Friends and Wetsuits (Again)

Was on the way home from looking at an ongoing oceanfront remodel the other day and spotted some friends, Marcus and Gail Felton, who live on the west side of the beach road in Kitty Hawk. My son and theirs have grown up together surfing and playing school and club sports, baseball and soccer. Their house is like an oceanfront home as there are no oceanfront homes across the street, just man-made dunes and beach. The homes that used to be there have long since been taken by beach erosion.

Marcus and I walked across the street to watch his sons and a few other local teenaged boys surf some small glassy waves breaking close to the beach. A little while later Pete Hunter dropped by and then Shawn Mulligan. So we had a regular jawing session going there, standing on the little wood walkway which reached over the crest of the dune. The boys were taking near shorebreak waves in full wetsuits replete with boots, gloves, and hoods as the water was around 50 degrees that day.

This was the first time I can remember meeting Shawn as an adult. I had met his wife once years before at the eighth grade graduation of our daughter and his son. I had even met his son, who used to be close to Molly at the time and through their high school years. Shawn and his family used to live behind our house in Virginia Beach where we grew up in the 1960's. His father was a naval Commander and aviator who had been shot down, captured, and held for many, many years by the North Vietnamese. In fact, as a child, I don't ever remember meeting his father. It seemed like he was never there.

We even used to play sandlot football and baseball behind their house during those years---all the neighborhood kids. We'd call everybody together, lay out bases or a football field and play till dark. My day would end when my father would step out the rear garage door and whistle for my brother and I, our signal to come home. We liked that our Dad's piercing whistle, produced somehow by placing two fingers in the side of his mouth just so, actually made us feel special and unique. No one was called home this way. So we would honor it and him with our obedience.

This neighborhood was near a number of naval air stations and was mostly inhabited by naval aviators although our father was a ship captain. We learned the harsh realities of war as military families when our friends' fathers didn't return. We played as a close knit group, but when something like this happens and as kids age, groups drift apart and form new identities and new ways of supporting each other without announcing to the world that that is what you are doing. Such was my departure from Shawn Mulligan's life I suppose. We never lost track of his father's situation though and were so happy the day in the early 1970's when Commander Mulligan, along with many other downed aviators, was returned to the United States. By then, I was in college.

So there we were, standing on this little walkway before the Atlantic, talking about our kids, where they were in college and stuff like that. Water temperature is always a topic of conversation at this time of year.

Pete mentioned he just got a new, Patagonia full wetsuit, a 2 mil with a wool lining. I said I'd love to see it as he had it with him. The four of us crossed the street back over to Marcus' where Pete's white pickup was parked. He pulled it out of the back of the truck and we all handled and inspected it---a wetsuit with a Merino wool lining. It's cost? It was four hundred eighty dollars with a lifetime replacement warranty. His son, who has one, said very little water even gets into it when other suits usually get flushed out, especially paddling out through bigger waves. "But a Merino wool lining?", I said. On closer inspection, the wool fibers were formed in neat rows of looped, bunched strands all attached at both ends to the neoprene on the inside. There went my "itchy wool" objection. It felt smooth and soft. He said the 2 mil (thickness) of the suit would do in water demanding a thicker conventional suit because of the wool. Pete had not tried his suit at this time. I'll check back in with you later for his feedback.

I have a three year-old O'Neill Psycho 3-2 mil full suit I bought used from Noah Snyder, which I love. But any way you can reduce the weight and the binding effect of a neoprene second skin during cold water months (see blog entry "The After Swell Hangover, The Winter Cometh, December 8, 2007, ), everything changes from stamina to board choice. The material advances in wetsuit technology during my surfing lifetime are astounding. It's a safe bet my son will be just as amazed at this stuff when he's my age, that is of course, if our oceans are clean enough for human activity. I sure hope so.