The week that was...

Yewee - EP won the SA Champs in Mossel Bay! JBay lighties Dylan Lightfoot & Emma Smith won the u20's and Steve Sawyer hooked the Zag Blow Up award (and 2nd spot in the u20's). Great surfing by the whole team saw us get our grubby hands on the trophy. Shot to Billabong for sponsoring the team. Local is lekker!

Check out the full comp wrap, results and shots here.

Not so rad were the kids on the beach at JBay who terrorised a juvenile Great White that was dragged out of shallow water at Main Beach. They beat it with a golf club and tried to gouge it's eye's. Thankfully a surfer finally stepped in and pulled the shark back into the water. Tsek.

One of the original Saffa big wave legends celebrated his 60th bash at the Seal Point Resort this weekend. Johnny Paarman is still renowned in Hawaii as one of the best big wave surfers our country has ever produced. He competed there back in the 70's, where he placed fourth in the 1976 Smirnoff Pro, and fifth in the Duke Kahanamoku Classic, which took him to 15th in the international rankings.

Four time world champ Mark Richards rates John Paarman riding Sunset back in the day as the best that Sunset has been ridden. Ever.

Attended the Coastal Forum meeting last week and raised the issue of the broken steps going down to Millers. Hopefully some money will be found in the maintenance budget to repair these soon. There is a new Coastal Management plan being drawn up for the bay at the moment, and one of the issues it will raise is that often capital projects are approved but allowance for the maintenance thereof isn't factored into the annual budget....which is why it can take a while for things like the missing steps to get fixed. Holding thumbs the new plan will rectify this.

Another area fallen into disrepair are the fences which prevent access to the dune area's between the beach and boardwalk. They were there for a reason - to stop peeps just missioning over the dunes wherever they wanted to. The hiccup with ou's making their own paths over the dunes is that it creates a break in the dune and accelerates sand loss. The dunes are important to help stabilise the beach, so we really need to protect them. If you have enough vooma in your legs to surf, then you have enough vooma in them to walk the extra 50m to either end of the dune to check the surf. Go round not over!

Same applies in the Pipe area. The new fences are up, so stick to using the boardwalk access and don't moering over the dunes wherever you feel like. Things are looking super rocky on the beaches at the moment, so despite hating the beasterly easterlies, we really do need some serious onshores to deposit some sand back again. Speaking of which - looks like east most of this week...bleh!

Found a classic shot of Seals back in the day whilst looking for an image for Throwback Thursday. Turns out it was taken by Clive Barber in around '68. He dug the slide out from under his shaping bay, and thankfully JBay's Garth Robinson has the original and has got the shot available on canvas and paper print at The Surf Art shop at Supertubes. Go check out the shop for plenty of awesome vintage JBay & Seals shots & other cool surf stuff.

Apparently plots were on sale around that time for about R3000. Lotsa ballies still kicking themselves today for not laying down the cash.