My First Surf Friend

by: Grant Gary

When I first started surfing in Boston, I thought I was the only one. I mean, I didn’t REALLY think I was the only one, but I thought there were at most 50 surfers in the entire city. It was 2014 and while I don’t want to pretend to be some OG who discovered surfing, it was pretty damn uncrowded when I started. I remember surfing on a Sunday in March 2015 on a huge Nor’easter, the waves were about head high and perfectly groomed by the winds. I broke my nose on my board because I had no idea what I was doing and I remember thinking that if I’d gotten knocked out I would have been dead because there was no one else in the water. Literally zero other people. This left me with the sense that I really needed to take care of myself in the ocean. It’s rarely like that anymore, but I won’t bore you with tales of the good ‘ol days, this is a tale about friendship.

I’d been working at East Boston High School for a few months. I would roll up to work in the morning in a dress shirt and tie, but with a surfboard and wetsuit stuffed inside my car. You see I was a sort of Clark Kent in my mind. I couldn’t wait for the final bell of the day to ring so I could bust out of that stupid outfit and right into my superhero costume that made me invincible to cold ocean water. I was worse than the students, I’d be the first one out of the building and all they’d see of me were my tail lights as I blazed on up to New Hampshire for a surf. Needless to say I didn’t make friends with any of my co-workers. It didn’t really matter to me: my Aunt was sick and dying, I hated my job and all I really cared about was getting in the ocean for my daily spiritual cleanse and having dinner with my little cousins.

In November, right before Thankgiving break that all changed. We had a school assembly before break and while all the students were inside the auditorium, all the teachers were hanging out outside. I was chatting with a few teachers when I suddenly got cornered by a substitute teacher that I’d seen around a number of times. He was around my age (early 30s) pretty tall with blond hair. He seemed like a cool dude and we’d mumbled some words in passing but had never really had a good chat. He introduced himself as Ethan and one of the first questions out of his mouth was “Hey is that your natural skin color?” I laughed and told him yes, I was really tan because I surfed almost every day. He lit up and said “Dude I’m a surfer too!” Have you ever surf at Cakawhacky’s?”

Now Cackawhackys isn’t the name of a real surf break, its a fake name for a surf break that I’d been searching for since I started surfing. I’d become obsessed with finiding this break that supposedly existed inside or just outside of the Boston City Limits. I’d spent hours driving along the shoreline in Quincy and anywhere I could think of to no avail. But when Ethan told me about Cackawhacky’s, I immediately knew it was the wave I’d been looking for. Nowadays Cackawhacky’s is a well known break, but back then it was a closely guarded secret.

Ethan and I surfed Cacky’s a few days later with planes landing over our heads and I couldn’t believe my luck that one of the only other surfers in Boston had FOUND ME! AND he’d shown me a secret break that I’d spent months looking for. What a guy! During our first surf session as we were floating out there waiting for waves, Ethan says “Dude you’ve gotta come down to Nica this summer”. “Nicaragua”? I asked. It turns out Ethan had bought a piece of land in the jungle of Nicaragua that was right on a secret surf break. It cost him $9000! He then divulged his wild plan of driving all the way from Boston to Nicaragua in April, living in the jungle and surfing there all summer and then driving back before the fall when he was going to enroll in medical school. He told me to fly from Boston to Nica when school got out and he’d pick me up and we could live in the jungle and surf all summer. To say that we were kindred spirits would be an all time understatement. I did eventually go down to Nica with Ethan, but that’s a story for another day. You see this story is about meeting a friend.

I’ve always believed that when you meet a truly great friend, they take some aspect of your life and crank it up to 11. And that’s what me and Ethan did for each other’s surfing. We were so obsessed with surfing that when there was swell we’d cover each others classes so we could go surf during the day. You see Cacky’s was less than 20 minutes from the high school, and since classes were 1.5 hours long, if you had someone to cover for you it was possible to get in your car, drive to the surfbreak, change into your wetsuit, surf for 45 minutes, get back in your car, change back into dress clothes, and get back to work before anyone was the wiser. No one ever seemed to question the fact that I smelled like neoprene and salt water, or the fact that I had a huge smile on my face for the rest of the day. We had several of these missions throughout the year and if we were really lucky we’d overlap at Cacky’s. I remember arriving at Cacky’s one day and Ethan telling it was head high, which almost never happened at that spot. It was the kind of place that was great at 3 foot, but rarely got to 6 foot. But when it did it was magical.

Ethan introduced me to skateboarding as a way to pass the time when the surf was flat in Boston. We would walk up huge hills and then bomb down on our longboards,. I have to admit that was far scarier than any surf session we ever had. I ended up rolling in the grass several times when I couldn’t make a tight turn at high speeds but thankfully I never got truly hurt. And when the surf was up? We were on it.

I was only friends with Ethan for a few months before he left for Nicaragua, but those few months were wonderful. I’d made my first surf friend and realized for the frist time that maybe I didn’t always need to surf alone.