The week that was....

© Riaan Vermaak

'Nother week of small summer surf in the bay, although the early birds (those that didn't go too big after the Bokke's nail-biting win) got a few juicy worms early Sunday morning. Plenty of pits if you looked outside the bay as well. 

The EP Open Longboard comp went down in small, but clean, waves at Blackbottoms. Such a lekker day no-one was too fazed by the teeny surf. Gave the groms a chance to whip their shirts off to show off their lekker surfer tans. Kiff neck and glove tans are a dead giveaway. If you don't have one of those you don't surf enough.

© Tristan Torr

Friday evening was a beaut. Plenty peeps out on the beach for a walk. But unfortunately the weather was lekker, but some muppets most definitely weren't. A gang of 5 skollies attacked a French tourist on the boardwalk past Rincon, tied her up and robbed her. Luckily she managed to escape. Couple of surfers wanted to go find the perpetrators and teach 'em some manners, but Jurassic Park (the "picnic" area just after the beacon), was packed with unruly revellers, and it wouldn't have been a wise idea.

No issues with having a public picnic area, but there has to be some control around alcohol consumption and anti-social behaviour. Ou's were even gooi'ing stones at cars that evening as well. Kak when you can't walk safely along the beachfront anymore. Be careful out there...

Be careful along here © Dean Cothill

How's this lekker shot of JBay back in the day. The Carpark section has been doing it's thing long before surfers even arrived. Looked pretty darn epic back in the 60's. That's for sure.

© Steve Shewan

Reckon if you asked any surfer if they could have anything in the world they'd all say "A time machine". Imagine travelling back in time to surf all the world's best breaks long before anyone else had surfboards or wetties. Although probably find the prehistoric finned friends were even more gnarly than the are today!

© Luc Hosten

The curse of coastal pollution is ongoing. Luc Hosten took a clever shot to illustrate this. Pretty piece of seaweed, not so pretty piece of fishing line and hook wrapped up in it. At least the hook will rust away to nothing in a while, but that fishing line's gonna be lurking about for the next 600 years. That plastic bag you spor blowing into the sea - that's gonna be there for about 20 years. Plastic bottles - about 450 years. Even more reason to pick up some trash when you on the beach. Look after your hood.

© Robbie Irlam

Robbie Irlam is one of the resident shutterbugs at Supers, but is just as adept with a paintbrush as he is with a camera. He has some cool canvases of the iconic wave, so if you're looking at that blank space on your wall wondering what to put there, well, know you know. Another local JBay artist doing some great stuff is Stephen van der Watt. The kneelo is laying down some rad modern wave work.

Eish, El Nino is looking pretty heavy for this year. Ou's are talking about it maybe even eclipsing the worst El Nino on record - the one back in '98 that bleached about 20% of the world's coral reefs cos it raised sea temps so much. Hopefully that doesn't happen, but either way it's gonna be one of the top 3 worst El Nino's of all time. 

​Hard to say what influence the Pacific weather system has on our local wave climate - but would be easy to correlate a big El Nino with a crap winter surf season - cos by most people's standards this winter wasn't up to scratch. Coupla good days here and there but not the consistent swell we'd expect.

J.O.B is not well in the head. Which is a wonderful thing cos he does all sorts of crazy sh*t that no-one else dreams of and keeps us entertained. He's fully into the Catch Surf foam boards at the moment, and has been riding them at big Pipe, whilst also chasing down all sorts of shorepounds to play on. 

Drones are great. Drones are not great when they show you you're about to get snacked on by a local. Nah - he's just cruising about checking out what's happening in the line-up. However, there've been a whole lotta shots coming outta Aus lately showing sharks in the line-ups. Gotto be tough to be a surfer there right now, when you know there's other locals out there with you.

Surfing and surfers have long been the favourite of marketing peeps. Whack some smiley happy sun-bleached surfers in your ad and sell bunches of stuff is the theory. Which is cool - unless you use surfing to sell your product but you don't actually make it easy for surfers to use it.

Like Mango. Cheap as chips airline, so far so good. But try take your surfboard with. Ah - here be the problem. Mango let's you pay a set fee for golf clubs and bikes...but not boards. Nup, you get annihilated with excess baggage fee's instead. 

Dropped them an email suggesting they consider a fixed fee for surfboard bags - cos why do the golfers and cyclists get special treatment and not us! But being a budget airline I don't think they have anyone answering emails, so remains to be seen whether I get a reply....

Sunny's the man. He's had his up's and down's but he's got his life solidly back on track now, and has been doing lots of charity work. He finished the Hawaiian Ironman in Kona last weekend - which is a 3.8k swim, 180k bike and 42k run. Not too shabby. The money he raised doing the event was donated to the Smile Train - which is an organisation which repairs cleft palates on lighties. Good to see surfers giving back. 

​Speaking of which - props to Dane Reynolds who donated his prize money from the Quik Pro to the Durban charity Surfer's not Street Children - converting dollars to rands is a bonus!

Sunny reckons an IM is way tougher than surfing big Pipe

Think the Nuke plant planned for Thyspunt is a kak idea? Andy did. Get involved. Public participation meetings re Nuclear 1 to be held this week: 
20 October 2015. 18:00 - 20:00 St Francis Bay. St Francis Links
21 October 2015. 18:00 - 20:00 Sea Vista. Sea Vista Hall
22 October 2015. 18:00 - 20:00 J'Bay. Newton Hall
23 October 2015. 18:00 - 20:00 Humansdorp. Old Golf Club

Another week comes to an end - here's a coupla cool good night shots from some talented local photags.

© Dean Cothill

© Dameon Van Antwerpen