When winter winds blow, Surf Superior

Originally publshed 02/24/03

Greg Isaacson once listened throughout winter nights for the

sound of the surf - "Like shotgun blasts" - reaching Oahu's famous

North Shore.

He is 30 years and 4,000 miles removed from the Hawaiian Islands.

But when the weather is just right, when a northeasterly gale roars

overnight toward a different North Shore and rattles the timbers of

his house on Duluth's Skyline Parkway, he feels it. Come morning,

he peers from his deck through binoculars down the city's hillsides

and measures Lake Superior pouring onto Park Point.

"If it's breaking two feet on Park Point, it's four or five feet

on the North Shore," he said. "It's always twice as big up on the

North Shore."

And if the waves are breaking high at Lester River or Stoney

Point or Beaver Bay, there probably are surfers in the water. No

matter the month. No matter the air or water temperature. No matter

the wind chill, for that matter.

On those days, surfers arrive before sunrise, their boards piled

in the backs of SUVs and vans, their Thermoses filled with hot

coffee, their bags of potato chips within reach. Already they are

dressed in thick, hooded wet suits, which, along with necessary

neoprene booties and gloves, will protect them from water only a

degree away from freezing. Vaseline is smeared on the only exposed

skin - around the eyes, nose and mouth - to repel water and keep it

from freezing to the face.

"Full body armor," said Bob Tema, a Minneapolis graphic designer

who grew up in Hawaii and has lived away from the islands'

80-degree days and 20-foot winter swells for the past 14 years.

Most of these Minnesota surfers are, like Tema, transplanted

Californians, Hawaiians and East Coasters. A few, like Isaacson,

are native Midwesterners who learned to surf in distant oceans and

returned home unable even in fall or winter to disengage themselves

from a sport founded in freedom and self-expression, with a pull

powerful enough to inspire its own music and culture.

Most of them - college students from Duluth, professionals from

Minneapolis and points beyond - spend three seasons each year

scouring the Internet for buoy reports and National Weather Service

wave forecasts, waiting for the few days when the weather breaks

just right and swells, from waist-high to well-overhead, line up

one after the other and collapse cleanly as they approach the

cobblestone shore.

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The discovery

For more than 20 years, Isaacson surfed mostly alone, accompanied

occasionally by a buddy or a skeptical salmon fisherman. Raised in

Duluth, he caught the sport's irresistible wave after seeing the

1960s film "The Endless Summer," in which two surfers travel the

world searching for the perfect wave.

He moved to Hawaii right after high school and returned home two

years later, just in time to see the November 1975 storm that sank

the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald and pounded Park Point with 20-foot

waves. The next spring, he surfed Superior for the first time in a

bulky wetsuit, what he now calls "Gumby surfing."

Isaacson, a contractor by profession and surf philosopher/writer

by passion, had heard reports in recent years that others surfed

there as well. Then, one day after he bought a computer, he

discovered Tema's "Superior Surf Club" Web site, started four years

ago to spread the word about the inland sea's surf potential.

Isaacson prefers to surf spring and fall, "when the big winds

change." (Summers usually produce few suitable waves). Others,

including Tema and surfing buddy Brian Stabinger, surf any time the

conditions are right: A day or two after a storm has pushed

eastward across Superior. The storm first produces northeast winds

that stir swells 400 miles away and then switch to the north and

northwest, producing surfing's preferred "offshore" breezes that

create crisp, individually breaking waves.

Nature picks the days. When it calls, surfers go.

That can even be a clear Tuesday sunrise in February, when the

thermometer showed 7 below zero and the wind chill measured 30

below. In wind like that, the 33-degree water feels, according to

one surfer, "toasty warm," a concept unfathomable to anyone who has

dipped a toe into Lake Superior in July.

National Weather Service data forecast 6-foot waves for that day.

They were smaller, but still big enough to surf Stoney Point, the

most dependable spot on the old highway between Duluth and Two

Harbors because of its deep offshore water and because, being

surrounded by the lake on three sides, it's one of the few places

that doesn't freeze up during winter.

"It's so cold nobody believes you can surf," said Luke Kavajecz,

a University of Minnesota-Duluth freshman who skipped a morning

writing class because the surf was up. "When I'm carrying my board

from my dorm to my truck, I get some weird looks. People ask me if

I'm lost."

Surfers paddle out from shore and pause, waiting for the right

"set" of waves. It takes an experienced eye to discern the correct

wave from many of what Isaacson calls "blue corduroy lines of

energy."

A surfer must choose wisely.

"You don't want to take the first wave," Isaacson said, "because

it's like going through the rinse cycle. Those are waves of

consequence."

.

Safety matters

The dangers are many. There are stray currents that can carry

experienced surfers and strong swimmmers tumbling several hundred

yards into rock cliffs downshore. A falling surfer can get hit in

the head by his board. Fatigue is a factor because Lake Superior's

fresh water is less buoyant than ocean salt water. Then there is

the numbing cold. Surfers almost always go with a buddy.

"The only enemy here is hypothermia, besides the essence of

surfing," Isaacson said. "You can drown, but that's something we

don't talk about much."

A woman watching from shore once pleaded with Tema. Don't get in

the water, she said, you'll die.

"This is something we've done before," said Tema, who has surfed

Superior the past six years, "but you should never underestimate

the risk."

The rewards on a morning when Arctic air reaching open water

creates an ethereal meeting of the heavens and Earth can approach

spiritual revelation. Isaacson considers it meditation.

Surfers have a word for it: stoked, the euphoric feeling found

from the catching of a wave.

"It's you and the wave and the energy, dropping down," Isaacson

said. "It truly is a time when nothing else in the world matters.

There are those moments when I feel like God knew what he was doing."

Of course, most sane people associate those days with palm trees

and tropical trade winds.

"People want to see blue paradise," said Stabinger, a Minneapolis

audio-visual systems programmer who traveled with Tema to Ireland

in November to surf the remnants of winter storms there.

"Apparently, that's the appeal. But this is so much more of an

adventure."

Surfers from the Twin Cities wake at 3 a.m. and drive three hours

so they can reach the Superior shore by sunrise for just such an

adventure.

"How many guys would go to that much trouble to play tennis?"

asked Randy Rarick, promoter of Oahu's professional Triple Crown of

surfing and a man known for having surfed more countries (60-plus)

than anyone. "That just goes to show you the thrill and stoke of

surfing runs deep."

Rarick had just left a nice offshore breeze and 8- to 10-foot

swells and made the short walk from Sunset Beach to his home on

Oahu's North Shore. A few nights before, temperatures plunged into

the low 50s, and local residents reached for their blankets and

sweat shirts. The afternoon high reached the low 70s that day,

causing surfers to wear partial wet suits and complain about the

lousy, cold weather.

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- Jerry Zgoda is at jzgoda@startribune.com

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ON THE WEB

Surf the Great Lakes

Links to surf forecasts and information about surfing Lake Superior.

- Go to www.superior-surf.com for photo galleries and

information about the Lake Superior Cold Water Surf Fest, which

will be held, depending upon conditions, in late May or early June.

- For information on the Great Lakes Surfing Association, which

focuses on surfing Lake Michigan, go to www.lakesurf.com.