The week that was...

© Marcus Ducker

A rather eventful week. There were some waves, then there weren't, and there was lots of activity out there. Unfortunately the normal parallel universe of us on the water and the finned dudes under the water coincided at Seals.

© Luc Hosten

Seals local Ross Spowart was surfing the beachie and had just paddled out after catching a wave - just past the whitewater he sat up on his board and not even 3 seconds later he got hit on his left leg by what he said felt like a train. Luckily he managed to stay on his board.

"Then in what felt like slow motion, I watched the top jaw of the shark come down on the left-hand side of my left knee and just rip, pulling me off my board. The shark then suddenly half breached to my right and I scrambled to get on to my board and paddle for my life it was about 5 seconds of complete cavitation and no movement as I was so alarmed by what had just happened. Luckily a big closeout broke just behind me and I managed to make my way to the beach."

© Craig Jarvis

Despite viewing the inside of his knee cap Ross will be making a full recovery as the quizzy junior Great White missed the bone and only nicked a tendon. He did however leave Ross a souvenir. Wishing him a full and speedy recovery.

Seals beach remained closed for a number of days after the incident as there were a number of fins spotted cruising about. Probably due to the huge amount of bait fish activity in the area. Basically the whole food chain just moving right into the backline.

The second of the City Surf Series went down at Port Alfred over the weekend, with some decent waves. St Francis local Crystal Hulett recovered well from having her brand new longboard stolen off the top of her cabbie at Pipe the week before and went on to win the very first WQS Women's Longboard event ever in Africa.

© Ian Thurtell

Lekker happy ending story for the week was CT surfer Tom Lovemore getting reunited with his GoPro after Kirsty Froneman picked it up on the beach at St Francis. Tom had lost it whilst been jet-skiing there during the Christmas vac. 

Three months later is washes ashore to be discovered by Kirsty. She took it back to PE and with the help from Colin and the crew at Katz Camera Warehouse they managed to recover the footage despite the camera lens having leaked a bit of water.

Within a coupla minutes of the pic hitting Facebook Tom got in touch to claim his camera. In an even better stroke of luck Tom's mate was about to fly from PE to CT so could hand deliver it back to him. GoPro's are tough lil bastards, that's for sure.

In what seems to be a week of re-appearing GoPro's local surf photag Petronel Posthumus picked up one which had washed ashore at Blackbottoms on Sunday - below is one of the images from it. Appears to maybe be a booger's camera as some bodyboarding footage on it. Tune us if you can ID the peeps in the pic or know of someone who recently lost a camera.

Every surf town has it's local legend. And it's always cool when you see a coupla of the ballies hanging out. Graham Hynes aka Hynsie is still actively coaching the lighties despite being in his eighties. He was in PE attending the City Surf Series and bumped into CarPark John. Let's hope we can all still be enjoying the surf world when we're that age.

Still some awesome weather about. And Hummies is always up to the challenge of looking photogenic when it's lekker. Even though it hasn't delivered much in the way of waves lately, it's still a peach of a possie.

Credit unknown. Via Ex-PE 60's 70's FB group

© Pierre de Villiers

The pinks and reds are still happening. We tend to take the sunsets and sunrises for granted but how do they actually happen? Stephen Corfidi, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) meteorologist who's written about the science of colorful sunsets, to help us see the light.

"When a beam of sunlight strikes a molecule in the atmosphere, what's called "scattering" occurs, sending some of the light's wavelengths off in different directions. This happens millions of times before that beam gets to your eyeball at sunset.

The two main molecules in air, oxygen and nitrogen, are very small compared to the wavelengths of the incoming sunlight—about a thousand times smaller. That means that they preferentially scatter the shortest wavelengths, which are the blues and purples. Basically, that's why the daytime sky is blue. The daytime sky would actually look purple to humans were it not for the fact that the sensitivity of our eyes peaks in the middle [green] part of the spectrum—that is, closer to blue than to purple.

But at sunset, the light takes a much longer path through the atmosphere to your eye than it did at noon, when the sun was right overhead. And that is enough to make a big difference as far as our human eyes are concerned. It means that much of the blue has scattered out long before the light reaches us. "

The prospect of a coupla waves in the coming week - if the wind plays ball. Hopefully a spot or two of rain as well. Remember to keep your eye's peeled if you're out in the surf - still a few more finned friends around than usual.