Pocket full of Pulses

MAGIC MOMENT: There were of course super fun waves for the usual crew. Photo Simon Smith

The swell at New Pier was fun all weekend. Make no mistake. But for the Durban chargers, the guys who sit on the charts watching with beady eyes, it was a pretty weird weekend.

The goofy footer who has seen more cyclone swells than I have had breakfastsMike Frew, the goofy footer who has seen more cyclone swells than I have had breakfasts, was perplexed. Frothing to get some waves after a lean summer season of onshores and small surf, he was down at New Pier super early on Saturday, when the charts had showed waves starting to fill in. He expected it to be at least 6ft+ and pretty wild, due to the short swell period from the storm so close to land. But it wasn't. By a long stretch of the imagination, said Frew, veteran charger of KZN waves from North to South and much between. "It was 3-4' all day. Small and fun for sure, clean barrels and warm water but nothing like the forecast we had anticipated."

He didn't want to waste the run of surf, even if a tad disappointing, so was on it again in the early hours of Sunday. "There was still some energy around, but a very straight direction with lots of close outs, like 3-4ft at first light. A couple regulars even looked at it, considered the crowds and bailed home before 6am."

CYCLONE TRACK: Gaumbe formed north of Durban, then tracked southward. Photo Windy.com

But then, all hell broke loose. "It just went crazy about half an hour after sunrise!" exclaims Frew, who describes the surf as going from benign - almost boring - to impossible take offs and double thick lips within about 20 minutes.

In the blink of an eye, or at least a long paddle wide from through the shorebreak after a wave, the swell was bordering on unmanageable, with four out of five takeoffs rendered totally ineffectual. "I even saw guys like Mikey February and Davey van Zyl getting slammed as the waves went nuclear. It was only 6ft on the sets, but super heavy, with a huge amount of water moving and chunky lips breaking hard onto very shallow sand. The main peak was a lot wider than it normally is.

"I saw Paul Canning take off on a particularly late one, he got absolutely obliterated by the lip before he even had a chance to bottom turn – and that’s a guy who’s handled big Pipe and Chopes. We haven’t seen waves exploding on a bank like that in Durban for at least a year. Look at the whitewater detonating in the pics, it gives you an idea of the wave’s energy.”

THREW BRU: Mike 'Frewbru' pays the piper at the pier on Sunday morning. Photo Simon Smith

And just as it pounded through, so it disappeared. The pulse of energy lasted only a few hours, and by lunch, it was all over, bar the hooting. By evening, it was 1-2ft, kaput.

We debated the causes. Was it a fierce portion of the wind fetch that peaked on top of another building wave train, to exponentially boost the surf into a three hour pulse directed at New Pier in particular? Next door, North Beach did not have the same intensity. Was it the swell direction, which seemed a little north of pure east? With neap tides there wasn’t a lot of tidal range so it couldn’t have been that.

Did the ENE swell that was tracking towards the East pass across a deeper channel between the Durban 'mound' and the coast north of Durban, and then as it swung past, the direction of the waves shifted with more focused grunt at one spot in particular?

Either way, the forecasts did not see this intense burst of energy coming.

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