Chris Bertish's 'Stoked!' book launch

I really enjoy attending book launches for adventure books written by South Africans. As it happens, I know many of them because they've probably appeared on the FEAT stage.

Tonight I went to the JHB launch of Chris Bertish's book, 'Stoked!', a big-wave surfing story (and more, for sure!), about Chris' win at the 2010 Mavericks big-wave surfing competition. In the big-wave surfing world, this is the biggest win possible.

Since I first met Chris I've kept an eye on his SUP and surfing adventures. He's always up to something.

Tonight, the best part of Chris' talk was his description of what it is like to catch and surf and make it out of the claws of a 60" wave that is moving at 60km/hr and threatening to gobble you up. I look forward to leaping into his book to get more of just that.

Even though I've only met Chris in person once before at FEAT 2013, we're in comms here and there and I get his Facebook posts and regularly see what he is up to. Other than this, I can't say that I know Chris - we don't do dinner once a month.

But still I have a feeling of pride for Chris and his accomplishment of writing this book (and recently also launching a film overseas - we'll get it here later this year / early next year).

I actually feel this way about all my FEAT speakers; I'm so fond of all of them and I take great delight in seeing their further achievements in all spheres, whether physical or literary.