Moving south - Folly vs. Wrightsville?

i lived in kiawah for 4 years and chucktown for 2.

will you get waves? yes. crappy shin high waves for 350+ days of the year. a decent swell will roll in every now and then but you will already be in a boredom coma when it finally reaches shore. not my cup of tea, but obviously yours. to each their own.

to the op: senc is the better choice for waves. no doubt. wrightsville is cool and all but i wouldnt live there with those assholes. best finding a spot in wilmington or pleasure island. the whole wilmington area is the tits. barely crowded and there are beaches everywhere.

 

Now someone is really exaggerating.

 

Lot of idiots on Swellinfo.

Folly and Charleston are great places to live and the surf does get good and once in a while great. If you have a varied quiver.....log, fish, shortboard, you will be surfinig a lot. But you will go mad with the flat spells. But if you live on the east coast you already know that. SENC is more consistent but not all that much more. They are both great places to live but not somewhere to move "for the surf." I get to travel out of country just to surf a couple months a year. Between that and the fun to good days we get here I am happy. If I couldn't do that this place would drive me crazy surf wise.

 

I would put anywhere in SC behind VB even. If you want to live in a quaint southern town, then by all means move to Charleston. If you want to surf with any regularity south of the Mason-Dixon line, your choices are OBX, Central FL, or Southern NC in that order.

 

Wrightsville beach has reached its quota of outa-towners and has been shut down. Please call back in 2016 when it is set to be re-opened.

Thanks,
Board of Alderman

 

Forum Platinum, HOF.

 

Hey Greenroom, what about Beaufort N.C.? Although i've got a friend that just moved down to Daytona and i think he's loving it down there (for more reasons than i care to mention here). Do you need a "true" city to live in, or would a quaint little southern town do the trick? Check out what you can about Beaufort, if nothing else just to get some ideas.

Beyond that, i would vote Wilmington over Charleston any day of the week. Wilmington's essentially a smaller version of Charleston; the waves are a whole notch better than anything you'll find in S.C. as well.

haha Banman, so true, so true.

 

Does anybody have any experience or recollection of how Washout broke before Hugo in '89? I lived on Folly (Charleston locals told me it was the "Redneck Riviera", LOL) from October '98 until April '99. The only surfers I ever saw were at Washout and the Pier. I even checked IOP several times, but never scored there.

Being from the Left Coast, I was pretty surprised at how good Washout could get. Board-snapping, spitting barrels good. But not Outer Banks good. And when it gets flat....it gets F.L.A.T. Consistency seems to lack, but I'd like to see what it's like during the hurricane season.

 

Jax can be rough around the edges as far as raising a family, but there are silver linings to every cloud. Ponte Vedra Beach ( home to the PGA Tour and the TPC Players Championship), St. Augustine Beach, and even Jax Beach(including Neptune and Atlantic Beach) are good to decent areas to live and are close to lots of good breaks. Good seafood, funky southern beach culture, and lots of tourists to make fun of. The water still gets too cold for me during the winter, but I am a South Florida bred spoiled thin blooded surfer that will gladly sacrifice wave quality for being able to feel my feet. Word of caution: If you decide to move to Florida, you have to fail the standardized IQ tests, but pass the concealed weapons class. Driving abilities and common courtesy are seen as weakness. Mullet is our most prolific bait fish and the latest hair style. And the smell of diesel fuel, herb and fried fish means you're home.

 

I married a chef, so that just proves food is a big factor in any decision I make. Well before I met her, one of my mottos was and still is: "The key to a good buzz is a good meal". Just sayin.

 

WB, Topsail and CB trump any South Carolina waves and the atmosphere is sweet. Charleston is a cool city but I would choose southern NC over it any day and as mentioned 3-4 hour trip to OBX and you got the best waves on the EC period end!

 

I wouldn't say better, because everybody has their preference, but it's pretty damn good. Anywhere from Jax down to Sebastian is pretty money, any further south and the consistency really drops off

 

I don't think the washout breaks like it used to. Actually, at high tide, it is almost unsurfable. IOP gets really good if you hit some of the northern spots on the island. That said, it is still SC.

 

Was anyone around Charleston when Hugo hit? That must have been horrific.

 

Destroyed the place... including the Coast Guard housing we lived in on Folly...don't even think they bother to rebuild the station but for a kid it was awesome.... school was out for a month

For the EC surfer, Jax has surprising consistency with a decent wave quality... playful rip-able wedgey peaks even at OH... not deep barrels like OBX or a ton of power like up north. Marque breaks in the area offering jettys, piers and even unobstructed inlets that break waaaaaay outside ...quality and consistency only gets better as you move further south.

 

sc is the best state in the world and produces the best waves and surfers in the world, dont move here we have enough tourist and transplants. make sure to bring your shredstick and wait in the line up for 3 hours before we let you get the white water scraps that is the wake of my 14ft log.

 

There are only remnants of the station left. They never rebuilt it. It is a nice place to go for a long walk and be alone now.

 

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