Pretty rad weather weekend. No wind - unusual. No swell - usual. But still awesome to be hanging at the beach. Despite much of the coast looking like a Vaal dam impersonation, there were still a few ripples to be had if you hunted about. Donovan Zoetmulder used a bit of petrol-assist to reach for the sun at Seals. The kiff weather extended as far as Cape Town, where the windless conditions resulted in a rather icky aerial shot of a daily phenomenon that affects all our cities. Jean Tresfon captured this image of sewerage getting pumped into the ocean about 1km offshore Greenpoint. Happens in Algoa Bay too. Basically where do you put this stuff unless you stick it into the sea? Certainly not an ideal situation, but currently is how we deal with our waste. Might have made sense yonks ago, but am guessing with the exponential increase in population it is a method of disposal that maybe needs to be reconsidered? Some new colour getting added to the already rad looking skatepark, with Nathan Sanan getting quirky with his spraycans. Much as we malign our local municipality for being pretty slack, this is one thing they did get right! The dolphins are back en masse. Last week saw huge pods cruising the beachfront daily. Usually the crew pull past in the morning, and then head back in the arvo. But they were in full-on jol mode, maybe cos the red tide has finally buggered off, and were up and down plenty of times each day. Great to be out in the line-up when they come past. We're so lucky to have these locals. Boogers showed that they are quite the romantics. Local drop-knee king James Jones did the ultimate DK when he proposed to his lady in style. Not to be outdone, PE's power king Dylan Stone got wed to his good lady. The guest list was a who's who of PE & JBay surfing. Carpark John reckoned there were some interesting threads worn by some of the crew. Surfers don't do suits.... The crew from the SABC environmental documentary program 50/50 were in town to take a look at the proposed fish farm just off Pipe. The CYOH boys met up with them to have their say. John's an avid fan, and was stoked to meet Bonne, the presenter. Teased him afterwards about he shoulda asked for an autograph! Big drilling rig passed through en route to Singapore. Travelling on these big boys won't exactly blow your hair back if you're a speed freak. They clock only 4km/hr. Local tug-man Ryan Braunschweig pointed out that it can hitch a ride on mother nature and increase it's speed to about 5-6 knots if it can find some favourable currents. So it'll take about 2 months to get where it's going. Long haul that. Surfers are pretty innovative at the best of times. Justin Bing came up with a clever way to raise some funds to get himself over to Nicaragua to surf in the ISA World SUP Games. They guys brewed up some local lager - Bing Bru, and are selling 4 packs to raise some cash. Lekker!
Brad & Grant Beck and Merrick Fairall were up in CT to do some judging for the Quik "Takes one to know one" comp and decided the best way to create an impression with the uber-cool Cape crowd was to go out wearing matching T's and drink cocktails! Can't have been an easy comp to judge given the waves in the Cape were about as non-existent as back home. Coupla waves here and there in the past week. As usual you scored if you had petrol in the tank. Heard of a few good sessions going down west of here with very few peeps in the water. There were some other interesting things in the water too - a "baby" killer whale was spotted chilling out near Bird Island by Raggy Charters last week. Nothing much "baby" looking about him. See a fin that size cruise the back of the line-up would see a few guys walking on water I reckon. Even though he doesn't like snacking on humans it would still probably be one to watch from the beach rather. The EP Grom surfing team which will compete at the annual Billabong Grommet Games at Pipe at the end of the month are desperately short of funds for the event. They need R25k for the 15 person team (about R1.7k per child) to equip and accommodate them through the event. The team compromises of talented surfers from all backgrounds. Rich and poor, black and white - all stoked on surfing. Although half the team are surfers from "previously disadvantaged" communities they are all there based purely on their surfing ability. No token anything in our team and we stand a good chance of winning the event. Whether you're able to help sonsoring tracksuits or bags, or are able to help with a cash donation - every little bit helps. Even R100! If you are able to assist please pop your bucks here: EP Surfing, Standard Bank, Rink Street 050417 a/c no 080298818. Use reference EP gromgames & your name. Also good to see some guys (including ex EP Grom team members Alex & Jonno) are chucking some of their old kit into the mix for the development lighties - boards, suits, leashes etc. If you have a few surfing items hanging about in the garage gathering dust, these would also be much appreciated. You can drop off at Surf Centre and they'll be collected from there. CYOH held their first Surf Off of the year round the corner. Some good waves, great surfing and epic vibe as usual. You can check out all the shots from the day on the Comp News page here. Speaking of comps, finally the Quik Pro at Snapper is back underway today. Round 3 nearly done with. Unfortunately the last Saffa hope, Travis, got done in by Taj. Bit of an upset with Julian Wilson getting blitzed by rookie Mitch Crew....serves him right though, apparently he burned Mitch badly on a few waves in the free surf yesterday - so karma bit him on the butt. Nice! The stretch of water from Pipe out to the bell bouy looked like a highway of boats with the annual Bell Bouy challenge underway. A few surfers did the long haul out to the bouy and back, with wildside local Gustav Lokotsch winning the wetsuit category, and Dylan Stone in 8th, followed by Donovan Zoetmulder in 11th spot. Nice one guys - that's a flipping far swim. Now no excuses not to paddle out there on the next big swell and catch a few!
Coupla waves about last week, specially if you spent some petrol money to head outta town. Jbay had some nugs, and Seals offered a glimpse of upcoming winter gems in summer conditions. But as the saying goes, gotto pay the piper to play in the band. As usual there was some surf tax to be paid. So everyone say thanks to Mush Hide for kindly donating his longboard so you could all score cooking Seals. Mush is never one to turn a good deal down, so jumped at the opportunity to get 3 boards for the price of one. And knowing Mush - he'll probably even manage to rip on the mini-boards he ended up with. Another unlucky soul was spotted getting a dunking at Supers. Supers Sinus Flush Special for you today boet. As usual the bay didn't quite deliver the same quality as our neighbours to the west, but still some fun surf to be had. Even a few floggings if you rolled the dice at the House. Water went a bit nippy, which caught out the guys thinking that boardies were still the go. Stupid red tide is still about, yawn. Further west you went the better the surf. Vic Bay had some smokers. Hadn't shown up on the charts as being quite as good as it was, so rule #1 of always drive to the beach to check anyway holds. You rely on the charts and you could miss out. An old vintage beaut showed up at Garth Robinson's door - it's got a Sunset Surf label - so if any of the ballies out there can share some info about who shaped for the label and where it came from that'd be schweet. Thinking it comes from Cape Town cos Carpark John says his first board was a Sunset Surf and the dude who sold it to him said it came from CT. Local metal band, The Cake is a Lie, disproved you can only drink beers for sundowners. An early morning sun-rise shoot at Hobie Beach saw the ou's slukking a cold one to wake up. Always rad to have your couch on the beach. Beats having to lie on a stupid sandy towel, that's for sure. Dig metal - check the band out here: https://www.facebook.com/thecakeisalieyo Not only did the weekend see 2 local trials go down - the Groms and the longboarders, but also the start of the first event on the ASP WCT for 2014. Snappy rights at Snapper. Stoked to announce that Billabong will be sponsoring some kiff prizes for the ML Fantasy Surfer comps again this year. Lekker Billabong hamper up for grabs if you can guess who'll win at Snapper. Get kitted out in a Billabong cap, TShirt & boardies, and score a deck grip and leash for your board (valued at R1600). Wanna win? Enter here.
Other than one good day last week, it's been a bit it quiet on the wave front, unless you have a nice petrol allowance that let's you go have a squiz around the corner. Long walks nearby got rewarded with long lefts. Long drives got rewarded with some decent size, and a family wave from the locals. Fence surfers and skaters, watch out for this lil gremlin at Kings Beach. Ran off with one of the kiteboarders bags last week. Getaway vehicle was a BMX. Keep an eye on your kit. Unless you are happy for it to be unofficially adopted. Back from a stint in the desert, Gavin Rother is only to stoked to have been able to wash all the months of sand out his bones with some kiff Supers pits last week. Watch out for a short clip of his fun sesh coming up soon, which includes a short glimpse of a secret left in JBay... Coupla vintage shots of Denvils surfaced again last week. This first shot is so old that even La Roche drive isn't there yet. The Hotel pictured is what became the Elizabeth, and is now the GardenCourt. No Big Mac's in those days, that's for sure. And only 1 row of buildings in Humewood! Those lil houses dotted all over Brookes Hill look like they must have had a great view of Denvils & Fence. Jbay local, Deon Lategan, is back to his early morning beach walks before work so those of us who prefer a bit of a lie-in still get to see how awesome the waves can look at sunrise. Outlook for the week? Not terribly exciting, but the weekend offers a sniff of a wave.
Beware of colours! If the blue bottles don't get ya, the red tide might. (and on a side note: word is that some of the ou's visiting Casey lately have gone home a bit green.) But back to the critters. Sounds like what everyone had thought was an innocuous algeal bloom might turn out to be a bit more serious than expected. Basically a Red tide is the result of an increased occurrence of some plankton cos of more chow being available. Main culprit is upwelling of cold nutrient-rich water with Mr Plankton in it, which when it lurks about at the surface catching some warm summer rays it goes "yih-hah" and makes hay (or more specifically, plankton) as the sun shines. The usual suspect is a species called Noctiluca. But this current bloom seem a bit more sinister. Samples taken and currently being analysed by NMMU show that this bloom might be Noctiluca AND friends. Problem being is that one of the friends remains anonymous. No-one can work out what he is yet. Good guy? Bad guy? Who knows? Dr Tommy Bornman from the South African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON) has been monitoring the bloom and is still busy with DNA testing. He cautions that although the full array of plankton buddies has not been clarified, the fact that they're such a diverse crowd of lil dudes might be an indicator that it could be toxic. Oh-oh. So, spit not swallow in the surf. Don't eat the shellfish. And surf at night cos the neon-glow from the critters is gonna look super-cool when you hook that big off-the-top. Critter #2 lurking in our bay at the moment are the blue-bottles. Bit of east wind has plonked them into the inshore area and beach. Bit of a challenge cos the warm water means peeps are wanting to trunk it, but that means lots of exposed skin to get yourself stung in your mielie. These ou's sting the crap outta you cos they have cells called nematocysts which are found in the long tentacles that trail behind em. These lil critters screw up your sesh by injecting a protein-based venom into your unsuspecting flesh, which can have varying reactions - none of them good. Firstly it stings like crazy, but if your luck is really out then you also get a nasty allergic reaction. Rule number one is to try avoid getting stung in the first place. It’ll help if you wear a rashie or a T-shirt as it means there’s less open skin area for the terror tentacles to stick to. Plan B – what to do if you do get stung. First off try rinse the tentacles off you using hot water. How hot? They reckon it has to be over 50C to work, that’s about as hot as you can bear. Chances of finding hot water at the beach? Bogger all. So let’s scratch that piece of advice then! Next best thing is to rinse em off using salt water, cos fresh water might actually make the stinging worse. And no, don’t piss on it either! The old wives tale about urine don’t fly, it just isn’t acidic enough. Plain white distilled vinegar like you would find in your kitchen has long been the standard first aid treatment for stings. Its use has been questioned in the last few years and several studies leave us wondering whether vinegar really works. Again, chances of finding vinegar at the beach are also bogger all, unless you get stung at Pipe and you can pop over to Something Good - grab some chips to go with your vinegar too. Just make sure when you rinse that you get those tentacles off. Peel the buggers off. Not with your fingers though! Grab a stick, a shell, use a T shirt over your hand, whatever. Just get those things off else they’ll keep pumping poison into you. Keep an eye out for anaphylaxis. Ana – what?? Anaphylaxis is a severe allergic reaction that can result in hectic itching, shortness of breath, wheezing, tightening of the throat, flushed skin, weakness or dizziness. And if things get real bad you go into shock. If you’re experiencing any of these symptoms make sure a mate gets you to the doc asap. Otherwise if you’re just stinging like hell, pop to the pharmacy and grab some anti-inflamm’s and then stick some ice on it. Moral of the story – don’t get stung, it sucks…well, it stings! Thanks to Dr Shirley Parker-Nance for providing the info about the red tide.
Not a helluva lot of surf during the past week, but lekker weather and bath-tub warm water have meant at least peeps can get wet in baggies and boardies. Jamie Morris has garnered himself a whole new female fan base thanks to some shirt-free board-riding.
Spots starting with "S" seemed to be picking up whatever tiny waves were about. Sards and Seals threw up enough of a lump to get wet on. Some of the JBay lighties went photo-bombing with Zag sharp shooter Greg Chapman (aka Chappypix) over the weekend, and Dylan was boosting all over the place. Perfect weather to de-wax boards as it takes about 30 seconds and you go from a solid gooey mess to a liquid gooey mess. Re-waxing is no problem in the sticky weather if you know a trick or two - just grab a small jug and fill with water and ice-cubes. All you gotto do is keep dipping your bar of wax in the cold water as you wax your board and it goes on in perfect lil bumps instead of a streaky smear. Pour a bit of the cold water onto the deck of your board whilst you wax too, same effect - bumps instead of smears. Sunny skies mean kiff weather to do some street art - and Joff is tackling the skatepark with his spray cans. It's going to look so rad to have it sprayed with some funky artwork instead of Tom, Dick, Harry and Koos tagging their names all over it. Forecast is looking a bit bleak again for the bay this week. Typical PE conundrum - beaut weather = bogger all surf. Some weird brown patches appeared just offshore on the wildside a few weeks ago. Wasn't sure what they were as there had been talk of a toxic red tide in the Cape Town area. Then yesterday I spotted a few in the bay out front and decided to find out a bit more. Turns out they're most likely to be a non-harmful algal bloom, not a poisonous red tide. Shew. Algal blooms are usually harmless and are part of the natural ocean cycle. When conditions are just right, ocean phytoplankton reproduce like bunnies, creating a thick, visible layer near the surface. These algae blooms - or what we often term as "red tide" - might look really sketchy during the day, but if the critters are the bioluminescent (such as Noctiluca scintillans), then look out for the night show! This particular variety of phytoplankton glows blue when agitated, transforming dark ocean into a giant lava lamp. If the bloom comes ashore, watch the waves light up as they crash onto the beach in a weird neon blue glow. Unfortunately our patches have stayed offshore so I haven't seen the disco-glow as yet. Maybe someone should go do doughnuts out there on their jetski at night? So why do these blooms occur? It's usually from some form of nutrient input. On the West Coast it's upwelling bringing bottom nutrients to the surface due to a combination of wind and bathymetry, combining with sunlight, and then "boom"....you get an explosion of phytoplankton production. These critters are always in our waters, they just need the right fuel to bloom. In the Eastern Cape there are upwelling cells (mostly off Port Alfred) which can periodically bring nutrients to the surface when the winds line up correctly. Another factor which might spark a bloom is when organic nutrients are leaked into the ocean from sewerage, fertiliser, or river run-off, where the addition of these nutrients is enough to start a phyto feeding frenzy. The blooms in our bay could arise from either one, but most likely are natural events resulting from wind-induced nutrient input from cold bottom waters. The most likely suspect around PE is the glow-in-the-dark-dude, Noctiluca scintillans. He's a big-ass dinoflagellate, well, big-ass in the dyno world - clocking in at about 2 mm. The blooms usually are thick and bright red/orange and cause outboard motors to choke up (OK, so there goes the idea of getting a jetski to buzz about in them to make glow trails at night) Other than draining oxygen from surface waters when decomposing or possibly clogging motors/gills/intake pipes the blooms are not toxic. We've had no record of poisonous blooms in the East Cape area to date. The toxic red tides which affect the West Coast happen when blooms of a specific phytoplankton species die after depleting all of the upper layer nutrients and oxygen and then become toxic. The blooms are eaten by filter-feeders - and then that's why it becomes an issue to eat shellfish from those areas. Cos you essentially eat what they've eaten. Maybe if you eat our blooms you can glow in the dark when you jump?! (Um no, that was a joke. Please don't eat the algae! It probably tastes kak, and you definitely won't glow) Thanks to Tim Parker-Nance, Gavin Rishworth & Dr Gavin Snow for their input
Another year gone by. Did you get barreled off your pip? Get smashed by a hollow Hummies drainer? Pull off a classic GoPro selfie? Sit out in the line-up watching an awesome sunset? Grab a solo session in some cooking surf? Take the surf trip of your dreams? If you didn't, well, then there's at least some things you can add to the list of new year's resolutions! Here's a quick look back at the first quarter of 2013 - the year that was. January 2013 - there was some surf about, mainly west of PE, with Supers & St Francis having a few pumping days. In PE, just the wind pumped! And a car got stolen from the Pipe carpark. Ou's braai'd on the pillars at Humewood. Work started on the new skatepark. Chappi went finless. Dylan went eco-friendly. February 2013 - pretty quite surfwise, some wildside sessions were the call. Fence had a couple. Some classic vintage pics landed on my desk. Seals and PE from back in the day, including evidence that Denvils used to be a cranking barrel. Muppets started exploring Algoa Bay for oil & gas reserves. The Becks and a Lenton went roadtripping on the west coast. More guys went eco-friendly, and took their chicks out on dates on skateboards. Alex van Rijswijck got sponsored by Billabong. March 2013 - Bobby the robot got fired up for the first time, and the world of computer shaped blanks dawned on PE. Some swell finally kicked in. Even broke a few boards. Avo's was off it's pip, and Millers was firing. Crowds were thick. Jaryd got dropped in on for the 5000th time and decided to make plans to emigrate to Aus. Hummies had lotsa waves in the frequent easts. Dylan Lightfoot won the u18 & u20 divisions of the Billabong series in Durbs. Work started on Something Bad to turn it back into Something Good. ex-PE local Craig Potgieter (aka Pottie) gets made head of Surfing South Australia. Year in review 2013 - Quarter 2, coming up soon......
Shew, there's a lot happening over the next few weeks so here's a quick run down of what you need to put in your diaries as far as surf comps, surf events, surf bands, skating and anything happening on the beachfront goes. No reason to be left sitting at home at any stage!! Not often you'll see a shark warning flag flying on a PE beach. However, on Wednesday morning all the southern beaches in the bay were closed after a large 7m whale carcass was spotted floating offshore between Pipe and Bell Bouy. The prevailing winds and currents saw the dead whale moving closer to shore, and concerns arose that it could attract sharks to the area. The Beach Office put up the shark flags at all bathing beaches, and sent out a crew of lifesavers in rubber ducks and on jetski's to locate the whale. Once spotted, they stay with it for a few hours until a boat from the Police's water-wing was able to come and assist in towing it out to sea. Media speculation about a "shark feeding frenzy" was totally over-stated. I spoke with lifeguards who were on the rubber duck that babysat the whale, and they reported seeing only a single shark briefly in the hours they were out there. There was evidence that the whale had been extensively bitten, but this had occurred some time prior. At about 2pm the whale was towed deeper into the bay in the direction of Bird Island. It would still be wise to exercise caution when swimming/surfing over the next day or two, as the oil slick from the dead whale could still be present and serve as an attractant for predators. Rather be safe than sorry. The surf isn't worth it anyhow, small weak wind swell at best. Thumbs up to Fernando Cain and the Beach Office for issuing prompt warnings and acting quickly to remove the whale from the beachfront area. |
AuthorMillerslocal Archives
July 2021
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