Womens Pro kicks off the day today
The third day of the Foster's Belmar Pro surfing competition in Belmar kicked off on Saturday with the Mens Pro and Junior Pro in the morning, to be followed in the afternoon by the Masters (ages 35 and up) semifinals and the Mens Longboard round of 20 and quarterfinals heats. Here's the schedule for the rest of the tournament, according to the Belmar Pro website: Sunday, Sept. 16:
While red flags kept bathers out of the water, surfers took to the waves Saturday
Wall photographer Mike Black caught these terrific shots of surfers doing what they do best at Belmar's beaches on Saturday.
11:00 am on Thursday, June 7, 2012
Hey....don't dismiss that locally we have all of the fertilizer use, the development adjacent to waterways promoting erosion of sediment, the stormwater runoff directly into the lakes/rivers/oceans...just to name a few things that easily are the reason why the water is brown in Spring Lake, Belmar, Sea Girt, Manasquan and everywhere adjacent to a river/creek or an outfall pipe.. Don't get me … more ›
A cautionary tale
It all started somewhere around the third grade. I was in gym class. The way I remember it, I think it was probably a three balls, two strikes, and two outs situation during a rainy day indoor kickball game. I was leading off of first base, just looping the words “run on the kick” through my little kid, achievement-dreamer skull. I probably shifted my body weight left, then right, then left again, trying to psych out the pitcher who was getting ready to roll the nuclear-grade rubber ball to my teammate. I heard my teammate’s foot thwack the ball with that awful rubbery echo, and experienced my first cogent tunnel-vision moment – something I would not experience again until my future days of surfing, or running, or doing anything that would…
1:19 pm on Sunday, July 10, 2011
No matter what Dan Duffy writes about (no matter how peripheral to surfing) I love it. more ›
How to enhance your summertime downtime
As we sit on the cusp of the official start of summer, the doors are opened to relaxing weekends spent (hopefully) lying by the water and not moving a muscle other than to turn our bodies with the sun. With the longer days and (again, hopefully) a more simplified version of life on its way, cracking open a book has been my go-to for enhancing this downtime and keeping me from loafing on the couch in front of the TV as the sun shines all day. Below is a quick reading list I’ve assembled for those of you looking for a decent read for the summer. Pick your category of choice, check my quick synopsis – devoid of spoilers, of course – and then give something a shot that interests you. Fiction: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by …
The latter half of spring offers plenty of opportunities to test new gear
After a winter that was dominated by overhead surf, river-quick currents, and an offshore gale that felt like it contained teeth, the present transition into our warm season is a welcomed respite not only from the cold short days, but from the reliance on our beefed-up shortboards to get us through those sessions. As the spring has taken hold, the surf has mellowed out, and as the neoprene of our wetsuits has become thinner, the repertoire of our boards has been allowed to adapt to the pleasant change in conditions. With the exception of maybe just that one memorable all-time swell in April, our continuous rounds of weekly surf have settled into an easy three-to-five foot wave that has seemed to appear twice or thrice weekly. With the new …
11:58 pm on Thursday, May 26, 2011
Come and meet our Paddle Boarding Community. http://www.paddleboarding.com more ›
Similar storms from last week send waves our way once again
Looking out my window every morning this week, it’s looked the way I envision Dickensian London: fog that settles just above your head, limiting the distance of your gaze and causing street lamps to be strangely blurry at night. Welcome, everyone, to the end of April on LBI. South winds that don’t garner much in the way of wave production, and an ocean temperature that is still settling down somewhere in the 50s have dominated the end of the month. While the warm air has been a welcomed change, it has still managed to leave us draped in fog day in and day out this week. I have had many moments of false hope while visiting the mainland this week, as the bright skies and warm weather in Barnegat have continually made me forget about the …
New Jersey gets another well-earned media credit due to Sunday's swell
This happens every so often to New Jersey: A much talked about barrage of swell appears via a fast-moving storm that ignites in the Mid West, steams laterally through the American Heartland, and then brushes up the coast from North Carolina all the way up to Canadian Maritimes. Cue spotlight on N.J. When this type of storm comes, New Jersey tugs at the attention of the surf world, not just because of how perfect the waves look, but because of how perfect they look for – of all places – New Jersey. When it comes to surfing, New Jersey has always been little David, waving his arms at an international Goliath to coax him over to see the truth of how impressively strong he can be. While the traditional tale of the feeble child and the giant …
Precision in surf forecasting has changed everything, and I do mean everything.
I’m beginning to find that one of the huge not-much-talked about parts of growing up is the searing nostalgia that you start to feel for your adolescent years. This subject has been a big reason for me finding myself in deeply invested, eyeball-drying "stares," where I not only miss the whole lack-of-responsibilities thing, but also find myself longing for the days of relying on pure chance in order to find the waves of my life. What I miss most about my early days of surfing was my naïveté to surf-forecasting. There were many mornings I experienced where, on a whim, I had ridden my bike up to the beach – ignorant to any swell that was in the water – and found immaculate (as was my perception at the time) waves that seemed to pop out of …
Thoughts on my re-acquaintance with a season
Two of my close friends and fellow surfers, Matt and Bill, lived the dream of an "endless summer" during the Northern Hemisphere’s winter of 2008-2009. While I received the invitation to join them to lifeguard on Australia’s East Coast, I could only counter their offer with the frustration of my commitment to a year of graduate school. As I suffered through classes and lived through yet another blustery New Jersey winter, I continually thought of my friends’ travels Down Under and grew envious. I vowed that, regardless of whatever ensuing job offer may come my way, I would defer and instead head to Australia myself the very next year. When my friends arrived back to the States late that spring, I was shocked at Matt’s attitude toward the …
9:02 pm on Friday, March 25, 2011
I liked this one, Duffy. Very reflective, optimistic, from the heart. And I too find it funny how sometimes only with maturity, experience, perspective and even absence can one truly learn to love "home". more ›
Comprehending worldwide devastation from the New Jersey homefront
Keeping in the vein of making things harder for myself than they probably should be, I have come to ascertain that one of the aspects I love about living in Beach Haven is the distance that separates me from the rest of the world. Tucked away on the south end of Long Beach Island, even getting to Genuardi’s in Barnegat becomes a perverse chore that sometimes takes outlandish dedication to actually get to, especially if the traffic lights on the island have been switched to "on." For us to go from here to Australia, in other words, is a whole different kettle of fish compared to someone who lives in Hawaii. To get to Singapore, from here, involves much more commitment than it does for someone who lives in Germany, and so on; and yes I know …
Mary
9:58 pm on Sunday, September 16, 2012
The pictures were awesome. What talent the surfers have. It reminds me of how much I miss living in Belmar, and being a part of the surfing scene. more ›