Zigzag June 2021 - 45.3

The Umgeni River Mouth is a barometer for Durban surfers. Thousands cross the bridge each day, taking their eyes off the road to stare dangerously out to sea. At a glance, the view from the Umgeni bridge will tell you everything you need to know about the size and direction of the swell, the relevant wind and the general cleanliness of the water. But after the first summer rains the Umgeni becomes a lightning rod for outrage, as thousands of kilos of plastic waste get washed down the valley and into the Indian Ocean, choking the banks of the river mouth with plastic. Enter Cameron Service, who's equally mad about mountain biking and surfing. “I was the GM for Holla Trails and I spent a lot of time in the rivers…

On shaping I started out glassing years ago with Selwyn Van Wyk, which led to glassing for Clayton Nienaber, who introduced me to the shaping side of things. While working for Clayton, he brought the Spine-Tek and epoxy technology back to South Africa from Australia. And that's where the epoxy journey started for me. On mentors and inspiration Back when I was younger, I was pretty inspired by the shapers I would get boards from and worked with – Gazo, Lisle Coney, G (Graham Smith), Selwyn, Peter Daniels, Spowy, Clayton… Spider is also a huge inspiration. I learnt so much from getting good boards and collaborating with those shapers and watching my boards come to life, and then getting to ride them. Nowadays I find that same inspiration, but on the other side…

I’VE MINED THE WESTCOAST Standing beneath the waves of the icy Atlantic, covered from head to toe in rubber and gripping a thick pipe, I’ve vacuumed up bags of 'gravel' from the bottom of the ocean floor. I was looking for diamonds, searching for those tiny stones that whole industries are built on. My family and many close friends did the same for decades to make a living, from Lamberts Bay to Lüderitz. Many still do. It gets into your blood, the 'greater West Coast of South Africa', as it's known. Some are born there, but for the rest of us it seeps into you over time, like the damp fog that’s so pervasive on a still morning. It’s difficult to embrace at first – hard and cold, unforgiving. The remote landscapes.…

The decision to build a pair of wooden surfboards with my youngest grom, Kye, was taken after a serendipitous meeting with Cobus Joubert. A tenth-generation vintner (winemaker), Joubert gave it all up to follow his passion and make surfboards that are less toxic to the environment. He left the winelands and set up shop in Muizenberg, with a shaping bay that overlooks Surfers Corner. Besides shaping traditional alaia and wooden surfboards under his Wawa label, Cobus makes boards from reclaimed blanks, cork, hessian coffee bags, hemp cloth and bio resins. He’s even shaped a board from a blank made out of mushrooms. We didn’t know all this back then. All we knew was that Cobus’ carload of alternative craft was beautiful. He’d pulled up in the parking lot at our local break…

Like most groms growing up, I wanted to be a pro surfer. I was heavily influenced by surfers like Dane Reynolds, Jordy Smith and Julian Wilson in my late teens, but then I noticed guys like Craig Anderson, Dion Agius and Chippa Wilson forging successful careers out of free-surfing alone. Instead of competing on the tour, they were pursuing different projects and managing their careers themselves. Seeing them doing it their own way was inspiring and immediately seemed more relatable to me. The trick was, how exactly could I get there? A turning point came in 2012. I was in France at the time doing a QS, and all the Globe free-surfing guys were there working on the start of the first Strange Rumblings film. My friend and filmer, Beren Hall,…

Sylvan & Sea is a knife-making studio. I started it up in the dilapidated garage of an old farmhouse, on the coast outside of East London. I had a forge, a kiln and some other tools. I bought a belt sander, too. It was enough to do the job, and all that I could afford. Sculpting and drawing have always been among the few things I get beautifully lost in. I had hoped knife-making would be a similar experience. Before that I’d dabbled with casting bronze in my workshop. Smaller stuff. There was so much freedom in it, which made the learning curve very frustrating when I moved on to the chef’s knives. I suddenly had to be careful, and precise. It was repetitive, and often I’d lose focus and hurt…