Surfers hope storm makes splash in waveless ocean

VIRGINIA BEACH

Welcome to Lake Atlantic. Ask surfers the last time they rode a decent wave, and there's a lot of head-scratching.

"Let's see.... It's been a good - I don't know - it's probably been a good month-and-a-half, and before that there wasn't anything significant," said Kevin Daisey, who runs Surf757, a website that posts daily surf reports.

Optimism is rising, however cautiously, with remnants of what had been Tropical Storm Emily potentially on track to skirt the East Coast on Sunday and Monday.

Summer typically levels waves here, but this year's dull spell has lasted particularly long. Even the surf on North Carolina's Outer Banks, which gets better waves than Virginia Beach because the barrier islands jut into deep ocean water, has been flat. The heat hasn't helped.

"High-pressure systems don't generate waves," said Brent Nultemeier of Kill Devil Hills, an owner of OBXsurfinfo, a surf-forecasting website. "We're looking for a low-pressure system, a tropical storm or hurricane."

He's found it challenging to vary the wording of his daily surf report.

"They're starting to come out like a broken record," he said. "Good day for Plan B. Fishing is going off. Whatever you can do that doesn't require a surfboard."

Not everyone is complaining.

"The longer it stays flat, the better I like it because it increases the odds we will have something," said Paul West, who directs the East Coast Surfing Championship in Virginia Beach. It starts Aug. 22. Waves at the contest have been pretty good the last couple of years despite flat spells leading up to it, he said.

Bloggers at Sandbridge's Surf and Adventure shop have resorted to mild online venting: "Nothing is more demoralizing than huffin' it over the dune on a scorching-hot beach to witness Lake Atlantic in all her splendor," one wrote.

"Everybody is going a little crazy, for sure," said Chris Stellato, a Surf and Adventure manager. He said the lack of swells forces people to try new water toys such as stand-up paddling, which can help surfers catch the smallest waves.

At the Beach's 1st Street jetty this week, surfers were making the most of the dribble.

"I just had fun," said Brian Macon, loading his board onto a bike carrier while surfers caught small waves behind him. "It depends on what your definition of flat is. Every surfer in Virginia Beach is on edge right now, but you got to take what the ocean gives you."

Will Emily deliver? Too early to tell. Some forecasts showed the storm, downgraded Thursday to a tropical wave, nipping Florida on Saturday before spinning out to sea off the Carolinas on Sunday and Monday.

"I'm not saying, 'Ah, it's going to go off,' " Outer Banks surf forecaster Nultemeier said. "It might not produce a single swell."

The Beach's Daisey said, "I don't think there will be anything big coming out of it, but maybe a 3- to 4-foot swell, maybe Sunday."

If that happens, surfers will flock.

"Believe or not," Nultemeier said, "surfing is what keeps us all sane."

Aaron Applegate, (757) 222-5122, aaron.applegate@pilotonline.com