SURFING: A day to just watch - Discovering a Secret BIG WAVE spot in the Garden Route, South Africa

Hello everyone, and especially the SurfHive Community! It's Jasper, the musical-surfer dad from Cape Town in South Africa.

As I mentioned yesterday, I am not in Cape Town at the moment. I am on holiday up the Garden Route, about a 5-7 hour drive from Cape Town, just before you reach Jeffrey's Bay.

Now yesterday, I had a desperate surf in the village's bumpy and shifty beach break, because I knew that more swell was on the way - (check here: https://ecency.com/hive-141964/@jasperdick/surfing-shifty-and-bumpy-but)

Today I went to check, knowing that the normal beach-break would be too big and unruly, but knowing of a couple of sheltered novelties I had managed to find on bigger days in the past. I also have my standing New Year's Resolution to surf a new wave every month of 2023, and I have been successful in this from January through to June. Perhaps today would be the day I find my new wave of July!

The problem was, scouring Google Earth, there seemed to only be one new option available... it would entail an 800m paddle across a rivermouth to the top of the opposite point in shark infested waters. With it being so far away, I would have no idea how big it would be either!

Well the first novelty was non-existent, and the second novelty was closing out right across the rivermouth instead of trickling along it! The reef I had surfed as my January new wave looked like death, and as for my new idea at the top of the opposite point - it looked big and raw, but how big and raw? I decided it would be madness to venture out alone.

I got back to the beach parking lot to a scene of somebody showing somebody else his surfboard. It was a proper big wave gun. His friend proceeded to bring his own big wave gun out of his mini-van. I started chatting and asking if they were after the big wave point across the rivermouth... apparently they were.

I asked the first guy his name... it was a name I'd heard several times before... a proper big wave legend in this part of the country. He admitted that my biggest board (a 7'0 semi-gun) would be far too small. The wave would be big and hard to keep up with. He also mentioned that the waters were very sharky and it was nice to have a bigger board to paddle faster (and appear bigger) if you saw one!

I decided that today was not my day, but that I would grab a camera and try and learn from being a spectator from a high vantage point! Now that I look back at the photos, I am reasonably happy (there's always that little bit of shame that other people can tackle waves that you can't!) that I stayed on the shore! I don't know if I will ever have big enough balls (or a big enough board) for these waves... that turned out to be bigger than I had thought!

Apparently a big great white shark swam past them as well, as if the waves weren't scary enough!

WAVE 1

WAVE 2

THE END