Скачать или смотреть Paddleout for George Bell

SA diving pioneer and surfer George Bell, whose life was celebrated by a paddle-out at Kommetjie Inner on Friday 13 January 2023, was a gentle man of few words - and hair-raising deeds galore, writes Ant Heard.

Bell regularly showed unbelievable bravery in the churning waves above and the swirling depths under the water. He died last year in Spain, but his daughter Caroline could only bring them to his beloved Kommetjie last week, where they were scattered in glassy, calm waters off the Kom Inner slipway.
I first met George in the 1940s when he was slightly older than me. He was entrepreneurial even then. Off South Beach, Durban, he was a renowned diver for rock lobster that he would catch with a grain (a sharpened rod) for less than a pittance in today's currency. He was usually hard at work when beachboys loafed or surfed.
George, like his beach boy "lightie" mates, was often a bare-handed surfboard bait-layer for big game anglers fishing from the Durban Pier, who wanted their bait cast far out in deeper water. Another money maker for the beachboys was to build or buy surfboards.
Bait laying was one of the scariest pursuits in a shark-aplenty place where we were shocked to lose two friends to great whites: Clive Dumayne and Brian van Berg.
The bait-laying involved a shad or other fish speared with a huge hook gripped gingerly between the ankles. And hitting far out by surfboard; then, on hearing the angler's most welcome whistle, executing a rapid "drop and go", and vamoosing asap to shore - with a beach boy "agent" collecting one shilling from the angler on the Pier.
George, living in Newquay decades later, would regale my ageing mother Vida in a nearby seaside village with such diverting stories about her own sons' reckless pursuits in shark water. (Bless him for doing that.) 
George later became famous around the Southern African coast and beyond, building up an enviably successful diving business with kid brother James, or Jimmy. At age 84, super-veteran James still surfs and has been honoured in the SA Surfing Hall of Fame at Muizenberg.
George is also attributed to have aided surfboard design by adding skegs to a board in the 40s. The Bells seemed totally fearless when their Cape Diving concern dispatched them into the "dark unfathomed caves of ocean" to look for treasure and gems, in the words of poet Thomas Gray in his Elegy.   
Diving was both fun and good business. The Bells scoured old and new wrecks looking for treasure and doing extensive salvaging and other underwater work.
A book George wrote on the subject called A lifetime of Diving Adventures is a self published a Hitchcock thriller: scary, proven fact, not psycho-fiction.
That book must be republished now since it captures not only the hair- raising dangers survived, but has crucial encyclopaedic information on wrecks, especially around our Cape of Storms.
George's mates shared countless thrills with him. He seemed to have nine lives. Yet he was always modest about it all, letting others do the boasting.      
A personal aside: Surfing with him on a wave beyond Sunrise Beach, Muizenberg, I saw his firm, resourceful, non-violent nature in play.
A young surfer had dropped in on him in a wave already carrying George and myself along. George did not rant, curse, rave or cuff the over-close nipper about to ruin his "slide". He simply reached out one arm, impounding the board after shaking the surfer off (no leashes in those days). He then nonchalantly tucked the board under his arm, and surfed with it to the beach, me right beside him and wildly amused. He planted the board in the sand, leaving it to the dropper-in to swim all the way in and learn a useful lesson.
George Bell was a modest, highly successful diver and surfer. A mensch. He is missed.