Jeffreys Bay
Supertubes Is One Of The Best Right Hand Point Breaks On Earth A Long Fast Barrelling Wave That Holds Its Shape For Hundreds Of Metres And Draws The World Professional Tour Every July In A Town That Exists Almost Entirely Because Of It, With A Long Swimmable Beach, Shell Middens And A Surf Industry That Grew Out Of A 1960s Squatter Camp · Jeffreys Bay, Eastern Cape
Jeffreys Bay exists because of a wave. Supertubes is a right-hand point break that peels off a reef at the northern end of the bay and holds its shape for several hundred metres - fast, hollow and barrelling, and by broad consensus one of the three or four best waves of its kind anywhere on earth. The world professional tour has come here every July since the 1990s. Californian and Australian surfers found it in the 1960s and camped in the dunes, the town grew up around them, and the surf industry that followed is still what the place runs on - board factories, wetsuit brands and shops along one main road. There is also a long swimmable beach for everybody else, shell middens on the headland and a good fossil and shell museum. Be clear about one thing: Supertubes is a serious wave breaking over reef, it is flat a great deal of the time, and beginners have no business paddling out there at all.
On the Eastern Cape coast 75 km west of Port Elizabeth, with Supertubes at the northern end of the bay, Jeffreys Bay, Eastern Cape, South Africa
A town and a beach, so the water and the sand are open at any hour. SUPERTUBES WORKS ON A SPECIFIC SWELL AND WIND and is frequently flat or unrideable - a south-westerly swell with offshore wind is what makes it, and checking a forecast is what surfers here do before anything else. The professional event is in July and fills the town completely while closing the main break to the public for its duration. The main swimming beach has lifeguards in daylight through the summer season; SUPERTUBES ITSELF IS NOT A SWIMMING BEACH. Surf shops, board factories and the shell museum keep daylight hours and many close on Sundays. Accommodation ranges from backpacker lodges to beach houses and fills in December and at the contest. Port Elizabeth airport is seventy-five kilometres east, and the town is MALARIA-FREE.