The Epic Outer Banks Swell Of 1980
by Lori Miller
Every day that week we sat around for hours at a time listening to the old weather radios. The more reports we soaked up the more our surf frenzy grew. "This is NOAA marine forecast for Oregon Inlet out 20 miles. Seas are 15-18 feet, winds are from the Northeast 35 to 40 knots with higher gusts.....", and so it went day in and day out. We waited, and we waited more, praying for the raging winds to die down. It went on for hours, which stretched into days, which felt like weeks.
Then it came. In the wee hours of the night on Friday the winds went dead calm, and we knew, it would be epic the next day. We packed up the van in wild anticipation that night and went to bed with that smell of sweet wax in the air. Nobody slept much, and when dawn approached we all lurched out of bed and piled into the van, destination: Outer Banks. We rolled into town and took a look at Kitty Hawk pier and all you could see were big green a-frames rolling in like from a wave machine. It truly gave meaning to the old phrase, corduroy to the horizon. It was three-times overhead, at least, and very thick. But the paddle out looked like fly-swatter material, so we opted for a much longer pier that had a natural paddling channel right next to it. That's right, the military observation pier at Duck, with all it's tons of cement California style, holding and spreading all that wonderful sand perfectly fanned out from a quarter of a mile out, making for a perfect break to hold a huge swell. We pulled up and cars with racks were lined up half of the road. A good sign, not too crowded! We grabbed the boards and flew down that winding path along the fence, with that huge three-wheeled monstrosity of a contraption that the military folks there used looming over us like some machine out of the Terminator.
As we reached the top of the dune, the most breath-taking outlook awaited us: Perfectly huge walls, giant green peaks rolling in from way outside the pier, rolling all the way inside for hundreds of yards, over the length of this quarter-mile long pier! But along the pier for some 30 yards was clear paddling, and paddle we did, until we reached the end of the pier. This in itself blew our minds, even for the Outer Banks. There we sat out on the shoulder watching these huge walls roll through until we looked at each other and knew it was time to rock! The first wave I paddled for just rolled by, making this thunderous crunching and hissing sound like we always heard in those surf movies on the big screen. It wasn't Big Wednesday, it was Big Saturday, and we knew this would stay with us forever. The next wave was it, and as I rocketed out into the chasm and down that incredibly massive face, I was really glad I had brought that old 7'1" Lightning Bolt gun that had sat in the corner of my garage for so long. It made me realize what these boards were shaped for, total power and long drawn-out bottom turns, to be able to make it around these huge sections of giant white churning fields of juice. My buddy Bill snapped his leash on his next wave and I totally lost sight of him. I became really paranoid for about five minutes until I spotted his tiny board and his head and arms moving toward it. Then a huge set loomed outside and I just screamed to him pointing, and then began paddling outside as hard as I could. Good thing, as the set began breaking even farther outside the end of the pier than when we first arrived.
All the while we noticed helicopters way down the beach towards Nags Head but just shrugged it off and prepared for the next heavy drop. The tide was coming back in with a vengeance and these waves were taking no prisoners. The next peak loomed up and I barely scratched over the top when what I saw next chilled me to the bone. This peak had to be 4 times overhead and breaking board-crunching hard. I turned and paddled with all I had, and it just launched me like a twig and then everything was dark and rushing, twisting, and dragging. When I started up, there was nothing but heavy white foam for three feet above my head, and I just kept pulling at the surface until me and my board came together to punch up through. My leash was so stretched out, it was 5 feet longer. I quickly grabbed a lungful of air before another rolling wall of whitewater thundered towards me 40 yards out towards the break and again I went under with board, popped out through and began paddling back out with limp rubber for arms. I finally did make it back out and now felt totally ready for whatever rolled through. The next wave was ripe for ripping. I pulled up high into the pocket for a little cover-up, then screamed out onto the shoulder for this raging cutback followed by only top to bottom carves on this big daddy all the way! Bill was paddling back out and I could hear him howling as I flew out the back into the air for some 15 feet with board rocketing like a space shuttle at launch.
So it went for hours into the late morning. We were spent! After going in for some food and drink, we sat and grooved on this outrageous knee boarder just ripping it up outside. We fell asleep for a while and when we woke about an hour later, it was going off on the inside with these spinning, winding, spitting tubes as the wind had started just a little out of the west about 10 miles per hour. I watched this guy get barreled for dozens of yards with his hands overhead when he dropped in, whooping it up! I remember this crazy-looking John Belushi-looking dude screaming the well-known song by Queen "Another One Bites the Dust", as the sections became more critical and the pack was just all-out going-for-it, and many paid the price with broken and splintered boards galore!
We forced our rubber arms to carry us back out and milked it until about an hour before sunset. As we headed back up the beach and stopped for that last look, we knew we had surfed it as good as it gets on "The Banks". On the way home we were so worked by the waves that we had to rotate drivers between the four of us, each getting at least one turn with little room for argument! When I got home to my girlfriend's place in Norfolk near the Colley Avenue bridge, I fell asleep in the driveway for hours until she finally noticed me out in my car and came out to shake me out of my dreams of that sweet raging swell of 1980.
Oh, by the way, sadly we learned the next day what that helicopter was doing. Nine people had drowned that day, all unfortunate tourists from inland somewhere where fields of wheat flow like waves of gold in the sweeping winds of the Midwest plains. May they be held in loving arms forever in the big castle in the sky. Let's not forget them when we think back fondly of how we rode that epic swell of 1980.
Lori M.