Cape Town
The beach where South Africa learns, and the one city on this coast with a week's worth of evenings.
Welcome to Jeffreys Bay
Surfing in Jeffreys Bay
Jeffreys Bay is a right-hand point and a town that exists because of it. The wave runs along a headland in sections, each with its own name, and on the days they join up a ride lasts long enough that people talk about it for years.
- 2spots
The season is winter, and that is the first thing to plan around. June, July and August are when the Southern Ocean lines the swell up and the offshore holds, and June is the strongest of the twelve: eighteen clean days out of thirty in the bay, sixteen at the point itself. The trade for that is water at 17 to 18°C, a 4/3 and booties, on a coast where the wind decides the hour more than the day.
Two spots carry this page and they are one headland read three kilometres apart. Supertubes is the point proper, fast and rocky, the one the world tour stops for. J-Bay is the wide reading of the bay, on a south swell rather than a southwest, and its sections are the softer ones.
The town is small and surfing is why anybody is there, which cuts both ways. Winter evenings are quiet, the restaurants are a walk away, and a week here is a surf week rather than a holiday with surfing in it. Somebody who wants a city at the end of the day is better off in Cape Town.
Welcome home.
Why Jeffreys Bay?
One wave, and the year built around it
The bay is not a spread of options. It is one long right that works when the Southern Ocean delivers and the wind stays west, and the whole town's calendar bends to it. Come in June and you are in the middle of it. Come in January and you are on a mild, quiet coast with small surf, which is a good holiday and a different one.
Where is Jeffreys Bay?
Getting there
Jeffreys Bay is an hour west of Port Elizabeth on the Eastern Cape coast, and that is the airport you fly into. The town sits on the point itself, so the distance from a camp to the water is measured in minutes rather than in transfers.
Best surf spots in Jeffreys Bay
See all spotsSurf camps in Jeffreys Bay
See all surf campsNo surf camp listed yet for this destination.
Other surf zones nearby
Durban
Warm water all year on the Indian Ocean side, and the season that runs when the rest of the country is flat.
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