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.