SUNSET BEACH, Fla. — Members of the Republican party may have shied from the threat of tropical force winds and torrential rains Monday, but the same could not be said for the Gulf Coast’s wave-riding faithful who swarmed Treasure Island’s Sunset Beach sandbar by the hundreds as then-Tropical Storm, now Hurricane Isaac skirted by.
Throughout the morning and late into the afternoon surfers from across Florida tested out Sunset Beach’s fast breaking left ahead of the storm.
To start the morning the offshore buoy north-northwest of Tampa Bay read five feet at 10 seconds – that is five foot waves with 10 seconds between them. By twilight the height had nearly tripled and the winds turned south as the center of the storm reached the beach’s latitude.
Cloudy skies loomed overhead through the morning and the day with sporadic rain storms and accelerating winds tweaking the conditions as the outermost edge of Isaac’s 200-mile reach flickered by.
Surf shops from Clearwater to St. Petersburg scrambled to meet the demand for surfboard rentals Monday, with some like Lenny’s Surf Shop even dipping into their used board racks to accommodate the rental rush. After all, it’s not every day the Gulf of Mexico kicks up rideable, sizeable swell.
Due in part to the area’s protection from open ocean storms on three sides, a narrow swell window serves up surf here, and the long and shallow continental shelf acts to drag energy from the waves as they approach the shore. According to local surfers, days of memorable surf on Florida’s eastern coast are few and far between.
“Five times a year we get surf like this,” said Brent Long, a 29-year-old St. Petersburg resident who split his day between Sunset Beach and Santa Maria Key’s deeper water wave. “You never know what to expect. Most of the time onshore winds blow out the surf anyways. Very rarely do we get offshore and glassy [conditions here].”
When considering conditions, surfers prefer offshore winds that hold – or “wall-up" – incoming fishwaves as their peaks begin to break. On the Gulf Coast however, winds tend to be the opposite.
“It’s a nice little treat,” said longtime local wave-rider Dave Williamson, 40, of Lenny’s Surf Shop in nearby St. Petersberg.
Other’s however, like Doug Lucas, 42, of nearby Clearwater, have grown more cynical of the local break, a testament to the suffering soul of the Gulf Coast rider.
“The surf here is horrible,” said Lucas. “I think that’s why there are so many people here today, because it’s never like this.”
“I used to live for surf,” Lucas continued. “But you get old, and you get a job. It’s a totally different lifestyle, rearranging your schedule and shifting your days off for a wave. You get into the beach. You pick up skating, surfing, fishing – the water is why you live here.
"Sun king baby,” he said.