SURFING (POV Photos): Testing my new surfboard in a week full of good waves in Cape Town, South Africa

Hi everyone around the world! I am writing to you from Cape Town, South Africa. I write posts about my original music and my beautiful cats among other things, but the sport I like to write about is surfing (and maybe some martial arts?). I hope you have had a great week? I definitely have!

Recently, I shared a post about why surfers tend to have more than one surfboard, and how they are designed and shaped to be suitable for different waves. You can read that post here:

https://ecency.com/hive-101690/@jasperdick/surfing-the-perfect-quiver-of

In that post, I shared that I have gained weight over the last few years, from very skinny to slightly less skinny, and that it means I have to save up for slightly bigger surfboards to have the extra volume and buoyancy to match the extra weight on my body! Recently I have been able to get a lovely board that will act as my step-up, an important board to have in Cape Town where many of the waves are steep and fast! I was thinking that maybe I will also have to get a high-performance board in a couple of months, but the upcoming winter months will mean more powerful waves, better suited to this beautiful new board in the picture first, and then we will see…

Look at this beauty!

One of my main surf buddies, Max, has been inspired by this and has also decided he needs a bit more volume, and so here’s a beautiful board that he’s just treated himself with as well!

Max’s New Beauty

You’ll notice that both boards are made by the same shaper. That’s because our good friends Jono and Justin rep his boards here in Cape Town. They have started a little company called Surfbros Cpt, hence the stickers!

So, I got my new board a couple of weeks ago and got to test it at a short reef break, as per my main plan for it – trickier, steeper waves.

New board takes on a short reef break as its first surf!

I was happy with that first surf and how much more manoeuvrable the board felt than I expected. Would I even need to get a more high-performance board than this, knowing that I’m not exactly a professional surfer by a long shot?

Well, last week gave me the chance to really answer that question. Two pulses of proper swell pushed some head-high waves into False Bay, where the beginner beach of Muizenberg is located. The waves at Muizenberg are often slow, small and weak. Even with better waves than normal, if my new board went well at this spot, then I can probably accept that it’s a lot more versatile and high-performance than I thought, and I probably don’t even need to get another one with a squash tail to be a bit faster and “skaty”. (Notice I said “need” not “want” Haha).

TUESDAY AND THURSDAY

The only issue was that the two pulses of swell were for Tuesday and Thursday, and I work a full-time job. The sunset this week was for 17:45 (nearly full winter now in the Southern Hemisphere), so if I got to the beach at 17:00, I could maybe frantically surf for an hour each evening, racing against the dying of the light!

The other issue? Muizenberg is a break with a very flat sandy bottom. This means that a bigger set wave breaks football fields away from where a smaller wave breaks. This meant that the hour of racing against the dying light was spent frantically paddling around trying to move to where each approaching wave seemed likely to be breaking when it reached me…

Here are some pictures from Tuesday and Thursday evenings:

Tuesday evening as the sun sets… and the board is turning well.

Muizenberg is a great place. Unlike some other spots in Cape Town, the crowd is diverse in terms of race, age and gender – everybody was out there having fun in the glassy conditions!

The waves were really good all week!

The consensus? Even though I should still be learning and adapting to this new board, I feel like I am surfing better than ever before. Maybe instead of “mediocre”, I am becoming “decent”. This is great, the board is definitely high-performance enough for my skill level while still offering the benefits of a step-up (catching steep waves early and being stable when you need it)! Now I suppose if I do get another new board, it might be a semi-gun for bigger waves instead… but that means I would have to get a lot braver! (Gulp!)

FRIDAY

Friday evening came around and the waves were still good at Muizenberg, but I was tired. I don’t normally surf this often! I decided to paddle out on my mini-mal surfboard instead. A mini-mal stands for “mini Malibu”, and a malibu board is a longboard similar to the original boards people used to surf in the 60s when surfing first became popular. The modern shortboard only came later!

The mini-mal helps you paddle fast and is also suited for keeping the momentum going when the wave gets a bit flat and weak…

Friday was still really good though, here’s an awesome stranger who was so “stoked” that he decided to stop paddling and cheer for me on this wave instead! Wonderful vibe in the water!

SATURDAY

Saturday came around and I had another look at Muizenberg. The waves were finally starting to get smaller and the weekend crowd had descended, meaning there would not be enough waves to go around. I decided to keep on driving. I rocked up at a world class reef spot that I have written about before (https://ecency.com/hive-148441/@jasperdick/surfing-hiding-from-a-big) and noticed it was very small and the tide was super low, making the reef more shallow than ever. This is usually a very crowded, localised spot by Cape Town standards. On Saturday, a single bodyboarder was out – I decided to dust off my bodyboard and join him.

Robbie POV, the other bodyboarder, performs a nice little barrel roll!

It turns out the other bodyboarder has a Youtube channel I like to follow called Robbie POV. Here’s an example of one of his videos at this location:

The reef was super shallow! If I sat on my bodyboard, my feet would sometimes touch the reef below. The water was also unusually clear for False Bay, so you could see every detail of the reef below you! This made it quite exciting despite the small size of the waves!

I hardly ever bodyboard instead of surf, so I’m not very good at it. However, this spot is so good that I still got a quick cover up on a couple of waves!

SUNDAY

By the time Sunday arrived the swell had dropped away in False Bay. However, this is Cape Town, where the western side of the peninsula has several beaches that are exposed to the open ocean. As a wonderful stroke of good luck, the wind finally changed to be offshore and glassy on that side. So, I landed up taking the new board for one last surf for the week, in fast zippy waves, more like it was originally planned for!

Sunday also lived up to its name, giving us a wonderful calm and sunny day, more like Autumn than Winter!

So, it was a great week full of lovely waves, and a chance for my new board to prove itself as being more versatile than I would have expected which is great! I also got to ride my mini-mal and my bodyboard, both of which don’t usually get enough love… so now I don’t have to feel as guilty for having them!

THE END