Jeffreys Bay—the second-best wave in the world

You gotta be doing something right if you come straight after Pipeline in the ranking of the best surf spots in the world for the criminally insane. Let’s find out what’s so special about Jeffreys Bay.

“It’s an almost indescribable sight,” said South African pro surfer Marc Price of Jeffreys back in 1982. “Watching from the beach, you start off looking up to your right and end up facing left as the wave travels down the point. This 180-degree perspective is something no photograph can capture.” A wave for certifiable nutcases then?

‍♂️ J-Bay’s many breaks

Jeffreys Bay—or J-Bay—is actually multiple different breaks with spectacular names. The names you might’ve heard before: Kitchen Windows, the Point, Boneyards, Tubes, Magnatubes and Supertubes, Impossibles, Albatros. That’s a lot of tubes. It’s located in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, about 75 kilometers (47 miles) southwest of Port Elizabeth. If you get extremely lucky, a ride at J-Bay can last two minutes, taking you through a few of the aforementioned breaks.

There are dolphins. There are sharks. A lot of sharks. That nibble on surfers quite regularly. And a mussel-covered rocky beach. It gets windy. It gets really cold. And yet, surfers love it. In 2015, Mick Fanning bumped into a shark—it got tangled in his leash—during the J-Bay Open finals. According to Wikipedia: Fanning punched the shark and tried to wedge his board between the shark and his body, and he emerged from the attack physically unharmed.

J-Bay’s surf history

Jeffreys Bay was “discovered” by South African surfer John Whitmore in 1959, but it wasn’t surfed until 1964, when five surfers—including John Grendon from Cape Town—tried to ride it on their 9’6” longboards at Supertubes. But the break was too super fast for the equipment, so they moved to the Point and rode there instead.

You’re probably hearing Bruce Brown and The Endless Summer made J-Bay—but it wasn’t actually featured in the movie. At all.

Here’s how it connects: St. Francis Bay, a neighboring right-hand point break just up the coast, was featured in The Endless Summer. In fact, it was one of the film’s most famous segments—Bruce Brown narrated the discovery of the “perfect wave” there. But, but, but—Surfer mag called it “fluky and unreliable,” according to the EOS, so anyone who traveled to South Africa and discovered J-Bay instead was pretty thrilled.

Today, J-Bay is as popular with tourists as it is with surfers, and it’s known for its seafood (especially calamari) and migrating whales. It also hosts the J-Bay Open—formerly known as the Billabong Pro Jeffreys Bay—on the WSL circuit. This year, it was won by Gabriela Bryan of Hawai’i and Connor O’Leary, representing Japan.

Author: The Wipeout Weekly team