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The World Surf League circus has landed in South Africa for the ninth Championship Tour event at Jeffreys-Bay. The right-hand point is one of surfing’s most beloved breaks and is always an event we look forward to most. However, it did take some time for a consistent event to get going at the iconic right-hand point. Surf legend, Derek Hynd, went behind the ASP’s back in 1991 and created an event called the ‘Country Feeling J-Bay Dream Sequence’.The ASP withdrew its blessing of Derek’s event and barred the top 30 from participating. The only top 30 surfers allowed to attend were Rip Curl surfers because Derek, as Rip Curl International coach, could call it a training event.
This archive was featured in Tracks Magazine Issue no. 252, September, 1991.
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J-BAY DREAM SEQUENCE
Words & Photos by Sarge
There are classic surf spots, but there is only one Jeffreys Bay. There are surfers and there are more surfers, but there is only one Derek Hynd. So, when one of surfing’s most bizarre and eccentric personalities decided to stage a contest at one of surfing’s most famous and revered breaks we knew we were in for a unique experience. Former top 16 surfer, now journalist and surf coach, Hynd’s brainchild was innovative and progressive but the delivery wasn’t as smooth as it could have been. The labour was long but, like any new birth, rewarding.
The event was called the Country Feeling J-Bay Dream Sequence. Derek’s original dream was to bring the world’s top 30-rated surfers and a collection of legends to the Mecca named Jeffreys and mix it with the locals in six rounds of a week-long competition.
Each surfer would contest every round, with the points being cumulative. There would be no contest singlets, hence attracting the best film-makers and photographers from around the world to capture all the action and, as long as Huey played ball, virtually guarantee an epic. To link the fantasy to reality, and further entice the world’s best carvers, a block of land at J-Bay would be put up as the winner- take-all purse. It sounded insane, eccentric, and downright indulgent.
When DH first announced his concept at the Coke Classic back in April the response from the surfers and the media was mixed. All agreed it sounded all-time but adopted a wait-and-see attitude. The cynics and sceptics always have a field day with eccentrics, don’t they. The ASP, according to Derek, expressed their support of the entire concept, and South African clothing entrepreneurs Ary and Cheron Kraak put up the “Country Feeling” as the providers of the sacred turf for the winner. It seemed to be all coming together, with both surfers and photographers committing to attend, but then the wheel fell off.
Tragically, if not hypocritically, it came to notice that such a herbal event at such a herbal place had been tainted by the ugliness of politics. Country Feeling have been co-hosting, with Billabong, the Jeffreys Bay Classic on the South African pro-am circuit for years, and they ALWAYS have the full- moon dates in July to run their event. This year though, there was some stuff-up, and the Country Feeling/Billabong Pro-am was slotted the week before the full moon. The full-moon dates were allocated to another pro-am in Cape Town. There are two sides to the story of who stuffed up, but the Dream Sequence was slotted into the Cape Town full-moon dates as virtual opposition to the other contest and in protest at the alleged fumbling of the official who looked at a 1990 lunar calendar in setting the dates for the 1991 season.
Because the Dream Sequence was running in opposition to an ASP-sanctioned event, the ASP withdrew its blessing of Derek’s event and barred the top 30 from participating. The only top 30 surfers allowed to attend were Rip Curl surfers, because Derek, as Rip Curl International coach, could call it a training event.
This all went down within a month of the scheduled event. Eventually, in fact a matter of days before the event, a compromise was reached, with the Dream Sequence being shortened to four days-finishing the day before the Cape Town event, and thereby not conflicting. It was too late for all the world’s best surfers to change their schedules and get flights into J-Bay.
A formidable crew was assembled just the same. Damien Hardman, Nick Wood, Simon Law, Luke Egan, Ross Clarke-Jones, Munga Barry, Marcus Brabant, Jeremy Byles, Richard Marsh and Americans Brad Gerlach and Chris Gallagher were more than enough to ensure one hell of a session.
So, the anointed gathered at the holy site on the Monday of the full-moon week. They had to run it. It was going to be a tight four days. Damien Hardman had never been to Jeffreys Bay before, and he wasn’t too stoked when he looked out over an ugly chopped-up line-up. The wind was howling in around 45 knots, cross-shore and up the face. It had been howling for around 36 hours and showed no sign of abating.
DH and his cronies postponed a start until noon. Dooma came back and spied the same conditions. Sighing with resignation, he went home to grab his board and returned 20 minutes later to grab his singlet. He was in the first heat. By some miracle the wind dropped and swung a full 180 degrees. It cleaned up into pristine four to six foot J-Bay, the best it had been for months. “It was certainly the most bizarre turn of fortune I’ve ever had myself. It was like I sold my soul,” said a relieved contest director Hynd.
The whole first heat was absolutely on it, because they were just buzzing at the freak of nature they had witnessed. South African Gordon Turnbull was the stand-out, throwing rooster tails up all along the marching lines as high as any surfer could. His fellow countryman, Pierre “Toasted” Tostee, was mindless in the barrel the following heat. At the end of the day, 17-year-old local Warren Dean had put the cat among the pigeons with a flawless performance that could only come from an intimacy with the wave. Derek saw it from the water.
“The heat included Warren, Gerlach, Justin Strong and Cass Collier. Dean won the heat because the guy proved that his floaters at J-Bay were the equal of, if not better than, Gerlach’s and Strong’s. The guy was pulling three critical floaters, on a pitching section, as well as pulling into two barrels on the one wave- and he kept it up, including on his last wave ten seconds from the end. He turned a three foot wave on a five foot day into a “red hot” just by linking every section by floating the lip and pulling into barrels. It was a highlight-something every local knew was possible Warren Dean’s beating the world’s best,” recalled Derek.
Derek’s terminology in categorising Dean’s ride as “red hot” came from the judging criteria for the event. There were two judges, with only one scoring at any time. Local fishermen/surfers Ary Kraak and Craig Van Rijn appraised the surfers’ per- formances based on the way they like to see Jeffreys surfed. Classifications of “cool”, “hot”, “red hot” and “outrageous” trans- lated to scores of seven, eight, nine and 10 (out of 10) respectively. A “cool” ride meant the guy was just cruising, making the wave with a bit of style. There were only three “outrageous” ratings given in the entire contest. Gordon Turnbull’s run down the line on a filthy six-footer in the first heat was one. Local Mickey Meyer proved how effective the judging system was, because he surfed to his ability but was so smooth on the face and close to the pocket that he was more like a “poor man’s Michael Peterson”, according to Derek.
“That’s not writing him off,” added DH. “That’s just saying that the guy showed flashes of how MP would have approached the wave just hooking in the pocket and bringing it down with a longer board.” At the end of the first day Pierre Tostee and Warren Dean held a joint lead on 28 points with Gordon Turnbull one point away in second.
The pros put the pedal to the metal on the next day though, as they adjusted to the wave and learned to handle its idiosyncrasies. Jeffreys is a deceivingly fast wave. If you overcommit to a manoeuvre, which is the natural tendency-especially in a contest you’ll be left behind the section, and there is fuck-all chance of catching that racing, peeling lip once it’s got the jump on you.
Finding that balance between commitment and down-the-line maintenance, Munga charged the South African pack and took the lead at the end of round two. Warren Dean would have been the equal leader, but he stood up after the hooter with 11 waves.
Even a “herbal” event had to have some rules, and since it was automatic starts there. could be no forgiveness for someone screwing around with the system. Mike Burness, Dooma Hardman, Brad Gerlach and Gordon Turnbull all hung in tight just off the pace.
By the end of the third round the top six guys were within a point of each other. At the end of the fourth round those six were in exactly the same places, each scoring 23 out of a possible 30 points. The swell had dropped a little on the second and third days but had refused to die. As the schedule came down to the wire the pressure was starting to tell on the surfers. Jeffreys was being surfed like it had rarely been surfed before in the early rounds, but as individuals began to rationalise that they could be in line for a block of land they began to take fewer risks.
It was time to stake a claim in round five. Gerlach broke clear with maybe the best effort of a single round-two points clear of Tostee, and one point ahead of Dooma and Luke Egan. Turnbull sat another point behind. At that stage only those five could win.
The swell kicked and cleaned up, miraculously again, for Thursday, the final day. Tostee blew it up by paddling too far up the point, while Gerlach had only a marginal heat missing some crucial sets. Luke Egan just fucking charged his heat and stitched the whole deal. It was hard to even separate his waves. He had 10 pearlers- nothing under a 7.5!
Earlier rounds had been 30 minutes/best three waves; the final round was 45 minutes/best four “Big Foot”‘s four included three nine-pointers and a 10. The 10 was a high-speed dizzy as he wound down the line like a roller-coaster car on fast- forward-seven raucous backhand hooks in a row and a filth barrel at the end of it. All his waves, but his last six in particular, were bizarre. It all equated to three “red hots” and one “outrageous”.
The other contender, Dooma, would have had to score the equivalent of 110 out of 120 on the ASP scale. The “record” is around 104. Dooma got four “red hots”, arguably surfing tighter than Luke actually was, but the sheer speed of the Novocastrian came through. Some crew who witnessed Occy ripping in ’84 were making comparisons. Pierre Tostee summed up the situation perfectly. “Luke! It was the best four waves, not the best 101”
So, Luke became a landlord. He took a few of us around to check it out late one after- noon. Located in a quiet cul-de-sac high over Albatross Point, it has commanding views up the coast and is just one minute’s drive from the J-Bay line-up. It even has a few gum trees. Luke reckons he’s going to bring back a koala next year to be caretaker. He should bring one back as a gift for Ary and Cheron as well. Donating a 35,000 rand (SA16,500) block of land for a contest with no sponsor ID other than a small sticker on everyone’s boards was pretty hard-core. They’re obviously into hard-core surfing. And they got plenty of it.
When the Dream Sequence ended most of the contest cast moved on to Cape- town, but a rock solid crew of ASP pros stayed behind till the last possible moment to revel in the swell that continued to wrap around the J-Bay point.
After a week of cruising and wallowing in the mellow vibe of an area reminiscent of the NSW north coast in the early ’70s, nobody was in any hurry to go elsewhere. It had been a routine of dawn checks and three sessions a day, interspersed with hanging out at Ary and Cheron Kraak’s insane house on the point and gluttonous dinners at a prime local restaurant.
Four days after the Dream Sequence finished the last day of June-Huey threw in a bonus that saw some of the crew clocking up four, five and even six hour sessions. The Bay was ‘pomping’, as the locals say, and Ross Clarke-Jones was one of the first out there.
I got down there at 6.15 am. It was still dark,” said Ross. “There was one guy there waiting in his car. He got out to get ready when I did but then I decided to bolt home and get a bigger board. When I came back he was getting cleaned up on the rocks and a kneeboarder was heading out.
“There were three of us out there and it was just pumping. It was six to eight and UNREAL! On one of my first couple of waves I had an astounding ride. It was a big huge wall. I did a few carves out the back then pulled in, came out and then got another barrel: a long, long one, SO fast. It was all-time, unreal. It’s hard to tell how long my best barrel was, it was just going so fast. You didn’t have to pump it or anything… just stand there. It was the best. J-Bay is even better than anything I’ve ever read or heard about the place.”
We were staying high up on a hill verandah as Terry Fitzgerald pulled into a crawled higher we watched from our barrel as he raced towards the section named Impossibles. He disappeared behind the curtain and then the wave dis- appeared behind a house down on the beach front. A few seconds later, on the other side of the house and out of the guts of a filthy pit, shot the familiar figure who’d stamped his style in the history books well over a decade ago at this very spot.
Fitz had come to Jeffreys an indignant legend after Derek Hynd had advised him that his invitation to the Dream Sequence had been withdrawn just ten days before the event. Fitz was of half a mind to surf through the contest area at will, but the cruisey vibe of this surfer’s town had disarmed most of his frustration. On the morning I’m talking about he was just revel- ling, utterly blissful. Fitz was thousands of miles from North Narrabeen, but he was as “at home” as he’d ever be.
The line-up was soon speckled from take-off to flick-out as the town went surfing. Munga Barry and Luke Egan charged like long-time locals. Nick Wood was going off with reos, hell floaters and plenty of flow, another who had it down. Marcus Brabant’s timing was all over the place but when he got it together on one he flew along the roof of an incredibly long section in a floater that was mind blowing.
Derek Hynd has had the place wired for years but things started getting so hectic even he got dropped in on while in the slot of his longest pit- and ripped a fin out in the process. Jeremy Byles was on after- burner (both meanings) and got a mega long barrel. American Chris Gallagher alleged that the lad from New Brighton burnt him on his best three. While all this went on, surfers bounded along the water’s edge hooting as the sets poured through and the howling offshore gradually backed off.
Just on low tide Impossibles started turning itself inside out. Ten medium sized waves steamed through, each carrying a charging child in its heart. Matt Hoy got one of the best.
The action was so intense, the surfing so on it, the waves so insane, I swear I felt religious. Vetea David dropped in on some guy and both of them got covered and both the fuckers came out. It was pretty damn hot. Fitz pulled in again on the very next set. It was a l-o-n-g one and he was coming out until Poto dropped in again, on his master. And then he got a filthy barrel on the same wave.
Fitz was obviously dirty with his big Tahitian protege. Back out the back Poto explained to his boss that he didn’t think he was going to make it. Fitz’s reply was probably to be expected. He said: “Of course I was bloody coming out. What do they call me?” Poto’s reply, pretty quickly, wasn’t expected. He said: “Sultan of Slow?”
Fitz finally came in after four hours. He was grinning so widely I thought his chin was going to split. I couldn’t help but compliment him on his performance. The broadening midrift arched majestically forward as he charged off the bottom, big roundhouses and snapbacks, the puffed cheeks and unblinking eyes, the epitome of concentration and commitment.
I know the guy is a legend, but frankly I’ve always had trouble handling his ego. After watching Fitz over a couple of days I’ve got to admit I was moved, impressed and even stoked. As he said: “It’s always good to let the groms know there is another way to surf.”
