If you’re of a certain age, or a person who has steeped themselves in surf history, you’re well aware of Bruce’s Beauties. It’s the place cemented in surf history from that scene in Bruce Brown’s Endless Summer, made so famous by Mike Hynson and Robert August climbing a dune in coastal South Africa to lay eyes on one of the most perfect right-hand point breaks on Earth. It is, as everyone knows now, Cape St. Francis, and that scene kicked off generations of surfers hell-bent on exploration.
In the film, Bruce Brown says “From all the information we could gather, we figure it’s like this about 300 days of the year. The water was seventy degrees. The prevailing wind there straight offshore.”
But the reality is that the wave is incredibly fickle, only breaking as well as it can for a scant few days of the year. But it instilled a sense of wonder for those watching, a sense of wonder that has lasted all these years. It’s a wave that has outshone its reality, one that acts as a sort of icon for what could be. And on March 25th, it showed its true colors, the colors that sent surfers all over the world in search of their own version of it.
“Named after the surf film maker Bruce Brown for his epic film Endless Summer about searching for the perfect wave, then finding this long barreling wave breaking down a sandy point break in St Francis Bay,” wrote Down the Line on Youtube, “it became famous and every surfer back then wanted to come to South Africa. Sometimes a bit of a Unicorn , but when the stars align it’s pure perfection!”
