Surfers dream about uncrowded waves, avid surfers would likely jump through a Cheerio to score some uncrowded clean and green rollers. Well, bubble burst, unfortunately scoring uncrowded surf is difficult and primarily why surfers started traveling and taking surf vacations years and years ago.
It all started with Bruce Brown’s Endless Summer, featuring Mike Doyle and Robert August globe hopping “in search of the perfect wave.” They sure did pop into some great waves and inspired a cultural movement from there forward: the appetite for surfers for travel exploded, Why? Well, 1) to get into some great exotic waves 2) improve their skills and 3) experience other cultures (and clearly there are other unmentioned benefits).
One distinct personality trait that distinguishes the surfing community from others is simply: curiosity. Curiosity is defined “as a quality related to inquisitive thinking such as exploration, investigation, and learning, evident by observation in human and many animal species. The term can also be used to denote the behavior itself being caused by the emotion of curiosity. As this emotion represents a thirst for knowledge, curiosity is a major driving force behind scientific research and other disciplines of human study.” by Wikipedia.
The primary “discipline of human study” here is the art of surfing. As with any skill, the more knowledge, education, mentors and smart time invested into the discipline the greater the rewards and benefits AND the shorter the time to achieve the desired result. For the surfer the rewards can be paralleled to “the stoke” or the feeling that one gets from enjoying the ride.
So whats the point? Why is the title of this blog post “Crowded Waves or Uncrowded Waves?” I recently bumped into this photo and it jogged some of my memory. The photo was taken at Ocean Beach aka Sunset Cliffs in San Diego California by a professional photographer of me in 2011, my last year in grad school at UCSD. A fellow classmate, surfer and buddy of mine, Colin Santulli, who live in OB convinced me to head out to “Osprey’s” with him after class. So we did and boy was I glad we did.
Many people often come to the conclusion that certain spots (usually reefs and points with one distinct take off spot) are “too crowded.” Yes, there may be crowds and often times they may even be thick, but for some surfers in the very same conditions, it may actually seem to be “uncrowded lines.”
The point is it depends on your perspective. The surfer who puts in the work, is curious, beats on their craft consistently and does what it takes to get better is the one that will often reap the rewards in the so-called “crowded waves.” Sure surfing has changed over the years, breaks are more crowded, more kooks are out, but what are you doing to improve yourself everyday? Do you believe if you put in more water time, had access to mentors and worked on your skills sets that you would see more “uncrowded waves?”
Get better everyday and challenge yourself! Live Swell