Zigzag Issue 45.2 - Autumn 2021

My earliest memory of a surf magazine goes back to when I was seven or eight years old. I had just gotten into surfing and my dad had a collection of Zigzags he had collected over the years. One of my fondest memories is of him walking into my room with a pile of these mags and saying I could cover the wooden floor of my bedroom with the photos. I got to tear out my favourite pages and literally covered the entire floor with covers, posters and pages of the Zag. We glued it all down and my dad helped me paint a clear varnish seal over the pics. I can still remember the amazing photos of surfers I looked up to and the exotic locations and lineups we…

Yeah, we all love double-ups, those sucky, two-for-the-price-of-one nuggets. Usually these anomalies are accompanied by collective whoops from the lineup as some oke paddles into the wave – or the beating – of the day. A simple look-see tells us that double-ups are created by one wave catching up with another, but why then are they a random occurrence rather than the norm, and what exactly is responsible for this strange sorcery? Let’s start with what a wave really is. Ocean waves are undulations of the water’s surface, caused by the transfer of energy. The water that makes up a wave does not actually move with it across the sea. Rather, these water molecules make a circular orbit with the passage of each wave, and then return to pretty much the same…

I’m originally from Tsolo in the Eastern Cape, which is just a few kilometres from Mthatha, but I grew up in Cape Town. I only discovered the ocean when I came to Cape Town and started to spend time in Fish Hoek. We would sometimes walk from Masiphumelele to Fish Hoek just to be at the beach. I got into surfing after meeting Tim Conibear in 2007. I was 17 years old, living in Masi, playing soccer and also teaching young boys how to play soccer. Tim invited me for a surf lesson at Muizenberg and I really struggled, I was just falling off. But I knew then that I wanted to become a surfer. After that, Tim would come to Masi to pick me up for sessions. He saw a bunch…

Mikey: I only really got into experimenting with different shapes the year after I fell off the world tour, but I was still competing when I became obsessed with twin-fins. I loved the looseness and ease with which you can express yourself on twinnies and fishes, and always carried one in my quiver that I’d jump onto in-between contests. But the more I rode them, the more I was looking for something that would fit in the barrel a bit better and feel more connected through turns. That’s where the idea of combining the twin with a rounded pintail came from. Twin-fins are great for speed because there’s no drag from a middle fin, but they aren't always the best in the pocket. A round tail just feels more controlled…

MARK Richards The first time Mark Richards really came onto my radar was when I was still with Quiksilver. I was becoming more interested in twin-fins and someone from the Australia head office suggested I should order a board from MR, and that they could help make it happen. I had seen footage of MR before, but after that suggestion I went deep down the rabbit hole and watched everything I could find online, studied photos of him, and got even more excited about his surfing. His unconventional style appealed to me but what I found most relatable was his build: he’s a lanky, tall guy like me, so I could really relate to how he approached a wave. When we met up, I was amazed by how humble he is for…

Popular histories of surfing tell us that Polynesians were the only people to develop surfing, that the first account of surfing was written in Hawai ‘i in 1778, and that Bruce Brown, Robert August, and Mike Hynson introduced surfing into West Africa while filming The Endless Summer in 1965. All these claims are incorrect. The modern surf cultures currently developing along Africa’s long shoreline are not something new and introduced; they are a rebirth; the remembering and reimagining of thousand-year-old traditions. The first known account of surfing was written during the 1640s in what is now Ghana. Surfing was independently developed from Senegal to Angola. Africa possesses thousands of miles of warm, surf-filled waters and populations of strong swimmers and sea-going fishermen and merchants who knew surf patterns and crewed surf-canoes…