JBay Longboard SA Champs: The more relaxed way to surf

Longboard surfing teams nationwide congregated on the hallowed beaches of SA’s surfing mecca, Jeffreys Bay last week for the annual South African Championship. The contest saw the country's most talented longboard surfers compete for the chance to don a Springbok blazer and hold a national title. I followed the Buffalo City Longboarding team for the week with my sister Francis Brodie, a competitor in the open women's division.

There was a wholesome scene unfolding on the beach when we first arrived. A swirl of long-haired, sun-drenched surfers decorated the sand with wet suits clinging to the lower half of their bodies while their tanned torsos were bared to the sun as they hoicked cumbersome boards up and down the beach. They are lithe and graceful, like people used to look before junk food bloated some of us to a plumptious mass. There's a profound lack of guile on those beaches — people seem genuinely happy — flashing white teeth, sparkling eyes and frazzled sun-bleached hair. Gentle upbeat surf tunes played, which were punctuated with tinkling laughter and greetings.

In contrast, the waves were huge and intimidating. As Jolene Blalock said, “The concept of surfing is amazing. You're taking on nature with a little plank and saying, 'I'm gonna ride you!' And a lot of times, Nature says, 'No you're not!' and crashes you to the bottom.”

It was incredible to watch these gentle people going out into that raging maw.

The competition was held adjacent to the infamous Supertubes, at Point Break. This is a reeling, long-running seashore where the waves break along a rocky reef spanning the length of the beach. This consistently breaking wave gives the surfers more time on it to manoeuvre the longboard along the face. The longer the ride, the more time to show what you can do and the higher the points the surfers are likely to score.

The teams are from various districts; Buffalo City, KZN Eden, and Western Province. There are charming idiosyncrasies everywhere, including in the category names. Once you get beyond the standard Open Men and Women you get all kinds of fancy nomenclature, including the older men's categories called Kahuna’s and Legends, and the older women's category — Divas. The youngest competitors are under 14 and the oldest is a category called Legends, which I heard described as, “If you are surfing in that category you’ll be leaving your Zimmer frame on the beach before you hit the water.”

There are families of surfers here, including father and daughter, Nathan and Anna Gernetsky who surf for Buffalo city; Nathan in the men's masters and Anna in the under-18 women, in which she placed third overall. These family units can be spotted trailing up and down the beach, debating tactics, assessing the waves and carrying the unwieldy longboards for their loved ones.

If you close your eyes and listen to them describing what's going on it would be hard to tell if they were talking surfing or ballet

Longboarding has a gentle and dignified ethos. Longboarders eschew their shortboard counterparts for focusing on tricks and fancy manoeuvres. Longboarding is a sport which levels the playing field between men and women — often women surpass men in style and elegance. Athletes are scored for their ability to complete a range of graceful moves. The highest scores are awarded for a hang five or a hang ten, which involves walking to the front of the board and curling your toes of one or both feet over the edge. Cross-stepping involves traversing the board, stepping over each foot rather than shuffling your feet side to side. Surfers are also scored on style, standing upright with beautiful posture and arching their back gracefully.

High scores are for arching your back and trimming your fingers along the wave for as long as possible. There is a lot of talk about artful hand positions. If you close your eyes and listen to them describing what's going on it would be hard to tell if they were talking surfing or ballet, but the surfer drawl gives it away.

Beyond this, there's a deep reverence for the heritage of the sport. Longboarding has a hierarchical puritanism, with the most pious surfing without a leash, which reflects when surfboards were invented. The leashes were added later. There's also politics around fin configuration. One fin is traditional and authentic, the more modern three-fin set up will get you some raised eyebrows.

I asked my sister Francis what the appeal was for her and her answer impressed me. “I used to have my own problems at the centre of my life. I was hunted by depression and feeling generally disappointed with my life. Surfing put something nourishing in place of that. Slowly that expanded until there wasn’t space for anything but happiness.”

This inner joy emanates from everyone I saw. Usually, at a sporting competition, people try to save themselves for their big performance. You don’t see runners jogging for fun before a race. But here, in every spare moment, everyone piles into the sea to catch even a few waves, with the hugest of smiles mixed with stern concentration.