I’ve decided to tell everybody I can about a relatively secret, but world-class surf spot. Why would I do such a thing?

When do you expose a surf spot? The satisfaction of impressing your mates and re-living the epic sessions you had there by telling them all about it is quickly overshadowed by the angst of seeing crowds of  fellow wave riders descending on the beach and taking off on “your” waves. It only takes a few surfers to clog up a spot and just one guy without manners to spoil a session.

Now I am in the process of telling as many people as I can find about the place and I have written about it to Zigzag, South Africa’s largest surf magazine. Admittedly, stories about these waves have been leaking out for years now and the amount of people in the water on a good day have steadily increased to the point to where some weekends are really busy. But telling every surfer about it won’t help the crowd situation.

The problem is that if I don’t expose my favourite surf spot, the waves here will quite possibly cease to exist.

I was lucky enough to grow up going on holidays to Vleesbaai right from the start of my life. Everyone body-surfed the beach breaks during December holidays and from there it was a quick transition for me to start riding a Boogie board. Before long, I saw the light and joined the handful of “dropped-out, drug addicted low-life’s” who rode waves standing up. And when some of the more clued-up surfers spoke about epic secret waves while glancing towards the point, I put two and two together and headed off along the rocky shore the next time the waves on the beach got big. That was the start of my addiction to the waves on the point.

I was just lucky that my grandfather bought a piece of land at Vleesbaai in the 1950’s and built an asbestos shack on it. That put me right in front of one of the best waves anywhere for anybody who had the patience to wait for it.

 Most surfers are not so lucky. They have to be shown these places, or spend a lot of time searching. In Vleesbaai’s case you could visit a hundred times and never see waves on the point. You have to know when to go and that is what kept the place off the radar for so long. For years I tried not to change the status quo by keeping mum about it, not even my friends knew.

Over time the point gradually became known to more and more people, but in the late eighties and early nineties you were almost guaranteed to have the waves to yourself if you could get to Vleesbaai when the right swell was running. In the days before web forecasts, you often got skunked going to Vlees. How many times did I not drive there like a maniac during a winter storm, with white knuckles on the wheel, only to find a pond in the bay, while massive unsurfable sets pounded the wild side of the point. So on the occasions when everything came together and I scored it by myself, I felt like I deserved it.

Gradually more and more people started surfing  there and during holiday periods we had to spread ourselves out along the point, but that was still ok. Then Windguru came and things got a lot busier. On good swells the water got crowded and nowadays most dedicated Cape surfers know Vleesbaai well.

But still, I’m telling everybody who cares to listen about Vleesbaai now, so the place is sure to get even more crowded in the future. To a degree I’m destroying the wave for myself by telling the world.

Still, this has to be better than letting it all disappear behind a breakwater that would block the swell completely. This is exactly what Petro SA are proposing to do in the next few years and it would mean complete destruction of the perfect waves along that point. The few people who visit Vleesbaai and the handful of permanent residents in the village are powerless to fight the development by a large organisation like PetroSA. We need more support. So, as far as surfing is concerned, we’re damned if I do and damned if I don’t. I’m trying to make the best of a desperate situation.

If enough people protest, we could at least postpone this development by a few years. Maybe we could even stop it.

I am so grateful for all the empty line-ups I have been privileged to surf at Vleesbaai over the years. The emptiness was good while it lasted. In the interest of saving the place, maybe it’s time to learn to share now.