VSTR

If there was a spot to forget about surfing, it was the one from that first front page.

First time I flew to Durban, the plane connecting out of Perth carried the South African newspapers. That first front page was intimidating. Three guys were surfing isolated Breezy Point, in what was then known as the Transkei, when one was knocked by a Great White. They were camping with their girlfriends and made a fateful choice to paddled back out next morning.

The surviving surfers said the same shark knew what it was doing both days.

Now it came between them and made for the known quarry further inshore. Other sharks were attracted after the fatal attack, but didn’t eat the entire body. They toyed with it. At one point the head was nudged towards the rocks. As the surfers and girlfriends reached out it was nudged back into deeper water like a dog playing fetch with a ball.

I had encounters over the next 30 odd years, very minor in the scheme of things. No being bumped or hit or traumatized, just basic reminders of higher planes of company, like the sudden rising stench of exploding fish oil all around me in deep water at Oyster Bay or the sight of something big coming my way at Supers.

The latter incident was a decade to the month since that first flight over. It was July 20, 1989 at 11:00 a.m. The waves had been average but regular until the wind had turned. A funky lull had come, often the case when the water started to ruffle. I drifted outside on my own on a tide that was dropping out, if only to be sure of catching a wave to myself. It had been uncrowded when glassy and consistent but was now getting crowded in the crud. Sometimes it went that way at J-Bay.

Twenty minutes would have passed, maybe longer. A head-high set came that held a wave with a good wall. It was the last thing on offer before the onshore set in. Fins came my way, a little wide out but fading at me. They didn’t belong to dolphins. I remembered the feeling of straight up comprehension. Gray top white bottom, big, broad, out of place. In those couple of seconds it looked like a turned on dolphin on a different trip to mine.

I swung to paddle. I was in the right position, ten metres off the top gully. The next surfer was about 50 metres down the line. The go on an outside wave at the end of a surf was to make it to the bottom gully and nothing changed now. I would have made three strokes thinking about a Great White coming my way but not in attack. There was no reason to dramatically change tack. It didn’t want me. It wanted a long lazy ride.

After about 100,000 rides in 40 years this is the only instance I have of total recall of paddling for a wave. I can still feel my head turning hard right to do two things. Check my position and check the shark. Sounds weird, but I can still feel my left arm digging a little harder to get a touch closer inside and a bit further away from the rhumb line of this phenomenal creature. I kept watching its left eye closing in. It was closed by membrane. I was no thought about whether it was good news or bad. I was just watching, stroking in.

Then I took off and ran down the line. There was nothing else for it.

The downer about a light sou Easter at J-Bay is the cursed crumbling section, and this one did likewise after a few seconds. I wiped out. Underwater I thought about the onshore ruining the wave in. I forgot about the other thing.

A surfer named Ed Razzano hadn’t long been in the water. He’d just driven up from Capetown. I briefly got to pay my respects 20 minutes later as Ed lay in the back of an ambulance.

He’s seen me fall at the same time the shark no doubt made it through the section. I didn’t get to know if Ed was a smooth or jerky surfer. It may have had bearing on what happened next. Ed was maybe a little ungainly right then as his motion suddenly altered from drifting up the face to ripping his board around to try for the wave. I don’t know if that’s exactly the way it panned out, but it likely posed the problem. The shark hit Ed for all its worth around his side and carried him in the foam to the shallows.

I regained my board and paddled to the first surfer I saw. “There was a shark in my wave,” I said to a guy who I soon realized didn’t speak much English. I kept paddling as he replied in a happy kooky voice, “Lots of dolphins at Jeffreys Bay.” I turned back to him in amazement and asked where he was from. “Israel,” he said with some pride. “It is my first surf at the legend of Jeffreys Bay.” I suggested that he looked further in. There was mayhem in the foam as the shark released Ed, and he and the other surfers bolted to the rocks.

I saw Anthony Woolf coming out of the top gully and paddled back up to let him know. We sat in the empty and flat line-up and talked about a shark that by now was probably past Point on its way to the distant Gamtoos River Mouth, spawning ground for things like these.

Up at the ambulance I heartily shook Ed’s hand in congratulating his survival. He had about 500 stitches coming his way. I asked him what it was like.

“Bru, all I remember was getting to the rocks and running. I had in my mind one thing: I was going to run back to Capetown. I forgot about my car. I was running as far as I could. Someone stopped me from doing it.”

***

Plenty of surfers have shark stories.

That one from the paper on my first flight to South Africa, though. Whenever I surfed the most common type of wave over there for the next 30 years—the point break at the head of the long gutter-fed beach, pattern of 100 great waves from Cape Aghullas to Mozambique—I paid respectful thoughts to sharks big or small, smart or stupid, alone or in packs.

On July 20, 1997, eight years to the day later, a travelling surfer by the name of Mark Penches left J-Bay to head north with a friend to Breezy Point. I’d got to know him a little over a week of reasonable surf in which he had astonished even the most hardened local. He wasn’t a great surfer. In an objective sense, he could have been excused for catching scraps. However, never before had anyone from out of the blue arrived at J-Bay to instantly catch most of the good waves that came through.

He hassled no one. He didn’t particularly charge to the inside. Still every wave came to him. Nasty things were happening in the line-up with locals back then, but even the most gnarled bastard eventually got to realize that the guy could simply do no wrong. I’d certainly never come across anything like it from a punter trying his luck. He was a quiet, gentle, smiling surfer from Dee Why in Sydney.

He hadn’t been surfing much in the past months and it kind of looked that way but nothing could stop him. He’d fall on a wave, get back outside and find the zone. He’d make a wave, get back outside and find the zone. I asked if he fully realized how freakish his luck was. He knew that his rhythm was something beyond normal. I asked his plans.

He was due to leave that day for the Transkei to surf The Wild Coast. That gave me pause. I waited for him to name the spot and he did. “Breezy Point.” He was paying keen attention to SURFER Magazine’s The Surf Report in the era before The Net—by far the most comprehensive information on the where and when of the best waves on Earth. I warned him. I told him about that first newspaper on the first flight over, but he left for Breezy. He had his leg taken off around noon the next day by a White and bled out in the water.

Breezy Point, as I later read in The Surf Report, was a must-surf South African location—“The Jeffreys Bay of The Wild Coast.” It was an overstated call and well shy of sound advice. It was foremost a notoriously dangerous strip, one of the worst in the world, particularly in July during the annual sardine run.

I looked up his parents in Sydney. Paid a visit. Related the unique story of a young man at the pinnacle of his greatest expectations.

Something had to give.

Posted by: Derek Hynd