Innehållsförteckning för # 21 från White Horses

When British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan addressed South Africa’s parliament in 1960 with the now famous words, “The wind of change is blowing through the continent”, we were too young to be aware. Our world was our little golden beach, the Bay of Plenty in Durban, wedged between a rock groyne to the north and a concrete fishing pier to the south. Though we weren’t aware of the changes happening through the continent we were keenly aware of the wind. Wind was a constant – the nor’easter would roar through, only interrupted by the howling southwesterly buster that would blast across the beach, kicking up sand and launching beach umbrellas. No matter the wind, us groms would say, “East or West, Bay is best.” Dad would pick my brother and…

Cape Town is the first place that swells from the Roaring 40s storm belt smash into after their long march across the South Atlantic. Three breaks – Sunset, Bayview and Dungeons – lie in a 150 kilometre radius of one another, and are the three waves that dominate big wave surfing in Africa. They’ve moulded me as a surfer. My family moved to the small coastal suburb of Kommetjie when I was 12. We had a view over the playful peaks of Long Beach but what interested me was what lay further out to sea. From the deck you could look into the monstrous bowl at Sunset Reef, one of the best big wave spots in the world. When Sunset gets to 25 foot, it doubles up and barrels top-to-bottom.…

KOA SMITH, HAWAII Landing in Namibia is like something out of Mad Max, just desert and sand dunes. It doesn’t feel like the same planet. Mars, maybe. To get to the surf you drive through red saltpans, along miles of open beach, with no idea if you’re going in the right direction. There’s a massive seal colony where the wave is and you’re often greeted by a dead seals washed up on the shore, some of them with big bites taken out of them. It’s all really eerie, until you see the most beautiful wave you’ve ever laid eyes on thundering down the point. It’s hard to find your bearings in the water. The wave is so long and grinds onto dry sand, with only flat desert and ocean around…

Between 1991 and 1997, Tim Williams undertook a series of voyages in traditional local sailing canoes along the western coastline of Madagascar from the south to the north of this mighty island continent. What follows is a selection of thoughts and reflections from his journals. Part 1: Figuring it out I smell the island before I see it. Those succulent green dune-creeping leaves on warm coral sands. My first day alone, aside from the three local fishermen who spend a few hours around the natural lagoon that forms at low tide, waiting for the right time to paddle out their net in their lakana or pirogue, as a Madagascan sailing canoe is called by the Vazahas, us non-natives. They must know I’m here, seen me approaching in my own sailing…

The board is four foot long with thin, pinched rails and a rolled bottom deck that ends in a sharp squaretail. The wide nose is rounded and mostly symmetrical, except for a kink on the left rail where the axe used to shape it had splintered the solid piece of wood. “Este é meu tambua,” Jardel Félix tells me proudly. This is my board. It’s late afternoon and the tropical sun has unclenched its boiling fist. The air is warm but pleasant. We are still wet from surfing a zippy point break in front of the village of Santana where 12 year-old Jardel and a group of his friends had joined us, riding a flotilla of surf craft – the snapped halves of a thruster, an old bodyboard, even a…

In the wake of that wave, the water’s surface was caked in thick white foam. Chapelle’s head, if he’d been decapitated, could pop up any second now. I waited patiently. We’d navigated here the night before, down jungle twin tracks. Leaves large as beach umbrellas caressed the paintwork of our car and then moved aside, allowing branches and thorns to scrape like nails down a chalkboard. The security advisor at HQ had told us that last year’s civil war had been focussed to the north and hadn’t extended to the coastal villages – mostly seasonal fishing camps used by migrant Ghanaians. They’d been wrong. The hangover of conflict was still being nursed here in the vacant, touristy spots, which were now home only to feral cats and roosters. Chapelle and…

GIDEON MALHERBE AND FRIENDS TAKE A HIKE ON THE WILDSIDE As with many unwise decisions, we were drunk on Tequila and gwaffed on good zol when we decided to do it. And then a few weeks later, when Chloe’s old man dropped us off in the Landy, our backpacks way too heavy to carry, and the surf pounding against the rocks, we had to question: just what were we thinking? It was New Year’s Day, several years ago, and our hangovers were cruel. Ahead of us was a sand track that wound its way behind the rocks, heading south. Or north. It was hard to tell. About 100 kilometres of wild coastline lay ahead of us. The inaugural “Survival Hike” had begun. Our mission was simple: to walk from Aasbaai…

Living in Cape Verde, not only are we surrounded by water, we also have the wind, which blows and blows and blows. Sometimes you think it will never stop blowing, but that is why kitesurfing is so popular here. It’s a big part of the tourism industry. The wind is the lifeblood of the islands. In a way, it’s also made all the disciplines come together in Cape Verde. If it’s too windy to surf, you kite, or windsurf. I really like this mindset of being open and having fun on any board you can, whether it’s windsuring, bodyboarding, surfing, or skimming. We don’t think someone is a bad surfer because they ride a certain way. Ever since I was young, my family was addicted to being in the sea.…

I was in Senegal on my first assignment as a bona-fide surfing magazine editor. The idea was to revisit the old fishing village of N’Gor where Bruce Brown had planted the seed for the Endless Summer all those decades ago, and take a look at how things had changed. Or remained the same. Whatever, we were on a paid surf trip, baby! Not much else mattered at the time. In between sampling the fine selection of waves Dakar had to offer, I kept hearing about the mythical godfather of Senegalese surfing. I was told he had pioneered most of the spots we were enjoying and had surfed these waters alone for years, charging anything the ocean would throw at him. Finally I asked our host, Phillipe, what happened to this…

WHUUUUUMPFF! A deafening thud fills the vehicle as we’re jolted awake and launched into the air. Heads bang on the roof, there’s blood in my mouth and the next sound is the terrifying screeching of tires as our driver over-corrects and swerves left and then right across the road. The tires miraculously grip asphalt again and our trailer remains unhinged. Rachid turns around to check we’re all okay and clicks his tongue, shaking his head while admonishing mother nature’s land mines, these miniature sand dunes that litter the road all the way into the Western Sahara. For the next few hundred kilometres he skillfully avoids the shifting obstacles that rear up in our headlights, not to mention the massive trucks that bear down on us along the thin strip of…

1. CASABLANCA, 1983 When he was three years old, Jérôme Sahyoun decided that he would spend most of his life under the open sky. He announced his plans to his mother after returning from a particularly gruelling day at preschool. The fact that he didn’t intend to sit at a desk, or spend any length of time indoors, might have been perceived as an issue for his family. His father and grandfather had spent decades building one of the largest civilengineering firms in North Africa — successful businessmen with designs to include the next generation of their family in the company. Jérôme’s mother, however, who was already familiar with the nature of her second son (and, by extension, with the nature of her husband, who was also restless, and also…

Ka-changgg! The sound of metal on metal punctured the air, followed by another crack and metallic groan. Ka-changgggg! A swarm of little boys squealed and ran into the shallows, each one wearing nothing more than a cowry shell laced around their bellies. Behind them stood a demon wielding two pangas. He smashed the blades together again as he wailed at the ocean, his orange mass bristling like a giant sea anemone. The Kankurang had arrived, and it was time to lop off some foreskins. This was not what you’d expect on a Sunday morning surf check, but we were in The Gambia, a place where magic and everyday life routinely collide. A giant demon brandishing deadly weapons before breakfast was nothing out of the ordinary. “This is a circumcision ceremony,”…

I was six or seven when Mum and Dad first brought me here to J-Bay. I don’t remember the waves as much as the rocks. I was really intimidated by the rocks, having grown up and only surfed the sandy beaches around Durban. In Durban you run along the pier, jump straight out into the lineup, surf over sand and then catch a wave in, onto the sand. But it isn’t like that here. The entire point is framed by these long fingers of lava that dig into the ocean. I was pretty scared and it was a big deal for me at the time to overcome my fear. We went down to The Point and Mum and Dad gave me some booties to put on. The booties were way…

I started diving diamonds because of Etienne. I was 20, working as a plumber, and I hated it. Old Etienne was working out of Lüderitz, a diamond hub in Namibia, and he said to me, come and dive diamonds, it’s perfect – you surf when the sea is rough and then you dive when the sea is flat. That’s how I got hooked. 24 years later, and I’ve been diving diamonds ever since. As soon as I completed my dive course I hitchhiked up to Lüderitz from Cape Town with my surfboards and dive gear and weight belts, a distance of 1500 kilometres. How stupid can you get, hitching with a weight belt? Perhaps as stupid as hitching all the way to Namibia and not having a work permit. Instead…

My name is Alphanso Appleton. I was born in February 1993 at the Saint Timothy government hospital in Roberstport, Liberia. The year of my birth was not a happy time. It was the height of the first Liberian Civil War, which Liberians today call World War I. One of my fist memories is when my mother and father bundled me into a wooden fishing boat in the middle of the night, along with my brothers and sisters. Rebel forces under the command of Charles Taylor had launched an attack on Robertsport, battling the opposing rebel faction who controlled our small town. Bullets were flying, people were being killed, and my father knew our beautiful home was no longer safe for us. Using all his strength, my father rowed the small…