Shortly before attending the festival at the Palmiet River, Justin Abrams and I decided to camp out at Yzerfontein for a few nights and score some waves. This sleepy little town about a hundred kilometres north of Cape Town can produce some fun waves in the right conditions. The wind is always lighter here than the mother city and if Cape Town is blowing 45/50 knots then the windsurfers often drive up here where one would typically sail a full square metre larger than further south on a given day.

On the first day the waves were colossal with no way out unless you just wished to be beaten back by huge walls of whitewater. We decided rather to rig up my tent sauna until we discovered that I had stupidly forgotten the tent poles at home! A quick trip to the hardware store and I came back armed with about sixty metres of rope. With crazy skill, we managed to rig up the entire tent sauna without any poles, only rope and as mentioned, skill… Tent sauna you say? Hell yes. The idea taken from when I visited Scandinavia I just had to build one myself. I bought a second hand tent made of canvas and designed a stove made entirely from 3CR12 except for the elbows and chimney which had to be 304. This is all stainless by the way if you’re not familiar with it. 3CR12 is the cheapest form of stainless and makes the grade by definition by containing a minimum of 12 to 12.5% chromium. If you want the design, let me know, I’ll gladly e-mail you the CAD drawings. Although not perfect, I recently made a modification to the combustion chamber and it’s a lot more efficient now, although still burning wood at quite a rate. People ask me if it’s like a real sauna. Of course!!! I’ve not measured the temperature but I’m sure 80 degrees Celsius and more is what it runs at.

Big waves the first day!

The tent sauna looking as ugly as possible – because I forgot the poles at home we rigged it up using rope…

Sunset at Yzerfontein. The camp site is great in winter, loads of grass. In summer it’s pure sand pretty much, so bring a groundsheet.

The next morning the waves were much smaller but the offshore wind made for excellent conditions.  Adrian Tregoning enjoying the light offshore winds. Photos by Justin Abrams.

Another evening camping next to the beach – just great! 

West Coast National Park. 

Lovely flowers. 

This spot can get really good, as we found out about 3 months later in a big swell.  Tiny little dude in the road!!!

The next morning the wind was easterly. This is very rare, and also totally offshore, which is perfect. The swell was dying but we went out and scored some really cool waves. Then later Justin decided he’d man the camera and with the waves now a bit smaller I still managed to get some very good rides in the left corner. Pure heaven and a great session for sure.

Photography by: Adrian Tregoning unless otherwise stated. 
Words by: Adrian Tregoning.