Luke Slijpen Escapes The Qualification Machine, Drops A Hammer Edit

At 24, two-thirds of Luke Slijpen’s life have been spent doing this.

Since the age of eight, when his father, John, taught him how to surf, Luke has been obsessed with making a living from surfing with monastic dedication.

The Slijpen clan also includes younger brother Connor, who follows in his footsteps, their younger sister Mary, who is representing South Africa at ISA Worlds for longboarding, and mother Jo, who provides unconditional support ranging from encouragement to ensuring everyone has access to temperature-appropriate wax and sunscreen.

With two events left on the calendar, Luke currently sits in 68th place on the Challenger Series. Last season, he finished 55th — in his first-ever attempt at the main qualifying tour. Granted, you won’t be seeing him on the CT next year, but the CS is still something of a rite of passage and, inevitably, a way to level up.

Though reluctantly, he found himself among a battalion of CT hopefuls. “I would enter the local contests and I’d end up qualifying,” he explains. “It was hard to pass up the opportunity to go overseas with my mates, see the world, and surf all over it.”

A life earning coin from free surfing remains the gromhood dream, the carrot that still dangles. “I’ve always wanted to go on trips and film for specific projects,” he shares. “I could do a lot on the freesurfing front with the money that I’ve been spending on the Challenger.” (Which is quite a bit.)

Next year, Luke has decided to put competition on hold to focus on making surf films — a perfectly respectable way to occupy one’s time. “I’m going to focus on carefully planning and completing new projects instead.”

It’s a decision influenced as much by time as by money. Traveling to and from South Africa proves rather more expensive and tiresome than departing from international flight hubs, and despite the wave quality and level of talent, the surf industry isn’t terribly expressive at the southernmost point of the African continent.

“I feel like it’s just so hard for South Africans to actually get internationally recognized,” Luke observes. It is little wonder, then, that the two most resounding names from ZAF — Jordy Smith and Mikey February — have both done major stints residing in the US.

When Luke spoke to Stab, Jordy was around in Cape Town. “Whenever he’s home he’s so amped to go on missions. He’s always calling us to go surfing.” By “us,” he means Eli Beukes, Luke Thompson, Jordy Maree, brother Connor, and the seldom-known talents that inhabit the coastal suburbs around the Cape, where there’s always a wave to surf.

“When it’s offshore and there’s a bit of swell, it can get really good!”

Look no further than SURGE for proof. Luke’s new edit was shot entirely in South Africa and features ample gems near his home, some a bit further east around Durban, J-Bay naturally, and a three-day mission up the sticks for its final section.

“That last section is probably my favorite,” he says of the eleventh-hour strike mission with Dale Staples, Frank Solomon, and Luke Thompson. “We didn’t expect much — it was supposed to be big, but the wind was a bit off. We camped with no reception. It was freezing, like 3°C, and then you wake up and have to get into a 5/4/3 mm wetsuit. But we ended up scoring pretty hard!”

As for the approaching year, Luke has no set itinerary, though there’s a strong possibility he needn’t leave the continent. “I would like to go to other places, but there’s still so much opportunity in Africa,” he says. “I was chatting to my dad about it the other day — he’s always been of that opinion. It would be cool to go to those places you don’t see too often and show a little bit of the various cultures too.” He’s been considering a project around Africa, though he’d also like to travel elsewhere to put something together.

In the meantime, there is a bit of summer to be spent at home, a two-month stint approaching on the North Shore for the Pipe event, and plenty of waves to surf.

And film.