Surfer Profile: Charles Reitz

Highlights:
I suppose it is an achievement to stay alive when one actively pursues a death defying passion.

I was watching Waimea just starting to break, a couple of guys out and a couple of people watching. Gradually the conversation swung around to South Africans who surf well at Waimea and naturally people started talking about Andy Marr. The conversation swung, fairly quickly, to another South African Charles Reitz. “Charley rips out here,” said one of the conversationalists. “Barrels at Waimea, ripping at Pinballs, jumping off the rocks, Charley is one of the guys.”
“Does he hit it when it’s big?” I asked, always the critic. “He rips when it gets big. Him and Andy are always jostling for the big ones when it starts turning on.”

There’s a thing. A surfer from Plettenberg Bay who grew up surfing at Buffels Bay Point near Knysna, hardly a serious wave, making a name at Waimea. Even more importantly, without anyone really knowing about it.

I remember thinking, ‘Well done granny. Must be something in that Buffels water that got you and Andy so fired up.’

A few years later and I am sitting with a bunch of big wave surfers, having a quiet drink and listening to them relate a recent cooking session at Sunset. It was a paddle session, and the waves were big and perfect when out of the blue Charles Reitz paddles out and joins the crew. “He blew everyone away on his first couple of waves. He got barrelled, he pulled off some deep drops and backdoored a section or two. It was like the level had just been lifted, and no one knew what had happened.”

Charley joined the consciousness of the big wave movement on that day, and his performance was talked about for a long time to come.

It would be fair to say at this point that Charley is fairly untested at Dungeons, but that is not a bad thing at all. I was surfing my homebreak the other day, sitting next to the take off rock and waiting quietly for a set when this little goofy-foot kid paddled out. He looked at me and nodded his head. Sat next to me and watched a few smaller ones. Then he did the unbelievable and paddled around behind the take off rock. He sat just behind it. The next wave came, gurgled behind the rock and he caught it and rode it, showing all of us up as to how to surf our local break. So Charles unfettered eyes on the Dungeons lineup could easily work some magic. If you don’t know about the restrictions then there are no limitations. Just like Granny blew them all away at Sunset, so he could do the same at Dungeons. Time will tell.