Summer in South Africa brings heat, humidity, tax season, bluebottles and chafing in hitherto unknown parts of the body. Summer also brings a crop of new faces you’ll see the surf lineup. Almost without deviance every year, you see the same familiar surfer tropes new to the lineups in your area. Perhaps they’re students with their first taste of adulthood, or gap years kids, or frothing school kids of any age. Even potentially culture shocked foreigners. Not to mention fair weather types of surfers who only paddle out in summer, regardless of how crap (or cooking) the waves are.
However, although these-new-to-types-spot’s ou’s backgrounds may be diverse, the unfamiliar surfers paddling out at (Invading? Infesting?) your local wave tend towards certain categories. So without further ado, let’s look into the top five kinds of new faces you’ll see in the surf lineup in summer. Surfers such as:
Number 1: The genuine low key ripper new to the surf lineup.
He or she is likely from another surf town. Said surf town could be 70 kilometres down the road, or from another province, or indeed – a foreign exchange student wanting to study abroad in the country that is home to J Bay. It doesn’t actually matter where they hail from, you may not have seen the face before but they can certainly shred. Their skill could be on par with you. Or, and you hate to admit it – and unless you’re one of the hundreds of pro surfers that read Trident – this surfer surfs way better than you. Either way, they’re generally pretty cool. Well versed in surf etiquette and quite aware that they are not the local around these here parts. They’ll generally not let their skill nor home town credibility inflate their ego too much. This is in direct contrast to:
Number 2: The guy who thinks he shreds way more than he actually does.
No gender equality here, this douche is pretty much always a dude. Look, they can surf, and sometimes fairly well… but something is lacking. Like, they just need to see a video of themselves. Their turns are way weaker than what they think (if they when they do complete more than 50% of them) and their weird jerky style is as uncoordinated as a stop motion dinosaur from a 1950’s B movie.
They are the kind of surfer who looks better than better surfers than them in below average, kak or really weird waves. Still, they have some talent and they can be (passive aggressive) low key about it. Sometimes, in contrast, they can be extremely loud mouthed and obnoxious. As far as Trident is concerned, if they don’t snake, paddle around or drop in, just let them have their delusions of grandeur. But they really need to see a clip of themselves. Like, really they need to see themselves doing a cutback with all the speed, power and grace of having just been shot with a tranquilliser gun.
Number 3: The cautious newbie.
Compared to Number 4 below, Trident far prefers this affable twit. They can be local or foreigners, but the local kind tends to be more circumspect. These guys may sheepishly grin and greet you awkwardly, but regardless they tend to stay out the way of better surfers. Cautious newbies tend to hang around the fringes of the lineup, or the inside sections.
Clearly they are sensibly wary of bigger waves and more experienced surfers. As they should be. In fact, the only time we really have witnessed them being a problem is when a surfer takes a decent wave all the way through to the inside and said newbies (across the spectrum) are invariably in the way. So yes, the cautious newbie is definitely one of the new faces you’ll see in the surf lineup in summer. And they’re okay. Unless there’s a collision, a firm but gentle caution will help.
However, in our experience, a calm bit of advice and/or constructive criticism doesn’t work on:
Number 4: The utterly clueless newbie flapping around.
Absolutely perplexed by the fact surfing isn’t just riding an ocean wave on a board. Well, it is of course, but with this simplest of definitions comes more subtlety and nuances than 1800’s dating in a Jane Austen novel. This poephol might come from Pretoria, where they were in their school’s first team. Or they come from Germany, where they were an amateur lifeguard. They may even be a cricketer, motocross enthusiast, or a triathlete, or a marathon runner sick to death of sweating their sack off in the middle of summer and looking for another sport involving water as a means of cooling off.
Whatever their reasons for hitting the surf scene, success in another sport or field gives them a degree of arrogance coupled with obliviousness and a lack of introspection. These would-be surfers tend to be fit, young and healthy, but treat surfing as a bit of a lark or some harmless fun. All without the respect due a sport than involves five to ten foot weapons made of metal hard (but brittle) material, with at least one knife like fin attached. And that’s just the start. Surfers sometimes drown. You can even potentially be eaten by marine life.
We’re not saying the ignorant newcomer needs to not have fun, but respect the sport and the surfers around you. Some of the new faces you see in the surf lineup this summer may end up being lifelong surfers and that’s terrific. But Trident would be rich if we had five bucks for every new face in the lineup whose interest wanes once they’ve moved back to Heidelberg.
Number 5: Anything that floats.
Swimmers. Body surfers. Buff steroid enhanced jock okes sporting those stupid little kak mini boogie boards you can buy at the Shoprite toy section. Drunken first years swimming over ankle deep reefs, trying to hang with those weirdo’s they see sitting on surfboards while they blithely ignore the bathing flags 50 metres to the north. Occasionally, you’ll even see canoes, paddles, those aforementioned kak mini boogie boards – flotsam and jetsam like that – being propelled unmanned by the waves. For the most part though, we’re talking about human beings with no real business being in the surf lineups in the first place. Trident takes consolation in the fact that few of these will be around in the winter swells.
