Tabla de contenidos para August-September 2018 en Zigzag

Imagine you’re in your early thirties and an absolute frother. You rip, and surfing has basically been part of your life for as long as you’ve been able to swim. And then one day while driving home from work, an inebriated driver side-swipes your bike and shatters your leg beyond repair. The surgeon is left with no choice but to cut it off below the knee. The trauma can prove too much to bear for some, as they contemplate being drydocked. And with their first love taken from them, a different path, a darker path, can possibly be taken. This is Option A. But hope remains in even the most dire situation. If you’re strong-willed enough to cling onto your potential, one day you might be standing up in pits…

Born in George and raised on the sand at Victoria Bay, Forrest Hair is a Garden Route local to the core. It was inevitable that he’d tail his frothing dad, Stephen, over the bricks one day to make one of the gnarliest rock jumps in the country. You’d think he’d follow in his dad’s wake and smash it in competitions too, but “I freaked myself out before heats,” says the chilled ripper. Instead Forrest likes to work with his hands and is an accomplished carpenter, not to mention that he built his own home as well. Otherwise he surfs whenever there are waves in the bay, which is often at one of the most consistent spots in the country. Name: Forrest Hair Age: 25 Nickname: Forry Local spot: Vic Bay…

IT’S A COOL AUTUMN EVENING. THE REMNANTS OF A LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM NOW ON ITS WAY UP THE EAST COAST, HAS LEFT IN ITS TRAIL A FRIGID OFFSHORE BREEZE The J-Bay highway, Da Gama Road, is brisk with activity. It’s no Kloof Street, the hipsters aren’t present, but it’s a Friday evening and the local watering holes are raking in much needed capital over the long weekend. We turn left up a dark, gloomy staircase. Dingy at best. Carpets from a bygone era line the staircase floor. Once bright paint is peeling from the walls. You’d be forgiven for thinking you’ve entered a satirical club in East Berlin, but you haven’t. This is J-Bay. And the only thing keeping this club alive are Black Label quarts and double brandy and…

What a cruel master surfing is. One minute you’re Jesus-like in your ability to bestride the water, the next you feel lower than a truck-stop lizard, legs jerked back over his neck by a moaning long-hauler. Suddenly, surfing is a drill blade twisting and hollowing you out! But let me kiss those salty tears away. Here are the 11 reasons your surfing is… ah…well, the reason it sucks to high heaven. Me too! Let’s investigate. 1 YOUR STANCE IS WRONG Your back foot is four inches too forward, the front foot equidistant too far back. The high-performance short board (with three fins) that you own has the twitchiest and least forgiving of dimensions and rocker. Unless that back foot is over the back fin, you aren’t turning anytime soon. And…

ON A COLD WINTER’ S MORNING, I FOLLOW SIMO MKHIZE UP THE DESERTED UMZUMBE POINT. The sea is dark and surly. The smell of burning sugar cane drifts on the breeze. It’s one of those mornings when the dawn seems reluctant and the sky ominous. Simo is wearing only a pair of boardies, despite the winter chill. He’s lean and sinewy, built like a long distance runner. The number 26 is tattooed on his right shoulder. His peroxided golden locks and dark ebony skin paint a striking picture in the dawn. “In my culture, the ocean is a thing to be feared,” Simo tells me as we consider the treacherous channel between the rocks. South Coast is no joke. The waves are powerful and the currents can gush like a…

“Fabian was on my board!” claimed Dougal Patterson like a proud uncle when Zag got in touch to talk about the massive wave pictured across this spread. “The punk doesn’t even have a decent gun of his own, so I’ve been insisting that he use one of mine,” continued Dougal. “He really pulled the sword from the stone on this day.” Asked to describe the teenager dwarfed by this beast of a wave at Dungeons, the respected big wave elder reckons that Fabian “listens to kak music, grows a terrible moustache, and is skinny as a rake. He is the Vanilla Ice of big wave riders.” Quizzed further, Dougal insists that as far as he knows, no other 19-year-old Saffa has ridden a bigger wave than this at Dungeons. “I’d…

It’s not age but the ability to swim that is surfing’s barrier for entry. A lift to the beach is another obstacle. But if you’ve got cool parents and the desire to shred, you can get started early. This is Kai Hall, all 11-years of him, standing inside a glorious pit on the KZN coast. His old man, Wes, first paddled him out when he was three, and soon Kai was ready for something more challenging. Like his ballie, Kai digs stand-up barrels, which caught Twig’s attention. The two-time WSL Big Wave World Champ recognised something in the little stick insect, and gifted Kai this 5’9” step-up he is riding. “I was getting into the waves so early,” Kai told Zag of his equipment revelation. The added time to set…

IT’S 4:00AM, DARK AND QUIET IN THE SUBURBS OF DURBAN NORTH. Jordan Alexander and Ricky Basnett are lashing a collection of whips to the roof. Videographer Ryan “Cracker” Janssens and photographer Greg “The Sheriff” Ewing play Tetris with the food and bedding to make enough space for their equipment. “Don’t squash the bananas!” Whisper-shouts the guide, Ryan Ribbink, trying to keep it down and not wake the neighbours, or worse, The Sheriff’s wife. Quietly, another band of lifestyle refugees break like the wind, long before the sun and the school run, heading on that well-worn trail north. The adventure begins. In the 450-odd kilometres between Durban and Mozambique, strange things happen. The environment grows ever more tropical, villages grow more rural, poor and laid-back, punctuated more by coconuts, Lala palms,…

Monday morning found me on a Cape Peninsula beach sprawled on my back looking up at an electric indigo sky. Envious? Don’t be. I only got into that position after slipping on a giant tangle of soggy kelp for the third time in a week. Also, I was lying on rocks. People were sitting on the bench when I came trotting past and I heard them laugh as I fell. Okay, some of that isn’t true. You stop trotting after a certain age. Every scrap of energy needs to be conserved for the paddle out. That’s why you never see older surfers stretching. If I had to stretch before a session, I’d be so exhausted that I’d have to turn around and go home. Assuming I could even make it…

I GET A CALL AT 7:00PM ON A WEDNESDAY NIGHT, IT’S TANIKA HOFFMAN. “Hellooo it’s me, I’m freezing cold and I’m outside your house. Can I come in and shower?” Supertubes has been putting on a show all day as WQS surfers from around the world effortlessly glide across the long, perfect walls. There is the Volkswagen SA Open of Surfing WQS contest this weekend in Port Elizabeth, and the Ballito Pro presented by Billabong shortly after. I knew that there were surfers in town, but I had no prior knowledge of Tanika’s presence. She had shot through from Port Elizabeth for the swell and will be staying the night. The next morning she plans her day from our home, wearing fluffy pyjamas, whilst playing with my dogs who can’t…