Hello everybody at Surf Hive! My name is Jasper and I'm writing to you from Cape Town, South Africa. I am quite new to HIVE, and only joined in about April 2022... I have posted about surfing about 15 times before, but usually on the Sports Talk Community (where people seem to appreciate the odd break from posts just regurgitating the latest soccer scores - haha)! It is great to find that there is a community dedicated to bodyboarding and surfing and other similar sports, and I hope it grows as more ocean-lovers join HIVE!
I am a new father to a baby daughter, who is now 15 months old and just learning to walk. This means that I don't have a lot of free time to surf... and usually when I do, I take a GoPro camera along so I can enjoy the moments again after they happened, and share some pictures on HIVE, because Cape Town is a beautiful place to surf.
If you look at the Cape Town peninsula on the map, you will see that it is nearly an island, and it is always offshore somewhere, which is great! It also means that there are places that are exposed to the open ocean on small days, and other places that are sheltered on massive days. This is great - it means that when I can get a chance to surf between work, family and music, then I should hopefully be able to surf somewhere on the peninsula!
The downsides to Cape Town? It can get very windy, especially in summer when we become a bit more of a world class kitesurfing destination instead of a world class surfing destination, it gets a bit unpleasant even at the offshore places.
Also the water is cold. The more consistent side facing the open Atlantic ocean has water that can get down to about 10-12 deg C. The more sheltered False Bay is a bit warmer - it never gets very big like some of the famous big wave spots on the exposed side, but for some reason it can hold onto a small swell for a day or two after the exposed side goes completely flat - which does happen on the odd rare occasion in summer...
And it happened last weekend, when I finally had a couple of hours to myself. False Bay has one of the best beaches for learning to surf in the world, called Muizenberg, but I didn't feel like surfing waist high waves with hundreds of other people... I thought I would try to find a place to be alone.
A little bit further I saw a novelty wave breaking at a similar size close to some shallow rocks. For the first time, it looked doable, especially as I've now added a soft-top surfboard to my quiver/collection.
I got to test out the blue board in my collection, which is something I'd like to try with my baby daughter soon! Haha! (I call it Maddy's board after my daughter!)
Surfing above shallow rocks with mussels on them
Maybe about time to end the ride?
Enjoying the rock pool life on the way back to the car...
Oh well! I hope to get photos on a bigger, better, more adventurous day and share them with you soon! Goodbye until next time from Cape Town, South Africa!
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