Hello everybody on Hive and especially the SurfHive community! It's Jasper the surfing-musician Dad from Cape Town in South Africa!
So on Thursday we had a day of pumping SE winds that blew a lot of windswell into the usually sheltered False Bay. Unfortunately a SE wind is onshore there and everything was a ragged mess.
But what are the odds? On Friday, the wind switched to a wintery NW, indicating that we would probably have rain today (Saturday morning it is raining as I type...). Using my incredible powers of deduction, I figured that there would be a window where the offshore NW wind had cleaned up the False Bay windswell waves created the day before... before the swell completely faded away. That window would be linking up with spring high tide just after the work day ended... giving us a two hour window before dark.
Even more unusual... a normal SW groundswell can make Muizenberg big enough, but some of our favourite reefs in False Bay are hidden even more around a corner and are often a bit smaller. This SE windswell angle would suit them far better... maybe everywhere in False Bay would be good??!! What are the odds that all these things would line up for us?
Disobeying my own thread of 3 days ago (@jasperdick/surfing-surfing-alone-friends-are) where I teased that surfer friends are usually more trouble than they are worth, I actually did tell my friends to be aware of the anomaly and to try meet me after work. Two of them (Spike and Max) actually arrived... on time!
The world class reef was crowded. Even our usual reef that we surf often with one or two other people was crowded with about 15 people. Luckily, the swell and conditions were so good, that there was a third option available only about a few hundred metres from the carpark we all met at and quickly discussed our options... and the three people that were there suddenly came in... tired and satisfied. We would have it all to ourselves! Well, Max's friend Alex came to make it a crowd of four! Hahaha!
So: SE wind swell created the day before, a NW wind cleaned it up all day, spring high tide just after work ended, and a fickle wave working well enough for us to be stoked about it! What are the odds?
Spike is usually land-locked in a small inland town and had just arrived in Cape Town... what a warm welcome!
Somewhere in the middle of this sequence of photos where I carve a turn, and then look at the spray landing, you should see some colourful beach huts to give anyone from Cape Town a good clue where we were!
Max on his backhand was able to pull off this late take-off...
Getting started...
Look carefully and you will see Max gathering his board as he's just finished riding the wave before...
There are those colourful beach huts again... now for an extra clue... If you look very carefully, you will see that the remainder of Max's wave is washing over the wall of a tidal pool - now anyone from Cape Town should know where we are! It's a favourite pool for young families to come and swim - including ourselves: My 20 month daughter Madison gets to experience the tidal pool and beach, and then there's a lovely playground at the local restaurant!
The conditions usually don't allow us to get this far in, and the wave doesn't usually have this speedy inside section!
Pulling off to see that Spike managed to get the third wave of the set - what a natural wave-pool! Hahaha!
As per my brilliant prediction - we really did have to race to False Bay after work on Friday evening. By the following morning the swell had dissipated... here's a webcam shot of the beginner beach Muizenberg this morning. All of the reefs would be even smaller than this now! Hahaha!
Image sourced from:
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