400 surfers aim for one wave

By Craig McKune

The first wave was chaos. Some yelled "go, go", others said, "no, no - back wave".

It broke slowly. Some surfers stood up, some slid down the wave on their bellies, others paddled into each other and surfboards flipped into the air.

Herding an estimated 400 surfers onto one wave isn't easy, Earthwave organiser Paul Botha said yesterday.

He founded the annual "most surfers riding the same wave" Guinness World Record attempt at Muizenberg in 2006 - now also held in Argentina, Brazil and Tahiti.

Botha said he hoped South Africans would beat Brazil's 2008 record of 100 surfers, and a count of yesterday's attempt put the number at 103, provisionally a record.

"The trick is to get the surfers not sitting in one big clump. They need to stay in a line, spread out along the beach, so that when they turn and paddle, they don't paddle into each other," he said.

Initially, the event aimed to raise environmental awareness, particularly around sharks and the new shark spotters campaign.

When other countries joined Earthwave in 2007, the focus shifted to the broader issue of humans' role in causing climate change.

"This is about community action versus conservation action," said Kirstenbosch conservation manager Augustine Morkel, who spoke to surfers yesterday morning about their impact on climate change.

"It's a global attempt to tell people about living more sustainable lives," Botha said.

"Reduce your energy use, re-use, recycle - the easy stuff. The concept is as simple as that."

After a week of strong south-easterly winds, which churn the surf and make it unsurfable, conditions were ideal yesterday, with a small swell and a light westerly wind.

Music played and a crowd thronged the beach, giving local coffee and ice cream shops good business.

"The wind's blowing a light offshore, and some of the waves out there are nice and long," Botha said. Twenty minutes later, hundreds of surfers and their colourful boards lined the beach from the rocks near the station to beyond Muizenberg Pavilion as they paddled out, led by marshals - well known big wave surfers including Frankie Solomon, brothers Chris and Greg Bertish, and Jeremy Johnson.

After the first few attempts foundered, the marshals, many standing on bigger paddle boards, called the surfers into lines and warned them when good waves were coming: "Not this one - second wave. Okay go, paddle, paddle," and across the beach, groups of surfers paddled into the waves and stood up together, with a few collisions occurring.

Meanwhile in Brazil, Botha's friend, longboarder Rico de Souza, would be doing the same after 10pm: "He organises a three-day professional longboarding competition, and in the middle of it he gets 150 of them to paddle out and sit in a perfect line."

But he said the waves were bigger in Brazil yesterday, making it more difficult to break the record.

craig.mckune@inl.co.za

• This article was originally published on page 3 of The Cape Times on October 05, 2009