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FeedA New Wave
The bad boys of surfing are a thing of the past. As the author proves, the sport has experienced a sea change.
Vetern surfer Brett Bouchler is helping a new breed of surfer get
their feet wet. Photograph by Keith Mosher, www.kamproductions.com
I am sitting in the ocean a few yards from the beach,
straddling a 9-foot surfboard made of soft foam. Foam is good. Should the board hit me during a wipeout, it won’t hurt as much as the typical hard board would. I haven’t caught a wave yet, but, feeling excited, nervous, and a little out of place, I am sure I may wipe out.
I’ll admit it: I’d always fantasized about learning to surf. But I was reluctant to try. I’m a 40-something mother. Surfing, I’d always thought, was a sport for cool young guys. Yet after talking to an assortment of experts and optimists, I was somehow swayed to believe that it’s never too late to learn.
So there I was, surf instructor Brett Bouchler of Surf Sessions in Fenwick Island floating behind me, ready to push me into an oncoming wave.
“Here it comes,” Bouchler said. “This is it. Paddle, paddle, paddle! Stand up!”
Bouchler, a teacher in the Indian River School District, has surfed around the world for over 30 years. He has taught the sport for the past 15 summers. It is, he says, a different game than it was 20 years ago.
Our class proved it. True, the average age of our 10-person group was 16. But skewing the numbers a bit were me and another student, Larry, age 54.
Larry and I are part of an evolution of the surfing culture. The sport has transcended a bad-boy reputation to become, somehow, mainstream. “When I first started teaching, parents were almost hesitant to drop kids off,” says Bouchler.
No more, says Art Baltrosky, director of the Delmarva District of the Eastern Surfing Association and a surfer for almost 30 years. He remembers surfing in the 1980s as “extremely aggro. It wasn’t a friendly scene.” But today’s surfing contests are family events that promote a healthy way of life. “We have different generations competing,” Baltrosky says. “The whole vibe is unreal.”
Dale Loeser, owner of The Quiet Storm surf shops in Rehoboth Beach and Lewes and a surfer since 1980, agrees. “Those original bad boys have grown up and had children and probably become more conservative,” he says. “Now they’re surfing with their kids.”
Surfing has been popular in Delaware since the mid-1960s, having ridden in on a tide that swept the California Coast in the 1940s and ’50s and popularized in such movies as “The Endless Summer” in the mid-1960s. Surf shops began to pop up locally, and the culture spread. Those in the know truly made their summers endless by surfing here year round, and to outsiders and summer-only visitors who scoffed at the idea that local waves rarely get large or good, they just smiled.
Surf follows a season, just like fresh produce. Summer brings endless weeks of high pressure systems that keep the ocean flat. By August, hurricane season begins, and devoted surfers begin watching The Weather Channel and scanning websites for signs of low pressure systems in the tropics and Eastern Atlantic that may turn into big, bad wave-making machines. Winter and spring see a preponderance of northeast storms that send swells from a different direction.
Surfers watch all of this with great interest, then, based on the size of a swell, its direction and the direction of local winds, and the timing of tides, head for beaches where they know waves will break best. But waves break on every beach at every time of the day and year here. Advances in wetsuits make the sport a year-round pursuit.
Women have noticed the charms of surfing in Delaware, too. Another big change in the scene has been their influx. Absent from the water 20 years ago, “The number of women surfers has blown up,” says Loeser. “It’s been kind of a gradual thing, all definitely within the last decade.” The Delmarva ESA hosted its first wahine (Hawaiian slang for “woman”) surf competition in 2007. There were 85 participants. Among them was Loeser’s daughter.
In the old days of surfing, novices just picked up a board and hit the water. Today’s newbies have many advantages, including the availability of lessons. In southern Delaware, surfing wannabes can contact Surf Sessions in Fenwick Island (245-7964) for lessons with Bouchler. Bouchler charges $40 for the first lesson and $20 for subsequent lessons. Dale Loeser at the Quiet Storm directs customers to the Rehoboth Boarding School (270-8103) for lessons south of Dewey Beach. Liquid Surf Shop in Rehoboth Beach partners with the Rehoboth YMCA for a children’s surf camp and directs customers to private lessons.
The heightened interest prompts a question: Can anyone master the sport?
Sitting on the beach, watching experienced surfers, it seems easy. Yet anyone who has ever tried will tell you it’s not as easy as it looks. They will also reassure you that, though it may take some longer to grasp, anyone can do it. “Age does not matter,” Bouchler says “My friend Mort was here today, and he was surfing.” (Mort does not like to give his age, but Bouchler puts him at “80 something.”)
Surfing is a physical and a mental sport. Though it is important to remember the mechanics involved, it is equally as important to “feel the wave,” Bouchler says. “If you think too much, you’ll get stuck.”
Bouchler advises students to practice the “pop up” before a lesson. The pop up is surfing’s clutch move, the act of quickly gaining one’s feet while his board is propelled by a wave. It involves starting in a pushup position on the ground, then, keeping the head and chest up, pushing or popping into a standing position in a single fluid motion. After practicing the pop up several times, a pattern will develop: One of your feet will naturally emerge as the forward foot.
Watching experienced surfers practice their craft before taking a lesson is a good thing to do. And, of course, a basic understanding and respect of the ocean and its power is a must.
Of course, you must be able to swim. Strong swimming skills are key to overall competence, and vital for safety in a wipe out. Before my lesson, Loeser advised swimming laps at the pool to build endurance and upper body strength for paddling the board. “You’ve got to paddle,” Bouchler told me. “That’s the key to surfing.” Paddling allows surfers to get the board up to speed to catch a wave.
Before my lesson, I practiced my pop ups, then arrived on the beach in Fenwick at 7:15 a.m. for a session scheduled to last two and a half hours (or until the lifeguards kicked us out of the water at 10 a.m.) Bouchler then moved us down to Ocean City, where the waves were breaking better. He handed me a board to start on and, after attaching a leash to my knee so the board wouldn’t drift away after a wipeout, I prepared to hit the surf with the other first-timer, a 12-year-old boy. His mom and some other parents (around my age) cheered us on. With Bouchler and his son at our sides, we paddled our boards through the waves.
“This is it,” Bouchler shouted as a wave approached. I paddled hard until I felt the wave below me, tried to pop up—then fell. Another wave approached. I paddled, popped—then fell again. We repeated the ritual several times. Sometimes I would just roll off the board like a seal off an iceberg. I looked over to see how the 12-year-old was doing. He was already standing on his board.
Bouchler was kind, patient and encouraging. After a few missteps, I felt a little banged up. Then another wave approached. Again, I paddled, tried to pop up—and did. I did it twice more that morning. I was stoked.
So at the end of the lesson, I could say I got up on the board. I could also say I stabilized the board and rode in a wave. Did I do them simultaneously? Well, no. But I know I will be able to—and I intend to keep trying.
While I experienced both physical and mental challenges to surfing during my lesson, there are also great benefits to the sport. “If you get hooked on surfing, you will get in better shape than you imagined and you will feel so healthy,” says Baltrosky. On the mental side, most surfers find it therapeutic. “I can be having the worst day and it can make everything all better,” says Loeser. “It can be a total stress release, even if the waves are totally pitiful.”
Expertise, apparently, is not a prerequisite for these benefits. Bouchler’s favorite old surfing quote: “The best surfer out there is the one having the most fun.”
