Peninsula Envy: Florida Surfing Explained

From Jay DiMartino
Article source: About.com

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I never noticed it when I was kid living down on the Treasure Coast in Fort Pierce (a quaint drug town with a fishing problem).

Back then, I hated every second living here and dreamed incessantly of moving away to ride real waves. So just days after high school graduation, I was off to the North Shore where I spent over eight years surfing phenomenal waves, but I noticed something about the other Floridians living in Hawaii. They took nothing for granted. Every wave was a gift, whether it was 10 foot Sunset or waist high Goat Island. They smiled in the lineup and respected the locals. I was proud of my people. My tribal Florida brethren all exhibited similar traits like being so hardcore that many referred to them as “floor”idians based on their somewhat frugal choice of sleeping arrangements in surf-rich locales. What was it about them? Maybe it was the years of surf starvation that produced such cool customers. Or maybe it was something else.

Maybe it was Florida’s somewhat dysfunctional surfing lifestyle. The present surf culture in Florida is a result of years of integration. Good ol’ boys dominated the Florida lineup in the 60’s and 70’s. I can remember guys paddling out in trucker hats and jeans without a hint of irony. Even today, many surfers fill their flat spells with deer hunting, and you can’t swing a dead gator anywhere in Florida without hitting a fisherman. These are real dudes with big trucks and a southern drawl. But the Florida surf scene has become more complex. Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Bahamian surfers have spiced up the lineup from the south with new and wonderful accents, while years of snowbird migration from the North has created a permanent link via the Turnpike to the kinetic energy of New York and New Jersey.

This exotic tango between such diverse dancers is made all the more wondrous when set to the backdrop of the coastal Florida landscape, a delicate ecosystem of barrier islands, inlets, and marshy saltwater swampland that is downright beautiful, especially when seen from a fishing boat on a calm summer evening. That’s where you’ll find surfers in the summer since the Atlantic goes flatter than flat for weeks, sometimes longer. Only the occasional hurricane can break the summer cycle, but with modern meteorology being what it is, the excruciating wait for a system to build and move from West Africa to its hopeful perch off the coast of Florida is riddled with pain and disappointment. And hurricane surf is almost always fickle and funky.

The winter and spring provide a healthier surf environment.

Big low pressures swirl off the eastern seaboard between North Carolina and Maine, sometimes cranking actual waves in our direction. Generally, the wind is onshore, but the waves are fun and most lineups are relatively uncrowded after a few days of surf. To get it good, however, a Florida surfer must exhibit another level commitment and possess a schedule free from work, school, and family concerns. You must be able to drop everything and get on it immediately. This sounds impossible, but there are many folks in Florida getting great surf. Take Charles Williams for instance. He shapes surfboards, travels in the summer, and gets more waves in Florida than anyone I’ve ever known. The bottom line is if you’re in the truck with Chuck, you’re probably heading for the best waves in Florida. In fact, recently, I spent the afternoon surfing chest high slop at my local beach break only to see Charles’ pictures from the same afternoon down the coast in double overhead barrels. His surf photo collection would silence anyone who says that Florida never gets good. He has shots that show that if only for a photographic moment, this place can produce waves that are as good as anywhere in the world.

The bottom line is that it gets good in Florida, but you have to be ready. And it’s not just the more famous breaks like Sebastian Inlet and Reef Road. There are scores of great spots that break consistently and are sometimes (I say this with a straight face) world-class. There is also a core contingent that regulates these breaks, giving black eyes to those who don’t respect the local surfers. But the threat of localism and the sheer difficulty of forecasting how specific Florida breaks will behave based on tide and swell direction keep these breaks somewhat controlled and maybe, dare I say, a little bit secret.

So what can a surfer expect when he travels here? After moving from Fort Pierce to my new home in St. Augustine, I see that it’s all the same in Florida. The waves are fun some of the time, and the weather is almost always warm. The surfers love to surf and they will ride almost anything. In order to get any real waves in the summer, you have to buy a ticket faraway. But with a long and short board, a fishing pole, and a credit card, you will never be bored here in the Sunshine State. I love it here, and even when I travel to places with epic surf, I still feel a little bit of peninsula envy and look forward to returning to my swampy, humid, mosquito-ridden, tourist-trap I call home.