“But first, before I go I look at the palm tree on the corner of my street. If he’s a-blowin’ I’m not a-goin’!”
Someone wrote that on the SurfingSD message board, and I loved it. For you non-surfer folks it means that if he sees the palm tree getting blown a lot by the wind he’s not going to go surfing. Generally a lot of wind, if it’s coming from the wrong direction, messes up the surfing conditions.
I’ve found that this is contrary to what a lot of people tend to think about surfing. It might be storming and windy out and people might mention to me that it “must be great for surfing.” Then I have to explain that really the optimal surfing conditions tend to be produced by offshore storms. Nobody wants to surf in a windstorm. It’s true, wind makes waves, but you want that wind blowing around out in the ocean. However, light to moderate offshore winds are the exception, as they can blow the waves clean. Too much offshore wind, however, and it becomes difficult to take off on waves and you get spray in the face.
Anyway…enough of that. That quote just made me smile because so often surfers have their own personal landmarks where they check the wind. Back home there are a few main flagpoles that I can look at to see what the wind is doing. One is the main flagpole in Bridgehampton, and the other is the flagpole on Mecox road that some guy put up in front of his house. When he takes the flag down I get annoyed, haha.
I can tell from the direction and movement of these flags if the surf is going to be good or crappy. A lot of times I’ll look at the trees and see if they’re getting blown around or if they’re still. At home the first thing I do when I wake up is look at the trees outside my window to see if they’re blowing around a lot, and which way they’re leaning. Can you tell I’m obsessed? I think it’s something that every surfer comes to do.
PS – The group shot from the SurfingSD beach party is up on their site as the header! Can you find me? http://www.surfingsd.com