Flat Spell Blues

The North Atlantic has been asleep for the past few weeks and it's starting to show.  Friends are going fishing and jogging when normally they'd be sitting on a surfboard enjoying the long summer evenings, people are twitchy and tempers are getting short.  Meanwhile, my friends in South Africa have been enjoying a really good run of swell (some evidence here) as autumn starts to morph into winter so, here for all of the European surfers (and for anybody else for that matter who's not got in the sea for the past few weeks for anything more then a "scratching the itch" fitness paddle) are a few images of some Southern Hemisphere winter waves ripe for a bit of mind-surfing.  I hope that this doesn't compound the frustration but helps you through the lean times by facilitating a bit of down-the-line day dreaming.  There're waves on the way, wherever you are.

The first two guys tip toeing their way across the bricks to the keyhole, probably with their hearts beating a bit faster than normal for a number of reasons. 

What alarm clocks were invented for.

This chalkboard hangs on the wall of Ubuntu guest house in Jeffreys Bay and the last time I paid a visit I figured I'd take a shot for memory's sake.  Wise words, and advice well worth taking.

Hitting Paydirt

"Twenty years from now

you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do

than by the ones you did do.

So throw off the bowlines.

Sail away from the safe harbour.

Catch the trade winds in your sails.

Explore. Dream. Discover."

Mark Twain

The phrase "If you don't go, you'll never know" gets bandied around a lot, particularly in the "action sports" (I hate that label) arena. But in fairness there is a truth in there.

These days it's difficult to search out novel experiences; in almost every endeavour you can bet you bottom dollar that somebody else has already been there, done that and posted it on the interweb. But not always, and even if they have, that doesn't mean you can't come a close second. Surfing-wise, you'd struggle to find a rideable wave that's yet to be ridden because in the past 60 years surfers have scoured just about every nook on every coast and checked every kink in every reef. When they find a wave then sometimes they'll tell, but if it's good then they generally won't. But secrets out over time and so the surfing map slowly grows. It's nice to think though that there are still mystery spots out there, or fickle, rarely surfed stretches of coast that rarely see a wave and even more rarely see a surfer. It gives me hope that perfect, uncrowded waves are still out there if you can get the stars to align.

I have a bit of a thing these days with that faint possibility that I might find an as-yet un-surfed or un-named or unknown place to catch a wave. I scour maps, study swell charts, tear photos and articles out of newspapers and magazines and relentlessly pester friends or acquaintances for information on far flung coastlines.

Sometimes I hit paydirt.

So the past few years I've tried to follow up on some of my hunches and research and gone looking. Now, I'm not so devoted that I'd risk hauling my boards around on a surf trip with a high risk that I might not find any surf. I still want to catch waves. Instead I've tried to tie my inquisitive forays into slightly bigger trips, either as an aside or as part of an extended stopover on the way to or from a wave-rich destination. I guess if I had more time, more money, and a 4x4 then I'd be able to indulge my curiosity but alas this is the best I can manage.

In August of 2011 I headed back to Jeffreys Bay in South Africa to visit some friends and scratch my Supertubes itch. From there I had two choices: West to the cold Southern Atlantic and the cold, sharky left-handers that peel along the base of the sand dunes of Namibia, or East up the coast of the Indian Ocean to look for warm, equally sharky right-handers in Mozambique and up towards Tanzania.

From the images of the flawless right-handers rolling down tropical points above and below, you can see which option I chose. I have to admit that my decision was mainly down to my desire to surf in boardshorts and my preference for surfing on my forehand.

I'm not saying where these photos were taken, the only clue that I'll give is that they are on the East Coast of the African Continent. The few people whom I managed to prise information about surfing up here from warned me that I ought to take a good thick book with me because I was most likely to find a flat ocean devoid of swell, whipped up by strong winds and teeming with sharks. The stars aligned however and I lucked in, but there were still plenty of X's on my map that I didn't/couldn't make it to where I'm sure I might've found equally good waves but without the handful of other surfers that I ended up sharing the water with. Those other surfers weren't a bad thing though; despite my desire to find solo perfection, it's nice to reduce the odds when there're that many big grey fishies swimming around beneath you.

So next time you wonder whether or not there might be waves there, or have an extended stopover some place strange, or even just want to run the risk and go looking for adventure as well as waves, pack your board and do it. You might just hit paydirt too.

Go looky,

Get lucky.

Images, top to bottom:

• Ponta
• One of the handful of other surfers whom I shared waves with, doing a pro-lap up the point.
• Local Lady on her way back from market.
• Dawn launch, in lee of another point.
• Well, it was offshore.
• Well worth the risk.
• Sunset swaying.
• I dare you to pour some of this on your food.
• Back beach barrels.

P.S.

If any of you read The Surfer's Path then you may well have noticed that an article about wooden surfboard maker James Otter and mine's "The Storyboard" project has made it into print. It's in the Jan/Feb issue (#88) and we're dead stoked about it. The Storyboard exhibition is also due to go on display at the Scarlet luxury eco-hotel at Bedruthan Steps, Cornwall, for the rest of the winter and into Spring, please go check it out if you're in the area.

Call me a pessimist, but...

Sometimes I just feel like casting off the lines, hauling in the fenders and getting the hell away.

I'll apologise here and now for following a none too chirpy post with one with a rather bleak outlook, but the timing is rather appropriate for this one and you can blame my piss-poor planning. I promise to publish something far more optimistic and full of sunshine next week.

You see, this weekend saw the politicians of the world gather in Durban, South Africa, for another seemingly doomed climate conference although you'd be forgiven for not being aware of that. The world is rather preoccupied with global economic woes right now and as such the fate of the planet that hosts us and our silly games of gambling invisible money seems to have slipped down the agenda. No habitable ecosystem on planet earth = no venue for our global economy. Seems to me therefore that it ought to be higher up the list of things to do.

Back in September, on or around the 27th, humanity exhausted nature's budget for the year. Earth Overshoot Day signifies the point at which we start using resources that the planet cannot regenerate or absorb the waste from within that year. It's the point at which we humans started spending more than we earnt in the year 2011 in an ecological sense, effectively living off an environmental credit card. Every year the planet can only absorb so much CO2, grow so many plants or support so many fish, however each year we use more than that. In 2007, the last year that data is available for, we used 1.5 planets worth of resources. Since 1966 humanity's ecological footprint has more than doubled.

All of this really, really scares me. I guess I'd be even more scared if I was a penguin or a polar bear though.

Jackass penguins, South Africa, some 1,600km from where their fate is being decided.

So how's about we all pull together and each try to do a little so that together we can achieve a lot. If not then perhaps I'll break the piggy bank and buy this little submarine so that I can visit the cities of the world in 50 years time when they're all underwater. It's quite expensive though...anybody want to go halves?

"It's not beyond possibility that warming will actually cause sea-level rises which could threaten the centre of London. The stakes are very high. We know these changes are happening – the evidence is incontrovertible – and if they go on, they will have catastrophic effects on the human race."

Sir David Attenborough

Broadcaster and naturalist (The last episode of Frozen Planet, On Thin Ice, will be shown on BBC 1 on Wednesday at 9pm)

£28,000 + VAT. Who's in?

The World's best righthand point? I reckon so...

Dawn at Supertubes in Jeffreys Bay, South Africa. Having run 5km in the dark to get there it was kind of annoying to find it breaking straight onto the bricks...

The 2011 Billabong Pro J-Bay has just finished up with South Africa's wonder-kid Jordy Smith coming out on top at his home contest. Every time I watch the World's top 44 surfers hacking into arguably the best right hand point break on the planet my jaw drops at how many turns they manage to cram in on a wave that is just too damn fast for mere mortals to even consider sticking a turn on. The first bit of advice I was given when I moved there was "don't even think about doing a turn, you'll just get left behind. Just take off and start going down the line as fast as you can..." Most of the contest was held in 4-6ft surf, pretty perfect size for Supertubes however the weather was grey, rainy and pretty strong onshore. It still looked heaps better than most surf spots do on their day of days though, despite the wind and rain.

It's set my feet itching, I'm trawling the internet for flights south right now...

Explore Your Own Backyard: Part 4

The story of Ducky's

Show us yer fins! The "staffroom" at Kitchen Windows, clockwise from top left is Brett, the real locals, myself and Kim.

Kim a.k.a. Ducky, slipping under the lip on a left at Kitchen Windows shot by a gent named Tom Harington.

Libya running up the point at Phantoms. Ducky's is just out of shot to the right.

Nobody called it Ducky's. It didn't have a name because it wasn't a surf spot. It was on the Wild Side and that was all there was to it until Kim started talking us into it.

I don't even have any photos of the place.

I guess you'd define Duckies as the patch of sand and rocks around the back side of Phantoms, the most easterly of the point-breaks in Jeffreys Bay. It was the start of a stretch of beach called the Wild Side on the edge of town that just looked incredibly sharky, was always windswept, bleak and very empty. There was a big yellow sign warning of the possibility of muggings stuck in the middle of the beach, which was a fair call because whilst I lived there somebody had their camera stolen when they took it out to take a souvenir comedy photo of the sign. I had to smile at the irony.

This place was the polar opposite of the world class wave at Supertubes five clicks along the beach. It was just a funny rippy little shorebreak with bits of reef sticking up out of the sand. Kim started running down to go bodysurfing there before work because it didn't require a lot of swimming, but before long we were all joining him and we nicknamed it Ducky's after Kim's favourite cap which had a big orange peak that looked like a duck's bill. So if time was pressing before work or the sunset, or we wanted a laugh rather than a serious surf, then we'd bypass the two regular respectable surf spots right in front of us and head around the corner for a splash & dash. We'd take a nominal "normal" shortboard, a surf-school foamy, a polystyrene belly board and a set of swim fins which we'd switch around between us. The waves almost always closed out, the currents were weird and there were odd bits of rock sticking out all over the place, not to mention the whole shark vibe that was going on there. We planned on building a driftwood clubhouse and having monthly "Ducky's Days" when we'd just hang there all day.

Nobody else ever surfed the place, and that's probably still the case today.

But it was ours, and because of that we loved it despite all of it's shortcomings.

Find a place and make it your own, just like Ducky did.

Indian Ocean Faces

Old Tamil Lady, Ella, Sri Lanka.

Bhodisatva, South West Sri Lanka.

Village Elders, Nusa Lembongan, Indonesia.

Rickshaw taxi rider, Java, Indonesia.

My old boss Rod on a vineyard in the Margaret River area, South Western Australia.

My friends Dr. and Hotchy at Big Day Out music festival, Perth, Western Australia.

Little girl with an ice-pop, Tokyo-Sexwale township, Jeffreys Bay, South Africa.

Xosa family, Tokyo-Sexwale township, Jeffreys Bay, South Africa.

Young Bedu men, Al-Ashkara area, Oman.

Outside the coffee shop, Al-Ashkara, Oman.

Here's a grip full of portraits, old and new, from just a few of the places around the edges of the Indian Ocean.
Each of the Worlds Oceans are so great that there is a massive amount of diversity to be found around the edges, diversity of climates, cultures, religions, ethnicity, wealth and environment to name a few. Whilst I've splashed around in and traversed each of these Oceans, the Indian Ocean is that which I have probably spent the most time circumnavigating and exploring, and there're still a ton of places around the edge and islands in the middle that I'm desperate to check out, and a few that I still can't (Somalia, Yemen and Burma). There's still time yet though.

My thanks goes out to the people above for allowing me to take their picture, I fully squirm in front of the camera which is why I hide behind it so I appreciate it when people let me do this to them.

Iron like a Lion

Hearing one of these beasts roar is one of the most terrifying sounds that's ever gone down my ear canal. It's such a primitive deep noise and so so loud that I can't quite comprehend how they can produce such a sound. It makes you remember that, alongside sharks and crocs, some animals on this planet are just out an out killing machines; the cumulative result of millenia of evolution with a singular purpose. They are awe inspiring animals.
I shot this image from the passenger seat of a landrover as we bounced along through the African bush in the middle of the night. I wasn't allowed to use the flash on my camera because it would've startled the cat so the ranger whom I was with drove one handed and held a spotlight with the other, training it on the lions face as we kept pace alongside it.
We were out with the sunrise the next morning, and as we rounded a corner we could see a tree shaking. It turned out to be a blue wildebeest (aka a gnuu) scratching its arse on the lower branches, but just behind it in the bushes we spotted a lioness on the stalk. My fingers were cold and I fumbled my camera that badly as she leapt out of the bushes and the wildebeest bolted -it was still on the same settings from the night before, pretty much the opposite to what I needed it on right now to capture this hunt in action. I managed to get this shot and the wildebeest lived to say another day, but ever since whenever I put my camera back in its bag I make sure I've put it back on my regular settings. Lesson learned.

A Moment of Distraction

The street outside my house looked like the ocean. The problem was that from the front of the house there was an uninterrupted view of the Indian Ocean, and the only reason the road looked just like it was because it was covered with ground up broken glass that glistened in the sun and sparkled like the sea.
At the end of the street, on the corner, was an empty lot again covered in broken glass and behind that a big blue house with grills on the window. This building housed the Joshua Project.
The Joshua Project in Jeffreys Bay, South Africa, is a Christian charity that seeks to provide a safe haven for vulnerable children and the street kids of the town, clothing, feeding and trying to provide them with a basic education. They also now teach them to surf.
Imagine: Kids as young as 8 years old who have to live and survive on the street. I don't care about the religious connotations of the Joshua Project, the work that they do is amazing and massively admirable.
Whilst I was living out there and working at Jeffreys Bay Surf School my boss and I went to a few meetings at the Joshua Project. Attempts had been made before to get some surf lessons up and running but the kids interest had dwindled and they hadn't had the necessary structure to their day to ensure it's success. Part of the reason was that they never knew when to turn up. None of these kids owned watches and literally survived day to day, meaning that they rarely knew what day of the week it was. They had that structure and routine now though, so on Wednesday afternoons we started teaching them to surf. I wondered whether the numbers would drop off each week as their interest waned. Instead, each week more and more kids turned up until there were more than we had surfboards for. They wore donated wetsuits that were inevitably far too big for them or riddled with holes but enthusiasm kept them warm.
I dragged in a load of friends and volunteers to help out, and Tom the bar manager from the backpackers hostel where the surf school was based ended up putting "helping the Joshua Project surf sessions" on the rota for his bar staff.
We enforced some pretty basic rules. Most of these kids had no homes or contact with their families, they lived on the streets and/or had been victims of abuse of some form or other - they had a myriad of problems that they distanced themselves from by turning to substance abuse. In the majority of cases they sniffed glue because it's cheap, readily obtainable and got them stoned. It meant they didn't have to think about stuff.
If they turned up stoned, no surfing. If they'd been in trouble, no surfing. It got to the point where the Joshua Project could use the surf lessons as leverage to get the kids to attend their normal school classes. When I left a few months later the surf sessions were going strong. My friend Dale took over my job a while after and ended up doing two sessions a week for them. He then started taking the bigger and more competent kids out to the reefbreak at the end of the beach, and it sounds like they're making good progress a year on.
Pretty good for kids who can't swim.
The point that I want to get across is this: Surfing, like a lot of other pursuits, is a form of meditation in motion. It brings us completely into the present moment where we don't reflect on the past or think about the future, all we're worried about is what's happening NOW. This couldn't be of greater benefit than to the kids who are helped by the Joshua Project. I'd wager that they've each got more problems that they need to escape from than a lot of us have put together.

A moment of distraction.

I hope that the surf sessions now provide those kids with some escapism from the daily struggles that they face just to get through the day before finding an empty doorway to lie down in for the night. These are the kids who people cross the street to get away from when they bowl through town with a collection of mongrel dogs yapping at their heels. Dale told me that when a guest at the backpackers was robbed on the beach one day, the street kids from the Joshua Project helped to get his camera back. Some of the opinions and preconceptions of these kids are starting to change, and hopefully it'll give them a chance to make a break away from the situation that they've grown up in.
Regardless, at the very least they have a smile on their faces for an hour on Wednesday afternoons.


Top Image: Photograph by Niels, a Dutch guy who helped out with the first few Joshua Project surf sessions. That moment of distraction, captured on camera.

Image Below: Photograph by Roger Arney. Myself and Tom Jones from Island Vibe backpackers hostel trying to get across the concept of turning a surfboard within two minutes (the kids don't have very long attention spans) and with a language barrier, being that English is these kids third language after Afrikaans and isiXosa and my grasp of isiXosa obviously ain't that good...

The Joshua Project

Jeffreys Bay Surf School

Island Vibe Backpackers Hostel

Paint the town...every colour imaginable

"If it doesn't move, paint it white" is the go-to decorating advice that anybody in Cornwall will give you, as in many other coastal fishing communities around Europe where whitewashed homes cling to the cliffs.

These directions never made it to Bo Kaap it would appear.

Bo Kaap is a suburb of Cape Town, South Africa; a Muslim community traditionally inhabited by the Cape Malay descendents of freed slaves. The story goes that slaves lives were devoid of colour - they had to wear white, lived in white rooms and as you'd expect life wasn't particularly vibrant. When that horrendous chapter of human history eventually ended and the slaves were freed they rebelled against the years of monochromicity and got busy with the paint. The result is a community where every street is a full on visual overdose - and a photographers dream.