It is with great pleasure to have been the editor of Personal Watercraft Illustrated when we published Taylor Curtis (now of TC Freeride fame) on his honeymoon in Tia’apu when the daring freerider rode his custom built ski into the crystal blue waters of a 12-foot-high barrel on the cover. Curtis’ daring and his wife’s talent at snapping the pic gave us one of the magazine’s best images of what the perfect blend of surfing and jet skiing can accomplish.
Unfortunately, opportunities like that don’t come together often. In a segment called “Sequence of The Week,” ZigZag Magazine published a series of sequential images showing a monster swell pounding on the KwaZulu-Natal (a province of South Africa) shoreline, and a lowly Sea-Doo Spark daring to stick it in the greenhouse, so to speak. Pilot Sipho Ngwane charged the barrel and was photographed by Neil H Photography, but Ngwane wasn’t up to the challenge.
As the story goes, this was Sipho’s first time at tow-in, towing-in surfer Quinton Shabalala. Quinton is shown in the sequence (found by clicking here) above the wave and out of harm’s way, choosing not to ride it after all. Apparently Sipho wasn’t able to avoid the barreling wave, and attempted to steer clear of it, instead getting stuffed deep inside and eventually pulled over the lip. It’s a heck of a sequence and definitely worth clicking the link to ZigZag to see it in its completion.
