Weekend wrap

JBay continues with it's awesome run of swell. PE continues to get it's usual skunking in the bay. A few snuck through late Saturday arvo that at least got everyone wet before the rugby. 

Plenty ou's making the mission west to JBay. Some even did the PE-JBay-Seals mission, only to end up turning round and heading back to JBay. 3 hours drive for a 2 hour surf? Got the balance wrong guys!

Big Dave managed to turn his quad into a thruster by smashing off a fin during the paddle out to the Point. Rule #1 - never paddle too early in the gully. Always a nice lil rock just waiting to nibble off your fins. He'll be bummed, cos his new "shortboard" (8ft10) has been going like a bomb - check the shot of him smashing a damn fine turn at Jbay last week. Doing the impossible at Impossibles.

Reduce, reuse, recycle. That 8ft10 was reborn by splitting her down the middle and adding an extra 2 inches of foam to widen her up. Looks like it's worked.

© Paul van Jaarsveld

Some of the SF locals are still lurking in Nam. Mike Hill and crew were due to leave last week, but car issues forced them to stay. They managed to get their car fixed, but then got their camera gear nicked. Win some, lose some. But maybe a win in the end. The enforced stay means they might be lucky enough to score another swell on the way. Guys have been scoring some insane waves there, and clocking up serious tube time. Dale Staples' vid of his trip there is crazy good. Check the video box on the home page to watch it.

© Mike Hill

Some scary facts starting to come out about the Fukushima disaster in Japan. It appears between 300-450 tons of contaminated water a day is leaking into the Pacific. Given that the Pacific is one big-ass ocean system it could see the radioactive water reaching as far afield as the Western seaboard of Canada and the USA. Glow-in-the-dark surfing coming soon? Probably not, but still not lekker that stuff's leaking out. 

Don't get caught out by the graphic doing the rounds at the moment supposedly showing the spread of the radioactive water - it's actually a NOAA infographic on how far the tsunami spread. But still, nasty stuff is leaking out, and it will enter the Pacific ocean & spread onwards from there. Eish.
Something to consider in light of the proposed reactor at Thyspunt. And I'm pretty sure the Japs are a lot better at running these things than we are. So if a uber 1st world country like them can get it wrong, yoh  - what does that mean for us? I'd be a bit more confident in our chances of success as long as we get some qualified peeps to run it - not our Eskom muppets. Let's not forget the incident a coupla years back when the ou's dropped a spanner into the Koeberg reactor, which put it offline for yonks.

JBay windfarm construction

Tough call. Nuclear is cleaner than coal - until it goes pear-shaped, and then it does so spectacularly. Pity we can get enough power from wind farms, like those going up outside Jbay, as definitely take a wind turbine over coal or nuclear any day. Those turbines are flipping big - check above to see how lil the 3 ou's look standing at the axis of the blade.

Herbie Fletcher, 1976, Maalaea. Photo Art Brewer.

Don't forget to get your entries in to the Cobbles Classic coming up next month. Kiff retro event for single fins and old school moves. Great vibe and great prizes. Entry forms here.