This is what we have been waiting for.
I have a personal conviction – it borders on a superstition – that one should never speak poorly of an ocean. That applies all the more so if you are planning on spending much time in that ocean, especially when it’s so much older, and bigger and stronger than you.
So I’m not one to complain about the waves.
But between you and me, the waves this summer haven’t been ideal. They were tiny, or choppy, or both. Some days they were close to nonexistent, while others broke about four feet from the beach.
The water would range from bathtub warm to icy, usually dropping quick and without warning – and then there was one day with a big, clean, heavy swell, and the Atlantic’s majesty kicked out these freight trains with a steep vertical drop that seemed designed more to snap spinal columns than to offer a fun day in the sun.
But this week – well, this week was sweet.
The weekend was a little rough. The waves had size and power, but were so choppy it was hard to get any kind of a ride. It wasn’t impossible, but as one surfer told me on the beach, it was a lot of work. Plus, she said, when you took a tumble, you could never tell where the board would land.
But early this week, we had nice, clean, lovely waves. The kind of waves that make you late for whatever you had planned. The kind of waves that make you want to take one more ride, not because you’re hoping to get one right, but because the last ride was such a pleasure, racing along the smooth, clean water, barely ahead of the curl of the break, and cruising along the face of the wave for long, beautiful moments.
They were the waves that remind you why you got out of bed in the dark, the kind for which the deep red circle of the rising sun and the smattering of minnows breaking the surface are an added bonus to a sweet session rather than a consolation while you’re bobbing up and down, fruitlessly scanning the horizon.
Did I mention they were pretty good this week?
They weren’t monsters. They were not double-overhead, have-to-be-towed-in mountains. Were you looking for those? These were just fun. Big enough, you know; they got the board moving, but terror didn’t enter the equation. The form on Tuesday morning seemed perfect, with each shore break forming at a nice peak, and an easy slope to slide down and make the turn at your leisure, instead of the split-second hollow drop that makes you fear for your life.
Even on the occasional monster wave, maybe about shoulder high, there was little worry of a wipeout. There wasn’t really much to worry about at all, once you managed to fight your way past the whitewater.
I’ve been assured that if I mention where I went in, I will not be allowed back. Surfers can be a little maniacal about keeping a (relatively) uncrowded break a secret. But it sounds like there were some sweet rides all over the area. There have been a few people saying this was the flattest summer they remembered, but there were a lot of smiling surfers this week.
The forecast is back to chop for the weekend, or at least it was as of early this week. I have been told I tend to write long, so this week I’m just going to lay out some photos of people catching waves and call it a column. Besides, I have to get up early to try again tomorrow.
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