The week that was...

© Robbie Irlam

The week started with a bang - solid surf Monday and Tuesday meant you could surf til your arms refused to paddle any more. Luckily it was a long period swell, which meant long waits between sets - and less crowds cos the ou's pull in for a quick surf check and see no waves and drive off again.

JBay had some proper waves, which gave everyone a chance to practice their sprint paddles for the horizon and their breath=holds whilst getting worked if the sprint paddle didn't turn out to be fast enough.

© At the Beach JBay

Plenty of surf in the Bay to start with but midweek saw a flatspell give everyone's arm's a chance to recover. Still waves if spent R10 on petrol. It was cooking. Have seen the photo evidence. Just won't post it here though. You wanna score that side you gotto make your own missions.

© Loggers Union

Ballie Barry Wollins dug up a few old pics and among them was this one of what looks like either 69's or Killers back in the day. 

© Barry Wollins

Plenty of awesome weather during the week. An almost mid-winter summer. Even the birds took to the skies in celebration.

Stealth mode over Schoenies © Luc Hosten

Oyster catcher line-up © Robbie Irlam

Props to Dean Biddulph, Vernon Boggenpoel and the ward 2 DA Councillors who arranged a beach clean up at Kings Beach over the weekend. Plenty of rubbish cleared up - nice work peeps! 

© Dean Biddulph

© Dean Biddulph

PE's NSRI's Sea Rescue Station 6 is raising funds to have an additional rescue station built at Noordhoek. Currently it takes a minimum of 20min to respond to Cape Recife by sea from the Station 6 Rescue Base in the PE harbour if conditions are good, and even longer if they need to tow their small boat to the launch spot at Noordhoek Ski-Boat Club. Not ideal in an emergency!

The budget for this project is R 450 000 including the Jetski, sled, trailer, launch dolly, radio’s, rescue equipment, safety equipment etc, for which we already have received pledges to value of nearly R100 000! 

If you'd like to contribute to this great cause please click the link to go to the funding page.
https://www.givengain.com/cause/5872/campaigns/18413

In the last 15 months NSRI Station-6 has responded to 18 in-shore incidents between Cape Recife and Maitlands River Mouth (boating related incidents, Drowning in Progress incidents., Diving related incidents, Whale distentaglement). These calls have involved 31 casualties of which unfortunately 5 were deceased.

NSRI's Sean Lunnon with 2 rescued scuba divers recently

Anyone interested in the shark cage diving operations due to start in PE, Bayworld PE's next “Know your Bay” event is on Tuesday 22 May and will include a debate on the subject. Raggy Charters who have been granted the licence will be showing their plans for their operation. 

The presentation for the evening will be Dr Malcolm Smale presenting some of his shark research in Algoa Bay, and this will be followed by the shark cage debate. The event is organised by Algoa Bay Hope Spot and WESSA Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa. Venue is Bayworld 17h30 for 18h00. Date 22 May.

It was a week of particularly awesome sunrises and sunsets - here's a selection from throughout the week by the early birds.

© Rendo Pienaar

© Allan Bezuidenhout

© Gideon Brunsdon

© Elzabe Boschoff

© Frans Gerber

The only time I woke up super early to try catch the sunrise this happened....

Sunsets happen at more my time of day. There were some cool one's.

Seeing as finned fellows seem to be in the headlines at the moment, why not grab yourself a new set of fins. Even if you don't get em onto your stick looks like your mutt will enjoy chewing on them...
A whole new range of Scarfini fins just dropped at the Boardroom.

Yip - it was a good coupla days of surf this past week. This week the crystal ball is looking decidedly favourable. Start making your bunk work/school excuses so long.

© Robbie Irlam