BREAKING THE SILENCE
The Big-Wave Map Gets Redrawn

Long’s wave drew cleanly off the reef to full height, a colossus completely ant-sizing Long.

After his Everest descent, Long compressed into a beautiful, driving tube line, the lip squaring over behind him in slow motion, the wave bigger than anything ever seen in Africa before. The spit detonating behind him looked like a collapsing building being overrun by an avalanche. Without time to comprehend the magnitude of Long’s wave, all eyes were immediately on Simon Lowe tracking down the second wave as it drew wide across the reef like a rearing Cape cobra in mating season. Traversing into a lower bottom-turn line, Lowe bled speed, negotiating churning boils from Long’s previous wave, leaving himself under the ax. It was a sick feeling to watch him skip backward, fail to penetrate and be sucked over the falls in the worst possible spot.

Mike Schlebach caught the final wave, pulling into a cavernous death pit. At both Sunset and Dungeons, he’d been fearlessly hunting the hollow waves with the help of partner Jake Kolnick, drawing masterfully clean lines in the process. It was an incredible performance for someone who only started surfing three years ago. Maybe that’s not entirely accurate. Mike, a former South African national bodyboarding champion, had made a name internationally by charging Waimea shorebreak, and sought greater challenges in stand-up surfing only recently.

Just like that, it went very still, and everyone remembered to breathe again. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked, a German tourist was robbed at knifepoint and a township youth dressed in hand-me-downs kicking a tin can dreamt of becoming a star soccer player. But we were oblivious to any of this, mainlining on visual adrenaline.

In the space of one afternoon, 15 years’ worth of questions were emphatically answered. Since its earliest days, Dungeons has always smacked of foreboding big-wave potential. Maverick’s regular Washburn called it “the most challenging paddle-in and tow-in spot in the world.” But despite glimpses, it had never quite rammed its presence home—always somehow missing that definitive synchronicity of tide, talent and technology. “We’ve always known and believed it must get this size and still hold its shape,” opined Cape tow-in pioneer Pierre du Plessis at a subsequent slideshow of the images. “This proves that Dungeons has what it takes to stand up against the best big-wave spots in the world.” Indeed, Dungeons has rung the watchtower bell again, declaring the coming-of-age of Cape Town as a heavywater destination. The silence has been broken.