 |
|
|
Nothing exemplifies the highs and lows of surfing like a hurricane, especially on the "feast or famine," East Coast. As easily as you can fire obscenities at your beloved home break for being unmakeable walls of shit, you can fall in love with crystal A-frames.
It's hurricane season again, and the active Atlantic is already responsible for causing more mood swings than a bottle of Valium. Of all East Coast swell-producing storms, the hurricane is the most mystifying. You can set your clock by a nor'easter, but Hurricane swells are an enigma.
There is something about these storms that draws a surfer into a personal relationship. Maybe it's the fact that it has a name. If your friend were to ask, "Remember Hurricane Felix?" you'd instantly bring yourself back to the break you surfed, the board you rode, and monster drops.
However, if he was asking about a random south swell, he would have to be more specific, "Remember that south swell, we were out at 8th Street, and the wind was really hard offshore, and we were surfing with that guy with the hump on his back and you had that one barrel. . ."
Much harder to pinpoint.
Maybe it's the fact that we surf them in trunks. Every northeast surfer has that one picture of himself exploring a huge winter cavern with 40 mph offshore winds.
Hey, that's great, but that guy could be anyone in a black 5/3, boots and gloves.
"No, that's me. When you blow it up, you can see my beard."
Groundswell too, has a certain appeal. When most of your swells are followed by 36 hours of local rain and onshores, and last half a day, the idea that a swell is traveling thousands of miles across an ocean to your break sounds pretty good.
While you sit in July traffic, wax melting off your board in the backseat, crawling down your coast road, for a chance to surf burgery wind-chop with 150 inland goons, the idea of long period groundswell sounds wonderful. However, as you examine the spider cracks on the deck of your board after a session of September close-outs, the idea isn't as appealing. For all the watching, waiting, and observing we do, Hurricanes bring us epic disappointment as often as they bring us joy.
Frances has been a perfect example of the highs and lows of surfing from Miami to Maine. She fluctuated between a Category Three and Cat Four storm, while skirting the Bahamas, and then dropped to a Cat Two before making landfall. A storm of that magnitude is certain to have hearts and surf pumping. Far too often though, these swells are responsible for days and days of overhead, offshore dumpers. The swell we've waited so long for is virtually unrideable. Then, however, the tide can rise or fall, delivering shacks to nameless sandbars.
Only a few days into September, and we have already seen more hurricanes swells this year than we did in the late 1990's. Our one-night stands with Alex, Bonnie, Charley, Hermine, and Gaston, have all been memorable. With Ivan tearing up the Atlantic Basin, we're seeing one of the busiest Tropical Seasons ever, before reaching the historical height of the season, September 10th. -- Jon Coen
***********
By 11am on Friday morning, September 3rd, the first rumblings of Frances were being felt on Florida's East Coast. Surfline correspondent John Sumpter was out at Melbourne Beach and called in. "It's about five foot and really sloppy," he started. "And the brand new beach replenishment at Melbourne is totally gone . . . and the clouds are really starting to whip through the sky."
Meanwhile, right around the same time, down at West Palm Beach, local surfer/journalist Terry Gibson was starting to batten down his place, but gave us this update: "Reef Road was six feet this morning and firing. Sideoffshore. Sunny. Sort of a stolen-oranges-are sweeter scenario: I had to sneak past the Palm Beach cops to get on the island. I surfed with four local kids, mostly former students of mine, until the wind-driven rain felt like birdshot. And now the animals are behaving very strangely. There were six manatees cowering in the lee of the inlet jetty, the fish are feeding like they won't get a meal for a while, and the pelagic birds seem to be holding a conference in the sky. I'm battened down. Gotta get a feature out before we lose power. Yeah, I feel weird. Giddy and scared all at once. I just hope we get one more session in the morning."
At 3pm, we received an update from John: "Clouds are getting thicker and there is dark bands forming out to see; guys are attempting to surf but mainly getting pummeled. They're closing the bridge when winds hit 30mph, but only about half the barrier island is evacuating."
By 10am on Saturday, John drove across the bridge to the Florida mainland and called in this report, crackling with excitement: "The wind's about 50-60 miles an hour now; full on tropical system, rain's blasting us sideways, trees are breaking everywhere -- I see palm leaves breaking and oak trees snapping and waves were breaking a half-mile out to sea and over the road when I was leaving. I've never seen anything like it."
Gibson continued: "South Beach was epic on Saturday. The guys from Stuart bailed down that way--a huge risk since we didn't know exactly where the storm would come ashore. But, they scored two days of epic South Beach (and it is an incredible wave when it's on), plus no curfews."
Meanwhile, a few hundred miles north in the normally placid beachbreak of Folly, South Carolina, Wes "Fatboy" Palmer and the local crew were digging in. "Folly and its surfers are being punished by Frances," Wes reports. "Saturday morning was cranking, winds light and offshore, and me and some of the boys had a ball. It was wedging up off the pier into peaks that were two feet larger than anywhere else. Slightly mushy take-offs quickly led to intense overhead bowls, breaking in about three feet of water. Made for heavy injuries with the gremmies. Saw some broken boards and spirits. Here's hoping it lasts." Indeed.
A few hundred miles north, SURFING magazine photographer DJ Strunz and Ben Bourgeois were hunkered down somewhere near the Outer Banks, cell phones off, not telling anyone where they were. "If people didn't know where to go, I wasn't gonna tell 'em," DJ remarked. "It was offshore for five days straight and ranged from head high to double overhead gaping barrels. Sure, it was good, but not as good as last year's Isabelle swell." DJ and Ben were joined by a solid local crew as well as Chris Curry, Billy Hume and a bunch of Volcom guys. A bit further north, Dan Malloy, Jesse Hines and a few other locals enjoyed decent, side-offshore Kitty Hawk. Virginia Beach, as predicted, pretty much stunk.
Reports back from New Jersey and New York weren't quite as epic. One NY surfer summed it up: "For me, nothing interesting went down -- Frances was a bit of a letdown, surf was relatively small and the winds were on it. Friday was my best day, but the rest of the weekend did nothing for me. Heck, last Tuesday was better than anything we got from Frances."
But further north, Rhode Island was pulling in Frances' south swell like a champ. The ESA Labor Day championships were held at Narragansett Town Beach on Saturday in solid hurricane surf. ESA Competition Director Mario Frade had to move the contest site to the far corner of the beach, from the south entrance steps to the seawall. "If we didn't move it," said Frade, "many of the Menehune contestants would have had a lot of trouble getting out past the shorebreak." The contest saw lots of broken boards but fortunately no broken bodies. (Though a surfer did drown at Green Hill Beach in overhead stuff on Friday.)
Northeast surfing fixture Peter Pan fills us in on the rest: "Lighthouse and Matunuck were lining up at eight-foot plus, and a bunch of semi-secret spots were about 4-6 and glassy. But there were way too many kooks to enjoy yourself; I got so disgusted I went to a secret beach break and bodyboarded in peace and quiet with Mario. Swell croaked out on Sunday, with a 2-foot chop swell that turned to shit."
As Rhode Island photog Joe McGovern noted on September 9th, "We're just starting to see rain from the remnants of Hurricane Frances today." --Ed
*Click right here for video clips of Frances lighting up South Beach.
*Stay tuned to Hurricanetrak for the rest of your Hurricane needs.
/swell_htdocs/travel/tripwire/images/2004/September/Barbados.jpg
|
|
|
|
