On the Diminishing Returns of Watching Other Men Surf

I spend less time in the water than I used to or, for that matter, than most of you. But the flame still burns.

I work, a lot.

Have kids at various life stages, both accomplished young adults and still in grommet hood.

Business partners who, at times, irritate me more than VALs drifting on the inside during a proper clean summer swell.

A life partner who, thankfully, is more like the grizzled local who calls you into the best wave of the set — but for whom I put in no little effort to reciprocate the love.

My six year old is now a baseball fanatic who wants to spend all our spare time playing catch in the yard, or going to batting cages, or playing MLB the Show ’26, or watching games on TV, or even attending a few here and there.

Reality is I spend less time in the water than I used to or, for that matter, than most of you.

But the flame still burns.

To feed it, at least in part, I consume more surf media than a (supposedly) mature adult man ever should.

IG clips, pods, short flics, longer ones, random video series on that other site, and frequent ramblings with the motley cornucopia of wannabe (and legit) core lords who frequent the space below the line at this fine confectionary of ultra hard surf candy.

Late at night when the sandman visits the rest of the house, or on long business trip flights, I scroll and comment and view and listen.

But, since I’m a white male in his 50s, much of it leaves me cold, cynical and uninspired (present company excluded, of course).

And I’ve often wondered: what exactly is it that I’m looking for?

Why doesn’t just any finely executed barrel do it for me?

What is it about yet another air reverse that causes me to yawn, again?

So I’ve started paying closer attention to what gets me off, surf wise.

I noticed that, almost every time, when a clip shows the moments before take off — the set as it approaches, the paddle into position, the takeoff and drop — I’m way more locked in than when it shows only a segment of the wave or a single maneuver.

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When I see the lead up before the surfer catches the wave, it’s like I can feel the board under me and the anticipation of a wave approaching, all the butterflies and heart in your throat expectation, like I’m there in the water about to take off with the guy (or girl) in the clip.

Same thing with paddle outs.

Seeing someone on the beach, timing the sets, sprint paddling through the wash — it fires me up.

All of which has made me realize — what I really want is to see or hear or experience something that puts me right back in the water.

Like the surf version of the first 24 minutes of Saving Private Ryan. 

Just by way of example, there was this one day on the Outer Banks a few years back.

It was summer.

Outside the seasonal windows when you would usually expect to see waves on the East Coast.

Mostly, winter and hurricane season (particularly September) are when you see it turn on.

But this was not winter, and too early in summer for the tropics to truly fire.

Yet through some butterfly wing off the coast of Africa magic, a proper swell lit up the OBX from north of Corolla all the way down south to Ocracoke.

I happened to be staying there for the week, trying to catch a few days of respite from the locomotive that was my typical daily grind in Hampton Roads.

That particular day, I woke up in my beach-access-path-adjacent cottage with hope that the forecast wasn’t a whiff.

Blowing the steam off my morning cup of java, I clambered up over the sand dune just a few minutes after the sun had done the same over the eastern horizon.

The forecast wasn’t a whiff.

Far from it.

The ocean was pockmarked with spitting cylinders, as far as the eye could see, in both directions.

Further out, lines of swell marched in, the ocean landscape feathered with whitewater here, there and beyond, as the swell energy fondled unseen sandbars on its odyssey toward the coast.

Wave heights are peculiar things.

As a kid, anything less than a 10 foot face was 6 feet and under.

Nowadays, feels like the measurements are flipped upside down.

But this day was a proper double overhead — assign whatever metric measurement you want, it was at least two of my 5’10” frame stacked on top of one another, a little more when a stronger pulse rolled through.

I took a deep draw of my coffee.

The adrenaline started to pump.

I turned and half skipped, half ran back toward my cottage and gear.

Every nerve ending tingled, like someone had just injected a dozen energy drinks straight into my arteries.

But first, the paddle out.

There are no channels on the OBX.

The swell marches in, hits a sandbar, and blows up in shallow water.

Given the shorter swell periods, lulls tend to evaporate quickly and unexpectedly, and waves peak from surprising directions.

Paddle outs are a gladiator pit.

This day, thankfully, was sunny and, despite the early hour, blessedly warm.

No neoprene required.

Duck dive deeper, paddle faster.

That didn’t make it any less hectic.

I stood on the wet sand.

Wrapped the leash around my right ankle.

Took long, slow, deep breaths, in a failed attempt to throttle down my racing heartbeat.

Looked for likely rip currents that might help suck me past the maelstrom.

Sprinted down the beach, leaped over the shore break, and started paddling like a tiger shark was nipping at my tail pad.

As the first line of whitewater approached, I built up as much speed as I could possibly muster in the foam-filled wash, shoved the nose of my thruster deep down toward the sand, and dove after it.

I simultaneously kicked the tail down and pulled the board and my body under and forward.

The surf gods were smiling on me, or at least winking at each other and not actively seeking to punish me for all my past transgressions.

Rather than drag me along for the ride, the Iine passed cleanly overhead.

But as I popped through on the other side, the after pull threatened to suck me back.

I fought gamely against its sinister gravity, straining to escape and hit a tiny aperture that had opened up a few meters away where the rip was pushing its way out to open sea.

I put my head down and paddled like I was 17 again, whispering “deeper, harder, stronger” to myself as I clawed for the shrinking hole between charging infantries of whitewash, even as invisible forces tugged at me from behind.

After a few desperate paddles, I felt the forces ease.

My board surged forward as I dug even harder and deeper.

The converging lines of foam and I hit the rip hole at about the same moment.

I dove down deep, again, just as the energy of the two competing swells slammed into each other.

The explosion momentarily redirected their energy upward and gave me the microsecond of relief I needed to slip under and punch up behind them before the full kinetic surge of their convergence swept away everything in its path.

The water ahead was (relatively) clear.

After a few more (slightly less frantic) encounters, I made it out the back.

In my fifth decade, that accomplishment alone merited a celebration.

So I sat there, just outside the impact zone, hands on hips, bobbing and panting on my sub 6-0 PU, feeling that nearly indescribable mix of exhaustion and euphoria — in a word, triumphant.

Then I looked at the horizon.

A set approached.

The waves were already feathering, their energy caressing some shallower bottom formation way, way out the back.

The adrenaline kicked in, again.

My stomach started to flip.

I pushed back against the fight or flight urge to sprint paddle further outside.

The logic part of my brain knew the feathering would taper off, the set would fatten up, and then each individual wave would reform again as it marched closer to my spot.

So I laid down on my board and started a slow, semi-circular paddle, all the while gauging the set as it approached, dissecting which wave would set up best for my position, trying to ground the electricity buzzing from my every pore.

There were a handful of other surfers in the water, but OBX beach breaks being what they are, no one was near enough to matter.

The first wave of the set looked bumpy, unfinished.

But the second was standing up, tall and clean.

I could see the shadows deepen on its face as it stood more vertical the closer it approached.

I paddled toward the darkest section of the shadows, spinning as the wave loomed over me, digging deep.

That instant, for me, is among the apex moments in our sometimes silly little ocean pastime.

The wave is clean, tall, and peaking.

You’re in the spot.

You’ve committed.

There’s no pulling back.

Any second now, you’ll feel the surge under your board.

Your mind is already subconsciously tripping out on the anticipated sights and sensations of being up on a wave.

It’s pretty close to nirvana.

But back to the OBX.

The wave surged under me.

I popped to my feet, a millisecond slower than I would have a couple decades earlier.

But the feeling hadn’t changed since my 20s.

The rail bit.

The fins held.

The long green wall tapered off in front of me.

I leaned off the bottom, check turned, and watched the lip pitch overhead.

And that, my dear friends, is what I’ve decided keeps me coming back for more of these too often unappetizing morsels of surf adjacent content.

If what I see, hear or read can trigger any memory from that day, and scores more like them, just for a moment — the smell of the salt in the air, the feel of the wet sand, the adrenaline of the frantic paddle, the sensation of a set approaching, the full nirvana of making the drop and timing the section just right — I’ll hit like, and subscribe, and ring your stupid dumb ass bells.

It doesn’t take much — just a little hit of paradise.