Today we checked into our beach house around 3:00. Sweet house with a good view of the ocean but we noticed one problem- WHERE ARE THE WAVES?!?!?! After we unloaded our crap and went to scope out the beach a bit, we noticed it was a typical New England beach break, however, there are some small islands not too far from the coast and we are in somewhat of a bay area. Also, at high tide, the waves crash on an upward slant, which make high tide surfing virtually impossible. As we remained at the beach for a bit, the waves were still quite small, but were getting larger as the tide went out. We checked it again around 1:30 AM, but the waves still weren’t worth suiting up for. Also, this water is fricken cold!!!! It has to be at least 10 degrees cooler than the Wall which means it’s probably in the 50’s.
This morning we walked to Old Orchard Beach which is about a mile and a half from our private beach. It’s a really touristy spot, but fun nonetheless. It’s similar to Hampton Beach, but with more stuff. There’s so many French Canadian hairy men wearing Speedos I don’t know if I’m in Canada, the United States or Hell. Hahaha. So anyways, we chilled at the pier and the surrounding area for most of the day and took about a mile walk to see a new surf shop called Huge Surf Shop. It’s quite small and in a ghetto neighborhood, but the owner and his dog were cool and he told us some good northern breaks such as Higgins Beach. The waves at Old Orchard were higher than our beach but not by much. We might go surf there at night when there aren’t many people. Later on this night, we decided to use our map and trek to Higgins Beach. Parking is tough to find and an asshole bicycle cop pulled us over for not making a complete stop, probably due to the gigantic bug up his ass. We ended up parking in the center of town at around 8:15 at a lot that closed at 9. When we got to the beach, it was a nice sandy beach that was really small but pristine. The waves were choppy but there were some good 2 footers here and there that actually broke in the water and not the beach. I stayed in until we had to leave, and I definitely have plans on coming back. I’ll also take some pictures of the beach.
In the early afternoon, we got a late start from a late night the night before. When we finally got our shit together, we headed south to Kennebunk Beach. We stopped at Aquaholics Surf Shop, which I had been to this past winter. It’s owned and operated by a cool woman from the North Shore of Oahu, her beautiful daughters, and their dog out of their house. They have a lot to offer for a small place, even surf lessons and rentals. As we were speeding down route 1 before we hit town, I saw Gooch’s Beach (yes it is Gooch’s Beach) on the map and it looked familiar from nesurf.com, so we decided to check it out. Since we couldn’t get our asses out of bed early enough and missed high tide at 11:30, we met this small yet busy beach with some weak waves. We threw our boards down and chilled in the sand for a bit, but there were throngs of younger kids with rented boards and wetsuits in the water waiting for waves that weren’t there. Around 2:30 or so, the waves started to pick up and we decided to hit the water. The water was sooooo fricken’ cold!!!! I mean this was probably the coldest I’ve ever felt it. When I stuck my hand in the water in the middle of February, it didn’t even feel as cold as this. In addition, my friend and I only had our shorty wetsuits, so our arms and legs had to bear the elements. However, we started talking to this surfer kid from Texas named Corbin. He said that Friday up at Gooch’s was charging because of the hurricane weather. Unfortunately, we couldn’t say the same for today. We stayed in for about 2 to 2 and a half hours, freezing our asses off but having fun on 1’s to an occasional 2 footer. The three of us played chicken, when we tried to knock each other off our boards while riding the wave. On one instance, I threw Corbin off his surfboard and somehow went on top of it and I was riding both at the same time. Also, we came inches away from decapitating John in the water. After Dinner, we headed to Higgins Beach and stayed there from about 7:10 to 8:30, just long enough to watch the sunset on our boards. The waves were much better than the afternoon at Gooch’s, with constant 2 and a half footers and often going into the 3’s and sometimes 4’s.
Sadly, no spongin’ today, but we did go to funtown/splashtown USA- a kickass water/amusement park!
Today we decided to drive down to a familiar spot, York Beach. It’s quite a hike, but the way we drive, we made it in a half-hour. We arrived around 1 pm, just around the peak of high tide. The waves were decent for a while, but still 1’s and no more than 2’s. There were a lot of surfers in the water, most probably with rental boards by the way they were surfing. There was also an asshole lifeguard who was getting on everyone’s case, even telling us to stay in the surfing area even though we had bodyboards. After staying there for a while, we headed out for some lunch and ended up at a new Jamaican food restaurant. There was no sit down area, but there were places to sit outside with reggae jams blasting. Jon and I got jerk chicken with rice, beans, a roll, and some sort of grilled fruit with pineapple soda. It was some good shit, but kinda expensive- $9 each. After that, we headed north a bit to Wells and went to the Bike and Surf Shop, a pretty large shop, with some fin socks and ding repair and some other bodyboarding stuff, more than other shops. The dude working there was cool and introduced us to the pickle, a cool wax remover thing for 10 bucks. Jon picked one up and it works great. I didn’t have any $$ so I’ll pick one up tomorrow. After that, we went to Wells Beach to check the surf, but the waves weren’t even surfable, so we decided to chill up in Portland for the night. Tomorrow from 10-12 in the Ogunquit Liquid Dreams Surf Shop, there are some pro surfers from the Billabong Right Coast Tour signing some autographs and shit so we’ll definitely check that out. Peace!
On this lovely last day of July, we decided to get an early start for once and check out the Billabong tour at Liquid Dreams Surf Shop in Ogunquit. As we neared the shop, we saw a big ass bus with pimped out designs and stickers all over it bearing the billabong title over the side. When we got there, being the bodyboarders we are, we didn’t know who was who but Benji Weatherly, being the cool guy that he is, asked us if we wanted an autographed poster. Of course, I was like hell yeah so I got this huge poster signed by Benji Weatherly, Sam Hammer, and Phillip Waters. It was great because there wasn’t a huge line of people, and the surfers were just chillin’ in the storefront hanging out with everyone. I was talking to Benji and he said that Ogunquit is the farthest north that he’s been on the East Coast. He said that tomorrow, they’d be in Huntington Beach, CA doing a competition. Later on, I talked to Sam and he was asking me about my favorite spots, which was pretty cool. I mentioned Higgins Beach, York, and the Wall and he said that he’s surfed the wall a bunch of times. We peaced out of there after spending some time with the guys and headed down to York Beach for some sponging. Being the poor-ass teenagers that we are, we had basically no money (I had $11 and spent $10 on a “pickle” wax remover, which I might add, works really well) and we definitely could not throw away $$ on parking. We were debating whether or not to park on some side street and hike to the beach or at the shitty amusement park, but amazingly, we found an open space with over 3 hours of time in it! Jon was still incredibly tired from the night before, so I had a solo session while he filmed. There were some decent waves, especially at high tide where out of sets of straight 1’s and 2’s came multiple sets of 3’s and higher. Jon went to take a piss and it was quite a walk, so while he was gone, I caught a bunch of good waves and was doing 360’s all over the place and when he came back and it was kinda flat again, he didn’t believe me when I told him how good they were. The waves started to get shittier and shittier, so we decided to chill on the beach for a while, where we erected this pimpin’ tiki statue made out of rocks. After that, we got some food and headed to Higgins Beach where dumbshit Jon forgot his board because he HAD to rinse it off before he used it haha. At Higgins, the waves were kinda flat, as it was the peak of low tide, bus still fun, mainly 2 footers. There was an undertow though, and I found myself face to face with rocks a few times, enough to scare the shit out of me. I sponged while Jon swam from about 7-9, when it was completely dark except for moonlight, and the parking lot closed, so we had to go. We went to Old Orchard and hung out for the remainder of the night, and right now as I’m typing this, we’re getting ready to do some sponging and sneak out of the house for high tide at 2:46 AM. Wish us luck!
UPDATE: Even at high tide, the waves sucked so bad it wasn’t even worth suiting up so we just chilled on the moonlit beach
As we awoke on this rainy crappy day, we had one and only one thing on the brain- SPONGIN! BUT, we made plans to go to Portland with Jon’s family for the day. We chilled in the city for a while, and ate lunch on DiMillio’s floating restaurant. After that, we went in some art galleries and stores, but then we said fuck this and took off. We whooped it up to Higgins beach at incredibly rapid speeds and walked through the rain to the beach to find incredibly choppy conditions. The paddle out sucked, but we managed. However, there was a huge ass undertow, which kept taking us to the rocks, making a couple of near misses. Out of the choppy crap came a few perfect 4 and 5 footers, which made it all worthwhile. These were arguably the best waves on the trip, and unfortunately this has been our last day here in Saco. Stay tuned to www.oocities.org/newenglandsponger for more updates and surf reports!