Surfing Life — Issue 337 2017

A grower may start off as a

playful three-footer on the

outside, but down the line,

through no fault of your own,

you’re suddenly locked into

a six-foot drainer. These rare

species are found scattered

around the globe, from the

depths of the Lombok Strait

to the Eastern Cape of South

Africa, and have become

magnets for pilgrims seeking

endless tube time. But what

kind of witchcraft powers a

Grower’s secret juju?

The answer lies in one key

ingredient: refraction.

All swells will bend towards

shallower water where they ‘feel’

or hug the bottom contours of the

ocean the most. This process is

known as refraction. Under ideal

circumstances, this refraction is

amplified onto a focal point. Cue

your classic pointbreak, where a

headland curves into a deeper bay.

Swells drag across the shallow

ocean floor at the headland (the

focal point), slowing down and

bending towards the shore as they

wrap in along the contours of the

bay. The result is an evenly peeling

wave, where the unbroken part

of the swell is travelling through

deeper water and won’t be slowing

down as much; it’s racing ahead,

but it is spreading its energy evenly

over a wider area.

Typically, the deeper you go

into the bay, the less powerful the

waves become and the smaller

they get as they disperse their

Supertubes,

Jeffreys

Bay

Case Study:

GGROWer

The