Surfing for charity

KNYSNA NEWS - Putting the “Fun” in fundraising is a real double whammy in terms of feel good factor.

It combines things we love to do, but gives that extra good feeling of helping someone less fortunate.

As with all really good things in life, achieving this usually involves a big amount of hard work and personal sacrifice, in this instance put in by the superb volunteer team who made sure it all worked on the weekend, and everyone left with as much of the feel-good factor as possible.

The Buffs Classic, in its second year now, was created with a specific goal – a contest that the whole family can take part in, builds development surfing, supports worthy charities, and builds the love of surfing and caring for our oceans.

2017 lived up to this in more ways than one.

Having a dad and 2 of his sons paddle out in the same heat and “compete” against each other, brothers and sisters competing in the same heats, kneeboarders and retro’s, and SUP and Loggers all looking for a high scoring wave, is exactly the ethos and fun element we love about this event.

Conditions limited the number of Saturday heats, but these were made up on Sunday which was a fantastic day of surfing.

Judges had a bird’s eye view thanks to the very generous Sponsorship from Cape Island Construction of the Judging Towers.

The Loggers and SUP division were supported by Pili Pili. Surf Café sponsored the hotly contested Retro Skins, and Surf Culture backed the Hot Dogs division which saw a field of fantastic young under 18’s giving it their all out there.

A surfer takes on the waves at the Buffs Surf Classic.

The Groms had a jam packed 2 days with and CRUSH Surf wear made sure they had fantastic prizes to show for their efforts. ZIG ZAG made sure everyone had a great weekend read, and Knysna Roofing made sure the contestants had the t-shirt to remember it all.

Keeping everybody in the loop in terms of media and news was generously done by the fantastic people at the Knysna-Plett Herald and CX Press.

The massive effort put in behind the scenes by this phenomenal team of volunteers, Clayton Bischoff, Brian Salter, Garrin O’Brien, Ben Jacobson, the Knysna Education Trust (KET) volunteers and staff all resulted in a fantastic contest, and talk of next year is already on the cards.

The KET and Knysna Sedgefield Hospice thank you for your support to this great fundraiser.

After about 25 heats and some fiercely demanding conditions we salute all 54 contestants that entered, you are all winners in our eyes.