 © Heather Nel Pretty small week. A few crumbs here and there to ensure your board still got wet, but nothing to shout about. Weather still doing it's bipolar thing. Stunning to crap in about 10 minutes, and vice versa.  © Kody McGregor Thankfully the waters been really warm, so even if it's small it still seems fun cos you not freezing your pip off.  © Allan Bezuidenhout Somewhere else with warm water was cooking this week. Not known usually for it's wave size, the Maldives had some biggish one's. Pretty much a real-life wavepool. Although that new one just opened in Bristol in the UK looks damn fun - hope someone decides to build one of those in PE.  Maldives had waves... Jordy got to the finals in Portugal but got beaten in the final. However, it does mean he gets enough points to be in with a chance of the title at Pipe. Here's hoping he can pull the rabbit out the hat.  Besides the fact our waters been warm, it's also been really clear. Ideal for the spearo's who frequent the bay. This camo suited but not so camouflaged guy spotted at Humewood.  © Dirk Erasmus On the subject of fashion, check out the very cool homegrown threads available at Relic surf shop down in the valley. Pop in and grab yourself a Holmes Bros. shirt. Made by Saffa's for Saffa's.  Not many waves, but plenty of stunning skies. Check em out.  Sards sunset © Marcus Ducker  Firey skies. Can't remember who shot it, eish, old age sucks.  © Luc Hosten And one more just to really cement home the fact that we live in a beautiful corner of the world! PE sure is one schweet lil town. Just wish it had more waves! Sunsets we good on, waves not so much.  © Luc Hosten  © Tristan Wright Spring weather in full effect. Howls one way, stops for 10 seconds, howls the other way. Gotto be on the ball to score a wave in between all that.  When there isn't much to go around sometimes sharing is caring. Always helps when you can drop in on your lil brother. That's the joys of family hierarchy! Whilst there wasn't that much happening wave-wise the dolphins didn't seem too perturbed about the lack of swell and still did their daily swim past the pier. Be interesting to tag one of them to see where they actually go during a day. Mostly they come past at about 10-11am from the south direction, and then back towards Pipe again after 2pm. Hardly a day goes by when you won't see them at some stage.  Frans happy that at least dolphins like SUP's! Quite a bit of sand at the moment along certain stretches of the beach, making even the small days fun. Very tide-specific though, so be in it to win it.  © Johann Roos The Coastal Water Rescue guys did some training at Hobie during the week. We're lucky to have a dedicated group of volunteers to supplement the metro services. More is better when it comes to stuff like that.  Andre Clarke has had some of his stickers printed, so if you keen to grab some Proudly PE surf stickers, or the cool Octopus or Pipe bomb one's give him a holler at andre.synergy@gmail.com or hunt him down in the Pipe carpark if there's waves. Small size is R15 and big one's are R20. You can also buy a whole sticker pack which includes a variety of all the different stickers. 
Always envy people who are early risers - best part of the day it seems, cos apparently the wind in PE also sleeps late. So if you up early you might miss it!  © Frans Gerber Life's all about perspective. Sometimes things aren't as they seem. Like for instance the wave here looks pretty fun...until you at ground level and realise it's only knee high! But hey, knee high in PE ain't such a bad day. Could always be worse. Flat or onshore spring to mind!  © Frans Gerber Always bigger round the corner. Take a drive and see what you find. Sometimes more than you bargained for.  © Andrew Stewart Still hoping to find a pair of lightweight, waterproof infrared goggles, cos look what we missing during the dark hours. Plenty of fun lil lines streaming in. Know a few guys who have done night surfs under a full moon. Apparently it's a pretty common thing in the States. Heard of 20-30 guys out at Trestles at night. Imagine if that's their version of "escaping the crowds". Eish, we lucky!  © Frans Gerber  CJ © Vaughan Deacon The latter part of the week saw some waves about. Friday and Saturday morning were probably pick of the bunch. Good timing as a few guys decided to get in the water to grab some shots. Thanks Tristan and Vaughan! You can check out their images here: http://www.millerslocal.co.za/latest-shots/avos-12-oct-2019 http://www.millerslocal.co.za/latest-shots/pipe-9-oct-2019  Taz © Tristan Wright Both JBay and Seals had some good one's. Even the "secret spot" had a few, although a bit smaller and slower than elsewhere.  © Robbie Irlam Plenty of PE guys burn a few litres of fuel to head west for a surf on the weekends. JBay can be pretty localised at times, so you have to be pretty confident to rock your PE local stickers on both your cabbie and board when you surf Supers. No skin off Andre Clarke's nose though, a proudly PE local! PE surf spot stickers will be available soon for purchase. Watch this space.    Not only the East Cape getting some surf , but Taiwan is cooking too. PE local Nic Flood is getting his share of the pits.  © Nic Flood Millers could be one of the best right points on our coast if we could just trim a bit of Cape Recipe back and open it up to some more swell. Sometimes it gives little glimpses of what it could be like. Specially when it's pint-sized swell and there's little peelers coming perfectly down the reef, and you wished you were ant-sized to be able to ride them.  © Frans Gerber  What Millers wants to be when it grows up © Robbie Irlam Interesting article on Wavescape during the week about guys going leashless on their logs. With the advent of small summer sessions upon more guys will be longboarding so it's worth taking a read of this: https://www.wavescape.co.za/surf-news/breaking-news/wear-a-leash-man.html Leash-free at your own quiet spot is all good, but doesn't make as much sense if you're in a crowded line-up. A number of our local loggers are very proficient and I can't say I've ever seen them lose a board. But that doesn't apply to everyone. And the hiccup is that the not-so-proficient guys want to emulate the style-meisters and then the potential for getting clipped by a runaway log becomes a possibility. So please be careful peeps.  Big surf round the corner over the weekend. With some long paddles and lots of duck-dives if you were up for a challenge.  © Riaan Vermaak Unfortunately the big seas had a very sad consequence. A ski boat with some fishermen was returning to Noordhoek on Saturday morning and capsized. Three of the men made it safely back to shore, but a 4th guy sadly didn't make it. RIP.  © Coastal Water Rescue Impressive full moon saw some nice big spring tides. Always remember Len Payne teaching me the trick about spring tides and tide times about 20 years ago. Spring high is at about 4pm and spring low is about 10am. Always. Every single spring tide. Neap tides are the opposite, so 10am high and 4pm low. So now all you need to do is look at the moon to see what the tide times will be. Who needs an app!?  © Luc Hosten Sad to see marine litter dotting the shores of our coast. Ropes like these are just what tangles up whales and other marine life. Such a pity that many who use the sea to make their money have so little respect for it. Luc says this rope is near the high tide mark so could well be swept back into the sea So if anyone is feeling like a work-out, go drag this lot further up the beach.  © Luc Hosten Local kneelo Craig Seale had a close encounter at JBay when a dolphin decided to leap before it looked. And crashed into his board. Which is of course better than landing on his head! Nonetheless. A rather bruised looking stick after the unusual accident.  Lots of nice sunrises and sunsets during the week. Always good to get your dose of orange at either side of the day.  © Luc Hosten  © Frans Gerber  © Frans Gerber Some swell in the water this week, winds might be a bit flukey though.
 © Luc Hosten You know things are slow when the highlight of the week is the fact that it rained. Super scratchy surf on offer. Usual story. If you missioned you could find a wave. But not a helluva lot in the bay. The groms don't mind iffy conditions though and went banana's at Lower Point in Jbay for the SeaHarvest SA Junior Champs. NMBM came 4thm with our best performers being Angeloa Faulker getting a 3rd in the u18's and Joel Dace getting a 3rd in u14's. Well done to all our groms for taking part and having a blast. The overall title was won by Buffalo City. First time their groms have won the comp.  © SA Surfing  © Petronel Posthumus Summer time is approaching fast. Which means be happy with knee high peelers. you can find 'em around for sure. Just need to upgrade your shooter to a log and you'll be good to go. Rumour has it that CarPark John might be finally thinking about a mini-mal. Time will tell.....  © Dave Lischitz  © Alfonso Peters Yin yang weatherwise for the week - some perfect beach days interspersed with some horrendous weather days. But that's the change of season for you. Four seasons in one day.  © @cheska_lia  © Anthony Sahd Some vintage shots cropped up during the week. Always cool to see what our beachfront used to look like. Sure did have a heap more sand.   Industry news for the week was that Ripcurl got bought by a camping company Kathmandu for $200 million. Hmm. Their marketing hoopla said as follows: “Rip Curl transforms Kathmandu into a highly complementary, seasonally balanced, global outdoor and action sports business." So there goes the last of the privately owned surf brands. All gobbled up by international business. Maybe a case of Icarus trying to fly too close to the sun. Woulda been better off staying niche instead of selling to department stores. Hindsight is an exact science as they say.   © Heather Nel |
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