“Safi has the worst vibes of any wave in the world,” Jérôme Sahyoun tells Tracks. “There is no respect, no positivity. However, in the dead of night, it’s good vibes only.”
The Moroccan right-hander has become a byword for perfection. Recent edits of Ramzi Boukhiam, Torren Martyn and Noa Mizuno surfing ruler-edge lines peeling down a boulder-lined point, 400-yards long, with multiple 10-second-long tube sections.
What isn’t shown is the big crowds and a heavy local contingent that has a lockdown on the main takeoff section. While it’s possible to paddle further up the point, to a steeper, deeper, drainer section, even if you manage to negotiate the take-off, an inevitable drop-in awaits.
And so, Sahyoun, even as one of Morrocco’s most influential surfers who can pick and choose any Safi set, had enough. One afternoon back in 2015, he was surfing the low tide session ‘til dark. After doing three more ‘one-mores’ he headed back to his filmer’s boat as night fell. With the wave hugging a coastal road, the street lights were just illuminating the whitewater as waves reeled off symmetrically in the oiled, Moroccan night.
“I said to my filmer, let’s try a few waves and see if it’s doable,” said Sahyoun. “I caught half a dozen waves, and while the footage was grainy, it was doable.” The next week another deep low pressure was set to park itself up in the Northern Atlantic and provide the huge, long-period swell that the wave needs.
“I called dad and said I need some electricians, trucks and lights to surf at night,” continues Sahyoun. “He was like, ‘Fuck, you aren’t surfing enough through the day? Now you want to surf at night too’?
At this stage you’d be within your rights to ask what type of father can come up with a rig to rival the set-up at the Beaurepaires Night Surfing Open (Google it kids), just so his son can go surfing? Well, Jerome’s dad is Roger, the CEO of Somagec, an infrastructure company started by Jérôme’s grandfather. It is a leading company for maritime projects including the building of huge ports and harbours and is one of the largest construction firms in Northern Africa.
On the plus side, this means that there are very few places that Jerome hasn’t been able to access in the country, even along sections of the coast that are inaccessible due to terrain, industrial usage, or military presence. He has had an all-access pass to the entire Moroccan coast, and the infrastructure to explore it. On the negative side, it was thought the young Jérôme would join his two brothers in running the family business.
“My father gave me the best gift you could give a surfer. He funded my lifestyle where I could travel where I want and surf where I want,” said Jérôme. “I was the black sheep in the family, all I wanted to do was surf, travel, hunt and fish. With his blessing and support, I could be the ultimate freesurfer. It took a while, but eventually he just said, “If you are happy, do what you want to do. My only request is that you do it well.”
“I’d say few people did it better than Jérôme,” said Dylan Longbottom. “I can’t think of a man who has travelled further, surfed harder, explored as heavily, or lived a life more dedicated to the ocean and waves. He is also a really talented surfer and barrel rider. He’s inspirational.”
The pair had met in Bali. Jérôme and his wife, Vanessa and their two young children would spend six months of the year in Indonesia, at the same time as Dylan had set up his surfboard factory and family home in Canguu. The pair share many of the same attributes; endless energy, a thirst for the biggest, shallowest barrels on the planet, and both have kids following in their footsteps.
Dylan has teamed up with his daughter, Summa, 20, who has been charging the heaviest slabs from Shipsterns to Nazare. Jérôme’s son Liam is just 15 but has recently been towing a range of 50-foot outside reefs in Morocco. Dylan started shaping Jérôme’s boards at least 15 years ago and their surfer-shaper relationship soon developed into a strong friendship.
And yet while Jérôme had ridden slabs in Alaska, towed Teahupo’o and Nazare, paddled Jaws, discovered world-class slabs in Morocco and Europe and been on pretty much every significant swell event for the better part of 15 years, the glaring omission on his CV was Australia.
That was fixed in 2023 when Jérôme came over and spent almost two months on what was billed as the ‘Slab Tour’. “Everywhere we went, we scored these incredible waves. Just giant, heaving barrels. In the desert, in the city, everywhere… Dylan had so many friends in each spot and had the logistics down.”
“I hadn’t pushed myself for a while. I started working for dad’s business, and with my son starting to ride the big waves I’d been more on the ski helping him,” the 43-year-old said. “But after those two months, I felt born again when it came to charging those types of waves. Dylan is crazy, and it felt to be good around that energy again.”
Jerome remembers deciding to step back a little from a decade of extreme adventure after the famous Cloudbreak swell of 2011. He’d surfed every big wave on the planet, multiple times, and had just opened a new eco surf camp at Dakhla, right in front of Morocco’s longest right-hand point, down in the Sahara Desert.
“I said thanks to my father for all the opportunities he’d given me, but that I wanted to work for him and pay him back,” he said. “It was the hardest thing I had to do. I went from having no limits, and real freedom. I used to tell my wife I would go for a few days, and I’d be gone for two months. That passion means being selfish. But I had to be less selfish for my family.”
However, Jérôme hasn’t exactly donned the suit and tie, brushed up on Excel and hit the nine-to-five existence. Last year he helmed a mission to a big-wave near Safi he called Tiraline. He’d first showed Mark Healey and Alex Grey the wave on the famed Hercules swell of 2013. Healey, at the time, said it was the biggest wave he’d ever seen, but the swell had peaked during the night and they didn’t attempt it.
In November Sahyoun returned with big wave surfers Billy Kemper, Lucas ‘Chumbo’ Chianca, Garrett McNamara, Axi Muniain, Dylan Longbottom, Andrew Cotton and filmmaker Tim Bonython. “I’ve been saying it for years, but after having surfed this wave, Garrett and Billy said the same thing; this is where the biggest wave will be ridden,” Jérôme said. In a portent for surfing’s future, it was his son Liam, then aged 14, whom he towed into the biggest wave of the day.
“The potential of that wave, and that coast is mind-blowing,” said Tim Bonython, who has been filming big-wave surfing since Moses was towed into the River Nile in a wicker basket. “And to see Jérôme in action was awesome. His drive, knowledge and ability to handle logistics, meant that he was the man. You could see the respect some of the best big-wave surfers in the world had for him.”
“I surf a lot of secret waves now, and don’t share the footage, or locations, just so I can surf it with my friends,” Sahyoun said. “I’ve taken some of the best surfers to some of my waves. Mick Fanning, Parko and Tom Curren have all said it was one of the best surf trips of their lives. To surf incredible waves, with no crowds is getting harder and harder to do.”
Having stopped exploring the Moroccan coast so heavily so he could partner his son and help him gain experience, the Australian Slab Tour, however, reignited his thirst for adventure. He says just in the last 12 months he has found two unsurfed, elite big waves, and another half dozen points and slabs that are world-class. Oh, and he has doubled down on his commitment to surfing at night.
After the first night session at Safi, where his dad supplied the lights, the local authorities shut him down, perhaps reasonably, deeming night surfing as too dangerous. Undeterred, he manufactured a mouth torch, and used that to surf the right-hand point break on his own, at night, every time it broke. Soon he was waiting for the sun to go down at most of the best waves he surfs.
He claims that the night has the best atmospheric conditions for surfing, being more stable and thus making the water surface way cleaner. He now often surfs a “crazy slab” near Imsouane that is onshore nearly every day of the year, but swings offshore most evenings. “I was taught by my father since I was five to fish and hunt by the cycles of the tide and the moon and the wind. We would fish all night and sleep all day. The surfing now is the same.”
