Category: Surf Sessions

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21 July Sardine Report 2019

21 July Sardine Report 2019

It’s been another cracking sardine season for the sardine run operators down in the Transkei and Natal. These guys have encountered bait balls daily and have been getting some spectacular video material, which we will get to see soon enough.

To make sure we are on top of things, we headed south on sardine patrol, and have the following to report.

July Sardine Report 2019

Port St Johns

Arriving in Port St Johns, we could already feel the buzz. The Umzimvubu was looking delightfully clean and there were boats everywhere. Anglers anchored in the channels, we saw one guy boat a 12kg class Garrick and a little Kob. Sardine safari boats moored at the line of jetties, all prepared for the mornings adventures.

We visited Offshore Africa down on the river, who run sardine run trips for two months through the season. Rob Nettleton and Debbie Smith (The Shark Lady), the operators, live in Port St. Johns and are consummate professionals in what they do. They chuck you right in with the sardines and sharks!

Chatting to Richie O’Connell who leads one of the boats, “You don’t even need a baitball to find and swim with sharks. They’re everywhere!”.

Rob showed me some of this year’s footage, the cameras are dressed up with much better and wider lenses making it possible to really capture all that is going on down there. Stay posted for this material when it comes out, it is truly work of underwater art.

Through the three days we spent scouring the views around Port St. Johns, we saw lots birds running south still. Some just sitting on the water too full to fly. And the odd dive bomber as sporadic shoals moved through under the surface. But the sardine spotters travelled north and south and every day out they have jumped in with sardines. Rob was on day 33!

Mpande

Great views and nice swells greeted us here. But again, we never saw any real hot action from the shore. Lots of birds. Oil slicks from previous sorties. Crystal clear water. Very fishy looking.

21 July Sardine Report 2019
21 July Sardine Report 2019

Coffee Bay

We stayed at the pretty Coffee Shack where they installed us in the King’s House. A delightful cottage overlooking the entire bay flanked by the Sugarloaf and the Mbomvu point. Four delicious shad for breakfast.

The action was absolutely wild!

Shoals of sardines were being driven to the surface. Mainly it was dolphins but we also saw sharks breaching and some outsized yellowfin tuna. The gannets were raining down like bombs. And this was just the first shoal. They just kept coming through sporadically throughout the entire day. The huge waves, well ok 2 to 3m, were kind of keeping the action on the backline and only one occasion did they come right into the white water where they were obliterated.

  • The view from Kings House at the Coffee Shack in Coffee Bay
  • Mbomvu River Mouth
  • When the red hot pokers bloom…

Mdumbi

When we came over the hill, the vista was unexpected. Waves were reeling down the point, the sand was connecting across the entire bay! There were a bunch of guys on it but the waves were plentiful and everyone was mellow.

There were birds diving and some dolphins were hunting but the water never smelled fishy and the surf continued even better the next day. When a fabulous Berg wind kicked mid-morning and painted the prettiest surfing picture I have seen for a while. Then the huge west that is currently blowing a gale at about 40 knots hit hard and so we moved on to the other side of the river to Freedom O’ Clock to catch up a bit.

And we got to throw a little video together quick…

Get in touch via umzimkulu@gmail.com if you would like to join us for The Sardine Run next year.

Catch us on Facebook at http://facebook.com/thesardine.co.za/

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Bodysurfin’ The Movie

Bodysurfin' Take 1

Bodysurfin’ The Movie

Bodysurfin’ The Movie: It’s not often you find something that blows you completely away. But this is will. Blow you the hell away. Flung by a masterful piece of artwork in the form of a quasi-ephemeral timepiece movie about the purest wave riding form we know about.

Bodysurfing.

It feels like a hundred years ago when my brother Marc and I were fortunate enough to hang out with a certain Frenchie Fredericks, as kids. The same Frenchie that toured the north shore as a Springbok surfer in a sponsored VW beetle late 60’s. This was way before any doors needed breaking down. Frenchie’s erstwhile and notable companion was Christine Petrucci. The first Springbok lady surfer. Who used hang out with The Rell. And is the mother of *Maya.

Frenchie was heavily into board design and fin technology. And as early teens, Marc and I fell in with his mystical dreamings and fanciful wave riding philosophies. He surfed with aplomb, and a nice twitch which he converted into speed whenever he needed it. An intense surfer, full of concentration. Flare.

Back then, a day on the beach was just that. An entire day on the beach. Starting way before the sun. And ending with it.

Umtentweni, our local beach, was infamous for it’s shorebreak. On a decent spring with some east swell lying around, this dumper could really deliver. With Frenchie’s encouragement, we were all up for it. So much tube time. So many laughs. So many grazes.

And it was here that Marc and I were able to live life through Frenchie’s decades of experience and travels a while. In between waves he would chat north shore and south shore. Names that were God-like to us. Haleiwa. Laniakea. The Pipe. And whilst surfing these mystical meccas, Frenchie was rubbing shoulders and sharing waves with the likes of Nat Young and Rell Sun. He even knew Gerry Lopez!

Those days charging the huge shorebreak with Frenchie Fredericks were right in our formative years. He taught us how to wipe-out properly. How to porpoise a wave. How to survive the sand!

So when I found this. Bodysurfin’ The Movie. I was flung back to those pure and simple days. When having a surfboard didn’t even matter. Because you could just go for a ‘body’…any high tide you liked.

BUT what a movie features just below! If you would like to get real familiar with the inside workings of a tubing wave, watch away! The camera work is straight from George Greenough and the completely custom made sound track and movie score is oh so ephemeral. This movie dollops buckets of kudos onto such a noteworthy and noble pastime as is bodysurfing.

Enjoy and share a magnificent surfing production – these guys really turned it on! You ought to watch every scene. Listen to every note. I did.

Footnotes:

Coincidences?

There are two wild coincidences in this story. Firstly. Christine Petrucci. Mother of Maya. *Maya is Geoffrey Petrucci from JBay. His first name is Maya. He bust his neck bodysurfing the infamous ‘Tweni shorebreak when he worked with us at The Spot. Nineties. He survived just fine, but Christine still blamed us!

Second coincidence. Frenchie’s spearing buddy in the late eighties was none other than The Sardine News’ spearfishing editor at the time, our very own Darrell Hattingh!

 

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Video: Surfing Praia do Rocha

Grant Gilmour and Chad Leavitt discuss the paddle out

Video: Surfing Praia do Rocha

Surfing Praia do Rocha with the cool crew of Grant Gilmour, Chad Leavitt and Branco Mijulkov.

Grant Gilmour, Chad Levitt and Branco Mijulkov star in the surf movie style flick of a surf patrol to Praia do Rocha, Inhambane, Mozambique. A fun session great for laughs and a few cool clips – all done on cellphones.

Grant Gilmour and Chad Leavitt discuss the paddle out

The sand has finally returned to Tofinho reportedly, but it doesn’t mean we won’t be doing the odd dawn patrol down Praia do Rocha way.

To stay in Tofinho, check out Oceano Azul here.

To stay a little up the beach from Tofo, check out LalaLand.

And for smoking hot pizza, check out Branko’s here.

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Surfing Mozambique’s surprise left-hander

Surfing Mozambiques surprise left

Surfing Mozambique’s surprise left-hander

Cyclone Dineo caused serious havoc in a lot of people’s lives, leaving behind destruction that will take years to rectify. But it also left us a proper left-hander. Right in the corner at The Dragon in Tofinho.

After imagining many times that one day a left would magically appear in Mozambique, it would appear out of nowhere – be a top to bottom pitching barreling rip wave that made you work and sweat and surf and surf and surf…well, it appeared. The featured picture is more to show where it is, there was only Captain Gallop and myself in the water AGAIN! So no more pics, but the main factor in this miraculous birth of a wave is very clear in the seascape. THERE IS NO SAND.

Right from Praia do Rocha in the south, past Backdoor, around the point at Tofinho, across the Dragon, into the bay, and all along to Tofo. There is nothing. Beaches have vanished completely. The football pitch sized beach on the wild side (if you can call it that), of Praia do Tofo, is gone. You have to walk half up the dune at high tide. It’s an amazing spectacle. The coastline in Mozambique is so subject to change by the elements.

Back to the top to bottom pitching barreling rip wave that made you work and sweat and surf and surf and surf.

The first day my eyes nearly popped out of my head. I saw it in the perfect blue warm conditions we came here for. It was hammering through. Head high and mean.

What had happened, is that the removal of all the sand scoured out the bay at The Dragon, right back to the primary dune. Exposing a reef! So the waves that come off The Dragon point reef (which is well surfed every high tide every day when this happens), spill into the corner, the water escapes north and drags across this reborn reef and straight out into the oncoming swells. Ok the current was mean, but that’s what makes these kind of waves stand up and go so fast.

We had to stop surfing eventually!

The next day was the same as the tide barely moved being in full neaps. Luckily for the neaps as the current would have been undo-able in spring tides. Water moves so fast with the 4m spring tide range around this area.

The next day was the same.

And the next.

And the next, until it was time to make travel arrangements and go West.

We left it there for any takers. A cooking powerful hollow EMPTY left in Mozambique.

PS except for Tofinho, the other waves are all still operating just fine. Backdoor is a bit wild as the lack of sand means it breaks right onto that shelf. I still cannot get over the power that bay holds. At 10 foot the ground shakes when the sets break – huge perfect a-frames that will shake your bones. The bay in Tofo has many different faces through the tides with the sandbanks producing long running lefts and rights at low tide and playful shorebreaks at high.

For any other surfing info or accommodation or tour options, buzz Sean on umzimkulu@gmail.com…or click here for more.

https://www.facebook.com/thesardine.co.za/

 

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Surfing the real Flintstones

Surfing the real Flintstones

After getting in a good session surfing at Flintstones Too, a few days later and we got back on the jungle trail around Port Shepstone. This time the path led straight to the real Flintstones and the guns were out.

Roosta, Calvin and Buzz took on the shallow reef ledge with lefts and rights coming in like a little miniature North Shore. The spot seems to hold semblance to a bunch of others close by – powerful, fast and challenging.

It has been a fantastic summer so far, the swells have been thick and fast – we even had a few bigger days at the end of January. In fact, speculation in the carpark calls the summer a better winter thus far.

The offshores have been holding way into the morning, and the water has been over 24 degrees most of the time. Crystal clear too! The fishing conditions are superb and many a spinning angler can be seen at our favourite beaches up and down the KZN South Coast. Today was another surfing treat as Hibberdene turned on the juice for an entire low tide – barrells in summer!

These videos are part of a series documenting the Wedge Blacktop series of surfboards – stay posted for more Surfing the South Coast in summer!

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