Hello everyone on HIVE and especially the Sports Talk Social Community! My name is Jasper and I’m writing to you from Cape Town, South Africa! One of my topics that I tend to post about a lot on HIVE is one of my favourite sports, surfing!
Recently I wrote a little post about small wave surfing (@jasperdick/surfing-pov-pictures-two-ways), and shared photos from a surf session where I was able to get to the beach after work… and just before the sun went down and the conditions were too dark to see properly!
Somebody asked me if I didn’t think it was safer/better to surf in the middle of the day… and it got me to thinking that truthfully, surfers often choose to surf at dawn or dusk, rather than the middle of the day, and they choose to on purpose. Why? What are the pros and cons of surfing at first light, or last light?
Let’s start with the cons:
CONS
Risk of Sharks
Many articles will say that sharks are more likely to be actively hunting at dawn or dusk, and that the reduced visibility will make it more likely that they mistake a surfer for a seal or something tasty. In other words, the risk of a shark attack should theoretically be greater at dawn or dusk.
That makes sense on a theoretical level, but I don’t know if there’s any statistical data to back that up? If I think about almost every shark attack I have ever heard about over the years, most of them happened in bright daylight? There are shark spotters at certain beaches in Cape Town, and they definitely spot sharks, and blow the siren for us to come in, during the middle of the day. To be fair, they usually aren’t on duty at dawn or dusk so that’s not a fair comparison.
My other point is that, unless I’m surfing a few particular places in South Africa, like Port St Johns or near the Robberg Peninsula in Plettenberg Bay, the statistical chance of a shark attack is so small that it really isn’t worth worrying about. I have a lot higher statistical chance of dying in a car crash on my way to and from the beach in the first place!
Risk of Crime?
South Africa has a high crime rate compared to most places in the world. We have an especially high rate of violent crime – I’m not just talking about pickpocketing here. With that being the case, surely it would be safer to park at the beach to go surfing in the middle of the day? Perhaps there may even be a car guard present?
Again, I can’t argue with that logic.
On the other hand, some of our criminals are damn brazen. My former boss (and good friend) was killed in a botched hijacking after getting out of the surf about 3 years ago. It is a topic I still want to write about on another HIVE community soon. As far as I remember, this happened in the middle of the day.
PROS
So, understanding that there should be a slightly higher risk of something like a shark attack or crime happening, why do we do it? Why do we surf at dawn (the “dawnie”) or at dusk instead of during the day?
Work
Well, here’s an obvious reason, perhaps we can’t wait for the weekend and choose to find a gap to surf on a workday. This is much harder to do, without feeling guilty, in the middle of the day. It’s much better to get your work done, and then treat yourself to a relaxing, stress-relieving surf as a reward.
Sunburn
South Africa has some serious UV going on! That’s great for my job where I look for potential Solar PV (and wind) developments (@jasperdick/south-africa-s-energy-crisis), but unfortunately, I have pale skin, and even a tinge of ginger in my facial hair, and tend to burn quite easily. You get some sun creams that do better in water than others, but typically none seem to last quite long enough! Better to surf before or after the UV risk is at its worst!
Crowds
Only select surfers tend to surf early or late. These tend to be the ones that are a bit like me, who revel in surfing with just a few friends or even entirely alone, rather than hassling an entire crowd over a limited resource of waves. There are only about 3 waves in a good set, and the sets often only come once every few minutes. If you’re surfing in a crowd, and obeying the unwritten rules of not dropping in on other people’s waves, then you tend to catch less waves then you intended and land up feeling a bit frustrated – which is not why I surf! I surf to feel good!
Wind
This is actually the main reason out of all of them, and is especially true for most of the rest of South Africa, where the coastline does not have an interesting peninsula facing all sorts of wind directions like the Cape Town peninsula does.
Along the rest of South Africa’s more uniform coastline, the wind tends to be a lot softer in the mornings and evenings, and blows hardest during the middle of the day.
In fact, besides the predominant wind direction – you tend to get two localised breezes happening along the shoreline…
The land breeze – this happens when the sea is warmer than the land, usually during the night, but also while it’s dawn or dusk. When this happens, the warmer air rises off the sea and is replaced by air coming off the land… this creates a localised offshore wind which holds up the face of the oncoming waves and makes them beautifully clean! Worth waking up early for!
The opposite happens in the middle of the hot day, and is called a sea breeze! By now the land is much hotter than the sea, and so hot air rises off the land to be replaced by air coming off the sea. This creates a localised onshore wind which flattens waves and makes them choppy and messy… EWW!
A clean offshore wave on the left, and a choppy onshore mess on the right…
So, in Cape Town – I can often get away with surfing once the sun is fully up, usually on the weekend – but in many other places in the country and around the world, don’t be surprised to find out that surfers are already hitting the water while you’re still in bed! Ha, and people think we are lazy and unmotivated! Actually, we’re just motivated about surfing the best waves the day has to offer – often first light or last!
THE END