Austin Maynard thought his surfing days were over. This would be in the year 2010, in the time of the BP oil spill. “They were saying we might not be able to get in the water for years,” he says. “This was my life, and I didn’t think I was going to be able to surf again. That was a surreal moment.”
It was a surreal moment for anyone who called Coastal Alabama home. For a time — 87 days, in fact — it looked like the Gulf as we knew it was no more.
For those who live along the Gulf Coast, the water is the region’s lifeblood, the source of what sustains us. Just how much it meant to its residents came into razor-sharp focus in 2010. Nothing concentrates the mind like a world-class oil spill, the worst of its kind in history.
“It taught me that we need to be very careful of what we’re doing, and be aware that this could affect the future,” Maynard says. “I had never really thought about it before the spill, even though I saw those oil rigs out there all the time.”
As a Mobilian, Maynard grew up on the water. He started surfing with his brother, back in middle school. His uncles and cousins were surfers, and the day he made the switch from a boogie-board to a longboard he was hooked. Soon, his skater friends were tagging along as he explored the local surf breaks, the spots where the waves break over a sandy bottom and become surfable. By the time high- school came around, he was checking the daily surf report and jetting down to Dauphin Island most days after school. Because Dauphin Island is essentially one big sandbar, the breaks are constantly changing, so he and his friends would traverse the West End of the island, always on the lookout for the new spots.
Before long, Maynard was a real-live surf brah. He’d started watching surf films and soaking up the culture; he notes in particular the 2004 documentary Riding Giants, which traces the careers of famous big-wave riders like Greg Noll and Laird Hamilton. “When I started surfing, it pretty much changed my whole life,” he says. “I just became obsessed.”
Posters of the modern-day surf gods adorned his bedroom walls. Guys like the Irons Brothers, Kelly Slater, Rob Machado, and Dave Rastovich. Maynard studied the moves of these masters. He liked the surfers with a fluid style, the ones like Rastovich and Machado who were really smooth on the turns and cut-backs, and who weren’t afraid to experiment with different boards. He also dug how surfing informed so much of their worldview. “They always spoke about the culture and the ocean, and the importance of respecting the water,” he says. “That was something I kind of attached to.”
It wasn’t long before Maynard himself graduated to a shortboard, which is better suited for speed and maneuvering, especially when the swells get bigger. For Maynard, there was no looking back.
Surfing the Gulf
The Gulf of Mexico is a calm sea. The waves that lap its shores are not like the bigger swells you see along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, or off the storied shores of Maui, where, along the surf-break at Pe’ahi, the waves on some days can reach between 30 and 80 feet when conditions are right.
Indeed, the Alabama coast is not known for its surfing. Its sugar-white beaches, some of the most prized in the world, are best for lounging about and swimming; for sunbathing and making sand-castles with the kiddos. For most of the year, the Gulf waters are warm and inviting, and you do not have to be an expert swimmer to enjoy them. Anyone can boogie-board or body-surf the waves, as long as the weather is reasonably good, and the rip currents are not too hazardous.
The Gulf is a relatively small body of water, compared to the greater oceans. The waves that roll in from the south have little time to gather the energy that make them surfable by the time they reach the northern coast. Surf conditions, for the most part, are the result of remote disturbances. The Florida Straits and Yucatan Channel — passages that mark the entrance to the Gulf — are populated with numerous reefs and shoals, which reduce most of the wave energy coming in from the Atlantic or Caribbean.
The topography of the continental shelf is also a factor. As you get closer to the coast, the seafloor of the Gulf begins to slope upward. That means a five-foot wave traveling in deep Gulf water is greatly reduced by the time it reaches the shore, due to the drag exerted on it by an increasingly shallow bottom.
Of course, this can all change during hurricane season, which runs from June through November in the Atlantic. When a northern front or major storm moves into the area, the conditions along the Gulf can approach those of America’s best surf spots. This is when the real action happens and the area’s hard-core surfers come out in full force – to taste the real thing for a few enchanted hours. You can find them surfing Alabama Point and The Cove in Orange Beach, or working choice spots in Pensacola, Fort Walton, and Panama City Beach.
For Maynard, surfing during storms can be thrilling, but it’s also offered some big lessons. “The power of the water humbles you, when you get too cocky and think you know it all,” he says. He recalls earlier attempts to surf during hurricanes, when he wasn’t quite ready and had no business being out there. “The ocean is way more powerful than you can imagine. It kind of puts you in your place.”
Caine O'Rear 