Hello everyone, and especially the SurfHive Community! It's Jasper, the musical-surfer dad from Cape Town in South Africa.
Winter has begun in Cape Town now... The first snow has fallen on mountains just inland, and we feel the iciness when the wind blows! Sometimes the seawater feels warmer than the air (especially on the False Bay side of the Peninsula), and the worst part is getting out the water into the windy air above! Nevertheless, we must surf, even if it means a bottle of cheap sherry or whiskey in the car to help with the thaw along with the car heater blasting!
Sedgwick's Old Brown Sherry, or "OB's", has kept many a surfer, hiker and camper warm in the Cape winter... Our clothes and houses are NOT designed for cold weather so we do what we must! Hahaha!
I have made a challenging New Year's Resolution where I want to surf or bodyboard a wave I've never tried before every month this year. I've been able to pull it off in January, February, March and April, although February and April were close calls!
After being sick for the beginning of the month, I finally got to searching last weekend... and failed! I landed up surfing somewhere I've been fairly often.
I was determined to get it right this weekend! The forecast started out with NW winds and a big enough swell to get into False Bay... I thought there would be something new worth trying in the sheltered parts of False Bay... but the swell was not as big as I thought, and the tide was a bit too low for the one mad place I've been thinking about.
So my first mission this weekend was looking like another fail! I resolved that Sunday might be better, and I would drive North out of town if I had to... let's just go surf the beginner beach with all the crowds - the conditions looked great there...
As the beginner beach rolled into view, out of the corner of my eye I saw two surfers surfing near a reef I have surfed before... (In this post - @jasperdick/surfing-shallow-reef-keep-a)
I turned the car around to have a look. Yes I was right, the tide was too low for the right-hander reef, but these guys were in the "wrong place" going left!
I have since had a look on Google Earth and it looks like it's actually a completely separate piece of reef, about 100m West of the "known" spot... and I never knew this place existed. The paddle out and paddle in looked totally gnarly over some rocks, but the wave itself looked quite surfable!
I paddled out to join the two surfers and found my #newwave of May 2023. I discovered that the surfers were the same two kids who were surfing March's new wave when I found that one! (This post - @jasperdick/surfing-discovering-march-s-new)
That's two times they've helped me keep my New Year's Resolution! The other months I haven't even been in town! They must be the False Bay princes of finding novelty waves! I should start paying them money!
The sand on this tiny beach doesn't even reach the water - had to hobble out over the rocks...
The waves were short but quite fun!
Got to start paying these kids to find novelty spots for the rest of the months of 2023?
My last wave in, still up and riding and trying to avoid rocks and get as close to shore as possible to make getting to land as simple as possible!
And then today (Sunday), the pressure was off! It was the kind of beautiful Autumn day I keep harping on about when the sky is blue but not too hot, and the wind was barely as whisper. Soft winds are quite rare in Cape Town during the rest of the year.
It meant I could go to a shallow reef I've been surfing quite often lately...
The water was quite clear - you can just make out the reef in this photo
My friend Shash is still quite a beginner at surfing but improving fast. Here he is managing to make the take-off at this quite tricky spot!
A grown-ass man tries to squeeze into a toddler-sized tube! Hahaha!
So! I managed to find my #newwave of May 2023! Again I left it to the end of the month and made it by the skin of my teeth. Some of these new waves have been pretty small novelties, but with winter swells on the way, perhaps that trend is about to change! (Gulp!)
Let's see what June brings to the Cape! Thanks for checking in!
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