THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 21, 1994 TAG: 9408190225
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 258 lines
GIDGET AND HER girlfriends never lolled on the beaches tanning for surf dudes on the Outer Banks. The Beach Boys haven't written any songs about this place. And ``Endless Summer'' film crews bypassed North Carolina's barrier islands two separate times - more than two decades apart.
But for thousands of East Coast surfers, the Outer Banks are the mecca for mega waves.
Vanloads of Jersey college students migrate each May. Station wagons of Floridians flock every weekend. Dentists, teachers, teenagers and businessmen come here to surf.
Some even move to the Outer Banks solely to surf.
The migration began in the late 1960s, and surfers say it has not yet crested.
``Over the years, hundreds of people have moved here specifically to surf,'' says Mickey Bednarek, a Virginia Beach native who began surfing the Outer Banks in 1969 and now manages Wave Riding Vehicles surf shop in Kitty Hawk. ``The surfing goes real deep here. There's granddads with children with kids: each generation surfs.
``That's the best thing about the Outer Banks. The plumber surfs, your lawyer surfs, the grocery store guy surfs. It's part of this place. Overall, the Outer Banks is one of the friendliest surfing places in the world.''
Dozens of surfers from New York to Miami who rode the waves last week agree. Some had driven 20 hours and more to camp along Cape Hatteras National Seashore. Others had flown in with old friends for a week in the water - and away from their wives.
Still more will arrive this weekend for the 20th annual Clean Water Day and local district Eastern Surfing Association tag team relay competition and qualifying contest in Avon.
All contend that the barrier islands - from Nags Head through Hatteras Village - are the Atlantic seaboard's prime place to pick up waves year-round.
``This area is better than any other on the East Coast if you want powerful, fun, rideable swells,'' Dewey Walsh says. A 30-year-old cellular phone sales manager from Indian Rocks, Fla., Walsh met two friends in Nags Head to surf and vacation last week. ``Florida is flat in the summer,'' he says. ``This was worth the 1,000-mile trip.''
Although Bednarek and other surf shop owners say the past three months have been ``the worst summer for waves in recent memory,'' many visitors and even locals don't seem bummed out about the bad breaks. That's better than most Eastern beaches can boast.
And the Outer Banks' best surf months are still ahead: late September through mid-May.
``On good days, you can compare this place to an average day in Rocky Point, Hawaii, or some California beaches,'' says Matt Walker, a 22-year-old Kill Devil Hills surfer and occassional writer for Surfer Magazine. ``On the bad days, you've usually got something to catch with a long board if you've gotta get out.''
Bednarek estimates that about half of the days of the year there are surfable waves somewhere in Dare County. Half of that time, he says, they're usually lousy.
Sometimes they're really rad.
``We've got a lot of power in our waves here,'' says Walker, who moved to the Outer Banks from Virginia Beach to surf. ``They jack you up and throw you. They're more demanding waves. You don't have time to drop back and think about what you're doing. You just have to ride on. It gets pretty hairy out there in the ocean at times.
``But this is a pretty mellow place to hang out.''
Weather to surf
In California and Hawaii, surfing began developing in the late 1950s as a seaside subculture. Popular films and musical performers picked up the sport by the early '60s. Later that decade, surfers started skimming the waves all along the Outer Banks.
``I saw the first wooden surfboard down here in the late 1930s, when Tommy Fearing built one after hearing about surfing from Hawaii,'' Outer Banks historian David Stick says. ``It took six men to handle that board. It was very big, very clumsy, eight or nine feet long and made of juniper.
``I'm not sure anybody ever stood up on it,'' Stick recalls.
By the late 1960s, Stick says, surfing had become popular along the still-sparsely populated barrier islands.
Hatteras Island native Johnny Conner Jr. caught his first wave in 1964. As a teenager, he sold some of the area's first surfboards. He's now 45 and runs the only supermarket in Buxton, across from the world famous surf spot: The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.
``Very few people surfed back then. And we looked forward to them coming when they did,'' Conner says of late 1960s' surfing safari groups. ``If the surf was good, they'd stay so long they'd run out of money. Those guys'd have to sell a board to stay - if they wanted to eat. I bought lots of used boards for $25 or $30 those summers. Rented them out for $10 a day.''
By the early '70s, the Outer Banks - and the Hatteras black-and-white-striped beacon in particular - had become known as a magnet for East Coast swell seekers. Jim Vaughn opened one of the area's first surf stores at Nags Head's Whalebone Junction in 1975. Today, his Whalebone Surf Shop is one of more than 20 that line the roads.
``This area is a popular surf spot for several reasons, location and weather especially,'' Vaughn says. ``We're mid-Atlantic, central for people from Florida to New Jersey. We've got better waves than Florida most months. And we're warmer than New England.
``We're also in the deepest part of the Atlantic . . . and we can pick up more swells and work the wind directions more to our advantage. Plus, we've got piers, hundreds of off-shore wrecks and sandbars that shift around forming the uneven bottom which dictates the shape of the waves.
``We get sandbar tubes here. That's our unique trait. The waves break close to shore and make really hollow barrels.
``Some really have a lot of juice.''
Outer Banks Surfrider Foundation president Brant Wise says the proximity of the Gulf Stream and the numerous storms also help build waves.
But there are other reasons people choose to surf off the barrier islands, Wise says, singling out the Outer Banks' openness in both environment and attitude.
Soul surfing
``There's a lot more to surfing than what movies and marketers show you,'' says Wise, a Chesapeake, Va., native who has been surfing Nags Head and spots south for 14 years and now lives on Colington Island. ``There's a chance to become part of your environment, sit out there in the ocean by yourself, get the rhythm of the swell.
``You see the dolphins, turtles and whales come up beside you sometimes,'' adds Wise, who works at a local coastal engineering firm and surfs whenever he gets the chance. ``. . . You stumble on so much more of the natural beauty that way. You become so much more in tune with the ocean.''
Older surfers - in their mid-20s and up - are more associated with ``soul surfing'' and environmental awareness than their younger counterparts, Wise says. Younger surfers are more radical, performing skateboarding-type stunts.
``Most younger guys, now, are more aggressive in their styles, the tricks they can do, the aerials and 360s they can land,'' Wise says. ``Then there are the people who are more laid back, riding the wave instead of working it to get the most out of it. Older guys tend to use the wave energy, enjoy its form and power, and may ride longer boards. The younger ones are getting a lot more radical and competitive with their stunts and shortboards.''
At age 28, Wise and his peers are on that cusp between the surf-for-yourself and surf-to-compete set.
New Jersey native Patricia Wood, also 28, moved to Nags Head four years ago to surf. She has an accounting degree from East Carolina University but drives a taxi cab every night. She entered her first surfing competition this spring.
``When I was 12, I used to ride on this raft in the ocean. I loved it. Then I looked over and saw the surfers,'' Wood says. ``I saved my baby-sitting money and helped my brother on his paper route until I'd earned $100. Bought my first surfboard. I was obsessed.
``I can't work days because I know if there are waves, I have to get out there and ride them,'' says Wood, who bought a one-way ticket to Hawaii for October. ``It's a lifestyle. We talk about it all day. I wake up thinking about it first thing in the morning.
``If there's good surf, I'm out there six hours a day,'' says Wood, one of a half-dozen serious female surfers who live on the Outer Banks.
Surfin' safaris
For many out-of-town surfers, the Outer Banks may seem too good to be true. Not only are there good waves at least half the time, there also are no rules.
And since much of the coastline is owned by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service or National Park Service, surfers from all across the country can feel like they belong.
Unlike Virginia Beach where surfers are restricted to two specific blocks of breaks, relegated to only a few hours a day in other areas or fined $50 and more for drifting out of bounds, Dare County's towns and officials don't regulate surfing - except for 300 feet around piers.
Most are careful not to bother surf fishermen, families, or other folk floating on rafts.
``Not all surfers realize how lucky they are on the Outer Banks to have the freedom to surf,'' says Bednarek, the surf shop manager who also serves as the Eastern Surfing Association's district director. ``Surfers need to preserve that freedom by minding their P's and Q's and not screwing up. They need to appreciate the allowances they've been given - and the local attitudes of acceptance.''
While surfers in other areas often shun outsiders, Outer Banks surfers are usually friendly, visiting surfers said. It's been that way since the '60s, Bednarek says, and that friendliness has become part of the Outer Banks' aura.
``Surfers, back then, would drive up and down the road with thumbs up for good waves or down for bad. That would save whoever passed you with boards on his roof the ride down the beach.
``In the '70s, you could close your shop for waves. Put a `Gone Surfin' sign on the door. People understood.
``Then, in the '80s, surfing just went psycho,'' Bednarek says. ``Everyone had a board. Even if they didn't ride them. Surf shops sprung up all over the place. It really became a business.''
Now surfers rely on Weather Channel predictions or $2-per-minute 900-number surf reports. Many surf shops offer recorded surf condition updates.
Boards have gotten shorter, from 7-foot-plus to 6-foot-2 and under. Prices have soared, up to $550. But you can still buy a used board for under $100.
And that's all you need to catch a wave.
``It's a good, clean sport that doesn't pollute the environment,'' says Conner, whose 17-year-old son is surfing in Costa Rica. ``Out there in the water, you can get your mind straight. You can just sort of be.''
``It's definitely a rush,'' Walker echoes. ``. . . It takes over. I don't think about anything else when I'm in the water. I just want to ride that swell into the beach.
``It hurts my stomach when I see a pretty set coming in and I'm not riding it. I mean, it's just such a waste. Why let a good wave go by?'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by DREW C. WILSON
An Outer Banks surfer goes off the lips of a summer swell off the
beach at Nags Head.
Brant Wise, president of the Outer Banks Chapter of the Surfrider
Foundation, collects boards used on the Outer Banks.
SURFING GLOSSARY
Half the challenge of learning to surf is learning the lingo.
Following is selected surf slang, as defined in the Surfin'ary,
edited by Trevor Cralle of Ten Speed Press:
Action: activity, usually in the ocean
Aqua boot: to vomit in the ocean
Axed: to be knocked off a surfboard by the lip of a wave
Barney: a non-surfer
Betty: an attractive female, derived from the ``Flintstones''
character
Big Mama: the ocean
Boardhead: a surfer
Bogus: a lame idea or concept
Bummer: depressed, bad
Chapped: see ``bummer''
Clueless: one who does not quite understand life
Dialed: tuned in
Dude: see ``boardhead''
Epic: something of grand proportions
Excellent: great, fantastic
Flow: to get something for free
Full-on: completely
Gnarly: drastic
Inland squid: tourist
Jazzed: excited
Kak: see ``barney''
Later for that: forget it
Locie: (pronounced LOW-key) a local, regular surfer at a
particular beach
Log: a long, heavy surfboard.
Not: a surfer's way of turning a positive into a negative, coined
by ``Saturday Night Live'' characters Wayne and Garth.
Rad: super cool
Raw: happening, hot
Righteous: something that's right-on
Rule: to be in complete control
Sacred: cool
Shine: leave it behind
Skeggin': see ``excellent''
Soaker: a surfer who just sits on his board, soaking up the sun
and saltwater
Spock: to peruse, or look over
Stoked: see ``jazzed''
Stokin': see ``righteous''
Straight out: I mean it
Surf: to ride the stuff of life
Surfurbs: neighborhoods near a beach
Totally: see ``full-on''
Wanker: see ``barney''
Way: very
Map
Area Shown: Outer Banks
by CNB