Table of contents for April/May 2016 (40.3) in Zigzag

Shortly after sending off the last issue to the printers – Zag’s 251st issue and my first as editor – I celebrated my 35th trip around the sun. For approximately 24 of those years, I’ve been a surfer, and in that time I’ve experienced three stages in my surfing life. The first stage involved a long learning curve. There was also plenty of begging the ballie for a lift to the beach, and a great fear of waves bigger than head high – which is about two foot for a hobbit like me. Stage 2 started when I left high school and bought my first car. It was a Ferrari-red VW bug that my father and I spent countless hours working on to get it roadworthy. But once we got…

On Saturday 30th January, Matt McGillivray finished fourth at the Burleigh Pro. A final in your first ‘real’ QS event on the road is a huge achievement for anyone, but for the snappy J-Bay regularfoot, just getting to Australia was a result. “This was my first time going to Australia or actually needing to apply for a visa,” Matt picks up the story, explaining how he’s fortunate enough to have a British passport, so all previous Euro trips were a breeze in that department. “I ended up applying for a business visa, which was a rookie mistake. I had just over two weeks until I was supposed to leave and so, although it was a little late, I was sure that it should only take a couple of days for…

Ricky stared out to sea. Lines were approaching, groomed and offshore. He relaxed and looked around. Brightly coloured birds were singing in the thick jungle vegetation nearby. He could hear the sound of monkeys screeching happily and couldn’t help thinking how lucky he was. This was the surf experience of a lifetime. Another surfer stroked effortlessly for the oncoming set wave. He dropped in neatly under the heaving lip, just before the wave exploded around him, framing him in vivid aqualine blue. Through the back of the wave, the surfer could be seen nimbly zipping down the coral reef. You prick, Ricky thought, that’s at least a #sevenpointride. But not to worry, Ricky was after a #ninepointride. A ‘wave of excellence’ that would set him apart from the boys, not…

Don’t judge a book by its cover. Port Elizabeth might not be the centre of the surfing universe, mere surfing space dust compared to its galactic superstar neighbour J-Bay. On the totempole of surf town hierarchy, PE sits at about ground level. The surf is functional, not fashionable. But the locals like it that way. It’s a blue-collar working-class surf town, and it’s what you find underneath the perceived grit that matters. PE surfing exudes a particular psychosocial underdog complex that gives it a unique spirit. What it lacks in the anonymity of its backdrop it makes up for in the personality of its people. An authentic, unpretentious little town that happens to have some fairly decent waves. The surf doesn’t come every day. Nor every week. But now and…

ONE DAY AWAY TO J-BAY Thought I’d send in a letter I wrote to my wife after going away for a day to surf cooking, uncrowded Supers with Charles Reitz. Perhaps it may help some of the other readers to get out a bit more for some stress relief. This is how it went: To my wonderful wife, I understand you are stressed sometimes. I know you deal with a lot on a day-to-day basis, and I just want to thank you for everything you do for me. Without you I don’t know how I would cope. I love you so much. We all have our worries and stresses on a daily basis, and we all have our different ways of dealing with it. So please understand that when I…

It’s a pity mermaids and mermen don’t have feet and dolphins aren’t into sneakers, because not only are our oceans polluted with plastic, toxins and other delicious flotsam – they’re also polluted by our kicks. In 1990, 60,000 shoes from a leading sportswear manufacturer were lost at sea during a hurricane and have washed up on beaches around the world since. In 2006, half a million shoes washed up on Terschelling Island in the Netherlands after a container ship lost its load. And a couple weeks ago on Blue Lagoon beach, Durban, following some heavy rains, an eclectic range of shoes were on their finest display amongst rusty deodorant-cans and debris. Some materials found in the soles of our shoes can take up to 1000 years to decompose in landfills.…

Endurance and age are not the best of friends. Been at this spot 36 years every autumn and most winters. When Terry Fitzgerald gave me his maxim back in ’79, thinking I might have a shot at a life in surfing, he said, “The key is – just outlast the bastards”. Sounded like a throwaway line at the time but it ended up having a kick as the years ticked over. Of surfers, shapers and industry players I guess I’ve seen the works; the rises, peaks, one in particular on an ongoing plateau, and the falls, just about inevitable, land or sea. Nature proves itself so infinitesimally stronger than any human in surfing if the surfer keeps going hard, and sure it’s a cliché but so beautiful, so terrible sums…

El Niño, is an oceanic phenomenon occurring in the Pacific along the coasts of northern Peru and Ecuador. “Basically in the equatorial ocean due to the easterly winds; the rotation of the earth; and the divergence of surface waters, a band of upwelling occurs. This brings cooler water to the surface in the east and piles warmer water up in the west,” explains Dr Juliet Hermes an oceanographer at the South African Environmental Observation Network (www.saeon.ac.za). “The Indian Ocean is a different matter due to the land mass at low latitudes,” says Dr Hermes, who is herself an avid surfer and is married to a Cape big wave hunter. “During El Nino the equatorial easterlies are reduced, hence upwelling is reduced. Warm water thus moves back to the east via…

Just when we thought Jaws and big wave surfing were done for the northern hemisphere winter, El Niño decided to throw yet another monster swell toward the small island chain of Hawaii. “The waves went from flat in the morning to 50 foot within a few hours,” recalls Matt of the mammoth session. “And I don’t know how big it got by dark! I’ve never seen anything like it before. Imagine paddling up the face of a 60-footer and staring down into a massive, massive barrel. Those were the kind of waves we were dodging on this day. I caught a quick ice-breaker to start the session, which was probably the biggest wave of my life until then. After that, I paddled straight over into the zone. Everyone was sitting…

Long time Zag lensman, Sacha “Spex” Specker, has been all over the news recently. Not for his usual spectacular, dreamy surfscape images, nor his hard charging – as evidenced by our cover shot, a drop-knee style bottom turn on a fibreglass sled at a heaving Cape Town wedge. Fair play, we say! Funny that the painstaking physical commitment and hard-earned technical abilities required to capture world class surf imagery, nor the sack required to charge the self-same medium gets barely a nod from the world in recognition for the endeavour, but one close encounter with a shark will make you a global hero at close to light speed. Just ask that blonde Australian oke. All the same, Sacha’s shark experience at a different Cape Town beach break is a rather…

The alarm clock buzzes, rousting me from a deep sleep and into a world of quiet darkness. It’s 6:00am and I lie there listening for the ever-present wind, but hear nothing. The gales of the past six weeks have finally abated. I take a deep breath and roll out of bed, pulling on my thermals and then my clothing as quickly as I can, trying not to let any heat escape. I eat breakfast in silence, glancing occasionally at the silhouette of a tree against the pre dawn gloom. No movement, no wind. My mind races and pulse quickens at the thought of what I will see today. “Calm down,” I tell myself, “It’s just a wave.” It’s easy to let your mind wander when you are dealing with the…

So how about this El Niño, hey? Sure, he’s a good surfer, but his manners in the line-up are appalling. Bloody foreigners. First they take all our women and now they want our waves. Oh, wait. I’m thinking of someone else. El Niño has something to do with the fluctuations in air and sea temperatures. I don’t know why it needs a fancy scientific name. Hot day, cold water. Cold day, warm water. Surfers remark on this all the time without feeling the need to explain it in complex meteorological terms. I suppose El Niño isn’t really a scientific term. It’s more of a Spanish word for ‘The Little Boy.’ Like most Spaniards, it’s not his full name. In official circles, he’s known as El Niño Southern Oscillation. His friends…