It’s ok if it doesn’t look like this. Photo: Jaider Lozano
I am highly suspicious of surf forecasting websites. Unreasonably suspicious. Maybe not to the point where I’d claim that they are involved in magic bullet manufacturing, but sometimes I wonder. Granted, the majority of my forecasting conspiracy theories are improbable. Do the guys at Surfline forecast mediocrity on occasion only to collectively high-five while scoring empty barrels? Knee to thigh eh, bro? (Laughs and pulls into a drainer). Not likely, I know, but on crap days I still check the surf in person, if only for a chance to catch those guys chest bumping in the parking lot post-session. I knew it! You bastards!
Still, paranoia is an interesting place to linger. All those epic days, always just five or six days out. You check and check. Click and click. Undoubtedly, a variable changes the night before the swell’s arrival and the forecast shifts from five stars to middle finger. Does a week’s worth of the surfing community clicking away and accumulating web traffic on forecasting sites allow these companies to generate more advertising revenue? Is that why those salivating swells are always a few days out? Maybe it just looks that way from the grassy knoll.
Either way, it sucks being lied to. Even if it’s by a NOAA data buoy in the middle of the ocean that can’t possibly fathom the concept of deception… can it? But there I sat. Staring out at my East Coast beach break. The forecast said five stars – seven feet at eighteen seconds. “You idiot,” the ocean said. “That doesn’t happen on the East Coast.”
Part of me started to wonder if there was even a hurricane 400 miles offshore, or if Jim Cantore had just manifested one out of boredom. Perhaps it would all come together soon. Maybe when the tide flipped. Maybe when the wind switched. Maybe when the swell filled in. But for now, it was just big, chunky, froth slop. Gross.
I looked on with disdain. With cynicism. Every few minutes, a potential surfer would walk up, take a gander, and ultimately offer something along the lines of, “Needs another hour.” Then back to their vehicles they would scamper, tail between their legs. I’d remain, thinking about how much I missed the Outer Banks. If it was happening anywhere on this seaboard, it’d be happening there. But I was stuck in the region of aquatic imposters.
Something happens when you’re exposed to quality surf on a somewhat consistent basis. When chest high becomes standard. When the internet overflows with tropical prestige and guys performing aerial acrobatics that don’t make sense. All of it congeals into an intravenous line that you forget you’ve got in your forearm. Day after day, cynicism drips down, until you wake up in the morning and waist high and offshore at your home break is just… okay. “I guess I’ll paddle out,” you tell yourself. When did I become a good enough surfer to need head high waves every session to warrant paddling out?
I didn’t. Maybe that’s just getting older.
Jump ahead an hour later. Nothing much had changed. I was still ogling a perpetual closeout factory and starting to think about tomorrow’s possibilities. I rose to my feet to retreat inland, internally defeated. But I was blocked by three little groms sprinting down the boardwalk. Leashes already attached and dangerously whipping around their ankles. Powder white Al Merricks. Fins with honey comb and elf hair technology. Traction pads that matched the color schemes. I let them scurry by and listened to their initial assessment of the surf, half wondering why they were allowed to leave school early. Wondering why they were allowed to leave school early for this.
“Whoa! Dudes!” One of them exclaimed.
“It’s huge!” Came the excited answer.
“Yeah,” the smallest of the three agreed. “Look! There’s lefts and rights!”
“Where?” I screamed in my head. “Show me where!?” I was about to tell them that tomorrow would be better, but it was too late. The Grom Squad didn’t even stop to pick a decent peak. They just paddled straight out, hooting the entire way. I was left in solitude on the boardwalk, wondering how people can be so spoiled and not even realize it. And I don’t mean the kids.
