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OAK ISLAND , NC
By mid summer of 1963, surfing had begun to catch on like wildfire all over the East Coast, and �Surfer� magazine was showing up at the local book stands and magazine racks. The July issue advertised the East Coast Surfing Championships to be held in August 1963 in Florida.
Bobby tried for two weeks to convince me to enter the contest with him. Finally, I told him that we would enter the contest together. After all, what the hell, it was only twenty dollars for the entry fee, and since no one in it could have much more experience in the surf than we did, I thought that we just might really have a good chance at actually winning that stupid thing. And, if not, we would still get a nice trip out of the deal.
For the next four weeks, we practiced every day that the surf would allow, for five or six hours a day. We surfed all types of surf at Long Beach, Wrightsville Beach and Ocean Isle Beach. We worked in big surf, small surf, sand bar breaks, shore breaks and close-out surf to prepare us for whatever type of break they had in Vero Beach Florida.
At last the weekend came for the contest. We loaded up our boards on his Corvair, picked up some food and drinks and took highway 17 south to Florida.
We arrived in Florida very late on Friday night and we slept in the car to guard our boards until the next day.
Saturday morning we signed up for the competition, paid our entry fees and listened to about an hour of instructions and rules. Then finally it was time to paddle out and wait for the horn to sound to begin the competition. We knew nobody there except each other, and we both hoped that the �butterflies� in our stomachs would go away when the horn sounded. We felt better knowing that the surf was a familiar three to five foot standard break, with a right slide about ninety yards off shore. This surf was very similar to Wrightsville Beach. And then, the horn sounded.
We surfed as hard as we could and tried to get everything that we could out of each wave. Bobby was having his share of troubles. Not with the basics, but with the things that the judges were looking for like, �toes on the nose�, radical cut-backs, �shooting the curl� and stunts like, �the 360�, the �coffin�, and the quasimodo.
At last the final heat was over and we were all back on the beach awaiting the judges� tally. The �butterflies� were BACK!
When the vote was announced, I had won second place in the East Coast Surfing Championships. I really did not feel badly at all about not winning. In fact I thought that second place was fantastic. I had not expected this at all and was completely stoked.
The winner was a surfer named Gary Propper who had moved from Hermosa Beach California to Florida. The guy was great, and deserved to win.
That was the only surfing competition I was ever in. I felt that kind of competition took away from the reverence of the sport. The real competition should be against the sea and not against other surfers. Surfing should be a reverent, personal event and not done for an arrogant display of skills. For on any given day, the awesome power of the sea can show a surfer who the real champion is, and consume him forever.
The surfing contest gained Bobby and I a lot of notoriety back at home on Oak Island. We brought back home, not only a trophy, but also a lot of pride for all of the surfers in our community. Our performance in the championships, had put Oak Island in the limelight of the surfing world, along side of Daytona, Myrtle, Wrightsville, Nags Head, Virginia Beach and Ocean City Maryland. All of which had representatives at the contest.
The following summer, Bill Sharp, the editor of �The State� Magazine did a two page story on the �new� sport of surfing at Long Beach, complete with pictures of me with my board, and while riding a wave.
Surfing at Oak Island now had a firm grasp all along the beach, and this grasp would never let go.