The week that was...

© Deon Lategan

Just another mid-winter's week in the Eastern Cape. Some flat days, some fun days, and some very fun days. 'Specially if you drove west. Hopefully everyone banked some good one's, cos we could be headed into a serious flat spell - cos CarPark John got his new stick. 

Nothing beats a fresh sled, but as we all know it often seems to coincide with the onset of a flat spell. Kinda like getting this kiff new battery operated toy at Christmas - and no batteries. Anyhow -so far so good. John is frothing on his new Boardroom board, and tested it out in JBay on Friday and says it goes like a boeing.

From new boards to new artwork. Uber-talented local artist Joff (aka Steven Carter) can weild a spray can with the best of them. He's just upgraded a boring wall in Upper Valley Road from eye-sore to eye-candy. Nice one!

Lots of wildlife around at the moment. The whales have made their way back into the bays, with quite a few spotted off the PE beachfront as well as out at St Francis. Paddlers Richard Arderne and Steve Palmer had an up close and personal kinda encounter out there. Awesome creatures, although somewhat daunting to view close-up.

There have been instances when they've swam under surfers and then surfaced right up under them. That'll get ya blood pumping!

© Caroline Wessels

My wave! © Robbie Irlam

Not only sealife here in abundance, but over in Florida an ou landed the fish of a lifetime - on his SUP. Fought it for a coupla hours, got tumbled off his SUP once or twice, but finally managed to land this massive 7ft Goliath Grouper, weighing in at 190kg's.

Dodgy dudes active in the Millers carpark again. One of the local paddleskiers had his surflock jimmied whilst he was out surfing. Opened his car door, grabbed some stuff, and then bailed....with his key. Expensive exercise to change locks on your cabbie. Eish. Need to clone the Pipe carguard so can get some decent protection at Millers. No-one messes with Chris the Pirate too often!

Carguards from the Caribbean. Chis the guard at Pipe. © Luc Hosten

Expect sales of Firewire Vanguards to spike after shots of Kelly ripping his to pieces recently. Can put him on a barn door, literally, and he'll still surf it better than 90% of ou's on normal boards. At least if he sparks a fad of the oddly shaped boards it'll be more functional than the fad he started back in the day - with super thin hyper rockered boards that the average Joe found a nightmare to try ride.

In terms of weird board dings, this one has to take the cake. Regular Zag columnist and general funny-man, Ben Trovato is jolling in Bali at the moment. Managed to do this spectacular bit of board damage to his stick. Getting a leash pull into your deck is pretty hard to do, but to get it to pull right through the nose, well now that takes talent!

Often feature Deon's pic's (his is the first one of this blog post), but here's evidence of him appearing on the other side of the lens, thanks to Robbie Irlam. If you like your daily dose of lekker images, then go give both of them a Like.
https://www.facebook.com/DeonLateganPhotographics
https://www.facebook.com/supertubessurfphotography

PE isn't exactly famous for it's surf, but it could soon be hitting the world headlines if Josh Enslin has anything to do with it. Josh is going to be having a go at breaking the Guinness World Record for the longest surf session. He'll have to log over 29hrs and 27min. You can check out all the deets here.

© Grant Clegg