The week that was...

© Chris Scott

Waves. Glorious waves. Ok, so it wasn't perfect, but the fact that there were 4 days of kiff waves in the middle of January is good enough for most folks. Fence was pretty gangbuster - rumour is that Greg Heasley got spat out with a foam ball on one particularly good barrel. Pity the skelms took advantage of the crowds and broke into a coupla cars parked on the grass there.

© Heather Nel

© Barry Heasley

Humewood had some smokers, provided you could find the gems in among the closeouts. Banks a bit screwy still. Pier even dished up a few wobbly one's. Millers had a small finned fellow visit the line-up, probably cos of the surfeit of bait fish about.

As usual, if you put petrol in the tank and drove west things got even more interesting. Quite a few PE ou's made the trek and were rewarded.

© Dale Staples

PE kneelo Hein Scheepers © Chris Scott

Wasn't only the surfers jumping for joy about the waves. The locals got in on the action as well, spotted at the Seals beachie. Just goes to show the joy or riding waves isn't limited to humans.

© Justin Potgieter

Some lekker weather days during the week - meant peeps got a chance to get down to the beach to catch some rays. Unfortunately there was a muppet lurking around at Pipe that decided to get his hand cranking in response to all the bikini's about. Thanks to local surfer Wayne Barnes for seeing what was happening and chasing the guy off the beach. 

The good weather saw the yachts and Hobie's out and about. Always cool to see some boating activity in our bay.

© Chris Stephenson

© Heather Nel

​Gotto say PE peeps get things done. Rocks n kak on the beach at Pipe? No problem, Mervyn Goddard made a plan. Donovan Fick arranged for a skip from Skipgo Port Elizabeth, and Christo Opperman from Sasol Summerstrand provided some staff on Saturday morning to help with the clean-up. A whole pile of junk was removed from the beach - thanks to all.

​There are also multiple smaller bins placed on the beach, so grab a few rocks and gooi them in there as you walk past. Remember, moaning gets bogger-all achieved, but actually doing something does.

© Mervyn Goddard

SANCCOB did their monthly beachwalk in the Cape Recife over the weekend. Sad to see they found 14 dead Cape gannets and 6 African penguins along an approximately 5 kilometre stretch of coastline. Hopefully the deaths are linked to some storm or bad weather event., and not as a consequence of something else more sinister. Keep an eye on the SAMREC website for notice of future walks.

© Luc Hosten

There were some stunning sunsets as usual during the week. Didn't get round to capturing one, but Robbie out in JBay got a great sunrise shot.

© RObbie Irlam

Change of scenery for CarPark John. You can now find him working at the Boardroom on Saturday mornings - so pop in and say howzit and grab yourself some gear, or a new board. Or try your hand at a bit of table tennis - CPJ is a dark horse in this regard.

Size can be deceiving on TV - like when you watch rugby and the ou's don't look that big - and then you see all 7ft 150kgs of them in real life. Same applies to surfing - who woulda known Adriano de Souza was such a midget til you see him next to local surfer Carl Barnard (OK, so Carl isn't exactly mini-me, but yrrr, Adriano sure is small!)

Soup Bowls, Barbados (back in 2015 on Carl's travels)

Speaking of watching surfing online - looks like Facebook has signed up exclusive rights for WSL event streaming this year. So seems like you'll only be able to watch the surfing live if you on FB. Be interesting to see how that all pans out.

Join SANNCOB for the Blue Moon Walk on Wednesday evening:
"The term once in a Blue Moon means that something is very rare, please join us for a walk on Wednesday 31 January to watch the blue full moon rise and the sun set! There will be a short welcome talk at 18h15 and the walk will start at 18h30. The cost is R50 for adults and R30 for pensioners and children. Bring a torch in case a cloud blocks the moonlight! We walk from SANCCOB to the Cape Recife Lighthouse and the distance for the round trip is about 4 kilometers. The beach is mainly sandy with a few rocks. Food and snacks will be available. Bring a bag and you can help clean up the beach."
https://www.facebook.com/events/356467911495695/

© Luc Hosten

As good as last week was for surf, looks like this week will be the yin and the yang. Time to get some work done, the lawn mowed and those school projects finished....

© Robbie Irlam