Hello everyone, and especially the SurfHive Community! It's Jasper, the musical-surfer dad from Cape Town in South Africa.
Those of you who follow me will know that I set myself a New Year's Resolution to surf a new spot every month of 2023. Well, I have been able to do it every month so far, and I have been staying in a lovely coastal village in the Garden Route part of South Africa this last week...
I checked the swell forecast and saw that there was going to be an unusual little peak in the swell (considering it was summer), and that the wind was going to be a soft South-Westerly first thing in the morning. This would be perfect for me to try the world-famous "Supertubes" in Jeffreys Bay for the first time! (I have surfed "Point" further down the Jeffreys Bay point before, but this is a much mellower version of perfection, both in terms of the wave and the competitiveness of the people surfing it...)
I actually landed up waking up at 3am so that I could arrive in Jeffreys Bay as the sun rose at 5am! How is that for dedication? I'm glad I did though, because it wasn't long after that before the competitive crowds came to enjoy the freak beautiful morning of good waves, knowing that by 7am the wind was going to slowly start blowing more and more onshore and mess the waves up!
An absolutely stunning morning - I paddled up from the bottom of Supers, and managed to time it that my hair was still dry as I watched the sets go past on my way up!
There were already about 5 people in the water at 5am!
The wave is absolute quality - long and very fast!
However, it is not hard for a wave this perfect and predictable to get crowded out by the relatively low number of people who had turned up by 6am... as there is not much variation in where people should wait to get lucky... this surfer did land up dropping in on me...
I think this radical air was punted by a pro surfer - Joshe Faulkner.
Several sections get hollow enough for good surfers to get barreled!
Lot's of action to watch during the long paddle back up after a long, fast ride!
Some other poor fool gets dropped-in on!
Based on the power of the waves in Cape Town, as well as how fast and good Supers is, I was expecting to get worked when I needed to duck-dive this wave - to my surprise it was actually quite easy to do!
A pretty radical lip-hitting manouvre...
I really like this sequence on a set wave!
So! The year 2023 is nearly over and I have honoured my commitment - the New Year's Resolution to surf a new wave every month of the year!
Am I proud of myself? Yes!
Am I doing it again in 2024? No! I think I will take a different approach and try and improve my surfing technique in 2024!
Perhaps I will also do a summary post to re-cap all of 2023's New Waves - not all of them were World Class like Supertubes, but there were definitely some others I will be going back to!