WELLFLEET, Mass. – Four boys emerge from the small crowd of surfers floating 40 yards out, paddle hard for five or six strokes, jump up on short boards and slide fast down the smooth hump of water as it breaks into white foam.
Among more than two dozen surfers gathered along a stretch of Marconi Beach at the Cape Cod National Seashore, the slender teenagers stand out. They surf four across, among men on longboards, other boys, a few girls, boogie boarders, body surfers and waders.
“Surfing’s become very cool again,” said Sebastian Frawley, whose Little Overhead shop a few miles away had run low on rental boards by noon. On a hot Friday in mid-August, he pulled the sales tag off a new 9-foot fiberglass board and rented it for the day for $30.
In most of New England, the surfing season is mainly July and August. But Frawley said the best waves come in late August and September in hurricane season, and some people even go out in winter when the water temperature is in the 30s.
Better wet suits have extended the sport to colder water. Angelo Ponzi, of market researcher Board-Trac, said the biggest recent change is the percentage of surfers who are women – from about 20 percent five years ago to 33 percent now.
In 1987, about 1.5 million people surfed in the U.S. The total dipped, then gradually rose to 2.1 million in 2000, dipped again slightly and is now rising again steadily, Ponzi said.
“The lifestyle, if you will, is probably the bigger driver in this market,” Ponzi said. “Kids want to replicate the Southern California lifestyle.”
Chris Mauro, editor of Surfer magazine, said the sport has lost its former outlaw stigma.
“It’s really, you know, just part of the American culture,” Mauro said.
It’s the biggest wave of popularity since the early 1980s, Frawley said, and he’s determined to make some money from it. He had “25 dot-commers” on a beginner outing the day before, and on the Friday in mid-August was welcoming a steady stream of customers at his shop on Route 6, the main road through Cape Cod.
“It’s probably bigger in places like this because it’s new to a lot of people,” said Frawley, who began surfing 20 years ago. “It seems like every beach we go to there’s 25 surfers. Back when I started in high school, it’d just be me and a couple friends and a couple older guys.”
The sport itself isn’t new to the Northeast, though it remains dependent on the weather. Ponzi said there have been large contingents of surfers on the Jersey Shore for a long time.
The skill level needed here ranges from beginner to advanced, depending on wave size, the Web site NESurf.com says.
“Which spots are best will depend on the constantly shifting sandbars (spots that are good one day may suck after a big swell or storm). During the summer many of the beaches listed get crowded and charge for parking, so you may want to explore,” the Web site says.
At Marconi, beginners struggled to their feet on small rolling waves, while skilled riders caught the crests and sliced back and forth toward shore. By midafternoon, sunbathers packed the sand for almost a half-mile under hazy sunshine, with open expanses beyond. The sprawling parking lot atop the bluffs, 60 miles from Boston and 13 miles short of the Cape’s urban tip at Provincetown, was nearly full.
The Atlantic Ocean was a bracing 60 degrees.
On the Net: New England surfing, www.NESurf.com
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