Hello everyone, and especially the SurfHive Community! It's Jasper, the musical-surfer dad from Cape Town in South Africa.
I hate summer holidays! The beaches are crowded and windy, and usually the swell is pretty flat by Cape Town standards! Luckily, yesterday, just before I had to go back to work, there was a morning of medium swell with soft winds and a pushing tide...
I landed up visiting a left-breaking spot in Cape Town that has three distinct sections depending on how far out to sea on the point you go!
THE OUTER
The outside is actually a respected and feared big wave spot. It literally doesn't break smaller than overhead, and on this day it was pretty inconsistent out the back with only big sets really breaking...
Nevertheless I paddled out to the outside - perhaps the lighthouse will help South Africans to guess where I am?
People were catching set waves on semi-guns or even guns...
Or even with paddleskis!
Here's a sequence of me catching a wave... You can see people waiting at the middle "Ledge" section in front of me.
Looking back... over my shoulder...
This man nearly lost his balance as he dropped down the wave, but managed to regain his composure and keep on riding...
A sequence of me catching a wide-breaking wave, and then tripping up in a thick patch of kelp!
LEDGE
I swapped my red board for a short fat soft-top to enjoy the inside sections... The "Ledge" is in the middle, and as the name suggests, breaks on a shallow slab closer to shore...
Kneeboarder in action!
The Ledge was looking good, but crowded as a result!
I heard a high-pitched "Go Dad!" from behind me (where Ledge turns to "Inners") as this man got a cover up!
INNERS
At high tide, the swell drops down to knee-waist high, but is able to carry on going for over 100m into the shallow bay of smooth rocks... let me show you the crowd of kids and longboarders who enjoy this mellowest section as I catch a long wave from Ledge and through Inners...
One for me?
Great, the kid on the inside wasn't able to catch it...
And I'm off... time to dodge the first pack of kids as Ledge becomes Inners
Coming up to the next pack of people, and gesturing to these two to split apart so I could surf between them, thankfully they obliged - Hahaha!
A longboarder fails at dropping in as the wave gets smaller and smaller as I keep going down the Inners section
Coming to an end... you can see how shallow it is now... On a bigger day, you can go even further!
SO
That's the spot with three distinct surf-spots! An outside big wave spot that needs to be over-head to break at all and can get terrifyingly big and powerful quite often, a slabby "ledge" in the middle that was offering some good manouvre sections and even the odd cover-up, and a long, small pointbreak on the inside at high tide where kids and longboarders can enjoy long, soft waves in the shallows!
Which section would you like best?
THE END