16 minute read
The Next Great Wave
Surfers find thrills, spills – and peace –rıding the rocky sea
By Jill Armstrong / Photography by Brian Yurasits
The sun is rising as I sit precariously on the back edge of my surfboard, waiting for a series of waves, known as a set, to roll in. Surfer Christina Dubin has graciously offered to take me out for a refresher session on this mellow September morning.
While I admire the cotton-candy pink hues filling in the clear sky, Dubin paddles hard into a wave, popping up and turning to the right before riding in toward the beach.
Deciding to go for the next wave, I turn the nose of my board toward the shoreline and lie flat across its surface, making small adjustments as I feel around for the “sweet spot” near the center. I begin paddling aggressively before the wave approaches, creating momentum with each stroke. As the wave arrives, I feel my board lift.
From the shore, I hear my friend Brian yell, “Go! Go! Go!” so I move through the sequence I’ve been taught: Place hands under shoulders, arch back, pop up into lunge.
But my timing isn’t quite right. Realizing I should have taken two or three more strokes before standing, I paddle gently back out to sea to sit and wait for another set to move in.
“It’s 99 percent paddling, right?” Dubin reminds me later. “That ride is such a small part of it, even though it’s what releases all the endorphins.”
I bob up and down in the water, waiting for the right wave, but it’s not clicking for me. Throughout the session, I find that I’m sitting too far out to catch those waves or paddling into the crest way before it starts to peel. Other times, I’m positioned too far forward on my board and end up pearling, or nosediving, tumbling into the crumbling white water.
Surfing, I’ve learned, is really about trial and error.
“It’s all about patience. Patience with yourself and then also being OK with whatever is there for you in the moment,” Dubin says. “Working with that and just getting out here.”
In his Pulitzer Prize winning memoir, “Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life,” war journalist and lifelong surfer William Finnegan shares a memory from his childhood as a 10-year-old Californian learning to surf. On a cold winter afternoon in Ventura, Finnegan stumbles back to his father’s car, exhausted and bleeding. His father won’t let him quit, demanding he go back out and catch three more waves. “In his version of the story, that was when I became a surfer,” Finnegan writes of that day.
When I arrived at Rye’s Jenness Beach to meet Dubin, the sky was still dark. And while it was only the first weekend in September, the air temperature was crawling toward 60 degrees.
In the lot that morning, I listened to surfers chat among themselves about the waves, sizing up the swell as they stood atop the concrete wall, wetsuits pulled only halfway up their bodies. I watched others spread dry wax in small circular motions across the surface of their boards, a technique for providing extra grip in the water.
Dubin and I met that morning for “dawn patrol,” a time when surfers head out extra early to catch waves. Some surfers — those who can avoid hitting the snooze button — prefer surfing in the early hours because it’s less crowded, amplifying the ocean’s tranquility.
“Surfing allowed me to experience the beach in a way I hadn’t before,” Dubin said. “Watching the sunrise, you know, being in the water, it's soul food. It's spiritual.”
With only a fling of sandpipers scuttling across the beach and a mere glimpse of the sun revealed, our morning out on the water felt like a real-life reconnaissance mission, scouting uncharted terrain.
Eventually, I pop up into a standing position on my board and ride a wave halfway to shore. My arms are heavy, and my legs are wobbly as I struggle to find my balance. Mostly, though, I try to hold on to the moment as it unfolds, the energy of the water carrying me along. It’s a feeling that stays with me back on land.
Catching waves
There are plenty of opportunities for beginners to catch waves along the New Hampshire seacoast during the summer season when the weather is warm and the waves tend to be smaller and more manageable.
When I asked around, many surfers recommended I speak with Cropper — Dave Cropper, that is — owner of Cinnamon Rainbows surf shop in North Hampton.
“For people that want to learn how to surf, the biggest thing to do is just, you know, educate yourself, then you'll have such a better time,” he said from his temporary shop on Route 1. (The Ocean Boulevard location burned down in a fire last fall, but the crew hopes to be back in that original spot soon).
Between May and September when weather and conditions permit, novice surfers can rent a surfboard and a wetsuit, take a lesson or join one of the many weekly camps that run for kids or adults.
“Surfing, you can see a lot of people in the water on a good day, but there's etiquette and rules in the water,” Cropper said. “So, you need to learn those so that everyone who is out there has fun and stays safe and doesn't just crash into each other.”
Surfing is different from other sports for a variety of reasons. For one, there aren’t officials out in the water enforcing the rules, like a court-side referee or ski patrollers on a mountain, so it’s important for beginners to educate themselves and not to overestimate their ability.
“The surf always looks bigger when you are in the water than it does on the camera,” he added.
Another detail that makes surfing unique is that no wave is the same. The ocean is constantly moving and changing, making the act of surfing incomparable to dropping into the same skate ramp every time or shooting free-throws from behind the same line. Surfing is all about learning how to read the water, which involves understanding the tides, the wind direction and the swell.
“Part of the fun about surfing is learning all this knowledge,” Cropper said. “Knowing when you think the waves will be good and where you should be.”
Cinnamon Rainbows, which has become a coastal staple, first opened in North Hampton in 1983. Cropper bought his first surfboard from the shop, and began working there shortly after. He took over Cinnamon Rainbows after high school and has been there ever since.
“It was a dream come true for me,” he said with an ear-to-ear grin. Running the shop on his own at the start, Cropper recalled how he would put a “Gone Surfing” sign in the window when the waves were good. He’d often see customers out surfing, asking when he might be back at the shop. “ ‘I’ll be back in an hour,’ ” he’d tell them. “ ‘See you there!’ ”
“It’s just so funny how simple it was,” Cropper said.
Another iconic venue directly across from Jenness Beach in Rye is Summer Sessions surf shop, run by brother-duo Ryan and Tyler McGill. The shop has been open for 21 years and is known for its rentals, lessons and especially its kids summer programming.
When I caught up with Ryan McGill on a gray and blustery day on the coast, he reflected fondly on the kids’ camps, explaining how the kids he taught when they were 9 and 10 years old have now become coaches at 19 and 20.
“We’re in this beautiful circle,” he said. “To see those kids growing up and having it be a part of their life is the most special part for us.”
For McGill, September is one of the most beautiful months for surfing in New England. The water is warm, and, for experienced surfers, hurricane season offers larger, more challenging waves. In New Hampshire, avid surfers vie for waves all year long, but the best times to catch waves — the months of November, December and January — come with the most extreme weather.
“You really have to be focused and love the sport to be able to put on the hood, put on the boots and gloves and jump out there in the snow,” McGill said. “And that I think is why people from around the world are like, ‘You’re going out in 2 feet of snow?’ and you’re like ‘Yeah, yeah, it’s amazing.’ ”
Ryan and Tyler have traveled all over the world to surf, but they admit there’s something special about the nooks and crannies of New Hampshire’s coastline. “We just have to wait for the times that are right. And when they are, you kind of want to drop everything to be there and see it.”
Surfing up a storm
In October, I return to the seacoast as a spectator. A highly-anticipated swell has been forecasted, one powered by Tropical Storm Philippe in the Atlantic.
I arrive again before sunrise and make my way onto a rocky beach. The ocean seems to be screaming as the tide pulls water back violently over the stone-covered floor before the whitewater churns and slams powerfully onto the shore.
The waves are forecast to be double overhead, or twice the height of the surfer standing up, anywhere from 8 to 10 feet tall. The scene before me is intimidating, and I pull my hood over my head as I watch a lone surfer wade into the water, the sun a faint glow appearing on the horizon.
Eventually, more surfers file in, boards tucked under their arms. I notice duct tape holding one surfer’s boot together, and I smell a familiar blend of sunscreen and neoprene despite the thermometer barely reaching 50 degrees.
But this is the time for advanced surfers to be out on the water. It’s hurricane season, and the waves have been “firing on all cylinders,” as many have put it.
As the sun lifts high into the sky and the day grows warm, the crowd in the water multiplies. I watch riders on longboards drop steeply into waves and cruise gently down the line. Others make quick moves on shortboards before executing sharp cutbacks up the faces of the waves to slow their speed.
Well after sunrise, I find Ralph Fatello, a longtime New England surfer, surf photographer and surf blogger, who, at the age of 73, has been surfing for over 60 years. Somewhere along the line, he got interested in photography, and for the last 20 years, he’s published a surfing blog every week on Sundays.
To say Fatello is a legend in the New England surf community would be an understatement.
“Every now and then I still get barreled,” Fatello says from our perch on the bouldered seawall. He’s referring to a barrel ride, which involves maneuvering inside the hollow part of the wave, an area covered completely by the wave’s curled lip. “I can grab a rail and kind of just crunch my 73-year-old-body down into like 2 feet and get inside a little wave. That still is enough of a motivation to make me want to go out.”
We watch several wetsuit-clad figures ride barreling waves. One minute they seem trapped inside, and the next they are gracefully exiting the mouth of the barrel, legs slightly bent and arms hanging casually by their sides.
The sun is bright, illuminating the spit, or spray of water, that shoots out and upward from the inside of a barrel as the wave collapses.
There was a vibrant surf scene in New England in the 1960s with pros like Dewey Weber and Mike Doyle visiting the area to surf. When the shift from longboard surfboards to shortboards occurred, the area experienced a lull in surfing since the waves weren’t always prime for shorter boards. But in the 1980s, when board sports like snowboarding and skateboarding exploded in popularity, surfing made a comeback.
And Fatello has been around for it all.
Fatello first discovered surfing when his father pointed it out on a black and white television set. “It was instantaneous. I was mesmerized by it. I’d never seen anything like that before.”
The first time Fatello went out surfing in 1963, he used an 11-foot paddle board that his babysitter brought back from her honeymoon in Waikiki. It was a hollow plank made of plywood. Oftentimes, Fatello and his friends would be scrambling as it took on water.
They also didn’t have leashes (devices that keep the rider attached to the board), so if a big set knocked him off his board, he’d have to swim back into shore, grab it, and paddle back out.
Fatello laughs thinking about the wetsuits of that age. “We had to wear divers’ suits. You had a jacket that buckled between your legs like it was a beaver tail. And you wore these pants that would fill up with water. It was archaic.”
Surf equipment technologies today make it accessible for many beginners to get out on the water. Wetsuits allow surfers to be warm and comfortable, and soft-top boards provide more stability and buoyancy, making it easier to catch and ride a wave.
“The thing about surfing is that it just generates excitement and generates that positive energy that people want to be around,” Fatello says. “It's something good to be part of you know, especially when there's waves.”
After a brief pause, he adds: “When there's no waves, we're miserable. We're a miserable tribe.”
I spend hours with Fatello as he snaps photographs of his friends, capturing the memorable swell. Sea-soaked surfers come and go from our perch on the seawall, asking Fatello where to paddle out next, comparing the break at different known surf spots in the area, and reminiscing about the swell from Hurricane Lee that kept many out for days on end last September.
For most surfers I’ve met, surfing isn’t just a sport for entertainment. It’s a way of life. Some even describe it as an addiction: When Mother Nature is calling, you drop everything and go.
To others, it’s something even more profound.
“I need to tell you that surfing saved my life,” Fatello tells me from behind his camera when we are alone again.
At the age of 17, Fatello joined the Marine Corps. By 18, he was sent to Vietnam where he served as a grunt infantryman for three years. When he returned from the war, he was in a very dark place.
“My mantra is, ‘Surfing heals all wounds,’” Fatello says. “And surfing saved my life.”
The two of us sit in silence, watching the sets roll in. I close my eyes and let the sunshine wash over my face. Not long after, the conversation starts up again, and Fatello points out that waves travel thousands of miles before arriving along the coast.
A surfer, he concludes, popping up in that exact place at that exact time, essentially rides the wave at the end of its life, which makes the moment special to capture on film.
Staring through his viewfinder, the lens pointed out to sea, Fatello continues without being prompted.
“That sensation of riding on a wave, surfing on a wave that’s this living liquid matter," he says. "There’s nothing like that. It’s just incredible, you know?”
I think I’m starting to get the picture.
Iconic Shops Bring the Love of Surf & Sun to NH
We can’t talk about the vibrant New Hampshire surf scene without mentioning Cinnamon Rainbows and Summer Sessions. These shops have been synonymous with New Hampshire beaching and surfing since they first opened their doors.
Cinnamon Rainbows Surf Company
This shop on Ocean Boulevard has been a staple of the New Hampshire surf scene since 1984. Whether you’re professionally hanging-ten or learning how to catch a wave, Cinnamon Rainbows offers a wide selection of boards and gear, as well as a steady stream of events.
Owner Dave Cropper grew up on the beach, and has worked at the surf shop since he was in high school. He took over the store from founder Todd Walker in 1989, when he was in his early 20s, and has loved every minute.
“I’ve been lucky enough to surf all over,” Cropper said. “Surfing in New Hampshire is cold and inconsistent. It takes a commitment, but you get good waves year-round, and the cold makes you appreciate the summer months.”
Even though a fire in 2022 caused Cinnamon Rainbows to temporarily relocate to North Hampton, Cropper is thankful that they have still been able to host events and run business as usual.
“We’re still able to have events and run the shop,” he said. “Three times a year, we have our ‘Surfing with Smiles’ program, where we offer free lessons for special-needs kids. We also have an annual event at the end of August with the Wounded Warrior Project.”
Summer Sessions Surf Shop
Summer Sessions owners Ryan and Tyler McGill live to surf and have been catching waves for as long as they can remember. While the brothers have surfed all over the world, there’s something special about New Hampshire, they say.
“It is hard to beat this surf community and the days when it is going off at the breaks you grew up at,” said Ryan on the Summer Sessions
website. “I have found where I want to be and what makes me happy ... it’s a pretty good feeling. There's nothing wrong with having surfing on your mind all the time.”
"Although I love being on the road, it is hard for me to imagine not being at home for the summer at the shop,” said Tyler in his bio.
Within the past year, Summer Sessions has expanded from their original location on Ocean Boulevard in Rye and opened a storefront in downtown Portsmouth on Congress Street. Both feature boards, fins, sunglasses, swimsuits, hats, comfy clothes and more.
— Elisa Gonzales Verdi
