The Charleston Swap Meet of last Saturday got rained out. (It's rescheduled for Oct 4th at this time.) Wind was marginal, too. So, this report is about Surfing.

Friday morning the surf conditions due to Fabian were just incredible -- some called it epic -- according to the older, local surfers. Danny Johnson and I got on water at 6:45am at the Isle Of Palms pier. We would launch at the pier with the locals and groms (that's surf talk for kid surfers who are better than you) and drift down several hundred yards, heck, a 1/2 a mile or so it seemed, catching what waves we could handle. Lots of locals surfed the outer sandbar at Station 29, too. We had reports of 2 and 3 minute rides out there. Friday afternoon session seemed just as good to me but not as glassy. On Saturday, Pat Evans and Scott Dunaway joined us. We also did two surfing sessions -- morning and late afternnon till sundown. It was a blast with the four of us newbies getting a real stoke from each other's rides. We all caught a couple of super long rides with time and presence of mind to do some longboard-type styling on the wave. Pat Evan's was doing 360's on his board in the whitewash. When two of us got on a wave side by side, it was so cool. Danny Johnson may have had the longest, totally solid, high-styling ride of the weekend -- going WAY down the line looking like the Big Kahuna himself. I got lucky standing up quick on the peak of some BIG waves that scared me to death and suddenly found myself glinding FAST down the face. Dudes, we were stoked!! Don't get us wrong -- we came to windsurf -- rigged up Saturday and Sunday and went out for whatever was there. We planned some -- solidly for a good bit of the time on bigger sails -- but given that the wind was marginal and the surf conditions were epic Friday -- and near that Saturday -- we felt we really played it smart to get into the surfing. It was so much fun to be in the ocean, to be challanged but not caring about results, to be exhausted and completely waterlogged, but most of all to share it with friends whooping and hollering with joy. We had huge smiles and those funky bright yellow and purple foam and plastic boards. We were a little obvious on the beach, I think. There were literally a hundred surfers out there in that area throughout the day, all were friendly, but I doubt any had a better time than us. (Oh, btw, it's easier than windsurfing. Any age and bodytype is doing it. You know us guys, we're no special athletes at all adn we all just started messing around with surfing on no-wind days THIS year or last. If you ever travel to the coast to windsurf, and unless you can generate your own 15+ knot wind, you're nuts not to get a cheap, easy board and get out there.)
The Charleston swap meet is rescheduled right now for Oct. 4th.