Out in the water, a Bok rugby player might drown in the first pass of a big wave outside set.
Baker had been chasing the swell up the coast since it savaged Victoria Bay and Plettenberg Bay.
His first stop was the fabled outsized waves of Bruce’s Beauties at Cape St Francis.
While local surfers have been mind-surfing the tip of the harbour breakwall for decades.
In 2014, in similar conditions, Fowles jumped off the rocks in front of the Wimpy along the Esplanade and paddled all the way out.
Riding two waves and wiping out on two others, he proved it could be done.
It has taken Fowles a further 12 years to find the right tow partner and the right day.
Keaton Stansfeld, 22, has wings on his heels.
When this young man hits the tarmac, he flies. Mind you, over rocks, rivers, sand, track, trail, mountains and streams, he does the same.
Keaton was this year’s winner at The Discovery Surfers Challenge.
As is usually the case, I was working at the Gonubie River mouth with the marathon hosts, Buffalo City Surfing, to welcome and direct the challenge athletes to the ropes and river crossing.
Keaton was the first athlete to the river, remarkably well ahead, over in a flash and gone like a rocket.
I caught up with him earlier this week to find out more about him.
Keaton hails from Johannesburg. Perhaps he finds the air at the coast moist and thick and full of oxygen and energy?
He is a provincial athlete across an outrageous nine different sports. He is humble about it, too, and almost surprised that this writer thinks his achievements are fantastic.
Dad is an all-round athlete and encouraged son to have a crack at almost everything, including badminton (green and gold representation), athletics (he has run and competed at world cross country in Kenya), hockey (been on a school trip to Malaysia/Singapore), baseball (provincial) and swimming (provincial).
He has played provincial soccer, competing in Barcelona, Spain, and played provincial cricket.
I think he was about to tell me more but I was about to fall off my chair so he stopped.
Keaton related all of this without much fanfare as if his achievements are quite normal.
Both his dad and grandmother have represented South Africa at “everything” he tells me. Sports genes completely run in the family.
Don’t think for a moment that this means school and academic work takes a back seat. Mom, also an athlete, is a principal, so school work has never been allowed to suffer.
Since about the age of 10 Keaton has always known what he wants to do, but selection was impossible, so off he went to Tuks to study a degree for town and regional planning.
After his second year at varsity, his dream came through.
Keaton has always wanted to be an air traffic controller. He finally got accepted, dropped his degree and stepped into ATC.
Full qualification takes about 12 years. This young man is not frightened of a long haul. He is in for the long run.
Currently, Keaton is working for Air Traffic and Navigation Services as assistant to the tower at King Phalo Airport here in Buffalo City. It takes about three to five years to get into the tower.
Keaton is living his dream and still running while he is about it. Doors have a habit of opening for him, and blessing and favour seem to be in front of him, beside him and behind him.
His hero athlete is Kenyan long-distance runner Eliud Kipchoge for both his decades-long athleticism and incredible mindset.
Keaton is a very mindful young man. Three priorities he impressed upon me included:
1 Be a good person;
2 Be humble; and
3 Life is more important than any medal.
Keaton likes to put God first. He follows his faith at Gonubie Baptist Church while he is here, and then family, friends, coach, physio and sport psychologist are relationships that follow out of that.
If you don’t rule your mind, your mind will rule you
I asked Keaton what words he lives by or what quotable quotes keep him focused: “Effortless is a myth. It takes years of hard work and you have to embrace the hard work because there is no way around it.
“If you don’t rule your mind, your mind will rule you. Only the disciplined ones are free in life. If you are undisciplined, you are a slave to your moods and emotions.”
Keaton has his eyes and heart set on the Olympics 2032. Possibly 5,000m or 10,000m. At the current rate of progress, I wonder if 2028 might even be a possibility?
I can’t help but think of Eric Liddell. “God made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure”.
It would appear God has made Keaton Stansfeld fast too.
Indeed, I shall feel His pleasure when I see this young champion in our country’s colours at the Olympics.
Run like the wind Keaton.
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Jeweller, surf photographer and thalassophile Pierre de Villiers has been watching this wave and dreaming about last Friday’s tow-in surf session for the past 37 years.
The tip of the wall was visible from his classroom as a Hudson Park scholar.
“On Tuesday I spotted what looked like a special swell, a big cut-off low pressure with a pulsing 5m plus south to south-east swell. It looked epic.
“The only wrinkle in my plan was the wind. It was going to be howling,” De Villiers wrote on Facebook.
Explaining that the first person he called was Fowles and then Baker, as they had been chatting about it for a number of years, he said both expressed keen interest.
“Friday and Saturday morning looked like the best window for some big barrel activities and the decision was made to commit,” he said.
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.
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.
Janey loves her surfing, netball and lifesaving but right now she is happy to lay it all down for 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.
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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Formerly from Buffalo City, now a resident of Cape Town, Fowles drove 1,048km from Cape Town, towing his 1800cc jet ski, to meet Baker who flew in from Durban to ride Friday’s storm surf.
Friday’s wind was brutal, collapsing many tube rides, with Baker escaping his tube rides clean given his experience while Fowles took a “chandelier” on the head — where the lip of the wave collapsed on him — and the tons of water injured his knee.
Recently, Fowles has spent a month in Nazaré, Spain.
Giant waves have put Nazaré on the world map and the local harbour there welcomes surfers when it is closed to shipping.
One wonders to what extent big wave surfing might put Buffalo City on the world map?
De Villiers says the wave breaks about 30 times a year of which about five or six times a year will be world-class.
A call to the port confirmed that the Buffalo City harbour is closed to shipping five or six times a year.
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