28 June, and I decided to treat myself to a day off work!
To my great surprise and joy, Wednesday offered up a day of medium swell with good 14-15s period, blue skies and very gentle N winds. This winter has been incredibly harsh, windy and rainy in Cape Town so far... It's already raining again as I write this! Hahaha!
So... where was I going to find a new wave in conditions like that? I have been speaking to friends of mine that are actually good surfers. I was asking them about a famous big wave break in Cape Town, and the fact that I was certain that I have seen some people surf it at a mortal size.
They both told me that it is a very heavy wave when surfed at it's full potential (double to triple overhead or more), but that it could be surfed smaller with an easier take-off spot on the inside. I decided to go have a look.
It looked glassy. Nobody else was on it or even in the carpark. There were some surfers on the nearby beach. I slowly convinced myself that it was empty because it was only about head high, and most of the hardcore people who surf this place wouldn't bother unless it was much bigger, and I made the decision to suit up and start the quite long paddle to the kelpy reefs far beyond the beach break.
I was nervous as I paddled out. The name of this spot has always put fear into me just from the reputation of the size and heaviness that it often achieves as one of Cape Town's most consistent and scary waves when big!
A big sense of relief as I surf my first wave - my New Year's Resolution had been achieved for June 2023 and can now roll over into July! I can now relax!
I tried to imagine this wave coming at me at twice the size (4 times the volume of water?) or even significantly bigger. I would have been very scared and would have taken serious beatings with some serious underwater time! It will probably be a lot of work to tackle this surf spot the way it should be tackled - and probably a big wave gun surfboard that is bigger than my biggest 7'0 semi-gun!
One last wave before a long slow paddle back to shore...
So, a happy, sunny, windless day, and I was brave enough to tackle a spot with a feared reputation all by myself (even if significantly smaller than most people bother with - hahaha!). Maybe I did grow up a little, and got a tiny bit braver, on my birthday! Hahaha! Where will I find my new spot of July?
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