Car stolen at Fence yesterday

Dropping R450 on one of these beats losing your cabbie

Eish, now that HAS to be the kakkest feeling. You're standing there after a lekker surf staring at the spot where you KNOW you parked your car. But no matter how hard you stare, your car does not appear. She be gone. Vamoosed. Re-appropriated by the new economic order.

Some poor ou finished his surf at Fence yesterday evening and came back to find his VW Polo had been nicked. Luckily it was found an hour and a bit later just a km away in Glengarry Crescent. But that's being plain lucky.

Think twice about hiding your keys on your car. It is the most obvious spot for the dodgy dudes to look. Spend more than 5 minutes at any car park used by surfers and even someone as doff as a wannabe criminal can work out pretty quick that the majority of guys just stash their keys on their cars somewhere.

So unless you have some fun "surprise" planned for would-be car thieves like a python hiding in the glove compartment, and you actually want them to try and break in, then don't stash your keys on your car. Thinking hiding them under a rock on the beach is also not a particularly higher-grade option either....

There's plenty of safer options. If you're at Pipe, give your keys to Chris the Car Guard - he hasn't ridden off in anyone's car yet, so seems fairly legit. The easiest is just to loop em on the key string on your wettie or round your neck on a piece of string - I remember doing this in the days when I still had to drive a car to the beach. This works fine of you have a klapped out ol banger that has those simple pimple metal keys.

However, if your ride's a bit more pimped and you have one of those new-fangled electronic keys, well - they don't like water much. Not a train-smash though, just head off to your closest dealership and buy one of the plastic moulded keys for your vehicle model. They aren't cheap at about R800 a pop, but damn, sure beats having your car nicked. These can happily be attached to a key string on your wettie.

Another good option if you don't fancy getting your key wet is to go grab a lil key safe thingy that you can lock onto that funny U hook thing at the back of your bumper. It's basically a teeny safe that you can stick your keys in, has a keypad that you lock it with, and it fixes vas onto some part of your car. JOhn Schepers has used his for years and has neve

Just spoke to Dave and Surf Centre does have some, and he's expecting more stock in the next day or two. They retail at around R450, but if you take your Millerslocal card you get another 10% off.

So yah, plenty options to keep your keys safe...and not arrive back from a surf to find your cabbie has disappeared.