Hello everybody at Surf Hive! My name is Jasper, and I am writing to you from Cape Town, South Africa! I have been on HIVE since about April this year, and I have been enjoying it and posting regularly since then.
I have various interests. I work as a renewable energy developer. I am happily married to my wife Julia, and a new father to my first baby daughter - beautiful little Madison, who is about 15 months old now. This means I have less free time than I used to, but strangely enough I seem to be using the free time that I do have better, focusing on my two main hobbies of music (I play guitar, sing and write songs) and surfing!
I have then been posting about these two hobbies on HIVE since I joined in April. Music has been easy as there are "Music" and "Hive Open Mic" communities that have been great and supportive of my music and it feels like I'm building a tribe there. Surfing - I have been posting about surfing in the Sports Talk Social Community, where the posts have been rewarded nicely and some people have asked some intelligent questions in the comments, but it is clear that I am one of the only surfers on there.
So, I was very happy to see that this "Surf Hive" community has been created, and I hope it continues to grow! When I shared a few photos last week, @lucasrocha94 welcomed me and asked me to write an Introduction post so that you can get to know me and my part of the world a little better.
Now I am not a fantastic surfer at all, but I seem to be improving for the first time in ages recently, for a few reasons.
- Using my free time to surf when I can, rather than being lazy, because now that I'm a dad, free time is precious!
- Accepting that I'm not a professional, and that I should have a little bit more volume in my boards across the quiver than Felipe Toledo would...
- I have made friends with better surfers than me in the last year, mainly through my third and newest hobby of martial arts (BJJ and kickboxing) They are pushing me!
You get all sorts of waves in Cape Town, from very small to much bigger than I want anything to do with! This means that my quiver of boards includes a variety of surfboard options, from a mini-mal for small days, a soft-top for shore-breaks and novelty rocky spots, a more normal board, a semi-gun for as big as I can handle... and a bodyboard as well! Here I am admiring my new shortboard that I got at the beginning of winter this year - it is actually a bit of a step-up because many of Cape Town's waves are on the steep and tricky side where it is nice to get into the wave early, but it turns well enough for an average guy like me!
Cape Town is an ideal place to be a surfer. It is always offshore somewhere within about 30-45 minutes of my house.
There's usually exposed places on small swell... and sheltered places to hide in enormous swell, so the chances of finding a clean, surfable wave is good almost every day!
Of the zones above, I have just come out of the Southern hemisphere winter where the swells can be enormous and the wind is often from the NW, and so the best chance of finding surf has actually been inside the sheltered False Bay (Yellow Zone).
The red zone is great in Autumn when the wind is very soft. Most of the rest of the year it is a world class kite-surfing destination instead.
The green zone is offshore in the summer SE winds and is close to the CBD. Some of the suburbs along this coastal stretch are very posh!
The blue zone is also mostly offshore in the summer SE winds (with a few mini-peninsulas providing other options!), but the people there tend to be more laid-back hippies! Hahaha! Some of Cape Town's best big waves are in the blue zone, and the biggest of them all (Dungeons, Sunset, Crayfish Factory) are the reasons why South Africa can produce World Champion big wave surfers like Grant Twiggy Baker!
In fact, South Africa is very competitive at bodyboarding and knee-boarding as well... I don't know why we don't get more surfers on the normal WSL Championship Tour? Maybe because of how weak the Rand is? Maybe also because of how good our waves are? You have to surf bad waves to learn how to use your body to add energy to turns properly?
WINTER means THE YELLOW ZONE
The most popular spot in False Bay is one of the best beaches in the world for learning to surf - Muizenberg! Here I am shouting my friend into some of his first waves ever. He is a very fit ultra-marathon runner and did great!
Muizenberg became even more popular during Covid when the gyms were closed but surfing was allowed (even surfing was banned sometimes!) The people who discovered exercise in the fresh air don't seem to want to go back to their stuffy gyms! Hahaha!
Sometimes a winter swell arrives at Muizenberg with enough power to want to use a short-board rather than a mini-mal or a soft-top with extra volume!
I have also spent this winter getting to learn the reef-breaks of False Bay with my friend Max, pictured here. We have been tutored a bit by our friends that actually surf well, such as Justin and Jono...
This reef does get hollow, but there is an even more famous, (but more crowded) wave that Max and I have started to tackle (and get scraps on the inside that the main locals don't want!) a few hundred metres away...
Here is a fickle novelty wave between those two reefs that came alive this winter - there are actually many spots in False Bay that you can keep your eye on and tackle on that rare day where the conditions suit them!
BUT SUMMER IS COMING - TIME FOR THE WEST SIDE!
Now the winds will more likely be coming from the SE, and the swell will not be enormous, we can go hunting on the other side... here's one in the BLUE ZONE
And here's a spot right in the city in the GREEN ZONE. That's the famous Table Mountain in the background! This is a spot that actually likes a massive swell but S winds, that rare combination actually happened quite often this winter.
Another spot in the GREEN ZONE, where I filmed someone get flushed down the toilet on take-off!
THE REST OF SOUTH AFRICA
Of course, there is much much more to surfing in South Africa than Cape Town. The most famous surf town is Jeffrey's Bay, and here I am (picture by my wife Julia) on a day that most locals thought wasn't worth the effort because the swell was a bit new and causing a current down the point. Unfortunately I was only there for the day so had to put in the work! Haha
I even managed to find my own little secret spot on a holiday somewhere between Cape Town and Jeffreys Bay this year - I called it Maddy's Left after my baby daughter - how beautiful is the location? I was the only surfer for miles! I think the back of the opposite point might be surfable and much bigger, so I look forward to going back!
So that's me! A happily married man with a baby daughter and a rewarding full-time job living in South Africa!
I have found that joining HIVE means that I want to learn more music to play for the Music and Hive Open Mic communities. I hope that joining the SURF HIVE community encourages me to improve at surfing, explore new spots, and hopefully post about it when I can! I also look forward to reading surf adventures from other places in the world!
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