a couple years ago i heard from a good source that a surf school in montauk had their shed broken into and all there softtops axed. if true, montauk is even cooler than we thought!
WTF...I have to go to a friend's wedding today in CT and if Montauk had any swell at all I'd bring my gear and be hopping a ferry right after to score all day tomorrow. Damn man. MTK is on my hit list. Got to get there this fall.
Some of the best, most soulful surfer's I've ever met were from Montauk. I don't blame them if they are fed up with everyone else.
The funny thing about Montauk, at least the couple times I've surfed it, is actually that the "well known" surf spots that supposedly are crowded and kooked out, like say Ditch or even some of the other rock points I saw, were actually mushy and sucked. I went on a 5 ft 10 second buoy reading morning during the beginning of August while visiting relatives on L.I and found the sandbar I had first checked arriving in town had by far the heaviest waves. I ended up driving back into town from checking and briefly surfing the rocky eastern points, parked at the IGA grocery parking lot, walked over the dunes, and scored head high+ incoming tide, HEAVY tubes on the sandbar right out front with just 1 sponger. Got barreled for about 2 hours with not 1 other surfer around(10-15 people were surfing 3-400 yards east on a mushier, outside break). Had to paddle hard and drop in early, as it was pretty shallow (knee deepish and lots of small/medium sized stones rolling around the bottom), but the tubes were insanely heavy. They can keep their hyped up spots, that was one of the heaviest sandbars I've seen on the east coast forsure. Check it out if any of you want to surf uncrowded waves out there. Only thing that sucked was a "swimming only" area right beside the sandbar that the lifeguards whistle at you from while they're there later in the morning If you paddle for a set inside the flags.
Well, after growing up in New Jersey and surfing all winter long, while all but one of my buddies went snow skiing, I never made it to Montauk... Heard rumors about it's point breaks but in the 70's, there was no surfline... Besides my 65 Rambler Station Wagon would never have made the trip... We surfed our "secret spot" in New Jersey which blew offshore when the winter Nor-Easter storms had everywhere else VAC and blown out... It broke double-triple over head stand up tubes in knee to waist deep water over rocks... I quickly learned how to get up really fast... We were the only ones that surfed there... the 30 degree water destroyed my hearing... I can't even hear my wife speak sometimes...But i digress... Looking at the pics of Montauk, it looks like an incredible spot... I will probably never surf there as I now live in toasty Florida... and a plane ticket to LI is $400 and to Puerto Rico or CR its $300... Enjoy your spot... and PS, in surfing, 1 out of 3 are assholes... so when your in the line up, look to your left and right... if you don't see one...
Most surfers LIKE point break type waves. Not the SI crowd which seems to like 23 foot bombs, but in the real world that's what surfers go for. It's the same situation in Cali. IE Mushy easy going fun LONG waves. Malibu point break type waves. Especially long boarders. The sandbar you're describing isn't even rideable on a longboard. I prefer sand beachbreak barrels over point breaks, but I'm a bodyboarder. I can still have fun on mushy point break waves though assuming the wave has some speed/push. Also, 5 feet at 10 seconds is not a big swell for a point break. Check the point break spots on a swell that's 10 feet at 15 seconds. Beach will be unrideable and the points will be firing and epic. Epic montauk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAbtvLx1D-0 Fast forward to 3:00 minute mark. Triple to 4 times OH barrel. I wouldn't call that mushy. Again depends on the swell. Waves are huge since their refracting and lining up perfectly for incredibly long rides. Doesn't look like the east coast. Also, the beach breaks will be constantly changing obviously due to shifting sand. What's great the few times you went might be far different next time. I've seen places not close out and go on forever and then next year it's close out city. OR...was your post an attempt to keep crowds down at the points? haha
Also, that point break in montauk didn't look THAT crowded. I think the size thinned the herd, but I'm not familiar with montauk so I don't know. Honestly, last year during hurricane swells in early sept, the rock reefs in RI were basically unrideable due to insane crowd conditions. You couldn't even park. It looked like a raid at trestles. Just as crowded at matun. as trestles in calif on a weekend. Probably 50 guys on a peak with 5 stand up guys thrown in for good measure.. Ridiculous.
Double- triple overhead, breaking in knee deep water..........clean during NE winds........breaking over rocks? I'm glad you learned to stand-up quick. Nothing like learning to surf in triple overhead shorebreak conditions. Wow, you sure you were in New Jersey? Knee-deep water, NE winds blowing offshore..........Man, Poverty must have been something else back in the day. Ahhh, those 10 foot at 15 seconds days........ People, am I on the same coast as y'all?
^Seriously. Wave heights on this forum are so overblown it's ridiculous. Triple overhead waves don't break in knee high water at beach breaks. Must be a hell of a sandbar to go from that deep to shallow so quick. And the waves at 3:00 aren't barreling, or triple, let alone quadruple overhead. The summer flatness is turning this place into the bullsh*t brigade.
The 3 minute mark looks incredibly fun. But, that IS mushy in my opinion. I would say the waves look to be 8-10 ft.
Take your fingers....measure the surfer at the bottom of his turn and see how many times you can fit that into the top of the wave. And how do you define a barrel? It wasn't pipeline or a spitting big barrel like cloudbreak, but it was clearly barreling point break style. The surfer didn't take off in the barrel section. 3:00 minute mark wave was at LEAST triple overhead. Surfers like to underestimate wave height to keep crowds down. That's how the Hawaiian scale of measuring waves came about. Measure from the back of the wave....haha. It was a big joke.
2 foot overhead....My ass!! Are you kidding me? None of you guys know how to measure wave height. I wish I could freeze frame some of that stuff. Yeah it's mushy compared to a spitting new jersey barrel.(which is what the majority of members seem to be familiar with) That's a classic point break barrel.
Sure they do... First, I know double and triple overhead, as in my 42 years of surfing I have surfed around the world including Sunset and Pipeline on numerous occasions. I don't know how the bottom is now but in the 70's it was a concrete and rock reef and sometimes in the shore pound I'd look down and see waterless sand and rocks. And yes on the right swell the waves would swing around the point and the NNE wind was offshore with hailing rooster tails and totally blind takeoffs and in sub 20 degree air and 30 degree water... It was just as scary as the pipe on the big day... There are numerous places that break big in super shallow water... Sebastian inlet on the right tide is one. We had more balls then sense then, now its the other way around...
Ahh man, Shark Hunter....... Just because you can use your fingers to put that dude four times from the trough to the lip doesn't mean its 4X overhead. Waves have different shapes and slopes. A four foot wave can literally be "overhead" depending on its form and shape. But it's not "Overhead." Those Montauk waves were pushing 10 foot. And it wasn't a classic, point break barrel. Go to Rincon(Santa Barbara, CA), low tide, in the cove for a classic point break barrel. God forgive me Seldom Seen, but there seems to be a lot of confused people from Rhode Island. Hawaiins aren't joking when they call 15 foot Pipe, "3 foot." Hawaiins are insane and mentally challenged. And surfers don't downsize the size of waves to keep the crowds down. That would suggest that every surfer depends on second and third hand accounts of the days surf, and that they only surf when these coconut wireless surf reports report sizeable waves.
Dang the acid must have been good during the 70's............ Triple overhead NJ beachbreaks.....breaking in knee-deep water.......... And considering Cape May is a third the size as the rest of the coast can you imagine what Ocean City and Bayhead was like !!! Wow.........
Surf was def. 23 feet and BTW I bench more than all of you combined and YES I'm frum Jersey and drop in da hui at Montauk all the time.
Talking of "confused". A four 4 foot wave can't be overhead unless a leprechaun midget is riding the wave. Wave heigh is wave heigh regardless of shape/mushiness ect. Well then teahpoo would be 1 foot when it's 30 foot according to hawaiin scale. Hawaii scale is a joke. You don't measure a wave from the back. That was to keep haole's away from the breaks back in the day.
Alrighty over-optimistic wave height callers....... I don't know aboot Rhode Island, or Montauk or New Smyrna, but Jersey's 21 foot under 23 foot....maybe even 20 foot under 23 foot.....tides starting to come in.....it's cloudy with a good chance of rain......the beach crowds should be limited.....the water should be uncrowded..........I'm on it. Whooo hooooo. Goodtimes....goodtimes. I wish Archy was down here. Aww man, he's all worried that I'm going to find out who he is. I kind of wish SUP was out with me today. Of course I wish Erock was around, and Koki Barrels. Sometimes I dream of MB with LBCrew. I think Za Gaffer is trying to kill me. I hope he succeeds. Spicoli's leaving the country. I wonder if the nation will notice anything different. Ocean0 hates me because I'm ugly. And Dune won't let me marry his sister...... Ok, I'm going to see aboot a shred. Good luck to all of you guys. Hope things work out for youse guys, except Xgen70