The week that was….. – Featured Blog

Grant Beck started his week off with a bang – nailing a lekker shot of Full Stop barreling. Big respect cos water was ice cold early in the week – not ideal for swimming about in. Frigid would be a good description. John measured it at Denville’s with his pool thermometer and it hovered between 14 – 15C. Frigging cold for PE! Dunno how the CT guys handle it?

Not a helluva lot happening surf wise during the week, but plenty of action down at the beachfront. Was the Armed Forces week and the ou’s took over King’s Beach. Cannons boomed, jets screamed, choppers swarmed. Lekker!

​Had a few days sitting out in the water watching the airshow – best place to see it from. And stopped you getting bored cos there were no waves anyway. Issi Abrahams was minding his own business out in the Hummies line-up on Wednesday when the ou’s fired the cannon from just next to the Moth Hut above Hummies. Reckon his wettie needed a clean after the sesh!

You can check out the gallery of all the shots from the SANDF week here.

As usual there were a few options if you drove west, with JBay and Seals getting a few lil waves coming through. Water was gnarly temp though as well. Keeping sessions short n sharp.

Dudes found a monster sharks tooth washed up on a beach in North Carolina recently. At 20 inches the theory is that the megalodon that spat it out musta been about 60m long. Yah well no fine…

Fin plugs are the sorts of things no-one pays must attention to – although you should. Kak plugs means they’ll rip out real easy if you knock your fin. The trend these days is to go towards the all-in-one double units instead of the individual plugs, as they tend to be far more secure.

One of the new kids on the block are Gearbox Surf‘s fin systems, designed by Robin Mair – who used to shape in Jbay back in the day but now lives in Hawaii. The customised one’s below are topped with abalone shell (what us Saffa’s know as perlemoen). Pretty neat!

Surfboards turn up in all the weirdest places. Mark Currin was staying over in Kokstad recently – and spotted this classic vintage Dennis Elllis board that was about 20 years old. Cos you never know when the surf’s up in Kokstad – gotto be prepared….

If you’re keen to have a bash at making your own surfboard, the haul ass down to Seals for the hollow wooden surfboard course run by Burnett Wood Surfboards between 28 March and 2 April 2016. You can choose from shapes ranging from fish, eggs, single fins, mini-malibus and longboards. Participants can sign up for the full six-day course where they start right at the beginning with a pile of planks, or can sign up for a three-day course where part of their board is done for them. All the deets here.

Plenty of lekker pics of the pier around at the moment, but cool to see some from different angles, like Dirk Moggee’s shot of booger Fernando Tallie trying to work out if it’d be worth getting up early for a dawnie.

Some waves at least showed up on Sunday, and there were a few little runners around. Bit more size if you headed further west, and even Bruce’s had a OK one despite the southerly. At least the week ahead shows some respite from the annhoudend east, with a few offshore days and maybe the odd lil wave to get wet on. Still a while to go til winter…..

The army, navy and airforce pulled into town for the week and set up camp at King’s Beach. Yah, they did screw up the traffic a bit, but worth the hassle factor. Pretty neat to sit out in the line-up and have the Silver Arrows pulling off their acrobatics above you, or jet fighters screaming past with their sonic booms, and swarms of choppers hovering overhead. Or if you happened to be surfing Hummies, then having cannons shot off over your heads!

​Here’s a collection of shots from the week.