Hello everyone, and especially the SurfHive Community! It's Jasper, the musical-surfer dad from Cape Town in South Africa.
At the beginning of the year I made a New Year's Resolution to surf at least one new surf-spot every month of 2023. I have been able to find something new from January through to July.
How has August gone? Well, I have been focusing on my music gigs, performing with my friend 
Yesterday (Saturday) I was busy throughout the day, so that left today... Sunday. The problem was, I had a commitment to practice music with Claire in the morning and then other musical commitments in the evening... I had maybe 2 hours to spare around lunch-time, what could I find?
Oh, and before I could leave Claire's house, we had to quickly log online to watch my good friend Justin's daughter Lilly compete in the final of the SA Longboarding Champs in the U14 girls division! This was held at Point, which is a bit further down the long Jeffrey's Bay point from the world-famous Supertubes section, and is a bit more suited to a longboarding competition, although it was still cranking after the big winter swell from yesterday!
Lilly (in blue) did enough to come second in the U14 Girls Final, which is amazing as she hasn't been taking surfing seriously for that long - maybe a year! Her father Justin is a great surfer and coach, so he must be super proud, and looking forward to seeing how far she can go! The overall winner was actually the other surfer from Cape Town, Western Province (WP) - Emma had a brother and mother make their respective finals too! (Image courtesy of the "South African Longboard Surfing" YouTube channel)
So, off I went... Claire lives in the Northern Suburbs of Cape Town quite far from me... so this gave me a chance to explore the area.
Even further north is a lovely seaside village with this view of the iconic Table Mountain back in the city center...
This village has a quality beach-break. Most of the waves in this part of the city are easily destroyed by Cape Town's strong winds, and are more favoured by kite-surfers than by conventional surfers. This village's beach break is protected from strong winds and messed-up storm swells by thick beds of kelp (a kind of seaweed), presumably attached to reefs out the back.
Well, I had surfed the beach-break several times before, so that wouldn't count as my new wave of August 2023. Why not explore the kelp beds on the reefs out the back and try and catch a wave there? I decided to give that a try...
Well, the kelp beds were super thick! I was sure I was going to get stuck in them as soon as I turned to catch a wave, but here I go!
By sheer good luck, the wave I managed to catch first lined up perfectly with a diagonal gap between the kelp! Hahaha!
Wave 2 - I wasn't going to get that lucky twice... hahaha!
Still, I had honoured my New Year's Resolution for another month of 2023 by surfing a brand #newwave... 4 months to go. Here I am catching a wave at the understandably far more popular beach break away from all the kelp to get back to shore!
So why am I doing the New Year's Resolution? Well, I was starting to feel like there was a big chance that my HIVE posts were going to get boring with footage of the same couple of spots over and over! So it is actually because of HIVE - I'm surfing these crazy, kelpy places for YOU!
Hahaha! Until next time! Hope the waves are good wherever you are!