Baptism, Part 2

(Editor's Note: Part 1 was published on this blog yesterday, Dec. 8th)

It was almost first light---Steve and me, fall 1970, "Road's End", Buxton, North Carolina---one eight of a mile south of the Cape Hatteras lighthouse. "Road's End" was our name for a parking lot behind a huge oceanfront dune. A state highway sign had given us the name. It said: "Road Ends 3/10 mile".

This was one of our favorite spots featuring a great sandbar. The sandbar was fed by the erosion of the huge dune before it during the winter. You got there by turning left off Route 12 at the entrance to the National Seashore at Cape Point. You followed the road around a lily pad-covered freshwater pond to an intersection of two-lane paved roads: left went to the lighthouse and keeper's quarters, right to the campground, straight led to Road's End.

There was a slow-moving tropical storm several hundred miles offshore---an east coast wave machine. We thought it would be pretty big so we wanted to get there and get out before everybody else. We had no idea what was waiting over the dune.

It could be heard long before it could be seen. We climbed over the dune and looked at it, spread before us, vast and deafening. It was huge by anyone's standards---even the surf flicks. We felt small. We were eighteen years apiece. One guy was already out, a mere dot on the outside, maybe three sandbars out or more. Sunlight was fingering through the clouds lying heavy on the horizon. These were the biggest real waves we had ever seen. Nothing before was even close.

We waxed our boards. My heart beats were so close and fast it felt like there was a humming motor in my chest. The rich, pungent smell of salt air and sea life alive and formerly living laid heavy in the mist sprayed into the air by the surf. It gave us some comfort as it always did. We were already trained to associate that smell with the pure joy of wave riding.

There was no hesitation whether to go out. Our moment was here. We did have to time our sprints through the shorebreak (the waves breaking right on the beach) in order to get off the beach. It was quite large, 5-7 feet, thick overhead, and seemed to suck all the water off the beach as it reeled back and up before slamming the wet sand before it. I watched and waited and watched and waited some more. Then in an instant went straight out from where we were. Steve walked about 200 yards to the south where he thought he could paddle out faster in a rip (riptide). I always admired his independent way of taking on a good challenge. Surely we had one now. I also always coveted Steve's longer arms for better paddling. Steve stood about 6'2" and 160 pounds. I was smaller, about 5'11" and 145 pounds.

Rips are out-flowing channels of water whose flow seaward from inside the surf near the beach often cause a kind of slot in the waves where the waves aren't breaking as large or often. They can be easier places to paddle out, but can be fickle and sometimes undependable. They can also be a swimmer's nightmare, but for a surfer trying to get over the sandbar to the lineup, a best friend. At this time we were surfing before the widespread use of the surf leash. So having no leashes, we were surfers until we lost our boards when it became necessary to be a swimmer. We kept our eyes on surface conditions so that we would know where the riptides were at all times.

Riptides are caused by large waves carrying lots of water across the sandbars at low tide. The extra large amount of water floods in against the beach, forms a current between the sandbar and the beach, and flows parallel to the beach until it finds a deeper cut or a gap in the sandbars which let it back out to sea. In the meantime, more large waves ram even more water over the bars behind it.

Sometimes waves will cross the bar and crash face-to-face against waves rebounding off the beach causing backwash. A real wildcard situation if you are riding a wave in and your wave collides with a backwash wave. Surfers usually go airborne when that happens. Most of the time it's great fun to get tossed up and off a wave face like this. You really must give yourself up to the circumstances, I suppose. The ocean's a good teacher that way.

My board was a 7-2 (7'2" long) scarlet red Harbour, 19" wide, shaped by Randy Rarick---and of course, a single fin. We had no surf leashes, as I noted earlier, and would count on our ability to swim or our buddy if we were separated from our boards and in trouble.

To paddle out through large waves with boards like these, when confronted with a wave about to break on you or a rolling wall of whitewater about 5 to 6 feet thick, you grab your board's rails tightly and roll over upside down. This was called "turning turtle" during this era. Your board would now be bottom up at or near the water's surface, you beneath it, underwater waiting (not long) for the impact. When your beating was over (we'll talk more about the beating later), you would roll over almost weightless in bubbling whitewater afterwash, dragging you back toward the beach, and continue paddling in a sprint over the sandbar where the waves are breaking---the "impact zone". If your timing is unlucky, you can be pinned down over the bar while being hammered repeatedly by all the waves in the set. At the end of this punishment you are often just outside the shorebreak where you began.

Waves or ground swells, coming from a far off source like a tropical depression, storm, or hurricane (the best wave makers on our coast), travel to the beach in sets of waves of 3-4-5 or more, each with a signature amount of time between waves, time between sets, and size. How close the tropical system is to the beach, how fast it is moving, how low its atmospheric pressure is, and which direction it is moving, influence the wave quality followed by local influences at the beach itself, for instance wind speed and direction and, of course, the tide.

East coast surfers, like all surfers. know there are a multitude of conditions which must align before the surf gets really good. The hardcore surfers are always watching the weather forecasts, especially the marine wind forecasts and tides, and checking the actual conditions at the beach regularly during the day they expect the swell to hit. The anticipation in the surf community with the approach of one of these storms offshore is difficult to accurately capture in print. Anyone with work obligations is killing themselves to get things in place so they can surf when the swell hits. The excitement explodes when swells line up, stacked to the horizon, pressing toward an offshore wind.

Okay. We're paddling out.

When paddling out in surf like this, there is usually a relatively calmer area between the shore break and the waves breaking over the first sandbar. The first real proof of close proximity to the impact zone are rolling walls of foaming whitewater which come one after the other almost appearing to be stacked up in layers. As you get into the thick of this you instinctively paddle harder and faster, arm muscles burning, shoulders, back, and down to your toes, all lit up. Paddle, paddle, turn turtle, flip back over---paddle, paddle, paddle, turn turtle, flip back over, again and again, and again until you reach the point of futility and total muscle exhaustion. You always hope to make it through the exact place where the monsters slam the surface water over the sandbar without taking direct hits. Sometimes you're unlucky. Direct hits are punishing to the body and psyche. They break surfboards. Most surfers who have surfed in fairly large waves or larger, have depressions in their boards where their fingertips have crushed into the fiberglass when gripping their boards tightly while paddling out.

Eventually we both made it outside to the relative safety just beyond the place where the most waves seemed to be breaking over the second or third sandbar out. We were hundreds of yards apart by the time we got outside. The other guy we had seen in the water alone was farther out than us. It wasn't clear why he was so far outside. We three were the only ones out.

When the surf is this big, 15-foot wave faces and up, it is especially eerie to the average surfer to sit alone outside picking and choosing the right wave to ride. We didn't think so at the time, but we were average surfers I suppose. It's the sport itself that has a way of making you feel special as athletes and sportsmen.

It's extra difficult to position yourself near the breaking peak of a large wave (the optimum place to take off) when it breaks over a sand bottom because the bottom gets so stirred up as to become semi-liquid a few feet or more from the bottom, with huge quantities of sand suspended in the ocean water. This often makes the shape of the breaking waves less defined and consistent, and more or less uniform than the preceding wave. The peak shifts along the wave face until the wave breaks, unlike waves breaking over rock or reef in other parts of the world. Here waves break a lot closer to the same place time and again.

We were nervous. There were few waves breaking consistently and ridable. The ocean was steel gray seeming to cast a sinister snarl, threatening these boys now in its grip. Steve had broken his nose after turning turtle under a huge wave and getting smacked by his board.

We could see a number of people gathered on the beach. A few were park rangers we discovered later. We didn't know it at the time, but a newlywed couple from Pennsylvania had drowned earlier at the lighthouse and the rangers weren't letting anyone else into the water, including other surfers. I guess they were mostly watching us and we weren't much to watch because we were already plotting our escape back to the beach.

Steve took off on his first big wave, a huge right. It was about 7-9 feet overhead and nasty as I watched him disappear out of sight as he dropped in. He made the drop, rode to the wave shoulder, kicked out, turned quickly around and paddled for his life back out of the impact zone over the sandbar. I picked out another big right, made a big drop in a crouch, made a conservative bottom turn, streaked down the line, and kicked up, up the wave face and out. The speed of it all was incomprehensible. I wasn't sure whether I was going to make it back out unpunished, but was just brushed by the whitewater of a few large ones on the way back outside.

We looked at each other and it was clear that the joy wasn't with us in these conditions. This swell was out of control. Many waves were unmake-able, meaning you really couldn't ride the wave face without having it break on you or ahead of you. In either case, the ride was shortened in these conditions and the risk of a catastrophic wipeout and swim to the beach were great. Surfers call these "closeout" conditions. The looming question now became: how are we going to get back to the beach through the shorebreak?

Now, paddling to the beach through the shorebreak racing to the beach from behind you is even more tricky than charging out through it from the beach. Sometimes, most of the time when it's big, you must sit just outside the breaking waves and wait for enough of a lull to get far enough toward the beach to get your feet down on the sand. You lift your board up above the water, shoulder high at your side, and slog/sprint to dry sand.

We did make it safely back to the beach. We met at the base of the big dune where we had begun, laid our boards down, and looked back at what we had just left behind. As I remember, there wasn't much heroic proclaiming or verbalizing about what this meant for us in terms of our surfing resumes.

I'm sure every surfer has a feeling of gratification at having faced his first huge swell, and answered the call. This first big swell had left its stamp on us. It was our baptism. I knew I had come closer than ever to realizing my physical limits. I suppose that is what some young men must need to know about themselves. I was one I now knew.

Big Waves, Part 1

Every surfer dreams of riding the big wave. I mean the really big wave. Now when we talk about big waves, we're seeing big wave surfers travel the world to challenge breaks like Teahupoo (Tahiti), Maverick's (Half Moon Bay, northern California), Todos Santos (Mexico), Jaws (Maui), and now, Surfer Magazine reports, Shipstern's Bluff, Ours, and Cyclops (all in Australia). Technology in marine weather forecasting, marine geology, and oceanography have now combined to predict the best time to be at a particular break any place in the world to catch epic conditions. Although sometimes still an email or phone call from an observant friend will do.

When surfers of this caliber take on waves like this, today it can easily be captured on film or DVD like no other era prior to this one. A big wave surfer's fantasies and nightmares can be laid before him and the world to see.

The known big-wave world we saw in the 196o's surf flicks featured Greg Noll, George Downing, Buzzy Trent, and Woody Brown riding monster swells in Hawaii at Makaha, Sunset Beach, and of course Waimea Bay on the north shore of Oahu.

These guys were taking off on racing mountains of seawater thrust at immovable reefs which in turn, tossed these 25'+ mountains and their riders toward the sky as the wave took form. Wipeouts were disastrous. We'd see a rider taking off on the wave's peak in a low crouch, gripping his board's rails (edges) trying to make the drop. Huge winds scouring up the wave face would lift his surfboard's nose into mid-air, heaving him up at first, then dumping him down the wave face and launching the board into a vertical spin some fifteen feet above the wave. We'd sit there aghast seeing ourselves on those waves.

We thought this was how we would learn how crazy it could be in big waves. You see we memorized these sensational wipeouts. We knew them well through the safety of the camera lens.

We did not yet know however the reality, that instant when a surfer gets one of three things at the point of takeoff in big surf: attempting the terrible drop and taking off down the wave face; pulling back behind the peak fast and hard enough so as not to be pulled over the "falls"; or being pulled over the "falls" to be pile-driven to the bottom by tons of water, hoping he gathered enough air to stay conscious until able to swim to the surface. At this point he must swim to the beach with other monsters bearing down from behind.

Was all this punishment worth it? If the thrill of riding smaller waves was any measure, without a doubt, we would find the worth. We all hoped our day would come. We did believe it would. Could we measure up? Everything we intended to do in the water until then was to ready us for our baptism.

Here on the East coast we saw the surf stars from Hawaii and California on surf flicks at special showings in the theaters of Virginia Beach in the 1960's. We strode into the theater with our buddies feeling like we were the core surfers on our piece of the coast---special---the real guys. We weren't I'm sure, but we felt that way and it felt good.

We'd look around the theater to see who was there. Were there any local big names like Bob Holland, of Smith and Holland Surf Shop, or Bob White, of Wave Riding Vehicles fame? There weren't many other names we knew for this was close to the birth of surfing and surf culture on our coast. In fact I was positive we wouldn't be surfing after say, age 30 because we didn't know hardly anyone older than us who surfed, except maybe Holland and White, but they owned surfing-related businesses.

I sat in the wash beside my best friend, Steve, at Croatan Beach south of Rudee Inlet in the late fall, 1969. I was seventeen. We were taking a break from surfing clean, but small waves. Steve and I shared the dream of riding big waves at exotic locations. We were the "Endless Summer" generation of surfers as well and Bud Brown's film was woven neatly into our dreams. This vision of traveling the world surfing seemed possible for us.

I carved the number "30" in the sand between us as the shallow wash receded. Steve asked, "What's that?" I told him that's about how old we'll be when we probably won't be able to surf anymore. The wash ran over the 30 and left two seventeen-year-olds sinking into the wash sand and thinking.

Could this be true? We didn't really know anyone much older than us who surfed, so maybe this theory held some truth. Maybe we would change that, but we never verbalized it. You have to understand how deep this subject ran in us and the urgency it bred. Yeah, we were boys worried about life as men with full time office jobs and Vietnam and riots off in the distance and our beloved sport even farther away.

The After Swell Hangover, The Winter Cometh

Real winter for us loams just ahead. It's the first week of December when we typically get our first shock of cold weather here on the Outer Banks. For some our cold is not your cold, but ours is simply our very own reality---our cold. It's just as cold to us as yours is cold to you no matter the temperature, wind, and humidity. Right now high 30's to low 40's at night, north winds around 20+ mph, and ocean water temperature now plowing down into the mid and then low 50's. Winter of '05 boasted the coldest winter ocean temps I could remember in many years, reaching down to a shocking 36 degrees.

Wetsuit design and materials have never been better though and let the brave-hearted surf right through our winters nowadays. This is a far cry from my first attempt at surfing in winter water in a wetsuit.

I was sixteen in high school around 1968 in Virginia Beach. I had a friend who knew someone who had a wetsuit. So we visited to see if that guy would loan it to me. I tried it on and it seemed to fit well enough. The loan was on. My best friend Steve Hudkins had come up with one as well so we were set. We just needed worthy conditions.

It was February, it was snowing, and we knew there was a swell associated with the snow storm. We went directly to Croatan, a home break on the south side of Rudee Inlet. The sand bottom formed a simulated beach break there beside the rock jetty. It was our kind of wave.

The wetsuit I struggled into was 1/4" thick "sharkskin", a diver's suit. The wetsuit arms were so rigid, that they would hold my arms inside them out at 45-degree angles from my sides if I relaxed. There were thick boots. I felt very special and very rigged up. Gloves? No, but I had solved that with my Mom's Playtex dishwashing gloves taped at the wrists with black electrical tape. No hood, but I was ready.

We paddled out, just the two of us, in snow-glassy 4-5 foot faces, mostly lefts. Everything felt heavy and slow, because it was. I took off on my first wave, a left. I have no memory of riding the wave, just wiping out, struggling underwater to find the surface and feeling water so cold I lost orientation as to which way was up. No, I mean really lost my way! I swam hard to the surface and kept swimming about to burst holding my breath. I knew I was about to bust through the surface any second. And then the top of my head butted hard against the sand bottom.

When something like this happens---you can't see cause of the cold, you can't breathe cause of the cold water, and you lose your inner compass cause of the cold---there is a dialogue that starts up in your head between you and your soul. "Am I about to die?" asks your soul. Your answer is surprisingly cogent, articulate, logical, but at the same time completely panicked about the possibilty of dying because you were stupid or dying as pitiful testament to Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest. This is the adrenaline talking. Nonetheless the inner voices agree this is not the way you envisioned going out. So you get into the "do-whatever-it-takes" mode. You turn 180 degrees, push hard off the bottom and find your pathetic way out of the mess you're in.

Needless to say, I waited many years for wetsuit design and material technology to reach a point of safe functionality. And because I was becoming a young man, I walked out of the water that day with my immortality still intact (I had conquered) so that I could find myself in similar predicaments surfing in the 40 years to come.

The Day After the 2007 Thanksgiving Day Swell

I awoke this morning knowing the end had really come. I was bone weary. I could feel the new cold air radiating around my piling supported house from inside its walls. The north wind was slashing through the pine trees outside. I knew what the ocean looked like in these conditions: raggy, pushed over fluid humps passing by the sand beach, racing south. The air temperature had plunged to around 40 degrees last night. The reality of the coming winter was in my face.

Yesterday was the triumphant 3rd day of the 2007 Thanksgiving swell that will not be soon lost to memory by any surfer on this part of the coast. Yesterday morning I raised from deep sleep ready to take a risk---a slow breakfast and prep for the day's waves. The cold front, I knew, was on it's way. But I wanted to surf both sides of low tide, with low tide being around noon. So I had a little waiting to do. I also knew I wouldn't last but so long out there, so my timing was critical. As a long-time east coast surfer, I knew I was risking ruination by the inevitable wind switch to north, but I took my time anyhow.

When I arrived at the beach access, there were places to park. I was surprised. When I climbed over the dune boardwalk, there were way fewer surfers in the water than yesterday. I guessed that it was less crowded because it was, after all, Thanksgiving and I suppose some guys were just too dog-tired to paddle back out again. I understood. As I have noted, we don't have larger swells like this stay around this long very often.

My guess is the typical east coast surfer would surf the first two days until crippled by the shock of such good waves for so long under such perfect conditions. This swell had a re-vitalizing effect though on many. It produced a symphony of wave and human energy until all was spent. It's demise marked a season's end in a way, and the beginning of new hope in us all for another opportunity just like it somewhere out in the future.

The wind was now a staked-out southwester about 15-25 mph. Small boat wake sized side-shore wavelets rolled across the face of each ridge of surf pushing across the bars. This surf was so fast and would curl up tight in the shallows over the sandbars inside. Big swift "C"-shaped faces offered a way long, liquid wave playground to every rider. Guys were paddling in multiple directions toward the next place their peak would emerge, others sitting waiting patiently, recovering from the hold-down on the inside. All trying to stay lined up on a particular oceanfront house where they had seen the last big set break. The next peak was their's.

I recognized the familiar slender silhouette of my almost 18 year-old son, Jack, as I squinted into the sun to the south. He said he had been out a little farther south for about 30 minutes. I watched him take off on a few long backside lefts which carried him way inside each wave. Finally he had had enough of fighting his way back out I suppose. I saw him trudging up the sand dune to the beach access stairs and then on to the parking area.

I saw so many great rides these three days by so many people I know or at least am acquaintances with. There was so much pure joy all around. A day of Thanksgiving to be sure. I left this day however, reassured this all can and will happen once again. I'll be sure to let you know.

The 2007 Thanksgiving Day Swell

Today was the second day of the second consecutive year of the timely arrival of a Thanksgiving ground swell. Yesterday I surfed with only two other locals, both goofy-footers like myself: Phillip Stafford and Jerry Slayton. We were on a break in Nags Head. The sandbars there have been rearranged by the current and swell caused by the passing of Hurricane Noel. We adapted. The waves were shoulder high to about 1-2' overhead. The lefts were fine and why you would find 3 goofy-footers converging on the same end of this singular sandbar. Water temperature was around 58 degrees. I wore a 3-2 full suit with boots and was completely comfortable for the 2+ hours I was out.

Today I chose the social cauldron at one of my favorite Nags Head breaks and surfed with many friends, their sons, acquaintances, and assorted iconic local surf figures. Even Delbert was there, apparently abandoning his beloved First Street, evidence that the sandbar there may be less than satisfactory now since the passing of Noel.

Everybody was in a great mood. The surf was a rare 1-3' overhead with offshore SW breeze around 10 mph. The air temperature even pushed the mid seventies.

The lines just kept coming to the beach. The lefts were insane. At mid-tide coming in, there was a huge peak busting pretty far outside, fairly mellow though, not breaking top-to-bottom, but a very long right.

Two straight days of overhead swell with offshore wind is rare on this coast. Everybody was surfing till they needed to be dragged out face down on the sand. I savored every wave as if it was life itself ebbing away. You just don't know when you'll see these conditions again.

I look forward to Thanksgiving Day, tomorrow. The same conditions are forecast. A cold front, one of many to come, is forecast to blow in late tomorrow sometime. The wind will clock around to north and this beautiful, beautiful swell will melt like so many before it, into a raggy, side-shore chop. The ocean will transform itself once again as it will our focus.

Since Hurricane Noel and Why We Must Keep Wearing Leashes in Town

Much has streamed by the coast since we last talked, after Hurricane Noel's passing. Yeah, we got great waves the following Sunday and Monday. I had the most fun Monday morning surfing with old buddies, some whom I only see when I surf and only when I'm at certain sandbars. I like to visit different breaks from Kitty Hawk to Pea Island when there's a swell. I can see the locals I've surfed with here since 1975 and make sure I get to surf with them once in a while if I move around to various breaks during the year. Some of them are more habitual about where they like to surf than I am. So, for me, it's like dropping in at their home to visit from time to time.

We have a great surf community on the Outer Banks. It represents a healthy cross section of our local population and has since around 1976. That was the first time I could remember looking around the room at a public hearing considering the imposition of regulated surfing hours and restricted areas to surf here in Kill Devil Hills (KDH). It was to be modeled after Virginia Beach's laws, a city where I had grown up and had my taste of what it's like to sit on the beach and have to watch perfect small waves peel without surfers on them. The only place you could surf between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. was beside the Steel Pier at Rudee Inlet. There were so many surfers and people posing as surfers, you could've walked from board to board. It was ridiculous and no way to surf!

At the time (1976) in KDH there had been a hell of a swell in September and a bunch of locals, me included, descended on 2nd Street, which was one of the three best sandbars north of Oregon Inlet. Planter's Bank (near the original Gray's Department Store) and Domes (the geodesic domes comprising Robert Benson's home) in South Nags Head were the other two. People parked anywhere they could. Seems some parked in the right-of-way on the west side of the beach road and down 2nd Street boxing in the home of a current KDH commissioner. Apparently he didn't like this.

So word soon flew around town that KDH was considering restrictive surfing laws. Word also flew around that local surfers need to somehow organize. I knew this would be a monumental effort, cause most of us were living here to avoid organizations, restrictions, lifestyle congestion, and for this era, any semblance of conventional conformity. I suppose we were being motivated to a type of civic action, many for the first time.

This was the first time I could look around that public hearing room and see just who the surfing community was on this part of the Outer Banks. There were carpenters, waiters, as they were called then, masons, shop owners, club owners, musicians, pharmacists, mechanics, fishermen, and writers. There was Skip Jones, Robbie Snyder, Monty Leavel, Doug Miller, Dave Menaker, who didn't really surf but owned Soundside Folk and Ale House where we all watered down, listened to live music, and met to plan for the public hearings; also Bill Longworth, Brian Caton, Stuart "Panda" Taylor,and my brothers, Jamey and Craig Saunders. (If I left anyone out please let me hear from you.)

Many of us spoke directly to a local government for the first time. I was nervous but I was truly motivated as were many of my friends. The town commissioners listened to us. A deal was proposed: we would wear surf leashes from that day on all the time when surfing in the town. This deal eventually became law for KDH and all the towns. But we could still surf whenever and wherever we wanted. I'd say the surfing community gained it's identity here when this happened. I felt like I now had a place I could call home.

My wife and I have raised three children in KDH one mile from the high tide line. One was born in our home and can't imagine leaving the ocean to go to college, but I'm sure he'll learn how.

I still cringe when I see overly-tattooed young shredders shed their leashes in the towns. I remember the deal that was made back then. I pray they don't lose their boards and injure a tourist or child. Our freedom to ride waves hangs in the balance and in their hands.

Waiting for Noel's Legacy

Hurricane Noel has now raced off to the northeast of us toward Nova Scotia. I checked the surf this morning around 7:20 and the surf conditions were intense and heavy. The First Street beach access was edged with fairly deep beach sand and plenty of sargassum from the very early morning's high tide. The wind was offshore, northwest about 30 knots with higher gusts. The breaking waves were at least double overhead and with smoking crests shredded by the torching wind. The north current was clawing the beach and dunes re-built after Hurricane Isabel 3 years ago. All I could think about was how good the surf was gonna be tomorrow. The offshore wind was forecast to subside and stay offshore. It would take until tomorrow for the surf to clean up and line up nice, and we even might have some leftovers on Monday.

I just returned from a 25-mile tempo ride. I stopped at what's left of Kitty Hawk Pier to check the surf on the way home, back down the Beach Road. The pier was chopped off by Hurricane Isabel leaving only the pier house and a stub of the original pier. Since then the Hilton Garden Inn, chocked full of tourists, sits where families and surfers and fishermen used to park their vehicles to use the beaches nearby and the pier. I understand the economic forces at work here, but it's sad to see a sign standing at the pier ramp which warns "for use of hotel guests only". Many a local child learned to surf or fish there including my son whom I saw get his first true tube ride there when he was 11-years old.

The surf there this afternoon was quite heavy busting hard on the sand dunes around the foot of the pier ramp and tearing away at the foot of the dune a little more with each successive wave. The outside sets were monstrous forcing the pier pilings to tremble and vibrate like guitar strings as they filed to the beach.

Tomorrow should be the day and tomorrow afternoon the time.