Gotto love drones. They give you a whole new perspective on things - like Full Stop. The appropriately named rock in the middle of the Seals line-up. Anyone who's surfed Seals has a story to tell about Full Stop. The drone used to cover the Billabong Junior Series this weekend got some great shots of the notorious punctuation mark.

Plenty of comps happening this week - not only were the lighties going bos at Seals, the loggers were doing their thing at the Cobbles Classic held in perfect log-sized surf at Cape Recife. Congrats to Craig Cuff and Shannon Bolotin are the King and Queen of Cobbles for 2015.

Things coming along with the pier after a bit of an hiatus in the renovations. New railings are going up. Here's hoping the muppets can resist the temptation to scratch their names into the balustrades. Good to see there's some sand building up on the northern side again - about time the break comes back to life. Used to be such a good lil wave before the big storm of 2008 just chowed all the sand away.

Can't wait to get back home so I can to check out the reno's to the Boardroom - cos from what I've seen of the pics it looks flipping awesome. Big screen's in place so you can pull in to watch the rugger. Gonna be so rad to finally have an official NMB Surfing clubhouse and a spot to put up some of PE's surf history.

The first ever Adaptive Surfing World Champs is happening in La Jolla, California. The Saffa's have a team, headed up by Antony Smyth (below left) - Pete & Jono Coffey's uncle. So inspiring to see what these guys can do despite their physical limitations.

Pretty tricky keeping up to date with things back home when you floating about in the middle of the Indian Ocean, with limited internet, and even more limited enthusiasm to be spending any time near a computer. Here's a coupla shots from the week that was. Will have to suffice for the weekly wrap.

Lack of holiday snaps attributable to brilliant packing effort which saw me leave behind chargers for the GoPro and Garmin Virb, and card reader for my camera. So can only load pics when back in PE and at the moment can only share shots from my phone, eish.

Surf was really decent the first 4-5 days, then hit a nasty patch of wind and weather. It is the tropics after all. Things been better the past coupla days and looking pretty fun for the next week. Hopefully hook up with Brad Beck and Hannah Bing for a wave at their local mid-week.

Did manage a very patriotic National Braai Day effort on a tropical island - missioned the grid and boerie all the way from SA. Local is lekker!

Lil bumps here and there - and then no idea what happened after Wednesday cos bailed for the Maldives! Updates might be a bit inconsistent cos internet signal sketchy out here in the islands. 

Some ou's take their spring cleaning seriously! Dennis Ellis & Mervyn Goddard are doing some massive renovations to The Boardroom SA. Includes new clubroom for NMBS, with lounge, chill area, bar, TV and braai. How kiff is that!? YOu gonna be able to pull in and watch the WSL live with the bru's and some brewski's.
http://www.millerslocal.co.za/millerslocal…/boardroom-revamp

Sean Thompson wrote a cool lil short story for the Zag comp Write to Surf recently. It was about watching a lightie get buzzed by some dolphins at Cape Recife - and you can check out the sequence of shots here. 
http://www.zigzag.co.za/features/write-to-surf/grief-becomes-relief-at-recife-by-sean-thompson/

Reckon the lil guy mighta had to wash his suit afterwards - cos don't think he knew they were friendly fins at first. Can anyone idea the grom and the rescue ballie? Sean would love to get in touch with them to share the pics.

The beasterly easterly doesn't make for the best surf conditions, but it does wash up all sorts of interesting bits and pieces on the shoreline. Ian Judd found this slop on the beach at Millers on Monday. Reckon the bluebottle is saying he thinks it's maybe one size too big? 

The Seals locals have been showing how tough they are by starting to trunk it before summer has properly arrived. Ballies are tough nuts. 

All sorts of weather this week, some of it pretty - like the kiff Sards sunset captured by Dean....but then some of it gnarly. Big lightening storm on Monday night that was lekker to look at - but kak if it hit your house! SF locals the Hill's had their possie whacked and lost a bit of the roof, and home burnt down in the canals. Hectic!

Why is there a braai grid on a surf blog? Because it had to get packed in the boardbag to make the trip to the Maldives so that we can braai on National Braai day. Not sure what the xray peeps gonna make of it, but just hoping it doesn't moer all sorts of interesting dings into my board! Has been wrapped in cardboard n bubble wrap so hope that helps! Am not happy about a braai grid in with my board, but got outvoted and had to stick it in. Maybe all will be forgiven when am chowing my chop under the palm tree...

All sorts of interesting transport spotted in JBay. Take your horse to the coffee shop? Why not! Reckon you could make could make good use of the 4 legged transport to explore the sandbar and reef set-up potential along the JBay to SF stretch? Or if you really don't mind fins, the miles of peaks towards Gamtoos.

Vintage surf cabbies rule. Most peeps are familiar with Dean's classic Toyota bakkie, but there're a few other beauts around. Gary Cooper has fired up his oldie, and Ants Keogh isn't to be outdone with his Kombi convertible. 

Always seems like a good idea at the time to get up close and personal with the sea-life. But then sometimes it gets a bit too close! Like these dudes kayaking up to check out the whale in Cali, and then nearly having one land on their hands!

Thys and Stevo made a great board for my mate Christie whilst he was over in JBay for a holiday. He lives in the Ments and gets to surf tropical perfection every day, but has been on a mission to surf Supers since watching Curren rip it apart in an old VHS surf movie. So as a 40th bday pressie to himself he came over last month. Unfortunately coincided with the horrid flat spell we had, but at least he scored this insane board to remind him of his African adventure.

Lekker weather for International Coastal Clean-Up day, and plenty of rubbish picked up along our coastline - great effort everyone. Just remember that EVERY day is clean up day, so always pick up at least one piece of trash on your way back up the beach after a surf.

Cobbles Classic coming up this weekend, so make sure to pull past the beach to check out some vintage logging (and possibly the odd vintage wettie as well!) The Makoy Food Truck gonna be there so some lekker chow as well. Bring the kids, dogs, granny and whatever else you need for a kiff day on the beach.

Dennis decided to take this spring-cleaning thing pretty seriously. Mervyn Goddard came on board, and together him, Deno and the crew are working day and night to bring you a new, improved Boardroom.

The Boardroom's serious makeover should be completed by 1 November, and will be the new home/clubhouse of Nelson Mandela Bay Surfing. The revamp that started at the end of August will now include a coffee bar with club Bar facilities, DSTV, live streaming of WSL events, braai facilities and a lounge and chill area with a pool table.

How flipping epic is that!

In addition to this, there will be a full retail shop on site, which will stock wetsuits, deckgrips, fins, leashes, wax , boardbags and all CORE surf hardware. There will also be a cool new clothing apparel range in store, called “Dead Reckoning”. You can suss them out on www.deadreckoning.co.za
 
Dennis Ellis will also be launching a new Retro and longboard label -  “GROOVEY” sticks. Single fin retros as well as long boards and logs. Material inlays, wings, channels and pinstripes will be the look making a comeback. Look out for it at the cobbles classic.
 
Deno would like to give a shout out to Merv, Andre Venter, Pieter van Ryn ,Barry Knaters, Brommer and DE surfboards Staff for the late nights working and the help so far.

He might be bald, he might be the wrong side of 40, but he can still do stuff that blows your mind. Like what the hang was that!?? No hands air's are so last year - how's about no feet air's instead! Of course the judges didn't know what to make of it and gave him a 4.17, the consensus being it was just sheer fluke he managed to get back on his board. I reckon you should score luck like that.

In other WSL news Freddy P said cheers to the whole pro circus in an emphatic manner. Blasted a 10, beat Medina and Bede, proned in to shore before the heat ended (which he won, easily) and announced his retirement. Boom. Thanks for playing!

Coupla lekker days during the week - waves in the bay, and out west. Luckily the swell decided to ignore the road sign at Seals! Water's warmed up plenty in the bay and even the odd ou trying to get away with a sesh in boardies. Maybe still a bit on the brave side to be trying to trunk it.

Still be vigilant around the car parks, some dodgy dudes been spotted lurking about again. Ken finally got paid out by the insurance company - but only after a month's dogged persistence. His surflock had been broken and the key from inside it used to open his car and steal stuff. Interesting to note that they wouldn't give him an answer as to whether they woulda paid for the car had that been stolen. So all those using surf locks - best you get it from your insurance company in writing that you'll be covered if using one. 

The renovations at the Boardroom are coming along lekker, hopefully should be done and dusted in about 2 weeks time. However if it's Deno's 2 weeks, make it 4 weeks real-time then! Surfboard shapers weeks are different from normal weeks - anyone waiting for their new stick will know that it's often "ready next week!" Merv reckons the place is looking awesome, and the guys are making a small clubhouse area that'll house a big screen TV so you can pull in and watch the surfing live. Kiff idea guys!

Some local crew went on a Ment's mission recently, together with Kody McGregor. Scored some epic surf, and of course some great shots. Kody snapped Donovan Zoetmulder on this schweet lil left which is on the back of the latest Zigzag, for the RVCA ad.

Pack your trash peeps. Zag's running a cool comp at the moment in conjunction with Tuffy - basically you go pick up trash at your local beach, and take a pic and send it to Zag - best pic of the month wins a Firewire stick. Not too shabby. http://www.zigzag.co.za/category/news/environment/clean-your-beach/

Comp or not you should always make the effort to pick up a few bits of rubbish every time you walk back to your car after a surf. Takes zero effort to bend down, grab some trash and pop it in the bin. It's your beach - make the effort to look after it. No excuses.

If you're out St Francis way then get involved with the beach cleans organised for International Coastal Clean-up day. Plenty of spots to collect your bags from. Pretty sure something will be organised for PE's beaches too, so will find out and put a note up re times/places.

Looking for a high performance stick? Etienne Potgieter is de-cluttering his garage and is putting some of his sleds up for sale. So if you weigh between 60 and 70kg and are wanting a seri-ass board, then get hold of ET. He has a bunch of boards from 5'6's to 6'3's, for various conditions. Note they all have 4 way fin systems. All boards R1500 each. Tune ET on [email protected]

The Kings Beach Lifesaving jetski was stolen on Thursday night - ou's smashed the door of the clubhouse to get in and skyfed the ski. Thanks to some vigilant work by the community the ski was found at a house in Bethelsdorp. Boggers. But nice to have a happy ending.

Local is lekker - team effort by Josh Enslin and Grant "Cea-leggs" Clegg to score the cover of the latest Boardtalk. Grant regularly patrols the line-up at Supers with his GoPro and gets some rad shots. Obviously has managed to tune out the Jaws theme music playing in his head!

Nice to see ou's helping bro's. Dylan Lightfoot fell foul to a local bug whilst in Morroco for the QS, and was man down. Fellow Jbay local Remi Peterson made the mission to brave a coupla hours in the chaotic Moroccan traffic to the airport, had to scrummage around searching for Dyls bags in the chaos there, and there re-negotiate the mad traffic a few hours back. Saffa's stick together like superglue bru!

Remi's good karma seemed to do the trick cos the guys been scoring pumping waves there.

Hannah Bing might be a qualified chopper pilot, but she opted for another aerial route to check the surf on this occasion. Lil paraglider action to float up and check the waves at the "office" aka Maldives. Brad and Hannah are coming to the end of their year of surf guiding in the Maldives, and deciding to stick with the "M's" and heading to Mexico next. Ah, the life!!

I really enjoy surf art, and JBay's Stephen van der Watt has been doing some really rad pieces lately. Stevo the kneelo does all the board art for Thys at Rebel Surfboards, but in between painting sticks he paints pictures as well. Check out his Instagram page for more of his super cool pieces. Definitely gonna buy one soon.
https://instagram.com/stevokneelo/

By Gary Giles (ex Bluewater Bay local & now living in Tasmania)

Ever stuff your take-off up because your booties stick to your board like flies to the proverbial dung heap??? Yes, booties do not slide!!! Unfortunately for those of us that live in colder climates they are a necessary evil in winter.

But stress not – help is at hand thanks to the miracle material that budgie smugglers are made from. Yes – Lycra!! By gluing Lycra to the bottom of your booties gives them a grip similar to bare feet. No more stuck like mud to your board - just the right amount of slide to get your feet where you want 'em.

Here’s how it’s done:

MATERIALS NEEDED

1)   Lycra – either cut up your budgie smugglers or your missus’ one piece speedo (she doesn’t need it in winter), or alternatively go to your local haberdashery shop and buy a metre of Lycra which means you can get a fashionable colour or enough to do 50 booties for about 10 bucks.
2)   Booties (of course) – an old pair is better just in case you stuff up.
3)   Contact adhesive
4)   Baking paper – the adhesive doesn’t stick to it and avoids a moerse mess
5)   Scissors
6)   Tape
7)   Marker pen
8)   Small Throwaway Paintbrush

INSTRUCTIONS 

1)    Place the Lycra under a bootie and mark the outline with the marker pen. Mark it a bit bigger so you can bring it up the sides a bit for a stronger job.

4) Now spread the contact adhesive with the paintbrush nice and thick on both the Lycra and the bottom of the bootie. Put two coats on and remember to let them dry inbetween coats as dry contact adhesive only sticks to dry contact adhesive. Two things to make sure you do here:

One – coat the edge of the Lycra where there is no tape nice and hard so that it actually sticks to the baking paper otherwise you will get little micro curls in the Lycra and !!!!– Yup you guessed it – back to Step 1). It should stay nice and flat once you take the tape off like the picture below.

Two – make sure you put a bit of contact adhesive up the side of the bootie for that excess Lycra you marked out earlier on. Rather go too far than too little, otherwise you will end up with an unglued lip that will either have to be trimmed off or will flap around which is where things will fail after a while as the Lycra will start peeling off here if it’s not snugly glued.

And that’s about it. Obviously give it a couple of days to really get the bond going before using them.

As you can see in the pictures I used a pair of external split toe booties and just went straight over the split with the Lycra which probably isn’t ideal, but couldn’t be stuffed cutting the Lycra and working it up between the split as it would be a messy job, but you can do it if you’re keen.

Finally I also embraced modern technology with my choice of Lycra pattern and haven’t had my feet chomped off yet!!!. Just waiting for the striped wettie now!!!

The first week of Spring bought a few lil waves, and a helluva lot of rain. Spring sprung a leak for sure. The Southern Cape area got the brunt of the rain - with the Wilderness ou's wondering if all the sand washing out a certain river mouth might make for some interesting banks for those prepared to walk. The Plett guys were hoping that their superbank might return but the river didn't break through.

Closer to home the Mpofu dam, on the Kromme River, overflowed. Which means the Kromme might finally get rid of all the sand that's been clogging it....which in turn might make for a few nice banks at the mouth. As long as you don't mind sharing your waves with the (finned) locals.

Quite a few nutters pitched for the Spring Day Swim at Hobie. Thanks to the rain they got wet even before they hit the water. So much sand built up on the beach there at the moment thanks to all that got washed down from Avo's and Millers over the past 2 months. Pier showing a few signs of coming back to life in the right conditions. Pity we can't lift a few slats from between the pylons and let some it through to the other side. Was such a good wave about 6 to 7 years ago.

Pretty hectic story from the JBay Animal Rescue Sanctuary during the week. A guy found a plastic packet on the beach that had been tied tight....and had squealing little puppies inside. Whilst he was checking it out a fisherman arrived and said they were his live bait for fishing! The guy who found them took them to the Animal Sanctuary and they've all been homed. So please keep an eye out if you're walking along the beach at JBay. Live bait is one thing, but there ain't no place for puppy bait.

White boards are boring, let's face it. Cuan McGregor from PA took the Boardstix to his stick and came up with a rad colourful cubist design. Coupla quick tricks to make sure your board art stays as fresh as the day you paint it. Make sure your board it clean (melt off the wax, wipe it with turps, and then with acetone), give it a light sand so the colour can grip nicely (board must look dull not shiny), do your magic, and then spray an acrylic enamel clear coat over your design to make sure it stays put.

Surfers come up with some weird sh*t at times. Like this thing called a Seal Blade. Scottish dude is looking to raise over 500 000 quid to get it off the ground. Supposedly increases your paddling power by 35%. So move over paddling gloves - here comes the paddling forearm. You gotto admit it's all together a bit bloody odd.

Remember Filipe Toledo's non-event of a heat at Chopes, where he didn't even catch a wave. Knives were out for the ou, with everyone having a ball Brazzo bashing. Turns out that it might not just have been fear that stopped the youngster from launching himself over the ledge, rumour is that he'd crunched his elbow the day before and was sporting 5 stitches in it - making it pretty eina to try push up into standing. Still - if you gonna paddle out might as well have a go.

The best lighties in the country will be tearing apart the walls of Lower Point soon, with the Billabong SA Junior Champs starting at the end of the month. Hopefully the kids score some cooking surf, and hopefully our local lighties will kick butt on home turf.

Many of the local lighties are on a European mission at the moment - hitting France, Spain and Portugal for the QS comps. Getting some good placings here and there, so should be a good warm-up for our premier junior event in a few weeks time.

Maintenance to the Pier is progressing, albeit slowly. Railing are going up at last, so should be ready for summer hopefully. Wonder if maintenance includes doing a clean of all the mussels along the slats between the pillars - crazy sharp lil critters you have to make your way over to get from Hobie to the surf.

Not too shabby to get sponno'd by Merc. Garret McNamara, big wave hellman, is gonna be riding a tow board designed by the Merc peeps this (European) winter. And if it's flat? No worries, hook up the Merc with a tow rope and drive it along the beach. Too easy. 

Garrett mentions that Merc's 3 pointed star logo stands for land, air and sea. Didn't know that. So he has car covered (land), board covered (sea) - so guess they'll have to give him a jet so he can tick the air box!?

Not sure if El Nino is pissing the sharks off, but they really seem to be a lot more quizzical than normal this year. Another incident in Aus - this time a ballie on a surf ski got munched. Ou reckons was like getting driven in to by a jetski at full speed. Got his leg chomped to the bone and a solid snack on his ankle.

These ou's were there right at the start of the surf scene in PE...and are still in the water here today. How many can you identify? Two are kinda easy, the other 3 should get your thinking caps on.