13
After a pit stop at home (or Burger King!) to get some
lunch, it was time to swap out our freestyle gear for
the wave stuff. What’s odd is that I'd spend all morning
sailing in my boardies, absolutely fine, before donning
the rubber. The cold Atlantic takes no prisoners. In
fact, I wear the same wetsuit in Cape Town as I do at
home in Scotland! It’s a strange feeling rigging up in
the car park in 30 degrees only to sweat your way into
a 5/3 steamer and get down to the sea as fast as
possible to cool down.
My personal favourite of these wave spots is Big Bay.
This legendary location feels like the centre of
windsurfing in Cape Town. The car park is always
rammed with small VW Golf’s crumbling under the
weight of kit.
The bay itself is enclosed by rocks so the surf is
usually a bit cleaner. When the waves were small this
was the best spot for busting out some freestyle on
the sea, my favourite kind of windsurfing. I had a
couple of really memorable sessions at sunset or
‘golden hour’ throwing air flakas, big shakas and trying
paskos with all the boys. It was the most fun I’ve ever
had windsurfing and was perfectly followed up by a
couple of sundowners in one of the great bars
overlooking the bay.
When the waves were a bit bigger though it was all
about riding and jumping. This year all of us in the Club
Vass crew sailed out the front of a restaurant called
Doodles. It tended to be quite messy and isn’t great for
riding but you could get some great ramps for jumping,
which is what most of us all prefer anyway. There were
a few sick sessions with everyone going for pushies
and backies. It’s a lot of fun seeing all your mates
flying through the air and whether they stomped the
move or crashed it, it was always entertaining.
With these crashes however, there are always
casualties. Some people, like myself, ended up with a
trip to hospital and a bad concussion. Some others just
ended up with a lot of broken kit! From ripped sails,
cracked boards and snapped masts all our gear took a
bit of a beating. I think at one point we had the ‘hybrid’
mast in play – half Tushingham 400 and half Gaastra
370 I believe! Poor Bruce sailed on that thing for the
last week of the trip. Any notion of being upset about
kit being broken swiftly disappeared after the
afternoon session though as thoughts turned to empty
stomachs and dry mouths.
Once we’d picked up a crate or two of Castle Light and
a couple of kg’s worth of steak it was back to the
house to be met with the smoky aroma of the Braai
being lit. Braai is the South African word for BBQ which
they take very, very seriously. It always involved a lot of
food, beers and most importantly, banter about the
best crashes, stacks and fails of the day.
uk
WIND
SURFING