HISTORY OF BIG WAVE SURFING IN
SA
History of Big Wave Surfing in SA
By Andy Davis
For
as long as people have been riding waves there have been mullets. Those
who are not satisfied with regular breaks and regular waves but have
always looked beyond the beach to the reef passes and outer shores where
the pure, undiluted ocean swell stacks up big and hurls itself against
the land. You can bet, way back in the mists of time, that amongst the
Tahitian and Hawaiian islanders there were a few mullets. Those who, on
any given swell, would always paddle their huge, long, heavy tree-trunks
into the big waves on the outside, leaving the inside wavelets for mere
mortals.
This same breed of mullet exists today and their lineage can be traced
as far back as the 1950s in Durban. The first wave of surf mania has
emanated from California and been introduced to South Africa via
Australia. Surfing has gripped Durban's beach community like a bad
dobies rash. Everyone is itching for a surf. But Durban's bay of plenty
cannot deliver the really big stuff. The bay is geographically denied
the brunt of huge swells. So a group of hardcore board riders (mullets)
frequently lug their 40 kilo plus wooden and fibreglass surf riding
vehicles to the Bluff and start surfing Ansteys and Brighton Beach,
where the waves can get well above head height and beyond.
The situation is not the same in Cape Town, where the reefs and shores
are lashed severely by deep Atlantic storms. Around the same time, in
the late 50s and early 60s, Oom John Whitmore and his merry crew are
pioneering most of the waves around Cape Town, locking into some much
more serious waves on a regular basis and pushing the surfboard design
envelope with their huge Whitmore original longboards. Main breaks of
the era were the Outer Kom, Scarborough Point, Rocklands, the old
Solly's (in front of the Mouille Point lighthouse before the Wayfarer
sank off the break and ruined the wave) and all over the Cape Point
Nature Reserve. This is a time of no leashes and no wetsuits. If you
bail or lose your board in a wipe out, you swim. Wetsuits do not yet
exist, they were still to be modified from the old World War 2 rubber
diving suits. It was a brutal time of bad sunburn and frozen nads.
Around this time Frank and Dave Meneses from Sea Point started to make a
name for themselves in Cape Town as fearless big wave mullets. Passing
their mullet genes down to Justin Strong, whose old man married their
sister. At the same time in the South Peninsula, the Bokhorst brothers
Frank and Murphy along with Roy Lindley and John Grendon were also more
into riding the big stuff than the Long Beach rollers. But it was the
hard living, deviant big wave killer, Peter Basford, a shameless rip-off
artist, wild man and maniac who was widely recognised as the best big
wave surfer of the time. It was Basford who really pioneered the
Outerkom and introduced the Paarman brothers to the beast in the first
half of the 60s.
Fast forward to the mid 1960s. The first SA Surfing Champs in 1966 in
Durban. A pidly 1-2 foot is running in the bay, so the contest is moved
to the Bluff where there's a more respectable 5-6 feet of swell. During
the day it builds to 10 feet and towards the late afternoon, those with
elephantine memories can recall, some mean 15 footers grinding away out
at the backline. The scene was set for legendary performances and the
likes of Peter Basford, Errol Hickman, Wowie Plater and eventual winner
Robbie McWade were out at the back and charging on 9'6 longboards with
no leashes. Back in those days you only had one board and it was good
for all types of surf, from 1 foot wind slop to 15 foot perfection, your
9'6 with a 12 inch single fin could ride it all. On that same swell a
photographer nabbed a shot of Neville Callenbourne riding a monster 12
foot plus wave, with a huge curl, the first South African big wave photo
had been taken. Later that week Callenbourne came out in a nasty rash.
The doctors attributed his condition to the great fear and anxiety of
riding those big waves.
The shortboard revolution in the late 60s saw surf culture running back
and forth between Durban and CT, with several month long sojourns in
J-Bay. Dressed like a hippie, boards on the roof, one foot flat on the
accelerator and perpetually stoned. It was a wild and bohemian lifestyle
of endless waves, chicks in bikinis, free love, hippy shit, parties and
stoke. Boards got shorter and shorter creating some heavy situations in
bigger surf as surfers tried to catch huge waves on chunky 5'10 sticks,
but nobody minded because the unbelievable manoeuverability of the
smaller boards enabled surfers to go places on waves that they had never
been able to go before.
Johnny
Paarman had legend written all over him from a very young age. He won
the very first big wave surfing competition in South Africa, at the age
of 11. It was a macking 12 foot day at the Outer Kom and the organisers
refused to let him enter the competition. But when a slacker didn't
pitch for his heat Johnny got the nod and when they tallied the scores
at the end of the day, the little nipper had won the whole damn thing.
True story. For the next 10 years John and brother Mark started pushing
big waves and small all over the Peninsula. Along with Peers Pittard,
Johnny Paarman used to beat Shaun Thompson regularly in local
competitions, but neither of them made it overseas on the world tour.
They got married and had kids instead. When Johnny Paarman eventually
did make it to The Rock in 1972-73 and 1974-75 (he only went twice) he
was phenomenal and is still hailed, in Hawaiian surfing lore, as the
best big wave surfer South Africa has ever produced. In his two short
trips to Hawaii he hammered everything as if he were surfing 8 foot
Outerkom. From Sunset to Waimea, no lip was safe and no bowl deep
enough. In fact four time world champ Mark Richards rates John Paarman
riding Sunset in 1975 as the best that Sunset has been ridden. Ever.
Around this time in Cape Town the big wave crew had stumbled upon the
nefarious pleasures of the Crayfish Factory bowl on a big swell. A
laaitie, at the time, by the name of Ronald Kingma was absolutely
charging. Although he had an awkward style and didn't look like a
natural when riding waves, he had humungus balls and became a legend for
slotting into some of the biggest waves and most fantastic rides of the
time. At the same time the Paarman brothers were asserting themselves as
the first South African family of big wave surfing.
While John tended to outshine his brothers Donald and Mark, Mark was
also a mullet in big surf, although he had a somewhat stiffer style
after Peter Basford rode over him in a motor boat at Glen Beach and
severed his achilles tendon. Although they now qualify as ballies, the
Paarman brothers are still surfing. A family of watermen, entirely in
tune with the ocean. The late 70s heralded the arrival of Davey Stolk.
Under the guidance of Californian Ward Walkup, Davey was induced into
the big wave fraternity and soon started pushing the boundaries of what
had been done before. Along with Tich Paul, the Paarmans and other big
wave stalwarts, Davey started surfing different waves on Cape Town's
South Peninsula. Waves like 365, Underwater Point, Black Rocks and the
Bos. In the early 80s there was a nasty rash of what can now be termed
Disco Surfing. A veritable small wave boom with the invention of twin
fin and then the thruster designs, and smaller more buoyant and wider
boards, people started revelling in the smaller surf with new tricks
like radical, rail-edge turns, the floater and some rudimental aerials.
Big wave surfing was all but forgotten, but Davey Stolk and a small crew
kept it going, always just charging the Factory, Sunset and the Reserve.
Then came Pierre de Villiers and Peter Button in the early 80s, and
behind the back of quite a shameful period of mainstream small wave
surfing fixation, an underground big wave cell of core mullets kept the
flame alive and pushed things forward. Along with Davey, Pierre and
Peter surfed Sunset and the Factory frequently because of their relative
accessibility. But while living in Hout Bay, Pierre, and countless other
surfers, would have to come around Chapman's Peak to get to the South to
surf. It was on one of these days, when a solid swell was running that
Pierre stopped to look at a clean phantom wave standing up and throwing
its toys underneath the Sentinel cliffs. So piqued was his interest in
this wave that he and Peter Button lugged up the back of the Sentinel
hill to watch it. One fine day in 1985 they decided to ride it. From the
hill it looked 10 foot and clean. They walked down the hill, scrambled
over the rocks and paddled across the deep water channel, oblivious to
whatever beasts were lurking underneath them. They got out back and it
was more like 20 foot, without a drop of water out of place. The wave
stood up like a fortress and had a wall like the one in China - huge,
long and sweeping into the distance. On his little twin fin hybrid,
Pierre was perilously undergunned. The next time he bought the right
equipment.
Pierre and Peter rated the wave better than the Sunset bowl, because of
the longer ride and the huge arcing wall it produced. They surfed it as
often as they were willing to make the arduous mission. And with that,
Dungeons was pioneered and recorded forever in the chronicle of big wave
lore.
Then came the late 80s and early 90s, along with the wholesale
commercialisation and mainstream-ification of surfing. Finally big wave
surfing started to regain some of the respect it was owed. By the late
90s two irie South African rastas, Cass Collier and Ian Armstrong become
the surfing world and South Africa's poster boys when they clinched the
Big Wave World Championship and placed second the following year. It was
also in 1999 that the first ever Red Bull Big Wave Africa contest took
place at Dungeons, although it didn't actually run. In 2000, on a day
with big greasy 18 foot swells imploding on the Dungeons reef, Sean
Holmes walked away with the trophy. Then Chris Bertish went on his big
wave odyssey and tackled huge Todos Santos, Mavericks and was the first
person ever to paddle into Jaws. Since then we've seen a plethora of
international big wave surfers like Grant Washburn, Matt Ambrose, Jamie
Sterling, Brad Gerlach, Mike Parsons, Rusty and Greg Long, Carlos Burle,
Paul Patterson and many others surf Dungeons. South African surfers like
Andrew Marr, Sean Holmes, Conn and Chris Bertish, John Whittle, Mickey
Duffus, Richard Sills, Cass Collier, Justin Strong, Ian Armstrong, Davey
Stolk and ballies like Johnny Paarman and Rudi Palmboom have shown us
what is possible at the Dungeon. We've seen horrific wipe outs, hideous
hold downs, mutant double-ups and barrels you could drive double-decker
buses through. We've seen anger, frustration and unparalleled levels of
stoke, commitment and the Aloha spirit. And we're gathered here again in
2003 to be apart of the whole celebration one more time. Big wave
surfing started long before us, and will continue long after we're gone.
It's a living tradition, an epic ode to mullets through the ages. And
now we look forward to the rise of a new school of big wave chargers
Damien Fahrenfort, Cheyne Cottrell and Josh Redman. Maybe Ricky Basnett,
Warwick Wright and Jordy Smith will show a propensity for heavier waves.
But that, my buddies, is the future. And the rest is, as they say,
history.
:: This article is complements of REDBULL
BIG WAVE AFRICA ::
Contact
form Link
Exchange
