East coast views

looks fun as hell. for sure on the list to surf on a cane swell but you guys can have the guidos!

 

Jersey Surf

I moved to San Diego 10 years ago and just surfed NJ (Deal) in the winter for the first time. It was pretty fun and the wave was different then SD. It seemed to break pretty quickly and close to shore but that may have been due to the tide.
SD is better but surfing anywhere anytime is awesome.

 

yea not bad over here in the winter...best be sure to have a 5/4mm suit, booties gloves and hood though.

Oh yea...did I mention Hurricane surf???? thats the best

 

im from oc md. I moved to san diego 7 years ago. I live in south ob and surf every day.

althought I love oc md, if u r talkin surf, its hard to compare the 2.

in the winter, I surf sunset cliffs. all winter. I choose from about 20 reef and point breaks right in my neighborhood. most spots hold 15 to 20 feet, while indicators holds 30 ft plus. I have video over the past few years. couple 30 second 1/4 mile waves the size of a 5 story building.

so the thing that cali has that trumps the east coast is really the wave setups.

cali obviously gets surf everyday all year, but it still gets real good back east during the right conditions.

but there are no good reefs under the water back east to hold up giant swells.

so even when obx goes nuts, most of the surf to me looks unridable.

its not a good ideal surfing a 20 foot beach break on any coast (except for blacks, which has a deep water channel, so its really not a beach brea).

so my point is, in cali, u can ride any swell no matter how big or how small. the east coast just requires a ton of factors to come together.

in sd, it rains like 6 days out of the whole year. we have zero weather issues which leaves clean well groomed surf all year.


but easwt coast surfers have a fire that californians lack. east coasters have a ton of heart and deidications.

in cali;i can roll out of bed at 2 in the afternoon, go to the beach a surf without even checkin the report.

there is always surf, so it makes us all real lazy about things.

east coasters have a lot of passion

 

one more thing.

the one thing that really pisses me off about the east coast is their local goverments.

surfers r treated like criminals back east. no surf zones in every town. shutting down beaches during hurricane swells. writing surf tickets in vb.

hotels thinking they own the sand. and then local law enforcement sides with the money. that is bs.

I had to call the cops in ocean city last summer cause some redneck renting out umbrellas told me I could use some other guys umbrellas in his beach zone.

so after laughing in his face, tellin him he doesn't own **** on the beach and to stick his umbrella up his ass. so he continued to try and tell me that cause he pays the city an annual fee, that he has "rights" to the beach. so the cops came. verified that this moron has no juristiction over even a grain of sand.

so all the hotels, and cops and local government should be ashamed of themselves for fu:king over the locals.

in cali, surfers own the beach. my whole beach town is surf only. if u don't have a board, u can't even step in the water.

when it gets huge in the winter, they don't shut down the beach. they send 10 cranes, every ambulance anf firetruck along with medics and cops line the cliffs by the thousands to watch the show and rescue surfers in need of help.

so its nice to be treated with respect. cause when all the euros and tourists are gone. im the one cleanin up my beach. im the one callin out btourists who throw cigarette buts on the ground.

we just faught greed, money and power. we took on the man himself and saved trestles... so **** all those people who infringe on what we do. we are the oceans protectors.

the ****ing marriott could giive a **** about your beach

 

i've surfed the cliffs for the last 4 years, and i've never seen it that big even on the biggest swells that have hit while i was there. i want to see those videos or else i don't think your wave-height judgment is quite right

 

I hyave about 3 years of video saved on dv tapes. soon as I get it digital, I will post it. I have a shot of the largest set I've even seen in socal.

and if u surf the cliffs, u know indicators. the only spot on the cliffs that can hold it.

and im not hawaiian, but I will tell u that the video of the sets were 30 foot faces. easy.

the video of me on the waves that day were 20 foott plus. it was that wednesday about 3 years ago. last year it got 25 feet about 3 times if I remember correclty. I broke my toe attempting to duckdive a wall of whitewater.

but anyway, im not sayin it happens often. but I have witness 30 foot surf her on a few occasions. blacks maxed out at like 18 feet last year cause it sandy. u know how the cliffs are, lon open faces.

 

p.s. if ur a surfline member, use lola and click on the first week in january last year. look at the bouys and the report for those 2 days. it says 25 to 30 foot sets from the visual surfline report. not a buoy report. its jon jon visual that day. it is documented.

 

wow umm... i really don't know what to say other than last year there was definitely NOT 3 days of 25 ft waves at the cliffs. the biggest it got was about triple OH. nowhere near 25 ft

 

well, I suppose I need to rethink my wave height judgement. like I said, I surf with hawaiians that say overhead surf is 3 foot, and I disagree. so I guess im wrong. but a basketball rim is 10 feet hish and I surf waves twice that high every winter it feels like.

like I said, once I get the video I will put it up. I am narrating it. I see the set coming like 1 full minute before it came. I was standing above the cove, waitint for it to calm down and the set sucked up every inch of water from bird **** to no surf and broke what looked to be 400yards outside the already ridiculously far lineup. that waves I filmed were un surfable. but only because the current and distance was so far off the lineup. I **** u not.

and I remember that swell that parked directly west of us for a week. they hadpictures of blacks with those helicopters. the **** was massive. it was overhead for the ntire month of january. u must remember that. 2006 I think. they saif it was the biggest in 10 years. looked liked indicators held up.

but ****, maybe I need to stick to hawaiian rules and say doh is 4 foot. I dunno.

 

lol @ blacks sandy bottom. Blacks will be bigger than any other spot pretty much due to the deep canyon. I surfed blacks on dec. 5 07, was big but not nearly close to 25 foot.

 

i know about the canyon. But, blacks is sand. It doesn't stack up as tall. It gets big and probably more powerful than any other wave in socal. But ive never seen a photo of blacks bigger than a few days ive seen indicators. Those reefs make that wave stand straight up with huge open faces. Its not a barrel machine like blacks.

Biggest photo ive ever seen of blacks was the one in surfshot a few years ago when that helicopter was flying over. It put the size of the massive wave into perspective.

but hey, ive never surfed blacks over like 12 feet. So, i am no eye witness. I am an eye witness on the cliffs. But like my previous post said, I could be crazy.

But even with a deep water canyon, it breaks in the sand. Nothing to slow that freight train down. That why we all love it.

 

I was born in Santa Cruz county but raised in north Jersey... so I'd say I'm familiar with waves on both coasts. California definitely has the consistent swell going and pretty much all the major metropolitan areas are right on the coast. You can go have a good session whenever you please, really... as long as you have a nice quiver built up.

The east coast... I would take a clean hurricane or noreaster swell over clean combo swell here any day. The waves in the Atlantic are much more glassy and tend to wall up over the sand and it makes for fast, intense drops and BARRELS. If it's one thing about surfing NJ or NC that I remember most is how freakin hollow it gets when it's good. Crowds are more sparse, the vibe is much cooler in the lineup, and yes east coasters are way more passionate about their waves. They come around so rarely and when they do everyone shares them and has a good time... not like that out here. When it gets good, the local crowd will flip everyone else off that they don't recognize.

So basically I'd have to say on a day-to-day basis I prefer to live in California where I can surf whenever I want and the weather is always pleasant. But on the other hand, the things that are gnarly out here (douchebag locals in the lineup, crowded take-off zones, lots of beginners, etc) the east coast lacks. Living in NC I really didn't mind driving 2 hours to get to the beach because when I got there I was stoked to find clean waves almost all to myself and it wasn't uncommon for me to be in the water for 4-6 hours without even realizing it. People talk to each other in the lineups and it was normal to go out for a beer with a stranger after it got dark. Out here there's definitely more kooks and bullsh.t to deal with. Although yes someone said it before the west coast caters to surfers while the east coast does not.

It's a toss-up I guess... if you like to surf every day then you want to be next to the Pacific. But if you're in it more for that satisfying feeling you get after it's been flat for a month and then it blows up to 4-6 ft heaven then the Atlantic is the place to be. I like to surf daily so I'm here now... but hell if the east coast was consistent at all I'd certainly rather be back in NJ with the majority of my friends and family.

 

water temp never drops below 55F in san diego county. and that's cold for the locals here. normally it hovers around 60F for a good portion of the year and in the really hot months it will get around 70F.

as for water quality - when it rains, the sewers drain into the ocean here, not into inland lakes like many places on the east coast. so after a good downpour the water gets pretty filthy near rivermouths and drain pipes. you can escape the filth though, i was talking to someone else about this in another thread...

for example, the SD river dumps out here in OB and it makes for filthy water in OB and MB. there's another rivermouth in del mar. but in between, like north PB or bird rock or windansea or la jolla, maybe torrey pines, the water still looks pretty clean even after heavy rains. there's also people that will surf in the filth but you can get sick easily... it's not uncommon to have a runny nose or a bad cough after a substantial session. definitely worth the effort to get in cleaner water around LJ or further south down sunset cliffs from where i live. so basically don't let people scare you when they say the water is toxic after rain... in some places it is, in others definitely not. just see for yourself it's really obvious if you look at the sea.

 

West to east

Just moved from So Cal to Florida ( new Smyrna Beach ) . Love it out here and my surfing has progressed beleive it or not. But I miss goin out with not even checking the report..

cnt type any more got donuts on myy handsa

 

a lot of socal locals are spoiled brats for sure... sometimes i wish i could just teleport them to the Atlantic in the wintertime