Welcome to the Alabama Coast, a place well-known for combining placid, pristine waters with white sandy beaches -- not to mention white legs and hair -- but lacking any surfing reputation whatsoever. Hopefully, you are also a fisherman, a skater, an expert bingo player or enjoy some activity that demands little cooperation from the ocean. If you must be in the water, windsurfing remains an attractive option, offering the chance to speed along at 15 to 20 mph while desperate surfers bust their testes on blown-out shorepound. If you ask an Alabama convenience store clerk where to score some satisfying swell, he will probably just look confused and offer you a copy of Wrinkled Pink and some lube. He may even challenge you to a contest. If that's not enough to scare you away from Alabama -- or if you simply have no choice in the matter -- read on and discover a tragicomedy of epic proportions.

During the winter months between January and March, Lower Alabama (L.A.) surfers can get just enough satisfaction to keep from selling their boards -- about a swell a week -- and you may even grab a "good day" of mushy, chest-high windswell. Then comes late summer and fall's tropical activity to recharge Dixieland's waveriding faithful with their overall best surf, sometimes producing groundswells a whopping two to four times per season from late August to early November.

Are we noticing a trend here?

Basically, almost any swell that reaches Alabama is going to produce waves of better quality and size farther east along the Florida Panhandle. However, there are times when Alabama is actually more consistent. And if you are in the Mobile Bay area and don't have the time or inclination to take the hour-plus trip to Pensacola, there are some breaks that are worth pursuing under the right conditions in both of Alabama's main surfing communities.

The Alabama Coast consists of two distinct areas split by Mobile Bay: on the west side of the bay, the only surf spots lie on a narrow 15-mile isle known as Dauphin Island. On the bay's east side, several breaks wait near the adjacent resort towns of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach.

If there's one benefit to being a surfing wasteland, it's crowd control. A 4- to 6-foot winter swell might draw a pack of 40 to the most widely known spots. The majority of takers are kids, and they flock to the same overblown favorites rather than search for better opportunities, even though Alabama's high amount of tropical activity frequently rearranges sandbars. Furthermore, these larger hurricane swells can become scary enough to limit crowds to around 10 to 15 takers at the prime peaks -- another rare, surfing bonus for the banjo state.

Most of Alabama's good surfers travel frequently -- in some cases, permanently -- and as you could guess from this area's stunning combo of wave selection and local population, talent levels are about on par with the surf itself. There are fleetingly rare examples of excellence, with the best action going down along some other more welcoming stretch of shoreline. But while Alabama may lack that pack mentality that plagues world-class breaks, hostility can still be a problem, especially when facing property owners and police over the issue of parking. Local businessmen and politicians are not friendly to the idea of low-budget surfers scaring off "snowbirds" (elderly Yankees migrating south for the winter) who fuel the Gulf Coast's tourist industry. Try to be polite, and remember: they're just as scared of you, as you are of them.

There have only been two reported shark attacks on the Alabama coast in the past 10 years (August of 2000 marked the most recent incident), so you can dangle your feet in relative comfort. About the only threats in the water are schools of jellyfish and the occasional stingray. You can avoid stepping on the stingrays by dragging your feet, but you can count on at least two or three jellyfish stings any time you paddle out in the spring, summer or fall. There's also the occasional Jet Skier, who will surely draw a few middle fingers for cruising too close to the surfers. (Most of them are tourists from inland areas who are not familiar with ocean etiquette.) Rather than pee yourself worrying about resident beasties, just pray you stumble across Alabama's most mysterious aberration -- decent surf.

SUMMER
Your chances of finding ridable waves between late May and late August are about as good as winning the Florida lottery. With the exception of a rare, early tropical swell, there may be a gingerly, waist-high south swell once or twice per summer. The tropics rarely become active until fall, but with a little luck, a low-pressure system may develop in the Gulf of Mexico in late August.

FALL
Fall is a time of great anticipation. After several long months of wave-deprivation, Alabama surfers begin dreaming about the epic hurricane swells that ravage their waters every five to 10 years. Most hurricanes and tropical storms develop off of the western coast of Africa and get caught in the Gulf Stream before they make it into the Gulf of Mexico; however, sometimes they form in the Gulf. The ideal path for a hurricane or tropical storm is due west or northwest toward Louisiana with a light wind out of the north. Though that can spell catastrophe for the lowland Ragin' Cajuns, it can also mean clean 10- to 12-foot bombs for Alabamians. In 1992, Hurricane Andrew ripped through South Florida and later crashed into Louisiana with devastating and deadly force, but not without producing some majestic, double-overhead barrels that will forever be etched in the minds of Alabama surfers. The beach at Stumps looked like Big Wednesday's closing moments with 10 to 15 surfers in the water, 50 on the beach and 100 spellbound onlookers "oohing" and "ahhing" as each breaker rolled in.

Sure, Andrew was nearly a decade ago, but the tropics have been particularly productive recently, and top meteorologists believe that the frequency and power of the storms will only increase in the future. Besides tropical activity, fall's only hope is an occasional knee- to waist-high windswell out of the southwest, so the area's surfers willingly implore Mother Nature to whip-up another Cat-5 macker. Even at its best, surfing in Alabama requires some appreciation of sadomasochism.

WINTER
Winter is definitely the most productive season for the Gulf Coast. A day or two before the arrival of a strong cold front, sloppy windswells build from the southeast and often produce overhead walls at select spots. Just after the violent thunderstorms at the head of the front pass over, the winds rapidly shift to the north and create beautiful, peeling lines that quickly lose size as the north winds grow stronger. Unfortunately, the fronts usually pass through at night, making it difficult to be out at the right time.

SPRING
Spring in the Gulf Coast area is a short season, but usually produces the best windswells. The same fronts that sweep through in the winter are accompanied by less powerful winds in the spring, so the surf is not as likely to be blown out. However, rather than shift rapidly to the north, the winds behind these fronts usually linger out of the west, causing the waves to close out.