AT THE BEACH | Buffalo City has reason to feel proud of this all-in girl

Some people just run on a higher octane than others. Janey-Heather Wood is that girl. She runs on 440 volts while the rest of us lesser mortals are on 220.

She has the personality of a small village and the energy level of three large ones.

Her dad, Haydon, tells me that already at the age of six or seven she told him that she wanted to be a Springbok one day.

Mom Anita tells me that Janey has a will like concrete. When she sets her mind to something and digs her heels in, that is the way it is going to be.

Janey’s can do/will do attitude comes from mom but her stamina and endurance come from dad.

Dad has completed three full Ironman races, many half Ironmans and Comrades, the Two Oceans, climbed Kilimanjaro and completed the Washie.

No doubt about it, Janey has good genes and she is driving her good start like Tiger Woods off a golf tee.

Janey smiles and laughs a lot. She is an absolute tonic to talk to.

Even when she was totally heartbroken, debilitated with a huge back injury and locked out of any sport with a nine-month rest period back in 2024, she still radiated humour.

She loves true grind. The more blood, sweat and tears in the training, the happier she is.

I am old enough to enjoy some of my surfing vicariously now. I do not need to catch every wave anymore. If you catch the wave of your life in front of me, I can share some of your joy. When I see local surfers like Vaughn Driesel, Bonny Hanafey or Taralyn Mclean break through to new levels, I am nearly just as thrilled as they are. Thus it is that I am greatly entertained by new grommet John Rance discovering surfing for the first time at the tender age of 47. As part of the Rance Timber Group, he has reasonable access to resources. He can engage in pretty much any sport that he would care to, but his current thrill is the simple act of going surfing, especially with his family. I can remember my grom days. The giant excitement of beginning to understand the waves, the water, boards, wetsuits, wind and weather, and piecing it all together to feel that surge from behind, the tail of the board and feet lifted up, the nose of the board dropping down the face and the beginning of the slide. Rance is a great outdoorsman, and the church of the blue open sky is where he loves to be after a hard week in the office. The thrill for Rance is only partly the hunt but mostly the entire gamut of sunrise or sunset, bush, forest, earth, sky, plants, rocks, trees, ocean, birds, animals and insects, and he appreciates life of every sort and form As a professional hunter/guide, he spends some time in the bush with guests, responsible for their safety and success, sometimes under the pressure of big game like buffalo. He is no stranger to calculated risk and high responsibility. On other occasions, he might take friends out deep-sea fishing. He knows and understands the ocean well, and again, big game is some of his plan. As skipper of the craft, the safety of all on board falls on his shoulders. This he does not mind because vicariously he is able to enjoy the thrill of his guests when they bag a good hunt or a good fish. The thrill for Rance is only partly the hunt but mostly the entire gamut of sunrise or sunset, bush, forest, earth, sky, plants, rocks, trees, ocean, birds, animals and insects, and he appreciates life of every sort and form. He is thrilled that a good many youngsters he has introduced to hunting and the bush have become full-time conservationists. Part of the rapture of surfing for Rance is when he grabs his board and paddles out; it is often just him and the wave. Simplicity. He is not responsible for anybody’s safety other than his own. It is just him and the absorbing challenge of the next wave, the adventure of the ocean and the abundant blessing of the big blue. Rance has long been drawn to the ocean and has always wanted to give surfing a go, but along with the pressure of business and competing other sports and outdoor interests, the vivid imagination of the threat of sharks has kept him away. Only this last July at the Corona JBay WSL was Rance finally lured into the water by the unbridled enthusiasm of his girlfriend’s son, Josh Crawford, whose infectious love of surfing knows no bounds. Standing 1.95m and weighing in at 105kg Rance has a good enough physicality from water polo to get well started. After a bit of death-staring from other surfers and the odd ambitious paddle out at dangerous point breaks, Rance took on some surfing lessons from top local surfer Wayne Monk, and he is now on a happy tangent to success. There are some “rules of the road”, and the right introductions can take you a long way. It is a tad unfortunate that only six months into the game he suffered a meaningful bump from a shark and had to stay in the water to chaperone his son and friend out of the water before he could step on terra firma. He has come to rationalise that buffaloes do as buffaloes do, and sharks behave like sharks. When birds are diving at the point, Beachbreak might be a better option. In Rance’s own words: “I find God in the wilderness. You will never find me in a church. “It is in the quiet moments in the bush, in the water and under the sky that I feel small relative to the greatness that surrounds me. “It is soul-fulfilling and my soul feels recharged.” Yeah. I know exactly what you mean. See you in the water. Click here to join the Daily Dispatch’s WhatsApp channel and get the latest news delivered straight to your phone Daily Dispatch

If her coach makes her do plank crawls over a rough carpet until her elbows bleed, she is 100% happy about it.

“Battle scars,” she tells me with a big smile.

It seems to me that a key coaching requirement to training Janey might be to hold her back a bit so that she does not self-combust.

When she channels her energy, she is a laser ready to cut steel. If you want the biggest and the best test of your mettle, Janey is the girl you want to compete against.

Her results are tumbling in.

At the tender age of 18, this grade 12 Merrifield pupil has provincial colours in six different sports — Border Cross Country, Border Surfing, Buffalo City Biathle, EL Lifesaving (winner SA national board race), East London netball and Border water polo.

Having surfed with Janey on multiple occasions, I can tell you that she is an absolute wizard on her pink, white and blue Hurricane lifesaving Malibu board.

If not that, on her Lonnie Buhn surfboard, in today’s photo, she can drop in with style, class and control at Yellows Point and line up a thrilling ride.

Janey loves her surfing, netball and lifesaving but right now she is happy to lay it all down for water polo.

Over the years, she has spent huge amounts of effort on all platforms and finally she has cracked green and gold.

She has a junior Springbok call-up for the Water Polo World Championships on August 16, in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain.

Goodbye surfing, lifesaving and netball for the next while. HPP — high-performance polo — here we come.

“Life without huge, impossible, insane, far-fetched goals is boring for me,” Janey tells me.

It was a long time ago that I read Swahili for the Broken-hearted by Peter Moore. The book is a travel memoir about the author’s overland adventure from Cape Town to Cairo after his break-up with the GND (girl next door). What do you do after a break-up? You go travel Africa. The book is filled with humour, wisdom, culture, chaos, crisis, restoration and epic tales. So I bumped into 33-year-old Nico Boh at Buccaneers Chintsa on his crazy surf trip with UK tour operation “Ticket to Ride” just this last week. He suffered a recent break-up and here he is, perhaps not the Swahili version but maybe isiXhosa. Twenty or so years ago, two UK lads put together a business proposal for a varsity commerce assignment for surf travel for youngsters based on their own travel and surfing experiences. The idea looked so good that they put it into action and here they are today with chapters of the business in South Africa, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. They have multiple package offers from 10 days, three weeks to seven months. It’s kind of a happy holiday to gap year and many things in between. A constant part of the adventure is surfing. You can go from beginner to average to advanced depending on where you start and what your aspirations are. Tour head of operations/manager/operator/co-ordinator on this leg of the expedition is David Solomon, 33, and he is a hot surfer so there is a start right there. Here as they pass through Buffalo City and head to Coffee Bay, they intersect with Greg Emslie (Olympic coach) and David Malherbe (Greg’s coach when he was a grom). The level of quality surfing and coaching input on the Ticket to Ride tour is not in question. Boh is a software engineer and having some good years of work and savings behind his back, he has gone for the seven-month tour option. When this author caught up with him he had completed the Sri Lanka leg and having started the SA leg he touched down in Cape Town and was making his way up our South African coastline. Thus far the Mzantsi leg has included the best breaks in Cape Town, Plettenberg Bay, Cape St Francis, J-Bay, now Chintsa, next Coffee Bay, Umzumbe, Durban and Ballito. Boh stays on the bus to “suffer” his way through Mozambique too. The said bus on this tour is actually two buses and a closed trailer full of surfboards with about 20 youngsters aged from about 18 just out of school to 36, the eldest person on this trip. The split is even at about 10 guys and 10 girls from Germany, New Zealand, Australia, the UK, US, Slovakia, Switzerland, Ireland and Netherlands. That is nine nations of golden-brown suntans, peeling noses, lean physiques, sore shoulders and happy surf stories. Boh says: “The best thing about surfing twice a day is you can eat as much as you want with no regrets.” Speaking about the food, I joined the crew at Buccaneers to interview and write this story. Oh my gosh, two variations of seafood paella and one vegetarian offering of paella with green salad and bread rolls. The lady in the Buccaneers kitchen deserves a raise. And I know about the food offered in Coffee Bay at The Coffee Shack with David and Belinda Malherbe, ubuntu and cuisine to knock your socks off. The Ticket to Ride tourists had better surf twice a day or they are going to roll home. Boh tells me that his best surf so far has been in J-Bay. South African people are friendly, beautiful, welcoming and the culture and travelling up the coast has been mind-blowing. Everybody on the trip improved their surfing in leaps and bounds through J-Bay. As they come up the coast the water is moving from cold in Cape Town, warmer and warmer every day until they head into KwaZulu-Natal and Mozambique. A happier man you will struggle to find right now. Serendipity has fallen right into his lap. As they say in Swahili “Nyota Haziwezi ng’aa bila giza - stars can’t shine without darkness.” Welcome to the African sky young man. Auf wiedersehen.

Erstwhile motivation guru Mike Lipkin describes ABHAG — a big, hairy audacious goal, in his books.

I doubt that Janey has read any of Lipkin’s books, but she sure understands the concept.

She is an all-in kind of girl. All or nothing. Burn the boats, as the Vikings would say.

In 2032, Janey will be 24 years old, and it is an Olympic year. The trajectory for her heart, mind and sport is clear. This is where she wants to go.

In the meantime, she is evaluating sport scholarship offers from universities in the US.

An aggregate scholar in the 75% area, with a beyond-stellar sports history; the sun, moon, stars, sky and all in between describe Janey-Heather Wood’s limits. That is to say, no limit.

Merrifield and Buffalo City have reason to feel proud.

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