Winter has not been super eventful this year in the neighborhood. The combination of funky bottoms, rumbling winds, and just a general lack of swell has kept the Space Coast mostly under head high with little to no swell coming from the North. While there have been a few post-boundary swells in South Florida for a few hours here and there, and a bunch of choppy days to paddle battle, there hasn't been much to brag about in the central parts. The heated topic of how the beach re-nourishments have impacted our local sandbars isn't worth arguing right now. It is what it is. The obvious answer is YES, the waves ARE different since the bulldozers began extending the beaches and dumping sand on the coquina shelf. It seems we're exclusively an inside surf break now, and we need a little bit of size for it to even work. No more long sliders from the outside through the middle... at least until the sand shifts around. But I haven't scored a 100-yard ride yet this year, and this was pretty normal by last year's standards.
So I've paddled out a few times when the inside shorepound was working. We've had a few wind swells with a lot of onshore breeze, so there's been opportunities on the clean-up days to score before waves disappear. The shorter period wind swells have a way less shelf life. Like just a few hours in most cases. So you gotta get on it, or you miss it. I had life stuff to do this month, but I was able to squeeze six sessions out of February, riding five different boards from the dozen I've got set-up right now. But I rode a bunch of waves in the fun zone and felt generally satisfied from a surf/stoke perspective. I got to hit some lips, got smashed in close-out barrels on dry sand, made a few nice slashes and turns, making the most out of the short and racy sections ending in mini explosions on the beach. My last session actually resulted in another broken board, this time just a rail and a fin, so it's definitely an easy repair. I was going really fast and I made a top turn on a midlength thinking I could float down to the bottom, but when I got there, there was no bottom... and kablammm!
The best news from February is that I did not get injured... even after getting a total beat down on the 26th. But I'm cruising into March unscathed, and pretty healthy for my standards. My fingers are crossed that March delivers and the sandbars begin to take better shape, but if I'm being totally honest I'm really expecting it to be kinda middle of the road... not absolutely terrible, but nothing special either. I hope you're surfing where you are!
February Clips & Edits
February 2025 Gallery
