i'm stoked! here's the text from an article written in 2000. might be helpful.
Wave Bye-Bye
On Hatteras, Some Favorite Fall Surf Spots Are a Wipeout
By Jeff Custer
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, October 11, 2000; Page C02
They've been waiting for the waves for months. September and October is the serious surf season at the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Board surfers, body surfers and boogie-boarders look forward all year to these days when summer tourists are gone and the weather--kicking up a fuss down in the tropics--is rippling some big ones up the coast. They zip up their neoprene wet suits and high-step into the surf to stake out that reliable Outer Banks swell, rollers that will shoulder them with muscular grace on long rides to shore. And finally they are here, floating off a usually hot spot near Avon Pier, gripping their boards and eyeing the green Atlantic. Waiting for the waves.
Hours later, they're still waiting. Something's wrong. A few measly rollers are breaking uselessly on the sand, much closer to the beach than normal. High tide, low tide, up shore, down shore--it's the buzz of the beach this year. The good waves are gone.
"I was bummed," says Wisconsonite Gary Larsen, who waited for months and drove hours for some of the excellent surfing and boogie-boarding he remembered from previous trips to the Outer Banks. "That surfboard cost me 40 bucks for the week. It didn't do me any good sitting in the beach house garage."
So where did the waves go? Dennis took them. In the shifting, sandy world of the Atlantic Barrier islands, big storms do more than blow down trees and flood beach houses--they can rip the very bottom out of the surf. Last year Hurricane Dennis, followed closely by his sidekick Floyd, ground away at the Outer Banks shoreline for more than a week in August. Dennis cut a 100-yard-wide, six-foot-deep canal right through Hatteras Island, and he dragged away the near-shore sandbars that provided those rides Larsen remembered.
Richard Walz, a year-round Buxton resident and surfer, is accustomed to annual changes in the surf on the island. But this year was different. "The changes after Dennis were drastic," he says. "Just south of Avon there used to be a good break all the way down to Buxton. Now it's nothing but shore break."
Surfers are notoriously picky, spending hours, sometimes lifetimes, floating on their boards waiting for the perfect wave. What they want are waves that are consistent, that start to break in one place and then peel either left or right (as opposed to rising as a wall and dumping over the top along its whole length), and that curl over to form a cozy tube, through which whooping surfers can ride and ride. That's what they come to the old beaches hoping to find. This year has been tough.
It is not unusual for Outer Banks visitors who return here to find alterations year by year, particularly in the annual crop of new restaurants and condominiums springing up north of Nags Head. But to the south, around the skinny elbow of Cape Hatteras, Mother Nature does most of the redevelopment. This delicate arm of land bending out from the continent is, essentially, an overgrown sandbar. More than 25 miles of Pamlico Sound separate it from the mainland. Seven small towns dot its narrow landscape, and between each are long stretches of unspoiled seashore that--thanks to exposure to the open ocean--are subject to some uncommonly good waves.
"Hatteras Island has certainly become known as an East Coast surfing Mecca," says Bill Birkemeier, a surfer and coastal engineer of the Army Corps of Engineers Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory located just north of Duck. The facility is designed specifically to study waves, how they develop, how much energy they carry and how they affect the shoreline. Birkemeier boasts that Duck's beach is the most studied in the world. "The Outer Banks' position in the Atlantic," he says, "make it susceptible to the effects of storms far off in the ocean."
Because of a relatively shallow continental shelf extending out into the Atlantic, Eastern beaches don't get the kind of giant waves consistently generated along the West Coast and the far deeper Pacific. But all that changes when the storms surge out of the warmer southern latitudes. When they are distant tempests, the storms kick up the big swells that autumn surfers love. Hurricane Alberto, for example, spun harmlessly around the Atlantic for two weeks this summer, staying far out to sea but bringing joy to the wave jockeys on Hatteras Island. But when one veers too close, the storm's ferocious energy can remold the coastal bottom, shifting sandbars and neutering the wavemaking mechanism along miles of once-rowdy beach. That's what Dennis did, to the disappointment of this year's surfers.
"I just went to the places I'd known before," says Larsen. "If I'd known where to look, it wouldn't have been such a waste of time."
But the news isn't all bad. Dennis may have taken many of the old familiar waves (and area surf shops report a decline in the number of visiting board riders so far this fall), but patient locals have found that the upheaval left some other beaches as promising surf zones. If you're still eager to hit the autumn waves--and the meat of the surf season is just approaching--here's the skinny from the Outer Banks surf shops:
* Waves, Salvo and Avon Pier. These beaches, which used to boast some of the best surfing spots on the island, are now mostly useless shore break.
* Cape Point, adjacent to the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, has maintained good surf, thanks largely to three jetties, or groins, built off the beach that confine the sand.
* Frisco, about six miles south of the Cape, seems to have actually improved. Darrin McBride, a 13-year-old native of Frisco, says he has surfed the area since he was 7. Standing atop a dune overlooking Frisco beach and leaning against his surfboard, he watches an impressive series of waves roll in. "Avon Pier used to have a real nice break and now that seems to be gone," McBride says. "But this place keeps getting better and better."
* The S-Curves. Just north of the Rodanthe city limits on Highway 12 is an unmarked spot where the road curves gently and the dunes are close to the road. There is no official parking area, but look for cars parked along the highway and surfers in the water. Waves are not huge but are consistent.
* South of Askin's Creek, immediately south of Avon Pier. Askin's has been a disappointment this year, but four-wheelers can drive onto the beach there. Head south for as far as you are allowed; the National Park Service has the limit marked. There you will find some decent surf. Non-four-wheel-drive vehicles can access the spot by driving another mile and a quarter down Highway 12 to a beach access known as the Old Road.
* North of Buxton. An unnamed spot where engineers have filled in the canal dug by Hurricane Dennis has become one of the most consistently reliable areas to surf any time, according to Walz. The area can be reached via the well-marked lighthouse access road, just after Highway 12's inland curve in Buxton.
ESCAPE KEYS
GETTING THERE: The shifting surf of Hatteras Island is located on the North Carolina coast 320 miles south of Washington. Take I-95 south to Richmond, then I-64 east to Norfolk, 168 south into North Carolina, then 158 to Nags Head and Highway 12 down to--and through--Hatteras.
SURF: Surfers hit the Hatteras beaches year-round but fall is the purists' favorite--especially if a tropical storm is at work to the south. Get inside tips, rent boards and beg for help at these surf shops, all on Highway 12. Fox Watersports (Buxton, 252-995-4102); Frisco Beach Surf Shop (Frisco, 252-995-5832); Hatteras Island Surf Shop (Waves, 252-987-2296); Hatteras Outdoors (Buxton, 252-995-5815); Natural Art Surf Shop (Buxton, 252-995-5682); Ocean Roots Surf Shop (Avon, 252-995-3369); and Rodanthe Surf Shop (Rodanthe, 252-987-2412).
EAT:Bubba's Barbecue (Frisco and Avon, 252-995-4385) boasts authentic Carolina dry barbecue--fast-food cheap and athlete portions. Froggy Dog (Avon, 252-995-4106), a surfer hangout with good food, good bar and good tips on where the waves are. The Fish House (Buxton, 252-995-5151) serves fresh seafood entrees for under $20 in a reclaimed fish-processing plant.
SLEEP:The Cape Hatteras Motel Buxton (800-995-0711) is on the beach and is popular with surfers. Rooms start at $65. The Comfort Inn in Buxton (800-432-1441) is a block from the beach but central to the whole island. All rooms are $70. The Hatteras Island Resort (800-331-6541) in Rodanthe has beachfront rooms starting at $55.
INFO: 800-446-6262,
www.hatteras-nc.com.
© 2000 The Washington Post Company
