Rasta & Occy for JBay?

The Jeffreys Bay Open Of Surfing is just a few weeks away, and all systems are go for a great inaugural event. Former ASP World Champion Mark Occhilupo and free surfing phenomenon Dave Rastovich have both put their name on the list of possible invited surfers, and together with Sean Holmes and Frankie Oberholzer, will be ranked high on the selection list as they can all produce world class surfing at one of the world's best pointbreaks. 

Other surfers to put their hands up for this Surfing South Africa sanctioned event are WQS campaigner Dale Staples from St Francis Bay, fellow campaigner and ISA World Champion Shaun Joubert from Mossel Bay, and fellow ISA World Champion and former WCT surfer Greg Emslie from East London. Along with the main event will be a girls event, with 8 girls selected to surf in the tournament. 

An exciting sideline to the main event is the FFFF Friction Free Session, a demonstration of surfing without fins, orchestrated by the leading exponent in this discipline Derek Hynd. While this form of surfing is challenging and hard to master, Hynd has developed his Friction Free skills on the waves of Supertubes over the last few seasons and will lead this demonstration. Derek will be joined by a few hand-picked local surfers and possibly a few international guests. 

The Jeffreys Bay Open Of Surfing Jeffreys Bay Open Of Surfing has a waiting period from 9 - 13 July and forms the anchor for the JBay Winter Fest JBay Winter Fest, a festival of sports set to take place in and around Jeffreys Bay from 6 - 14 July. As well as the surfing tournament there will be a skateboarding event, a mountain biking race, a trail run and a cold water swim, with the possibility of more events to be added at a later stage. A list of the events can be found here.

There are still a few days left for surfers to go to the event Facebook page and put their names down for possible selection for the surfing contest. Entries close on the 10th June, and the invited surfers, wildcards and alternate surfers will be announced soon afterwards. There will be a R500 entry fee, with proceeds going to the Supertubes Surfing Foundation. Surfers will also need to join the PST at a cost of R200 via the Surfing South Africa website SSA.

Bring it oooooooon!