Work Where The Waves Are
The primary perk of living in Jeffreys Bay
Some people are lucky enough to be blessed with this one from the outset, but it doesn’t stop them from wanting to check out what’s over the next hill; if you aren’t blessed with the good fortune to already live somewhere where the waves are consistently really good, then move to such a place and take any form of employment that keeps you there. The first problem that I encountered with this was that there’s an awful lot of places to choose from where the waves are really good, and even narrowing it down to where the waves are really, really good still leaves a lot of choice. My approach was to spend several years moving from place to place, usually on one-way tickets, bedding in and living for extended periods of time surfing, working and leading a normal life. I wasn’t on a surf trip; I was living somewhere else. When an opportunity arose to move on I’d ask myself a question: “If I had to go home tomorrow or stay here forever, what would I do?” If the answer was to go home tomorrow then I’d move on.
There are definitely some places where it’s just not practical to turn up and expect to get a job, fit right in and settle down; visa issues, lack of employment in less developed nations and culture shocks can all provide a stick in your proverbial spokes. But there are still plenty of options available. The point with this option is that what you do in between surfing is inconsequential. It’s all about being in the right place and having the time when the surf comes up.
The beauty of living where the waves are good is that not only can you be on it on the best day of the year, you can be in the right place at the right time, every time: Secret spots and optimum conditions for each local nook and reef aren’t common knowledge and elude visiting surfers, but it’s just the sort of inside info that you get from work colleagues, housemates and the crew that you regularly surf with and that’s what makes bedding-in to a surf community worth while.
I got some incredible waves living in this way, lived in some beautiful places and made some lifelong friends. But I found that I had a bad case of itchy feet and didn’t feel ready to lock into a place for the next fifty odd years just yet.
I wanted to surf different waves and to keep looking just to check that there wasn’t some place better, and I never earned enough money in the jobs that I took to take a holiday, so in order to take a look over the next hill I often had to up sticks and move there. Alex Espir is one surfer who’s also given this “work where there’s waves” option a really good run in his career as a surf guide and coach (Initiative Surf) and he’s spent significant amounts of time in some of the world’s best wave locales. His take on it is as follows:
“’Making sure that you surf every day ultimately leads to some sort of sacrifice. After a while those sacrifices can weigh heavy but in the end surfing as much as you want to, when you want to and where you want to has to become the sacrifice.”
