Happy Ending

A sunny Sunday af ternoon, a packed beach, excellent waves, and the event webcast going live around the globe. The finale begins, the world watches, and a great white shark decides to become very famous.

- Craig Jarvis

For a little while, the J-Bay Open became the biggest story on the planet, pretty much trending on every single media platform in the world. Every TV station, radio station, newspaper, and website had it covered as well, all due to a 4-metre great white that came to visit. The fact that it came to visit during the event’s finale, on a Sunday afternoon, in front of a packed beach, with hundreds of thousands of people watching on a webcast, just heightened the drama. The shark attack was probably one of the most well-covered pieces of news in the world, so, no need to revisit it until the end. Before the shark came into town, there was a massive festival going on in Jeffreys Bay.

The J-Bay Winterfest presented by Woodlands Dairy is a sports and music festival that brings tourists and visitors to the town. It fills up hotels and restaurants, boosting all sorts of retail sales when things could seriously be slumping for this little surf town. The festival is anchored by the J-Bay Open, a huge surf contest that takes place at Supertubes, one of the best right-hand, point-break waves in the world. This event is stop 6 on the World Surf League’s Championship Tour. This is the tour that’s given American surfer Kelly Slater 11 world titles, where Durban surf hero Jordy Smith competes.

The J-Bay Open 2015 started off with a solid push of waves that saw the world’s best surfers going hard to get those valuable points and prize money. The World Surf League had been absent from J-Bay for a few years, making a return last year, coming back in 2015 much to the competing surfers’ delight. “J-Bay is one of the best stops in the world,” said former event champion and one of the top competitors in the world, Australia’s Taj Burrow, “It should be on the tour every year, and never go off again.”