Why Namibia's Skeleton Bay is every beachbreak surfer's dream come true

The current edition of The Surfer's Journal celebrates Skeleton Bay in Namibia – one of the most spectacular surf spots anywhere in the world. When monster swells generated in the Southern Ocean arrive here they start to peel along an enormous sandspit beside the mining town of Walvis Bay, and once they start breaking, well, they just keep on going. And going. And going.

Whereas most of the big, barrelling waves in the surfing universe – Pipeline in Hawaii, say, or Teahupo’o in Tahiti – typically allow surfers to get covered up by the lip once, in a ride lasting perhaps 15 or 20 seconds in total, the waves at Skeleton Bay offer multiple barrels and can last for up to two minutes.

An entire double- page spread in The Surfer's Journal is devoted to a drone sequence showing a 2019 ride by Hawaiian pro Koa Smith, in which he covered over a mile in one minute and 56 seconds, pulling into the barrel a total of eight times along the way. His ambition at Skeleton Bay? To get a single barrel that lasts for over a minute.

The most remarkable thing about Skeleton Bay, though, is the fact that – until recently – it wasn't really a surf spot at all. One of the locals quoted in the Surfer's Journal story is Shaun Loubser, who first started surfing at Skeleton Bay in 2002. Back then, he says, the wave broke in sections so it wasn't possible to ride for very far. "We didn't think it was a world- class wave," he said. A few years before that, another early Skeleton Bay surfer, Naude Dreyer, remembers it as being completely sheltered: "We used to come fishing here back in high school." Being on the edge of the mighty Namib Desert, however, the sandspit at Skeleton Bay is constantly changing shape as huge quantities of sand are blown out to sea and sculpted into different shapes by the waves – it's estimated that as much as a million cubic metres of sand flows along Skeleton Bay every year, enough to fill 400 Olympic- size swimming pools.

Geologists believe that a shift in the predominant wind direction in the area in the 1970s began the process that ultimately caused the spit to take on its current form, and there are now fears that, just as Mother Nature giveth, so she might also taketh away: "The wave evolved so quickly," says Dreyer, "and maybe in a few years it will be gone again."

In 2019, it seemed that the wave was in danger of being split in two when a large sandy berm formed roughly halfway along its length, but then a powerful south swell blasted the berm out of the way in a matter of hours and the spit survived, at least for the time being.

In spite of its perfection, relatively few surfers will ever surf Skeleton Bay. Partly that's because it's difficult and expensive to get to, partly because it only breaks a handful of times a year, and partly because, when it does do its thing, you need to be fit enough to paddle continually against the raging current that washes along the point and then surefooted enough to stick a landing after skittering down the face of a hollow, angry, fast- moving wall of ocean. But just because most average surfers will never ride it, that doesn't make it any less fascinating, and part of that fascination – part of what makes it so relatable – is the wave's fickle, precarious nature. Most of the surf spots that are regularly pictured in magazines are reef breaks – that is, waves that break on big slabs of underwater rock or coral, where the water suddenly becomes more shallow.

There might be subtle changes to the way these spots work from swell to swell and from year to year, but they can mostly be relied on to produce similar- looking waves, to the extent that most long- time surfers will be able to recognise a picture of a Pipeline wave or a Teahupo’o wave ( or, indeed, a Thurso East wave) even if they've never been there. These wonders of underwater topography are few and far between, however, so, for reasons of convenience, most surfers will spend most of their time surfing beachbreaks; that is, waves breaking over sand.

It has its moments, but a lot of the time beachbreak surfing can be incredibly frustrating. Because the sand – the surface over which the waves are breaking – can change shape from one day to the next, a spot that was working beautifully under certain swell and wind conditions on one day can a pale shadow of its former self under the exact same conditions a few days later, as an immaculately sculpted sandbar is broken up and mysteriously transported somewhere else.

Every now and then, though, the planets will align and – perhaps on a day when you weren’t expecting much of a wave – a little miracle of bathymetry will occur down at your local beach, a small- ish swell will hit a newly formed sandbar just- so, and, if only for a few hours, you can feel as lucky as the guys scoring mile- long rides at Skeleton Bay, even if you are only surfing waist- high peelers for a couple of hundred metres.

Part of the fascination of Skeleton Bay is the wave's fickle, precarious nature