The week that was....

Helloooooo winter, you finally arrived! Better late than never. The swell arrived on Friday, but it's good mate, the gale-force westerly came with it. Which meant unless you liked the challenge of getting repetitively bounced off your board by man-sized chop, then you were resigned to sit and watch and wish for the wind to bogger-off.

Which it did, on Saturday. The bay still had some morning sickness which extended into lunch sickness, but by mid arvo it had sorted itself out and there were a few bombs around. CarPark John for once got his timing spot-on, and paddled out after a 30 min lull and hooked straight into the wave of the day. The ou's out there made sure that there were enough shouts of encouragement to make sure he went for it.

© Kody McGregor

© Robbie Irlam

​JBay was pretty stellar. Supers doesn't get much better than that. It also meant that everyone and the kitchen sink was out there having a go. Crowds were pretty thick thanks to school and varsity hols, and plenty of visiting surfers and pro's thanks to the JBay Open starting this Wednesday.

Familiar silhouette, JJF © Robbie Irlam

© Robbie Irlam

© At the Beach

Unfortunately it wasn't only Supers that was on fire, a fire sadly also gutted the Billabong warehouse on Thursday evening. Flipping terrible timing with the Jbay Winterfest about to kick off. The Bong guys are on the ball, and will be getting more stock in from overseas asap. Wishing them well for the clean-up operations.

Besides delivering epic surf, winter also managed to deliver some seriously plummeting temperatures. PE recorded it's coldest day in 8 years on Thursday morning, with just 0.5C on the thermometer. Ou's were reporting that car windscreens in the canal area of SF had iced up over night. 

Stanley Badger had forgotton his wettie outside over-night and quickly decided the dawnie was not going to be an option if you first had to crack the ice off your suit before getting into it.

It had warmed up lank by 8am! Not. © Dirk Erasmus

Someone who's scoring the perfect combo of cooking surf AND warm water is PE's Carl Walton, who's over in Maldives at the moment with his wife n grom. Looks like he's having a kak time hey!?

Maldives might be paradise but it isn't without it's own issues as well. The government has for some inexplicable reason decided to build a moerse expensive bridge from the main island across to the airport island, which will effectively destroy Male's best waves, the only surf spots accessible to most of the local population. Kak when the bigwigs don't give a sh*t about surf spots. Money always wins unfortunately.

© Shabulho

Mid-week saw the funny bones being tickled. Ex-Pe surfer and author Hagen Engler was in town to launch his new book, The Maid's Room (which includes surfing among other things). Fellow PE surfer and very funny human, Gino Fabbri, was decked out deliciously in her/his favourite pimping pink mini-dress to MC the evening. You can grab a copy of Hagen's book at Fogarty's in Walmer Park, and it should also be available on Kindle soon.

Went to drop someone off at the airport over the weekend and spotted these dude's pulling in to unload their stuff. Pretty impressive when the pile of boards on the car is almost bigger than the car. Christie made a classic comment when he suggested "Uber!?" Know you know why you shouldn't buy end-of-lease rental cars....

Everyone loves aloes, cos when they bloom you know winter's here and the waves should be on the way. Well, the aloes delivered this week. Keep it up ou's!

© Marius Labuschagne‎