Hello everybody on Hive and especially the SurfHive community! It's Jasper the surfing-musician Dad from Cape Town in South Africa!
For those of you who follow my SurfHive adventures, you may recall that I have made a New Year's Resolution to surf (or bodyboard) a new wave every month, to challenge myself and to make sure I don't post 796 posts of the same wave and scenery!
Here are the New Waves of January and February:
January: @jasperdick/surfing-new-year-new-surf
February: @jasperdick/surfing-discovering-february-s-brand
Well, yesterday I realised I had been working hard and missing out... and that March was half-way done! I had a free afternoon, and even though the swell forecast was pretty small - False Bay would be clean and offshore, and there was one spot that I wanted to check. I had heard rumours that it might be surfable but had never actually seen anyone try it!
I passed Muizenberg (one of the best beginner beaches in the world) with 700 people buzzing around the backline like flies... and to my great surprise saw two kids sitting in the water at the spot I wasn't even sure was a spot!
Well, it's hardly surprising nobody surfs here! Hahaha! Even in the right conditions it looks like one submerged rockslab causes the wave to break for 3 seconds before it smashes into the dry rocky shore!
I asked the kids if this novelty wave was the name I had heard rumours about - they said they called it a different name - so now there's a mystery - is this the same wave or is there another obscure wave for me to discover around here?
The peak starting to feel that single rock on the bottom...
Mysto-tiny-novelty #newwave of March broke to the left and to the right! If I was a little braver I could have pulled off this one about 2m later before it really smashed into dry rock? Hahaha! I must be honest, on my blue soft-top surfboard, the take-offs actually felt like it was the easiest reef in False Bay?
It was a short paddle over to a spot I have tried a few times before - unfortunately the swell was a bit too small for the ride to get around some rocks between the tidal pool wall and the beach... so I had to paddle in! Ew... work! Hahaha!
I felt sorry for my normal surfboard, and noticed that a world-class reef a five minute drive down the road was surprisingly uncrowded - I assume everybody was surfed out after the barrel-fest it had served up to some of its best locals over Thursday and Friday while I battled the flu... and worked! Even at yesterday's tiny size you could still see clues of how good this wave does get when its bigger (and scary and crowded around a super-confined localised take-off zone!) As chance would have it, the only other two people out yesterday were the same two kids that were at the mystery spot an hour earlier! I hope they didn't think the older guy following them around was too creepy! Hahaha!
Sure, it wasn't huge or anything like the few days before, but it was still a blessing to get it glassy and uncrowded. This is a place I should slowly tackle more - maybe on a bodyboard at low tide too!
Another glassy one - I had to be patient to get ones that ran for more than a section, but this one definitely did!
...which gave me a chance to practice my patented horrendous backhand butt-wiggle manouvre...
So! A worthwhile adventure where I got to discover something new (and keep my New Year's Resolution going another month!), and then surf a spot that is usually too crowded for me to bother! I definitely made the best of a small day!
THE END