I remember Fabian as some '60s pop rock star with feathered hair I never wanted to look like. But after he smashed his way through Bermuda on Friday, September 5th, I started to think that maybe he was a bit more of a badass than I'd originally thought.

The Coiffed One made Category 4 hurricane status on Thursday, with winds clocking in around 150 miles per hour at his peak and seas somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-40 feet as he spun his way up the Atlantic. The biggest spinner this year, and probably the best swell-producing storm since Gert brought triple overhead surf to Rhode Island in '99. LOLA was calling for 10- to 12-foot sets peaking on Saturday.

If you watched the Weather Channel -- as all East Coast surfers and hurricane-o-philes do this time of year -- it became pretty clear pretty quick that it was time. The ducks were lining up. "Roofs are being blown off in Bermuda," cried one weather guy. Personally, my favorite reports came in from the ham radio operators who'd stand in the middle of the fricken gale -- sometimes on chairs as their houses flooded -- and send in reports about what the wind was doing, even as their lives were buffeted around 'em. It seemed so, uh noble, like they were weather soldiers on the front line instead of in front of some animated map with a pointer. "Forty-foot waves are smashing the island's south shore," they cried.

I could've kissed the little JetBlue teevee screen. See, we had made this, uh, fairly last minute (not to mention irresponsible) decision to escape Southern California's mediocre summer and fingers crossed hoped to sample some Atlantic vittles. Longtime Natividad pilot and hurricane junky Mike Castillo was only slightly sneaky in procuring his hall pass. "I told my wife there was this Category 4 hurricane and she told me I should go," he started laughing. "I neglected to mention which ocean it was in." Whoops. Small oversight.

All it really took was one phone call to convince me. "It's gonna be as good as Gert," my friend Scotty breathed. "Get over there."

I wasn't entirely convinced, but then Rhode Island charger Jamie Risser, who waits all year for this shit, called back with the bad news. "I can't come out," he moaned. "I gotta go fishing."

"Fishing? What about the giant swells -- isn't that dangerous or something?" I asked

"Dude. They're calling for dead winds all weekend."

"Ah. Shit. Sorry, man." I felt guilty as hell. (At least till the first drop, that is.)

See, surfers who grew up in the Northeast have this fairly unhealthy obsession with hurricanes. It's not so much like Maverick's comes to New York or anything like that -- the West Coast in winter is way bigger way more often -- but if you spend your whole surfing childhood looking at all these little coves and points and reefs that line the New England coastline, all screaming potential, all flat for like 355 days a year, hell, you'd go a little crazy too. Plus, the only other time I'd been over there, I was baptized by Hurricane Gert's double overhead glassy, uncrowded point surf -- I was a believer.

And by 10am the next morning, the rest of our little crew was believers, too. We hurriedly checked out of the airport Holiday Inn, where even the pudgy desk clerk knew about the "big breakers" hitting the coast and reminded us to be careful. After driving around frantically and checking a couple obvious points and reefs, we found ourselves perched on mansion-lined cliff at New England's most famous big wave hurricane spot, squinting into the sun and sweating, only partly due to the 80-degree weather and lack of breeze. "Now we're frothing," remarked Surfline's Jeff Berg to no one in particular.

The ocean was alive with swell. Thick, glassy double overhead walls marched down the point, steamrolling into an perfectly tapered barrel section along the inside cliffs; an outside left smoked off towards the upper corner of the bay; a dozen guys were jockeying around the two lineups, trying to avoid getting caught inside by the building swell, while occasionally screaming into a perfect green wall, arcing off the top and jamming down the line. Every ride or wipeout would garner a solid collective intake of air by the punters watching cliffside. New England may not be famous for its surf, but the seafaring folks who live here know what the hell a wave can do.

Puerto Rican legend Edwin Santos would've started jumping up and down but his Latin cool got the better of him. "Uh, out there, eh?" he rhetorically asked. His brother Roberto were already gone and waxing his 7'4", while the rest of us started fumbling with leashes and fins and wetsuits and sunscreen in a giddy flurry, like what we'd seen was a mirage and would vanish before we got out there.

At exactly 12:18pm, I knew it wasn't a mirage. I'd been out on the outer lefts for about an hour with like four other guys and had a dozen waves under my belt, feeling probably a little more confident than I should've, considering the new spot and the size and all. I kicked out onto the shoulder to see the horizon get a little darker. Shit. Before I knew what was happening, a ten wave set rolled me (and everyone else) in towards the inside rocks. "I'm too old for this shit," cried one big, hairy regularfoot on a nine-foot-gun as we finally made it around to the channel and could catch our breath. "That set ripped my watch off."

And by the time the thing peaked at 3pm, there were still only a dozen guys scattered around New England's most famous pointbreak. "I guess everyone thought it was gonna be packed or something and went somewhere else," explained the legendary Sid Abruzzi about the lack of crowds. Keith Malloy was one of the few who stayed on target all Saturday and was slightly giddy by Sunday morning. "That was a real wave," he said. "So beautiful, too."

New Jersey's Sam Hammer surfed till pitch-black dark and giggled his way to a win at a contest up the coast the following day. Wes Laine and Mark Healey towed into a secret ledge wave just up the coast while Peter Media and four buddies boated in to some secret, heaving beachbreak. "Six foot barrels," they frothed. "Perfect."

But hurricanes inspire such obsessive/compulsive behavior precisely because they're perfect, sure -- but not for long. And by Saturday, Fabian was still spinning fairly strong, but was motoring out to sea at 20 knots -- meaning that he wasn't exactly the kind of guy who sticks around for breakfast. The next day, at exactly 12:18pm, I was sitting back on my 6'2" in the middle of 30 guys, all hassling for a shoulder high peak.

Thing is, some of us were smiling. --Marcus Sanders

For video footage of Fabian, click here.