The trusty Milo – a 58-foot trawler converted to surf charter vessel.
of reefs and coves opened up to the swell. Deep evening now, the sky-peach and mauve colored—
reflecting off a great snow patch between higher peaks just inland, the light was low enough for the
forest shore to go dark and a feeling of cold to settle over the water. Again in the distance, we saw
white water churning off rock stacks extending from yet another small island. The back of a wave
bending to the reef below, it looked to me like a good roller with a broad bowl section — some
variation of Sunset Beach in Hawaii — not a barrel, not even a very high-performance wave, but
with this south swell having traveled from the other side of the planet, that energy would translate
to power down deep in the wave and it would provide speed to burn. We sat in the channel for 15
minutes, waiting for another set to materialize, but it didn’t come before the light got lower still. The
Milo sat a few miles off, and instinctively, we wanted to get back to the warmth of the galley and the
pot of hot water for tea that sat ready on the stove.
At 1 in the morning, when it would soon start to get light again, we hoisted the runabout back
aboard and Captain McCunne motored through the night for a spot he knew of some hours yet down
the coast. Before turning into the tight bunk room I could not help but stare at the dark shore, and
at the swells as they ran beneath the boat, willing a surf set up out of an incoherent stretch of coast.
Far be it for me, a greenhorn from California with zero experience in Alaskan waters, to gainsay the
captain and his first-mate, Scott — both of whom pioneered this coast for surfing — but I had a
strong feeling that we should have stayed in that first stretch of coast to at least see it in full sunlight
and through the run of tides. There were just too many set ups that were almost working, that just
needed a little something to tweak them from sloppy upchucks to rock reef magic, and with this
swell running too…
Days later, after some disappointing glacier-fed rivermouth surf, we made it to a long, black
sand beach. Big peaks broke from one end to the other, with two headlands anchoring the stretch.
The water out here was blue and smooth, and the set up like a mountain-lined Ocean Beach in San
Francisco. Chris and Keith made their way to the far south end of the beach, catching wedge-waves
in front of boulders at the base of a high, sheer cliff. Taking a break and letting the warm sun bake my
black suit, it was fun to watch the brothers slash and weave the thick little pockets they found. The
San Diego boys and the captain were surfing the outer right up the beach and holding their own. And
then, later in the day after lunch and a few refreshments on board Milo, we made the long paddle back
in to the beach. The tide was pushing high and focusing the waves at the north end into long, running
lefts with a proper pocket. The Malloy brothers wove clean turns all the way through, while us more
work-a-day surfers skated across for the chance to make a turn. And this felt like what we’d come for
— an open beach, not a soul around, and beautiful ocean waves doing their ceaseless pulse.
We motored up the coast a few miles, and McCunne and Dickerson talked between themselves
about the best lineup on the rocky shore for a certain bottom