Knowing your local surf area

if someone where to find my private spot they might be impaled by a pine cone or a corn cob,so beware in what new break you arrive at make sure you bring a knife like kenny does in east bound you even know when you might need it.

 

Nice post Antoine . This guy at the county pool where I lap swim is from up north and has surfed up and down the east coast. He said his favorite spot is Paradise Beach in Brevard. He says it csn get crowded but there's plenty of waves for everyone. I think he paddles out to the reef, unsure. Have you gone there. It's a drive.

 

I really think most surfers are excited to finds spots that work, and if you are local and cool, they really can't resist sharing the stoke with you FIRST HAND (not online) once they get to know you. They'll trust you with hard-gained knowledge (at least SOME of it) and probably unrealistically expect you to be judicious about dissemination.

 

If your not sniffing around on a regular basis, your slacking on your surfing because observation is a key ingredient. I took an extra long walk with my dog the other day, at low tide, and what did I find? A sick a$$ sandbar that didn't resemble any sandbar in the area. This storm may tweak it or even remove it but that will be my first stop on the loop when the conditions are right. The general area is rarely surfed this time of year and I'll likely be solo even if I let a couple buds in on my discovery. People rather struggle with the default spots when they're not working instead of rolling the dice on what I'm telling them. Their loss, but they don't even realize it. Ignorance is bliss, I guess. It's also hard to lure some people I surf with away from the photographers too. Personally, I rather load up on good rides than deal with a crowd on a lack luster wave. Some of the photo whores are blind and selling themselves short big time. However if the one of the default spots is working well, I'll deal with the crowd.

 

Well put. Once I started going to where ever the waves were, and searched out new spots, that's when i started scoring more times than not, and living 2hrs from the E. Coast and 1hr from the Gulf, it is important to make every trip a success as gas is not cheap and I make the trip every single weekend to one coast or the other, usually E. but I have gotten it good on the Gulf lately too.

You begin to know what swell direction is best for each spot, and how the wind affects it and the tides, etc., I don't keep a surf log, but a mental one and it almost comes natural now when I see the forecast. I usually have 3 spots that i'm willing to check in the event my "go-to" isn't working, and out of the three I choose one will be working 99% of the time. The key is you have to be willing to drive a little, even if you're a local, DRIVE to where the waves are, don't be lazy and wait for YOUR break to do something. I can't count how many times I have found one spot working to perfection while all other spots within a 3-4hr drive are all blown out or flat.

Glad you're exploring Antoine, you'll never get bored surfing different spots on the regular.

 

I have this internal zen compass about where I am going to surf. Im not going to say the ocean is speaking to me telling me which break to hit up, but I'm not going to say I didn't take a lot of acid in the 90s either. Anyway, I live in Vermont. My closest wave other than Montreal is in NH. I had MLK day off. I checked the report, and SI said Kennebunk was going to be thigh high and green at the end of the day. I drove to the wall in NH and found onshore 18"ers at an incoming tide. Drove to Rye and found weak peaks just strong enough to propel a 9'er, which I did not have. I kept checking the cams in Maine and it was bumpy choppy lakey crap. I called and Ogunquit was lake flat. I kept driving north though, partly because I didn't want to admit defeat, and partly because I had this bizarro confidence that when wind shifted my spot was going to pull through. I got to my destination and decided to suit up for some crumbly thigh highs. By 2:30 is was peakier, and occasional sets came through that a hobbit could've gotten tubed on. By 4pm it had cleaned up and was breaking down the line.

Keep up the good work scouting. I study ariel maps of coastline like a nerd. I am a climber and backcountry skier too, so I am constantly stopping the car and getting out to eyeball patches of trees, rock outcoppings, boulders, etc. For fun I read topographic maps of my local mountains to find lines. Not to sound like a northface ad, but seeking out new spots and being the first guy on it is the last frontier. Its some superhero ****.

 

That sounds like a lot of driving, how many hours round trip was that?

 

i usally just explore my little part of the beach,wwhich is probably 15 miles with 30 different beaches.people see pics of a spot further south and everyone thinks that's the best place to be.unless its a newly discovered reef or point im not interested.its all sand and when their spot is breaking so is mine.would be nice to have a spot tho that u can surf when its small.the ocean doesn't even blink until its atleast 4 ft,and its usually closed out.once it reaches 5-6ft then everything comes together and it breaks right.kind of hard to improve tho,im mostly catching closeouts every session,but a few good ones stick.i would love to see a wave with a nice face so u can carve,but around here its always dredging barrels with thick lips

 

I have 4 spots relatively close to each other that all break differently so I check them all out and usually surf at least two of them in the same day. It's really convenient because one of the spots can get crowded and then the other spot seldomly has people surfing it. You never know what you may find

 

If I don't have work, on the way home from a morning session I'll stop on the way home, walked up the dune and check out how other spots that are not so easily accessible are breaking. Only problem is I could never surf these spots since they are in between beaches. No parking lots or anything. I'd have to park on the side of the parkway which would surely get me a ticket. So anyway this fall they did some dredging at one of my local spots. I branched out to find a few new spots that are more accessible. I ended up finding some good stuff. Nothing secret or hidden. Instead I found that some of the near by beaches can get pretty fun. Everyone flocks to the well known spots, no one's ever out. Most my sessions are with only another 1 or 2 guys out. Not only that but I now have a spot for almost any day that the winds are right. I got spots that works well at a higher tide, spots that works good at low tide, one that is almost always a tad bigger then the other breaks. I surf so much more now. When it's 2 feet and the tide is high and all the well known spots aren't even breaking I'll be out having a blast while everyone else is cursing the ocean. It's a great feeling

 

east coast kooks wish the spots were different. one spot less mushy than the other, one spot closing out more than the other

 

yes BITE THOSE APPLES

…..cause they might be taken away. my favorite a/c left gone…beach pumping. the beach i grew up
surfing on wasted by pumping…in front of monmouth county house two separate spots…now just a
fond memory…that there might actually be tangible benefits for pumping just makes taking this pill worse.

 

That's what it's all about antoine.

 

From my house its 2.5 hours to Rye in good weather one way. 3 hrs 15 minutes to Kennebunk (Gooch's), 4 hours to Higgins, which is as north as I go. Its 4.5 hours to RI, but I go to southern NE for the weekend and meander back to VT after a Sunday session.

I left the house at 9:30am, got home around 8pm.

 

I just sat here typing a response for 10 minutes but just cant. This statement is so ignorant and moronic all I can do is bite my tongue ad shake my head.

 

F that dude he clearly has no clue. Now I like Gary Williams more than him.

 

Ya seriously... Clearly that guy must have never heard of Belmar,NJ

#alwaysEPICinbelmar

 

F'n A brotha! He obviously doesn't know about the reef.

#BelmarReefCanHandleAnySize

 

Ya bro!! The reef!!

#onlyartificalreefontheeastcoast