Boardshorts

Tales from the wave-chasing life

Month: April 2020

Beaches reopen on Monday-sort of

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On April 25, 2020

In COVID-19, Galveston, Uncategorized, World Surf League

An empty right reels at the 91st Street Fishing Pier on Thursday, April 23, 2020.

If you love dawn patrols, you’re in luck.

The Galveston City Council voted on Thursday-in a split 4-3 decision-to reopen Galveston beaches to surfing from 6 to 9 a.m. daily starting April 27.

So, if you want to surf, set that alarm to get up at the crack of dawn and hit it.

Since the city closed beaches on the island on March 29, Galveston surfers have been heading south to catch waves. And, while Surfside is a great location that offers plenty of wide-open spaces in which to feel the glide, there’s still no place like home.

Over the past month, the waves along the Galveston beachfront have been exceptional, with likely several of the best days of the year rolling under piers and along the jetties unridden, empty waves beckoning like gleaming jewels just out of reach.

So, despite a pretty limited opening of the beach on Monday, surfers I know will be glad to again have access to the island’s waves, even for just three hours a day.

The forecast for the coming week looks promising as well. Magic Seaweed is calling for rideable surf on the island for much of the next week, with clean conditions possible on Wednesday.

Tropical water wax is the call, with temperatures now in the mid-70s in the Gulf. Happy surfing next week.

JOHN JOHN FLORENCE ON THE LINEUP PODCAST

Hawaiian phenom and two-time world champ John John Florence is the latest guest on the podcast, “The Lineup with Dave Prodan.”

Florence shares what it was like growing up on the North Shore, talks about his battles with Brazilian Gabriel Medina and his breakout performance at the 2017 Margaret River Pro in Western Australia.

In other John John news, the Hawaiian recently published a four-episode YouTube series chronicling a 2,500-nautical mile sailing and surfing voyage to explore the Northern Line Islands, a collection of coral atols that straddle the Equator south of Hawaii.

The brilliantly filmed and exquisitely produced documentary is breathtaking and captivating. If you love the ocean, either sailing or surfing, Florence’s new feature will be a hit.

Stephen Hadley is a longtime surfer who lives and works in Galveston. He can be reached by email at stephendhadley@gmail.com.

Likely no surfing in Galveston through April

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On April 18, 2020

In COVID-19, Galveston

Last week, this column–which has been published in The Galveston County Daily News print edition since July 2017–moved to online only for the foreseeable future.

The Daily News, like many newspapers across the country, has been especially hard-hit by the economic turmoil created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses that advertised in The Daily News have had to cut back on their marketing budgets and even resorted to layoffs in these uncertain economic times. Without advertisers, it’s difficult for The Daily News to keep producing a larger print edition, hence the newspaper has cut its production from seven days a week to five, starting earlier this month.

Subscribers help offset some–but not nearly all–of the losses in advertising revenue for the newspaper. So, if you value community journalism and want to see your local newspaper survive, please consider subscribing. You can do so on The Daily News website at https://www.galvnews.com/site/services/.

Now, on to our regularly scheduled program …

Empty waves pass unridden near Galveston’s Pleasure Pier on Sunday, April 12, 2020.

Despite an outcry from upper coast surfers who continue to watch the spring’s best swells pass unridden along Galveston’s beaches, the City Council this week decided it won’t vote to consider even a partial re-opening of the beaches until its next meeting on April 23.

At their meeting on Thursday, councilmembers asked City Manager Brian Maxwell to develop policies and procedures regarding a partial opening of the beaches-such as for a few hours each morning-for it to vote on next week.

Given the timeline discussed this week, even a partial re-opening of the beaches likely won’t happen until May 1.

During this week’s meeting, it appeared Councilman Jason Hardcastle was ready to bring a beach re-opening proposal to the council for a vote. But based on feedback from the other councilmembers, a vote was delayed until Maxwell could bring the proposed policies and procedures before council next week.

In the meantime, Galveston surfers have been driving south to Surfside/Quintana to try and score waves. While Beach Drive there has been closed to parking, surfers can still park at Jetty Park to access the beach.

As fate would have it, while Surfside did get a good swell last Sunday, the next day was blown out there and absolutely perfect and firing here in Galveston. Chest-high and bigger waves reeled along the beachfront as the strong offshores groomed them to perfection.

All we could do was sit on the seawall and watch the show.

While I understand that it’s important for the city to protect the public from the spread of the coronavirus, a full beach closure probably isn’t the best approach to make that happen.

People are still visiting Galveston, parking on the seawall and walking along or riding their bikes along the thoroughfare. Now, they’re just doing so on an 8-foot wide strip of concrete that stretches the length of some of the island’s beachfront.

Perhaps a better approach is the one being used in Hawaii during this pandemic. On Friday, the governor’s office added to beach restrictions in the Aloha State which forbid anyone from walking, standing or running along the beachfront but do allow access to water-based activities such as surfing, swimming or paddleboarding, so long as social distancing rules are followed. You can read about Hawaii’s policy here.

Even if just for a few hours each morning or evening, Galveston should consider a similar approach.

Stephen Hadley is a longtime surfer who live and works in Galveston. He can be emailed at stephendhadley@gmail.com.

Empty lineups beckon in a time of selfless isolation

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On April 10, 2020

In Galveston, Surfing, Uncategorized

The waves weren’t big, less-than-stellar by any standard. But riding my bicycle along the Seawall on Tuesday morning, I could imagine the push from these little peelers reeling across the shore in waist-deep water.

Light offshores were freshening up what had been a choppy lineup just a few hours earlier. Clean and green and beautiful.

Before all this started, it was the type of morning where I would’ve likely grabbed the longboard and paddled out to catch a few before heading into the office for the day.

Such surfs are just the sort of palate cleanser that most of us need to get us through the normal, stress-filled days at work.

Alas, on this particular morning, such an experience wasn’t possible. The beaches, having been closed for more than a week at that point (and by extension prohibiting surfing too since most of us have to walk on the beach to enter the lineup), were empty. Wave after little wave cruised through the lineup without anyone on them, exhausting their final energies along the sand in complete anonymity.

I stopped at 61st Street and watched for a long while, closing my eyes occasionally to focus on listening to the gentle hum of the ocean’s energy caressing its sandy bottom, sending whitewater froths in uniform lines.

In my mind’s eye, I could feel the lift and the smooth glide of takeoff, speed building as my imaginary longboard began to effortlessly plane on the clean wave face.

While no substitute for the real deal, we all will need to reach into the storehouse of our surfing memory banks for a bit longer, recalling our most memorable waves ridden or a particularly thrilling session.

It seems every surfer who has been doing this for a while, has several memorable rides that have happened in their lifetimes. Some of mine have been right here on the east side of the Flagship; others are from trips to Mainland Mexico or Costa Rica or California.

Regardless of location, these memories are punctuated by the feeling of surfing, the unmistakable thrill of speeding atop a foaming wall of moving water, harnessing the vast energy of the ocean we call home, even for just a few seconds.

At this point in time, memories are all we have. Hopefully soon we’ll have the opportunity to make more. Until then, stay safe.

Stephen Hadley is a longtime surfer who lives and works in Galveston. You can reach him at stephendhadley@gmail.com.

Putting surfing on hold for the greater good

By

On April 3, 2020

In Uncategorized

This column was originally published on April 3, 2020, in The Galveston County Daily News.

For surfers, this past Tuesday was the first true test of Galveston’s new beach closure order that was put in place last weekend to help prevent crowds from gathering on the island.

The day dawned with offshore winds and a clean little swell groomed to perfection, the kind of morning that usually is punctuated by crowds of surfers gliding onto waves at some of the more popular spots in Galveston.

This is a different time, however, and it was heartening to see that surfers were heeding the city’s orders to steer clear of the beaches, and by extension, avoid surfing the island’s waters.

Yes, it’s hard to watch great waves slip through unridden, especially given that we’re heading into the time of year when rideable surf is about to be much harder to come by.

But, in my estimation, if surfing is the only thing some of us lose during this pandemic, we can certainly count ourselves among the more fortunate. Many of our fellow Americans are being infected, and others have lost their jobs in the related economic implosion, which certainly puts riding waves in perspective.

In these calamitous times, surfing just doesn’t seem that important.

There will come a day, hopefully in the not-too-distant future, when we can return to the beach, congregate on the seawall with our friends and share the waves that come calling along our island’s shores. But now is not that time.

By its very nature, surfing is a solitary pursuit. On the best of days, we catch and ride the waves alone, coalescing with the ocean’s energy in a way that often defies description. For many of us, it’s a feeling as much as a physical pursuit. But by and large, it’s an individual experience.

Staying out of the water and off the beach, is a chance for surfers to be communal, to show solidarity with our local communities with an act that puts the health of our fellow island citizens above the pursuit of the next wave.

And it’s the right thing to do at this most uncertain of times. Stay home, keep calm and dream of a future spent with toes in the sand and plenty of sun-drenched days playing in the surf.

There will be better days ahead.

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