Ocean City finally gets good … Sorta

Written By Trevor Moran on May 27th, 2010 with 1 Comment.

As per KR’s Post, the waves finally were rideable in Ocean City the other day. The weather warmed up, raising the ocean temp, and bringing a solid ground swell. I saw the forecast about a week ago and tracked it up til D-Day. I managed to set myself up to have off work and penciled in a full day of surf for Wednesday. South East swell, 6 feet at 11 seconds, light SSW winds on Tuesday, with super light NW on Wednesday morning – an epic setup and guaranteed fun waves. Well, this is Ocean City we’re talking about, so maybe not.

Tuesday afternoon I was cruising through my work trying to get out the door as soon as possible. I was a machine. Sped down to 1st street and was greeted by just about everyone one else in the town who could find a surfboard. So many old faces I thought it was an NSSA from ’93 – pretty sure I saw Rich Slesh on the beach. The winds weren’t exactly light, but close enough, and I hadn’t surfed in Jersey for the better part of 4 months, so I was out there. I quickly remembered how lame the jetty hopping routine is – paddling under eachother, getting wrapped up in rips, and dropping in on waves that have 5 side chops to ride into a mushy deep water shoulder. Quickly I decided to jump ship, and paddled over the jetty to 2nd street where I met close out after closeout with the endless rip soup slurring around on the inside which you hit as soon as you stand up. Eventually I went back to the original location, pulled in to a couple closeout barrels and kept patiently waiting for a wave that actually bowled. It finally came in, but I was one person out of position – rad. The next wave wasn’t too bad, I dodged a few people frolicking on the inside and managed to setup for an inside tube section. When cruising inside, I was surprised to see the skeg and tail of the longboard of one of the guys paddling out, and it was coming back at me straight towards the head. I was forced to bail in the only makeable tube I’d seen all afternoon and called it a day after that, knowing that the winds would be light the next day and everyone would have work.

As was the case the night before, the tide was super high on Wednesday morning. I constantly saw swell on the horizon coming in, but when it got to the inside, it found the deep water gully that sits at the end of the jetty where it breaks in a mushy mess of a wave. Every wave that started to line up quickly turned into a turd where best case scenario was a shoulder cutback. Worse, it was the sort of conditions where every person out paddles for every set wave creating a stampede of danger that lingers on the other side of every mound of water. And at 10am I realized mystically two thirds of this surf population doesn’t work on weekdays and the crowd was going nowhere. Again, I just tried to get away from people and ended up pulling in to closeouts in order to get as worked as possible to blow off some steam. Then the wind came on shore.

After a 5 hour wait, the wind had no signs of backing down. I pulled up to the beach again to side onshores with a decent amount of chop. The sideshore in it made some of the lefts look like they were clean and barreling, but once you got out there it was a different story. I spent an hour and a half putzing around until I finally got into a little bit of a rhythm trading waves with Luke DiTella and Rob Kelly down by the pipe. That lasted about 5 minutes until the after highschool crowd swarmed on the peak and I continued my meandering drift northward ending up in the doldrums that used to be Waverly. While walking down the beach back towards my original paddle out point for drift two, I studied the waves, which looked pretty terrible like I remembered. I saw about 15 people walking down from the boardwalk and chatted with a few other people on the beach, before deciding, nah I’m not going back out. Some times you just gotta call it quits.

In the end the perfect spring swell was, for the most part, a dud. Maybe I’m being bitter and negative about it all, maybe I should have stayed out longer, or gotten up at 5 instead of 6am, but in the end it was lack luster. Talking to a few other people in the water helped me realize I wasn’t crazy and it was a bit of a ludicrous situation. About once every 12 to 18 months I have to go through this situation of crowds, perpetually too high or low tide, winds never quite right, and no where really lining up or breaking with power to realize why Ocean City usually isn’t my first choice to surf. But hey, if it weren’t for those factors, I would have never logged so many missions to north Jersey to find actual good waves. Next south swell, you’ll find me in Bayhead.