By Bill Barlow
Now’s when everything changes. Paddling out for an evening session this week, there one person in sight on a wide stretch of sun-washed beach, and no one in the water. A cool breeze cut across the waves, chopping things up, and making a little neoprene seem like one of humanity’s great inventions, but there was some size and some power to the waves.
Now, I’m all for little summer waves. I don’t disdain playing in fun, warm water if there’s enough swell to cruise along on a longboard, but I know some of the hard-core surfers won’t even consider getting the board out for waves of a foot or less.
Most years, July and August see small waves, if there are any at all. A knee-high wave may seem like a lot to a kid on something inflatable, but for some surfers, that’s still not worth much notice. They wait for the fall and winter, when offshore storms start throwing the big waves at the Jersey coast.
Some years have been different. In 2014, three named storms, Arthur, Bertha and Cristobal, rolled off the coast way early, coming along in June and July. They did some damage farther south, but up this way, they were nice, well behaved storms, staying far enough off the coast but still pushing in some big, clean, ridable waves. I’m sure they were an enormous headache for the lifeguards trying to keep beaches full of shoobies out of trouble in overhead waves, but for surfers, playtime came early.
But as September comes in, look for the waves to get a little more power and size. It takes a little getting used to, a little recalibration after charging in to foot-high ripples all summer.
On one sunny weekday, I slipped away from the sallow glow of the laptop screen to hit the waves off a local sandbar.
I paddled into these nice, waist-to-shoulder-high sets. They looked perfect from the beach, lining up in rows, with a deep shadow forming along the face just before the whitewater appeared. Heading out, the nose of the board climbed over each peak, the first indication that this was an entirely different kind of surfing.
A few looked about to close out, and a couple of waves lined up but then didn’t break at all, but then heaven smiled and everything lined up. I spun and started to paddle, and it wasn’t long before the wave grabbed the tail of my board and gave it a little push. I felt a rush as I dropped in to the wave, and a smooth acceleration as I made a banking turn, punching through a smatter of foam that formed between me and the shoulder of the wave.
For one glowing moment, everything was perfect. On my right, a rising wall of glowing green water. To the left, empty space. It felt like flying. Normally, this would be where I trip over the leash, or dig the nose in to the wave for a painful and humiliating tumble to the sand, but not this time. The board had a life of its own, feeling through the changing currents and shape of the wave as I sped down the line, skirting another breaking section, and doubling back as the wave reformed and broke again.
I’ve been in several times since then, including a brief session in churning, disorganized waves and some fun times in more knee-high swell. I even managed to make good on an embarrassing wipeout, this time when there were plenty of people watching. But the feeling of that initial exhilaration of that one perfect wave has stuck. I can call it to mind now, hammering this out on deadline in a room with an open window, where I can sometimes hear the waves.
