September is suppose to be the month. The month you paddle out in head high surf with nothing more than a pair of boardshorts on. The month that you watch the swells models set up one after another on the charts. The month you save your sick days at work for. The month when you put away your fishes and longboards and break out the high performance shortboard. The month where you are proud to call the east coast your home. This year, none of this transpired and I feel ripped off, cheated and unfulfilled. Its like getting a years membership to the Jelly of the Months club on Xmas eve and unfortunately Randy Quaid is not here to go kidnap the responsible person for me - El Nino. 2009 will officially be the year where there was only 11 months. I already find myself searching for flights online to places with fruitful seas, this usually results in me purchasing a plane ticket I cannot afford. Typically I do this to ease the pain of winter, not fall..... My good buddy is optimistic by nature. When he listens to me complain on a daily basis about this flat spell, he always comes back with "well at least we got Bill and Danny, they were fun..." or "last weekend was fun, there was some tiny little barrels at the jetty". Sorry dude, that's something I want to hear in July, not September. And as for the bill and danny swells.....I would trade those two days in for a months worth solid surf any day. But he is right though, I should be optimistic. Maybe October will surprise us all and make up for a disappointing September. OR maybe I'll just end up running up my credit card with plane tickets...Pray for surf -BK
I agree, I've been doing this dance with the EC for over twenty years now and swear it seems to get worse just about every year. Your absolute right hang up the fish and long boards and remember why you love it. Back years ago it wasn't a question the second week of August would come and the Atlantic Basin would turn on and wouldn't stop till late November. What can you do?; I got about 5G's of boards wishing they were living back in socal. Warm water, right points, Morocco February? What do you say...
hahaha Why is it that all the old timers say that it is getting worse? Oh how quickly you forget the solid three weeks of swell we had in August, it was not just 2 days. Or how about the swell three weekends ago? Head high and draining on friday and then one of the best days ever that following saturday. Or how about this past weekend's surprise, I guess you missed that one too. The month of August is supposed to be our worst month, yet it turned out to be our best. Maybe it is the fact that you have twenty years of surfing under your belt so all those years build up and make individual years fuzzy. I get sick of hearing about 'how good it used to be' , 'man back in the 70's it would break every day' Bull****, Bull**** Bull****. We know it is not true and you know it as well. Last summer was awesome, late june pretty much through the end of july there was solid stomach to bigger surfer every morning. Surfed 23 mornings straight. Granted our winter was not that good, and neither was Socals for that matter. They had one of the worst winter on record as far as waves go. That is part of being an east coast surfer. Sticking it out, waiting, being let down. If you cant take it then leave it, take your $5000's of boards and get out of here. Yea we all want perfect waves all the time in the warmest water but guess what that does not happen, anywhere in the US. Mother nature is not ripping you off, maybe you just need to find joy in other surf besides the most optimal conditions. I am proud to be an east coast surfer, I, like many, have the courage to put on a 5/4 hood boots gloves for that perfect waist high day when it is clean all day. Makes you appreciate it more, and that is something to be proud of. Tight lines.
First of all, Ash Wednesday was one of the biggest swells to hit the mid-atlantic, so this is a rarity. This is the storm that essentially washed out the inlet. Also if you are 34 as you claim to be, you were merely a future thought when this storm hit!!!!!!!!!! OOPS! Second of all, the noreaster that you speak of was in december, that is not quite fall unless you want to get technical. And named storms do not mean anything, storm names do not equate to good surf, and I think we all understand this. I am 22, not 34. How about noel two years ago? Or how about the unnanounced swell that hit us labor 2008, f'n epic surf. Our fall was not very good last year at all. And as for 4-6+ surf for 3 weeks straight, if you can name when this happened then so be it. I know of this happening only one time, but lets see if you know when. And i do not believe i was barely walking when this happened. Anywho surfed today, it was junkie, but still fun to be out there.
do you realize how spoiled you sound dude? be thankful! or you better start working on a time machine bc you sound pretty close to washed up.
i disagree, i dont buy those old timer comments. yeah, It was def the best summer in recent years for surf. but those summer swells aren't real surf. 90% of it is local wind swell dribble. and the summer before we only got one hurricane swell in july. The last few hurricane seasons before that, Texas saw more head high days than we did. This year, the hurricanes finally started bending up our way and entering our swell window. Bill and Danny were perfect. And i would call that a successful hurricane season. However Sept is the typical peak of the season. This is the first Sept i can remember with out at least one over head day. I wont deny, that we do get good big surf in the winter during the noreaster weather patterns. If this is a real el nino year, we should have a spectacular winter.
