Screenshot//Now Now Media
Left or right? It’s not a difficult question to answer in the surf world since at least 90 percent of us simply lean toward whichever option fits our frontside. It doesn’t stop a regular footed surfer from falling in love with a big heaving lefthand tube. It doesn’t exclude goofy footers from drooling over a groomed righthand point break. But you get the picture.
But how often are you actually faced with a true one or the other game-time decision? Two waves of opposing directions on opposite coasts, both easily in the top tier of the world’s best (and longest) rides on their day, and all within a reasonable enough distance from one another that you truly have to pick left or right on the rare occasion a swell is going to hit both perfectly. Call this the African Coin Flip for surfers within striking distance of J-Bay and Skeleton Bay — arguably the world’s best-looking right-hander versus the longest left-hand tube. This was almost a conundrum for the film team at Now Now Media, who had wanted to document both on the same day.
“It was a tough decision because these kinds of swells hit Cape Town and they split up the coast,” says NNM’s Alan Van Gysen, who arrived in Namibia the day before the swell was projected to arrive. “We were kind of monitoring the swell event in Namibia and the swell going to J-Bay. I’ve always wanted to try and do both.”
The South African production crew decided to divide and conquer with a highly anticipated swell on the way and their edit from the July 8 session(s) tells the story of one banger day on separate coasts.
“Pretty wild and unruly,” Bruce Gold assessed early in the day over at J-Bay. “Nothing like 2005, ya know? When this one wasn’t a mind surfer. Now we’re just a spectator most of the time. Not going to risk life and limb out there, that’s for sure.” Sure enough, the swell maxed at J-Bay as the day went on and eventually flipped from all-time to less-than-ideal by the end.
However you cut it, nobody got skunked.
