Tabla de contenidos para July 2019 en Zigzag

These underwater teddy bears may look adorable, but their detachable penises and deadly toxins suggest otherwise. Meet the nudibranch, a tiny sea slug that looks like it would be more at home in a Japanese cartoon than clinging to the reef. These creatures are soft-bodied, colourful, and pretty damn adorable. There’s even a whole craze amongst scuba divers to spot and identify as many different nudibranchs on every dive, like collecting underwater Pokémons. But don’t be fooled by their cute, rainbow exterior. Nudibranchs are badass. Straight up alien when it comes to aesthetics, you can find these mini, squidgy, flamboyant creatures all over the globe inhabiting every ocean from the Arctic to the tropics. Some even live in hydrothermal vents, basking in sulfates so dank they’ll burn the lips off…

Style is surfing’s Holy Grail. It is widely accepted that if you follow the progression from popping up on a soft-top at Muizenberg or Marine and work your way through the levels to threading overhead pits and rounding out the kinks in your roundhouse cuttie, you can generally become an accomplished surfer and push it as big and far in any direction you please, or that pleases you. But what is also widely accepted is that you cannot learn style. Style is, in many ways, unattainable. Style is something that “just happens”. Passed down in the DNA, living in the infinitesimal tiny movements and split second decisions that affect not just movement and direction but poise and presence. Stylish surfers seem to have that smidge of extra time, time to…

Surfing has long carved its niche on the cusp of style and good taste; from the clothes we wear to how you stand on a board (always bend at the knees, not the waist). But some aspects of surfing are done in decidedly bad taste. Zag dives in to explore a few of these phenomena. GOING LEASHLESS There’s a reason why, more than 50 years ago, our mighty forebears started tying socks and ropes around their ankles so their boards wouldn’t disappear every time they wiped out. Not only did this stop their logs from rolling to shore and getting smashed, it also minimised the chances of cracking open another punter’s skull as lineups became busier with more surfers. Fast-forward 50 years and along with everything retro, it’s become fashionable…

GRAHAM SMITH SURFBOARDS RETRO FISH SHAPER: Graham Smith DIMENSIONS: 5’10” x 20” x 2 ½” – 33L FIN SETUP: Thruster This new Retro Fish model is based off the famous MR 1982 Retro Twin Fin. The concept was to refine and still retain its basic features by adding better bottom curves, vees and concaves that have been infiuenced by modern performance surfboard shapes of today. All these new features will enhance the speed, making it super responsive, putting emphasis on having fun in smaller conditions. EMAIL: info@grahamsmithboards.com TEL: (+27) 31 368 4022 WEB: www.grahamsmithboards.com GRAHAM SMITH SURFBOARDS JORDY 44 SHAPER: Graham Smith DIMENSIONS: 6’1” x 19 7/16” x 2 7⁄16” - 31L FIN SETUP: Thruster Currently our most popular model reaching all global shores. EMAIL: info@grahamsmithboards.com TEL: (+27) 31 368…

Car parked, you open the door and take a few steps to get a better view of the spot. Beyond the fynbos is a narrow patch of coarse, shelly beach, then lichen stained rocks. The smell hits you before you can make out a set through the mist. It doesn’t gross you out as much as it used to. Part of you has grown accustomed to it. But it still creates a weird, subconscious, primal unease. It sets you on edge. Like a rustle in the bushes, a feeling that you’re being watched. It sharpens the senses, amplifying itself. Because kelp smells like blood and shit, like rot and life. For others it just smells horrible. But you have learned to associate it with surfing. So you are different. As…

Team Zag are first up for the Splab Shit-Out-of-Luck Award. After new editor, Glen Drysdale, snapped his Fred Rubble clean in half on his first wave at New Pier, on his first surf back in KZN (talk about good omens), then Online Ed, Sean Diego Kelly was all primed for a bit of jetsetting to Portugal to cover the Vans Duct Tape Invitational. But the ol’ Green Mamba zukked him one time and his visa never came through in time. So he went for a few dops, as you do, lost his keys, jumped his fence, landed badly, fractured his heel and slept in the garden, whimpering with the mozzies. I think they call that a ‘fall from grace’. And to cap the saying that bad luck comes in 3s,…

JAPAN HAS A PLAN FOR ECO BOARDS Hello, I am Naohiko Shindoh from Japan. I read the article of environment in your website and want to introduce my idea to you. I designed and made ‘surfboards with less plastic’. I hope this can be a small light to solve the environmental problems. The idea arose from the thinking that it would be good if the plastic waste on the beach was made of materials that could be broken down into soils as much as possible. The materials are mainly Japanese paper, cardboard and Styrofoam. First we make a core and cut and shape it into a surfboard. By getting rid of the Styrofoam, it has a hollow structure. Then it is laminated with Japanese paper and resin, next we add…

Andy Marr is basically a smile in a wetsuit. At least that’s what I remember of the days paddling out at big Dunes, trying not to get pinched between the Atlantic and the sandbar and seeing this big grin paddling towards me to say howzit. That’s Andy Marr in his happy place. The heaving Dune. Friendly, affable, stoked you made it. Hooting you into and out of waves. Cackling maniacally with the uncontained joy and excitement of the whole experience. There’s no jostling with Andy, if you want the next wave, just call it. If it’s his, you’ll know. And when it’s on, he is too. In the last decade he’s paddled some of the heaviest water the South Atlantic has kotched up on Cape Town’s reefs. No stickers on…

SURF SENSE SURFBOARD BAGS Custom designed surfboard bags made in J-Bay. Available in black, blue and olive green. All shapes and sizes… upcycling with coffee bags. Enquiries: EMAIL: shellyrankin@iafrica.com WEB: www.surfsense.co.za CELL: (+27) 83 556 6292 IG: @surfsense Thule ENROUTE CAMERA BAGS These versatile backpacks have a dedicated camera compartment as well as space for a laptop, making them perfect for traveling or for daily use around town. Available in a 20L and 25L version. Shop online at www.thulestore.co.za ENQUIRIES: WEB: www.thule.com/en/za EVO WINGBAR ROOF RACKS An aerodynamic roof rack system for an exceptionally quiet ride, easy installation of accessories, and maximum loading area. Rack your board and head for the water safely, easily and in style. Available in silver and black. Shop online at www.thulestore.co.za Rakit SURFBOARD RACKS Full…

The Corner Surf Shop in Muizenberg smells exactly what you’d expect the oldest surf shop in South Africa to smell like – wood and libraries and history. It smells like an echo of the past. You can imagine the pioneers of surfing in Muizenberg and Kommetjie coming here to buy massive single fins to load onto their wood-lined kombis in the early Seventies. At the counter you can catch the whiff of loud zinc sunblock of the Eighties. The skate section reeks of Nineties faux edginess. The latest hoodie from Billabong smells like your entire expendable income for the month. The other surf shops in Muizies have their distinct smells. Lifestyle smells like new gear – fibreglass and plastic – mainly because of their huge board selection on the second…

Bali doesn’t have one scent, it has one thousand, even more. It starts and ends with the smell of peanuts - that small bag they give you when your flight hits 40,000 feet. And then every time you’re there, you recognize more and more: each one another bridge between your memory banks and the emerald jewel of surfing. Shiny like a new lover for some, old and used for others. Over crowded, too expensive, too busy, but still worth it for the more than 7 million people who will visit her every year. Bali has constant scents: the muddy wetness of rice paddies, the tang of sambal meeting sweet soy sauce in nasi goreng, mie goreng and babi guling, the sweetness of frangipani flowers and banana leaves. That weird mix…

Being a surfer in Cape Town is an uncompromising endeavour. There’s no middle ground, only a hard line. If you don’t man up to the elements, at some stage, you’re probably going to stop surfing all together. Gale force winds, bull kelp, water cold enough to cyrogenically freeze you and sharks bigger than minibus taxis. Brendon Gibbens sizes up to the harsh realities of another day in the Deep South. ©FOXFlip the page for a different perspective. It’s all in the eyes. Skilled surfers know where they are going on a wave by watching it unfurl down the line. There’s never a doubt as to where they’ll end up. Next time a good surfer flies past you, take a moment to gauge their focus on what’s happening ahead of them.…

These days, acts of kindness are more likely to be shared on a Pinterest board than in the flesh, let alone in the water. Rory Heard doesn’t have a Pinterest account, what he does have is an overwhelming sense of purpose that surfing holds as a galvanising agent to improve and touch lives, changing them for the better. Salt water therapy for those that need it and hope for those who thought it had all but left them a long time ago. Most surfers know the healing powers of the ocean, how stresses, worries and anxiety are washed away after a duck dive and life’s complexities seem easier to manage and frame when you return to shore, feeling sharper, lighter, more complete. But quite often, surfers selfishly keep the healing…

“I surf because it keeps my life at an even keel, without it I would tip into the oblivion.” Andy Irons“ “Sometimes you just need to get off the land.” Graeme Carr “Surfers are the ‘throw-aheads’ of mankind, not the dregs; they aren’t the black sheep of humanity, but the futurists and they are leading the way to where man ultimately wants to be. The act of the ride is the epitome of ‘be here now’, and the tube ride is the most acute form of that. Which is: your future is right ahead of you, the past is exploding behind you, your wake is disappearing, your footprints are washed from the sand. It’s a non-productive, non-depletive act that’s done purely for the value of the dance itself. And that…

I got a call the other day from the courageous young man who recently took the reins of this snorting beast of a magazine. He gave me a fake deadline and told me that the theme of this issue was the census. I was confused. “Are you talking about the people who come around to your house in the middle of the night and start counting how much stuff you have before taking your family away in the back of a van?” I asked. There was no answer. He must have cut the call and gone surfing. After much confusion, entirely on my part, I realised that he was talking about the senses. Surfing is one of the few sports that gets all five senses involved in many different ways,…

The sixth sense, not just a movie, but another term for extrasensory perception or ESP. It involves the reception of information not gained through the recognised senses. It’s also a misnomer that falsely suggests that there is only one additional sense. Surfers, like young Kommetjie charger Fabian Campagnolo, featured here, have at least four additional senses that would fall under the scope of a sixth sense. These include balance; joint motion and acceleration; sense of time and direction. All of which help to negotiate ever-changing moments like this. Fabian, true to his style, explains life through the third eye. “Moments spent rapidly fading in and out of control, scared by the necessity to act boldly, bravely and ready for the moments where things aren’t going well. Digging deep and detaching…