Our hundreds – nay, thousands – of cats spend a lot of time inspecting the various items of equipment that Tony uses to execute his job. Here, Dixie investigates the bow of Seahorse, still (or already) loaded with dive gear.
Sunset boat inspection
Tag: sunset
Friday photo: Door in the dunes
I think this gap in the dunes takes one to the Fish Hoek Seaside Cottages, but I could be wrong. It looks like a portal to somewhere amazing, though.
Friday photo: Just add people
This is last week’s photograph, but with people. I liked the symmetry.
Friday photo: Quiet beach
Fish Hoek beach can be the most peaceful place in the world to watch the sun go down. We do this quite often. Here is an empty, kelp-strewn stretch of beach, with a negligible swell running and some beautiful clouds for depth.
Friday photo: Fish Hoek sunset
Tony and I ate an ice cream and watched the sunset at Fish Hoek beach one Sunday evening. The colours cycled through a range of pinks to blue. Can you see the mountains on the other side of the bay? I think even Hangklip is visible in the middle of the image.
Friday photo: Clouds over Simon’s Bay
I took this photo standing on the end of the Simon’s Town jetty. As an amateur cloud appreciator (cloudspotter would imply that I can remember the names of anything other than cumulonimbus), I enjoy any landscape involving ocean and clouds. I think I am an immensely irritating companion on days like this, like a three year old constantly drawing my companions’ attention to the same thing. In this case, CLOUDS! Look at how much depth and interest it gives to the landscape.
Flying the drone at Glencairn
We took the drone down to Glencairn Beach one evening so that I could stroll and enjoy the sunset, and Tony could fly a bit. The SA Agulhas (now a SAMSA training vessel) was in False Bay, seen near Roman Rock lighthouse. Tony hoped absently that it had run aground, thus supplying us with a new wreck to dive.
There had been a bit of winter rain, so the Else River was in full flood. The waves on the beach were small and quiet. The sand seemed impossibly smooth and glossy. The colours of the sea and sky melted into one another near the horizon. It was one of those evenings that calms you down, regardless of how the day has been.
Here’s a little bit of Tony’s video from the evening:
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8vaTYYJ8k0&w=540″]
Sunset surfing videos
On Saturday 23 August a long (21 second) period swell rolled in from a favourable direction, and some waves stood up quite tall at Sunset Reef, a wedge shaped reef about a kilometre off Long Beach, Kommetjie, that starts breaking when the swell is 3-4 metres in size. There were about 25 surfers in the water, and a few spectators in boats and jet skis. The wave I filmed in this video was too small (I think) to ride, so it just rolled through the group of surfers untouched. But it gives you a sense of how these bulges of water were appearing, seemingly from nowhere, on an otherwise flat piece of ocean, and then storming beachward.
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ITLxvOHLaE&w=540″]
The air temperature was on the nippy side, and the water was on the very nippy side, so the surfers must have been quite chilled lying on their boards waiting for something to happen. This second video shows some surfers actually catching one of the bigger waves. Look how fast they are moving! You can also get an idea of the number of boats and jet skis in attendance.
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsYanszXi-E&w=540″]
When conditions are this good for surfing it’s rarely good enough to dive, which is why we’re very happy to take the boat out for an adventure like this when the opportunity arises. Please get in touch if you’d like to be informed of future expeditions!
Interested in a more sedate introduction to big wave surfing? I just read Ghost Wave, which is pretty awesome.
An afternoon at Sunset Reef
If you’d happened to look out to sea from Long Beach, Kommetjie just after lunchtime on Saturday 23 August, may have seen – just at the limits of your sight – a group of 20-25 surfers, sitting on their boards in the middle of a flat ocean. If you’d continued watching for a while, you would have seen giant sets of swell rolling through the group of surfers, and, as the afternoon progressed, you’d have seen more and more of those waves being surfed.
The waves were breaking at Sunset Reef, an outcrop shaped like a wedge about one kilometre offshore from Long Beach. There is a lot of kelp in this area, and it isn’t particularly deep, but the deep water is not far away, which has something to do with why this wave stands up the way it does. It’s not Dungeons by any stretch of the imagination (and on this particular day, one of the surfers told Tony that the wave was a “four out of ten” for size), but for a recreational surfer, or me – who doesn’t surf – it’s a remarkable sight.
There were long lulls between the sets, and after a while I started to get disoriented and forget where the wave breaks. Later in the afternoon, the waves got bigger and bigger, and once the surfers started to stand up on the waves we could see just how fast they were moving. Some of the surfers stayed further inshore, and just did short, speedy rides on the shoulder of the waves as they came past, looking relaxed and loose limbed as they caught a ride closer to the beach.
In the distance, below Slangkop lighthouse, we could see a parade of swells and breaking waves at another shallow reef. We had a wonderful time, enjoying the display of natural power, as well as being entertained and awed by the surfers.
There are some lovely pictures of our boat, taken by Grant Scholtz, in last week’s newsletter, and an album of photos on facebook.
Friday photo: Moonrise over False Bay
As the sun set, the moon rose. I took this photo from the top of Red Hill, near the grave of Just Nuisance.