BROTHERS WICHMANN

Dylan Wichmann is no stranger to these pages, even having scored – amongst other things – the prestigious cover shot in an earlier issue. But more recently, his brother Donovan has also started to find his own way into the magazine, in footsteps that were trailblazed by his brother, but ones he’s now stepped out of as he sets off on his own pro riding path…

Here Dylan writes about the life-long sibling dynamic that has made these two riders so successful in what they do.

Words: Dylan Wichmann
Photos: Samuel Tomé & Mitchell Doyle Markgraaff

In the sporting world, there always seems to be a ring that comes with having siblings all excelling in a single sports discipline. But at the same time, when siblings are only a few years apart, it can become a sibling rivalry. My brother and I are only 21 months apart, and being the older of the two Wichmann brothers, my younger brother, Donovan, has always seemed to find the same sport as me. But since he is younger and would generally start at the same time as me, for his age, he would always be the one stealing the spotlight. Not only because we started at the same time, but he is also talented as hell in anything he tries to pursue.

My first love was the ocean, which came from wanting to do the same thing as my older half-brother, who is 13 years older than me. I recall being just five years old when I saw a photograph of my dad and half-brother at the beach with surfboards under their arms. I desperately wanted to become a surfer, and shortly after my fifth birthday, which falls in December, I got my first surfboard for Christmas. This changed the trajectory of my little life. I became so obsessed with surfing that I couldn’t think of anything else that I’d ever do that didn’t involve the ocean. But at the same time, I was five, and my brother was only three when he got his first surfboard. At this tender young age, there was no competition between us, and after surfing for two years, I even ended up stopping surfing for another three years, and I began again at the age of 10. We didn't grow up in the wealthiest family, but my dad was self-employed, and as a result, he was able to take us surfing very often. We were also very fortunate to have grown up in a house just five minutes from the best learn-to-surf spot in the whole of South Africa.

But 22 years ago, wetsuits weren’t what they are today. And even then, we could only afford second-hand wetsuits, which were probably over 10 years old. After braving one or two years of cold winters, I decided that I didn’t want to surf anymore at the time. Following suit, my brother also similarly began to surf less and less.

This is when I picked up skateboarding, and since I’d already surfed for a few years, and also been on a skateboard since the age of three, I got good really fast, and my first time at a skatepark, I dropped in so easily first go, and after only three drop-ins, I was already dropping into 8-foot quarter pipes. Skating for me gave me a very similar sensation to surfing, but I would not get freezing cold as I did in the wintertime in Muizenberg! But as my skating improved, so did the risks. At first, I was pretty fearless, but as I started to go bigger and bigger on the skate ramps, so did the gnarly falls…This is where I decided to try my hand at surfing again, and somewhat fortuitously I became friends with a few kids in my school who also wanted to start surfing, and now I had my first little surf group as a grom. My brother was always following in my footsteps, and he also started surfing way more again and we started getting involved in the South African competitive scene. It was during this time that we were both competing that we began to be known collectively by everyone as “The Wichmann Brothers”!

Fast forward a couple of years, and after losing hope of being a surfer for a living, I worked at a surf school for a handful of years and was the manager for two-and-a-half years of that time. This is where I was lucky enough to meet one of the kids' dads that I was teaching. He told me that he had a foil and a jet ski that he had never tried before. He invited me and my boss at the time to come and learn with them. This was in 2018, the start of my foiling career, when almost no one knew what foiling was, and the designs of the foils were prehistoric compared to what we are riding today. With my surfing experience and many years of teaching people to surf, I thought that I grasped the understanding of how a foil works, and even though I was pretty terrible at the time, I thought that if I stuck with it, with my knowledge of teaching surfing and incorporating it into my foiling, it would be possible for me to create a career within the foiling world.

I could never afford to purchase a foil myself so when the guy who I had learned with left his foil set up with me for a few months, I would take it out every chance I got. Once I reached a certain level, I was confident that if I asked my parents to borrow the money for a setup, I’d be able to get good enough to get a sponsorship – and that is exactly what happened. Only a few months later, I snagged the cover of the third issue of Foiling Magazine, and that helped to cement my name in the foiling world.

During all this time, I had hoped that my brother would also be able to begin foiling, but since my sponsorships only gave me enough for myself, I never had an extra setup to let him learn on. But at the same time, I was a bit hesitant that, if he started, he’d overtake me and steal my spotlight like he did when we were younger! Almost exactly a year ago, after completing his studies, Donovan picked up a job working as the marketing manager for AK Durable Supply Co., and finally had access to equipment he could learn on.

As I said above, he’s been foiling for less than a year (he started in July 2023), and he’s already better than most surf foilers who have been riding foils for the same amount of time as me. He was a bit luckier that he was able to learn on equipment that is much more advanced than when I first started, but I am stoked that we are finally able to foil together at our home in Muizenberg.

In South Africa, specifically Cape Town, the foiling hasn’t really taken off. This is because foiling equipment is so expensive, and we also have an abundance of really good waves for regular surfing. But to be honest, I’m not complaining, if foiling in Cape Town was as big as many places overseas, they would probably start putting in regulations of where one is allowed to foil, especially in a place like Muizenberg, where there are sometimes close to 100 longboarders and people learning to surf. If you throw in a bunch of people also learning to foil, it could become extremely dangerous for those trying to enjoy their time on the water. Luckily, most of those who foil at Muizenberg have been surfing for many years, and they understand the rules of the line up and stay far away from those trying to surf.

One of the awesome things about foiling is that the waves that foilers want to ride, especially when pumping out and connecting to an unbroken swell, are far away from where the surfers want to take off. For the time being, we are super lucky to have a place as good as Muizenberg to foil. With Muizenberg just a few minutes’ drive from the house my brother and I grew up in, all those years of trying to escape Muizenberg to find better waves to surf have come to an end, and we can take advantage of our local to have an extreme amount of fun on an almost daily basis and now that my brother's foiling level has improved drastically in the past few months, I finally have a foil partner whom I can explore Cape Town with and also the rest of South Africa, which is littered with epic foil destinations if you know where to look – so keep an eye out for our future adventures.