Wavescape Surf Film Festival Poster

Wavescape has organised another Surf Film Festial between 5 and 14 December in Cape Town, where they will be screening epic surf movies.

They’ll have an art exhibition of nine crafted spoons, as well as a exhibition of underwater photographs by Tom Peschak. The exhibition will be held at the VEO Gallery from Wednesday 26 November until Wednesday 3 December, when we will auction the boards.

The final list of artists is Kim Longhurst, Scott Robertson, Trevor Paul, Ross Turpin, Leonora van Staden, Konradski, Motel7, Mak1, Willie Bester, and ND Mazin.

There will be eulogies to gritty documentaries about surfing in the Vietnam War; from big wave tow-ins at scary spot Aileens in Ireland to classic longboarding in two-foot Robertsport in Liberia; from the lanquid lyricism of longboard ballet in Beneath The Surface to an uplifting South African story about the Zulu surf riders of Umzumbe.

Wavescapes launches it’s Surf FIlm Festival on friday 5 December with a special outdoor screening at Clifton Fourth Beach (Saturday 6th is a weather day in case that southeaster is pumping!)

The venue is then move to the Brass Bell in Kalk Bay from Sunday 7 December until Wednesday 10 before returning to town for screenings twice a day at the Labia Cinema.

infoline 082 360 5231
Brass Bell: 021 788 5456
Labia Cinema (Orange Str): 021 424 5927
VEO Gallery: 021 421 3278

You will most probably have seen the Firewire board with “Parabolic Balsa Rails”, which basically means instead of having a normal central stringer, the board has 2 balsa stringers on the rails. This makes the rails more rigid and the center of the board more flexible, so if you think a normal board has a rigid stringer in the middle and more flexible rails – thats how the sales pitch goes anyway.

Read more about Firewire Surfboards

The Seawin ship wreck at Dardestein

Last week a ship ran aground, The Seawin, in heavy seas and came around at (a classic surf spot) Derdesteen. The beach is currently closed off, you can make out the tape in the photo after the break.

News reports say the ship wreck caused a fair amount of damage to the dune area, and the mostly wooden hull is breaking up.

The ship is sitting on the beach right in front of the surf spot car park, and the car park is currently full with waste removal equipment.

These are the photos from this weekend.
There are some more great photos here http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?p=6053630

Read the full article on News 24: http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_2367937,00.html

The Seawin ship wreck at Dardestein

1. The banks are crap at Llandudno at the moment. Apparently this is because the sand the is supposed to blow over from Hout Bay, but not as much sand is making it over due to a large amount of development in Hout Bay.

2. On weekends Llandudno is a circus. I’ve heard stories of 50 guys out all paddling for 1-2 foot closeouts.

3. I have names and photos for the Llandudno idiot and supporter of mean localism. They are going on the new Name and Shame page.

4. There are more and more knobs than ever surfing around Cape Town.

It all sounds a bit bleak, but there are some proper nice blokes out in the water too, and Cape Town houses some brilliant waves – bring on the winter swells!

If you see these guys out, don’t attempt to catch any waves unless you want Wayne to shout at you.

Wayne Stewart

Wayne Stewart – Saying he is slightly high strung would be an understatement.

Liam Wood

Liam Wood – Although he is not the most agro person in the world, he teaches surfing and is happy to snake you all day long and drop in you just in case you are on the inside.

Rip Curl

I’ve had a bit of bad luck with a (currently unnamed) surf shop in Cape Town. I bought a 4/3 Rip Curl Ultimate Elasto wetsuit, and after about 8 months the inner seams started to break and crack. The cracks made the liquid taping bend and curve and the gaps caused tones of chaffing and there were holes forming in the gaps of the suite – which were two reason to return the wetsuit from whence is came. Needless to say returning the wetsuit to the surf store is when the fun started.

June 2007.
I returned the wetsuit to the surf shop (still not named) under warranty with the till slip, bought a replacement suit, and awaited the response from Rip Curl about the wetty being either fixed or replaced.  After a few weeks I heard that there was no stock of the old season, and they were waiting on new season stock.  I thought this was fair enough, no stock means no stock and I would have to wait a bit, but I already had a nifty replacement Billabong Solution Platinum, and I was going to get the next seasons Ultimate Elasto.

I returned to the surf shop about 3 months later (still no replacement wetty – at this point I am starting to feel sorry for someone who wouldn’t have the cash to fork out for a replacement wet suit like I did), and the story I got from the store was that Rip Curl had changed ownership and the store was struggling to get the new owners of Rip Curl to honor the warranty on the suite. I figured this was a legitimate hold up, but I felt confident that Rip Curl would stick to their part of the deal regardless of who owned Rip Curl SA at the time.

Now we have moved through time from June 2007 to March/April 2008, and I hadn’t heard anything in ages and ages from the surf shop, since they were in contact with the new owners of Rip Curl SA. I basically asked for a resolution, any resolution, from the store and I hear some excuses that I won’t go into detail about but there was a lot of flack given to Rip Curl and another big wetsuit brand for their warranty’s in South Africa

rted in July 2007 and April 2008 and I went to the store again and I was looking for a final resolution – after a little more than 6 months of waiting. The store manager told me that the new owners of Rip Curl were basically not keen to replace the wetsuit as the owners were not surfers and they didn’t understand the problems were legitimate claims. The shop manager then said my wetsuit was still in the basement and I could have it back and look at it if I wanted.

The flag got raised at that point, and I managed to find the contact details of Rip Curl Australia and Rip Curl America. I sent them the details above and they promptly forwarded my mail to the blocks running Rip Curl down here in South Africa.

Here is a summary of the dates:

• 8th of August 2006: My old 5/3 Ultimate Elasto was stolen from my car
• 15th August 2006: I bought my new 4/3 Ultimate Elasto no later that 2 weeks after that (I would have died from dryness), putting the purchase date roughly in the middle of August 2006.
• 20th of June 2007: I returned the wetsuit within 12 months of purchase
• 20th of June 2007: bought a new suit while I waited for the broken one to be fixed.
• 30th April 2008! Finally picked up the replacement wetsuit – a cool 9 months later.

On a separate note I have to give some feedback on my wetsuit. The suit in question is the new Billabong Solution Platinum. They retail for R3500 at Surf Zone Surf Shop in Cape Town. To start with I was not 100% impressed with my Billabong ‘Platinum’ wetsuit. But after surfing in the cold-ish waters for at least 2:30hrs I was still warm, so I guess they are pretty good, if not better than my old 4/3 Rip Curl Ultimate Elasto. Also a bonus is the 4/3 Billabong Solution Platinum feels like the Oneil Phsyco 3/2, nice and stretchy.

The surf was great and everyone was being very nice and friendly over the weekend, partly due to the abundant number of quality waves and barrels. And no Llandudno Idiots about – bonus.

Here is a video of the surf at Llandudno. It’s pretty much closing out the bay, but there were 2 blokes surfing, or at least trying!

As for today, the surf is evern small, with Seapoint and Greenpoint having better conditions for Wakeboarding than surfing – no jokes. It’s like a pond/oil slick out there.

Bring on some more swell.

The guy at Llandudno (granted a he is still a dick) was he was actually a blessing in disguise, because it made me start looking for new spots. I didn’t really feel like making the 20 minute drove from town to bump into him, so I drove 20 minutes the other way – which I did up the west coast.

Now I’m only talking about Big Bay and a little bit beyond, but it really is a different world up there. Everyone has always been friendly – even chatting to strangers (OMG) in the water and everyone was getting waves. I have to say I was getting pretty stocked seeing everyone get their fair share of waves.

Since I started venturing out of town, I have had a couple of the best surfs in years (since I went round the world to hawaii, fiji and oz) and having not felt stressed about what kind of agressive idiots there lurking in the lineup.

Things happen for a reason, which is why I got some cracking surfing up the west coast, and which is why karma will come round and kick selfish agressive surfers in the ass.

Next up will be a little note from someone elses opinion on Localism, a nice UCT student whilst we chatted surfing at Off The Wall and soon I’ll be posting some of the legalities surrounding agressive behaviour in the water and what your rights are.