Photos by Bill Cramer/ Wonderful Machine
GONE GOOFY
Kelsey Hammell, 17
In surfing, you’re either a right foot or a left foot—meaning the foot you lead with and the one you attach the leash to. The rear foot you use for balance. If you lead with your left foot, you’re a goofy foot. I used to be a right foot, but then I hurt that foot, so now I’m a goofy foot.
As a girl surfer, you have to be as good as the boys or better, to prove you can do it. There are about fifteen people on the Middle Township High School surf team, and two other girls besides me. You have to try to be like one of the guys instead of performing at the lower level they expect you to be at.
Guys are more competitive, but girls just go with it and let the waves take them. They’re more natural surfers.
Knowing whether the wave is going to break right or left is important. If you get it wrong, you go under. Another tough thing is when you’re paddling out to where the waves are breaking, you need to be able to duck under the waves you’re not going to ride. That was the thing I struggled with most. I was scared going under the wave that I wouldn’t come out on the other side, or that I’d come out into another breaking wave.
Once you’re out there, you kind of don’t think about things. You feel happy and at peace, kind of like you’re getting high off the water. After I leave the beach I’m always in a good mood, no matter what—unless there were no waves to ride that day.
I injured my foot surfing last Memorial Day. I started to go into a nosedive, so I tried to right myself by putting all my weight on the back of the board. My foot slipped (because I forgot to wax the board) and I ended up crunching all my weight on the outside of my foot. I wrapped it with tape and kept surfing all summer. I didn’t tell anyone. When my parents were around, I’d walk normally; when they weren’t, I’d limp. By August it was really messed up, and I was having trouble walking. I went to the doctor, and he said I had a stress fracture. He sent me for therapy and told me I needed to rest it. This winter I went skiing and it flared up again really bad, and I couldn’t walk, and he put me on crutches. Now I have a brace, and that helps support it. I’m hoping it won’t mess up my surfing this year.
I first got into surfing with my church, because every Sunday after church we’d all go down to the beach. One day when I was in fifth grade my friend Eric offered to take me out surfing. At first the waves were kind of big and I was kind of scared, but I got over that by not looking back.
By the end of that summer I had kind of gotten the hang of it, but I didn’t really know how to do it completely. Then my church went down to Cape Hatteras. It was hurricane season then. That’s when I switched from a light, flexible board to a hard, fiberglass board and finally built up the courage to try the bigger waves. My favorite part is dropping in on the waves. That’s when you’re on the top and you dive down to the bottom. That’s heart pounding.
At my old school, we’d always go surfing after school. I’d bring my surfboard with me in the morning and put it in the classroom with one of my teachers. This year I transferred to Middle Township High School, and they have a surf club there. We surf in competitions. I just started getting involved.
I couldn’t compete in the Nun’s Beach Surf Invitational last September because of my injury, but I was there to cheer on my friends. In October I competed for the first time. Since our team placed third, we get to go to Laguna Beach, California, in June. I’ll be surfing there, but I won’t be competing since I’m new to the club. We leave the day after school gets out. —interview by Jill P. Capuzzo
CURLS
Andrew Fried, 18
This board I’m holding is called a Sharp Eye. It’s a short board, at least compared to others. I got it at Wet Suit World in Stone Harbor from a guy named Dow. He’s an awesome guy and runs a really cool surf shop. I like using the short board. It gives you more maneuverability and more freedom.
My family has a house in Stone Harbor, and we’re there pretty much all summer. I work at the Sun Glass Menagerie in Stone Harbor. My brother, Matt, works at Wet Suit World. I competed in the Nun’s Beach Surf Invitational. I didn’t do so well, though. There were some pretty good guys in my heat. But after we were done, the waves started to really pick up, so it turned out to be a good day to be surfing. Sometimes it can be hit-or-miss. You can sit there all day waiting for some waves, which really stinks during a competition.
This was my first time competing. All my buddies were going to do it with me, but none of them turned their paperwork in on time, so it ended up being only me. The competition was in September, so any excuse to get a day off of school and be at the beach was okay with me. I go to Conestoga High School in Berwyn, Pennsylvania. I’m a senior. I’m going to the University of Miami in the fall to study marine biology, and that will be good, because about ten or fifteen minutes away there are beaches with good waves. —J.P.C.
ROMPING ROOM
Misty, 15
Chris Karabin, 51: We live in Wilton, Connecticut, about an hour outside New York City. When we get out of the car at Stone Harbor, Misty goes right to the beach. She jumps into the waves and out and back and forth. She’s also highly affectionate with people and sort of nonchalant with other dogs. She’ll go up to someone sitting on a chair and say hi to them. She’s very empathetic, if you can say that about a Gordon setter. She also loves snooping around the ocean and smelling things. She has an extraordinary desire to roll around in things—like a dead horseshoe crab or a fish or something.
I’ve been coming to the Shore since I was six. My folks bought the place in Stone Harbor around 1965 or so. It’s a bit of a hike coming down from Connecticut, but we come down for a long weekend, take a couple of weeks in early summer and then fall. I work at Deloitte, one of the Big Four accounting firms. I’m on the sales side, so I’m handling responsible for a couple accounts globally for Deloitte, specifically Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers. We particularly like September and October at the Shore—those are just wonderful times. It’s less crowded and Misty can walk on the beach, as opposed to summertime when there are restrictions. It’s sort of amazing—even in the wintertime she doesn’t hesitate to go into the water. Her tolerance for cold is a lot better than mine.
On the Connecticut shore, there’s just a lot of rocks and stuff. You don’t have these long barrier beach islands of beautiful sand. The Jersey Shore is a completely different experience. You’re way out in the open. For somebody like Misty, there’s just no comparison: the freedom, the openness, the miles and miles of beautiful beach. In Connecticut, people tend to think of going north toward Martha’s Vineyard or something. There’s not much understanding of just how beautiful the Jersey Shore is, which is actually not such a bad thing. But we have exposed quite a few people to the Shore, and a few have even bought places down here. —interview by Daniel Weiss
PRAY FOR SURF
The Nun’s Beach Surf Invitational
Sister James Dolores, 71: Years ago, the south end of Stone Harbor was not inhabited, and the area in front of our convent was considered a private beach that we had riparian rights to. We’d have our beach time, 1 to 3 pm, when we’d hire a lifeguard; otherwise the surfers would use it, because there were no swimmers there. The surfers are the ones who dubbed it Nun’s Beach.
About thirteen years ago, a gentleman approached me and said, ‘We’d like to run a little contest as a payback for your letting us use your beach to surf all these years.’ It was a very small contest that year. We had a table with coffee and donuts. It was a very cold day, but everyone had fun. So we decided to do it again the next year, and then we decided to make it an annual event. It’s always in September, the best weekend that the tides suit us. This year it will be on September 6th.
Five years ago it got too big. They were still running the contests up to dark, and it was losing its flavor as a small-town, family-atmosphere event. So we changed it to an invitational. We send out letters to all those who have surfed it before, and newcomers can also fill out registration forms in the local stores. It’s on a first-come, first-served basis. It’s still fairly large; we get about 100 surfers and a lot more spectators. We’re very grateful to the surfers and to the people who come to watch, because they buy our T-shirts.
One of the big attractions is the nuns. People always say, ‘Sister, do you surf?’ I’m the one who’s pictured on the T-shirts. I say, ‘The closest I’ve gotten to surfing is on this shirt.’ Our shirts are all over the world, in London, Germany, Australia.
Sisters Anne Francine, 51, and Maria Loyola, 82, came down from their convent in Runnemede to help for the day last year. The sisters work the concessions stands, sell food and T-shirts and hats. At night we have a dinner. It’s all a big fundraiser for the convent; it helps us keep the place up.
We have six retreats every summer, with each retreat bringing in 100 to 120 sisters from our congregation, the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. At the end of the summer we bring the infirmed sisters down, the ones who can make it. They come for five days.
None of the sisters surf. It’s the kind of thing you have to grow up with. I think they’d get hurt if they tried now. But watching it? They do enjoy that. By September, the sisters have started back at school, but we try to get anyone who’s available to come down and help out that day. They work tirelessly. At the end of the day, they’re exhausted, but they know they’ve helped us keep this place going. —J.P.C.
THE NATURAL
Chase Deegan, 7
Chase: I do surfing, skim boarding, boogie boarding, swimming. I like them because they’re fun, and I like to be in the water. I like surfing the best. Most of the kids I surf with are a little older, nine or ten. I guess I’m good at it because I have good balance, and I think it’s kind of easy.
Melanie: Chase walked at eleven months, and when he was one and a half, we had to lock our garage door because he would go in and get his older brother Cole’s skateboard to try out the half-pipe ramp we had in the backyard for Cole.
Chase: I go to the beach almost every day in the summertime. My whole family does. My dad and brother taught me how to surf. My brother does all the same stuff I do, only better.
Melanie: Chase’s father taught him to surf and snowboard the same year, when he was four. The whole family snowboards. We have a place in Camelback in the Poconos, and we go up there every weekend from Christmas on. Both Chase and his sister, Alexa, qualified for the national snowboarding competition out in Copper Mountain, Colorado, this spring. Chase did pretty well. In the Ruggies division, for kids seven and under, he finished in the top ten in three of the four disciplines he qualified to compete in. At first he was disappointed with that. He’s accustomed to first place in the Poconos. I told him, ‘Look, you’re competing with kids who have ski mountains in their backyards.’
Chase: Snowboarding and surfing are kind of the same, but they’re also kind of different. They’re the same because you’re riding on snow and you’re riding on water. But they’re different because the water moves, and the snow stays where it is.
Melanie: He competes in surfing, too. He’s competed in the Brendan Borek Surf Memorial in Avalon for the last two or three years. He placed second in 2007, in the Squirts category for kids nine and under. He also competes in the Nun’s Beach Surf Invitational in Stone Harbor.
Skim boarding he taught himself. With that you have a slim, flat board. You stand on the shore and watch the tide come in, and run with the board, then throw it and ride along the top of the water, doing tricks, 360s, spin arounds, flips. Unfortunately, there aren’t any skim-board competitions in our area.
Typically, a day at the beach with Chase—and there are many, because we live only about a mile from the beach—means loading up the truck with surf, skim, and boogie boards. He just goes from one to the other, all day long. Everyone stops and watches him skim or ride the waves on his surfboard, I guess because he’s so little and started doing it at such a young age.
Up to this point, he hasn’t had any serious injuries. He doesn’t have fear, but he’s smart about it and knows his limitations. He always wears a helmet to snowboard and skateboard. He knows what he does is dangerous and doesn’t want to get hurt, because he wants to continue doing these things.
He’s a really happy kid. He skips and runs everywhere he goes. He’s compassionate and very strong-minded. He plays soccer, and I’ve been trying to talk him into playing tennis, but he’s not interested. He has no desire to play basketball, and baseball bores him to tears. This is what he loves, and that’s part of the reason he’s so good at it, he just loves it so much.
Chase: When I grow up, I want to be a professional snowboarder or skateboarder, or maybe a surfer. I’m going to try and go to the Extreme Games when I get older.
Melanie: I think he’d love to pursue surfing or snowboarding as a career. But it’s such a hard thing, so few people make it to that level. A lot of this is fun, and if something comes of it, great. But I tell him, academics come first. —J.P.C.