A-frame

Aaberg, Denny

Aaberg, Kemp

Abberton, Koby

Abbruzzi, Sid

Abellira, Reno

Abubo, Megan

academia and surfing

Adler, Tom

advertising and surfing

Aeder, Erik

aerial

Aguerre, Fernando

Aichner, Scott

Aikau, Clyde

Aikau, Eddie

Aipa, Ben

air-drop

airbrush

Airshow

Ala Moana

Alabama

alaia board

Alaska

alcohol and surfing

Alexander, Kala

Alexandre, João (Dapin)

Allen, Chuck

Alms, Paige

aloha shirt

Alter, Hobie

Alvarez, Pepe

Ancell, Kevin

Andaman Islands

Andersen, Lisa

Anderson, Craig

Anderson, Simon

Andino, Kolohe

Angel, Jose

angle

Angola

Angourie

Antarctica

Apocalypse Now

Arabian Sea

Aragon, Janice

Arakawa, Eric

Archbold, Matt

Arena, Eduardo

Ashton, Juan

Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP)

Atlantic Ocean

August, Robert

Aurness, Rolf

Auster, Ken

Australia

Avalon, Frankie

Azores

backdoor

backside

backside attack, Pipeline

backwash

bail out

Bain, Rob

Baja California

Baker, Bernie

Baker, Grant “Twiggy”

Baker, Tim

Bali

Ball, John “Doc”

Ballard, Bill

Ballard, Rochelle

balsa

Baltic Sea

Banks, Jim

Barbados

Barilotti, Steve

Barland, Michel

Barreda, Sergio “Gordo”

Barry, Michael

Bartholomew, Wayne

Baxter, Jackie

Bay of Bengal

Beach Boys, The

Beacham, Debbie

beachboys

beachbreak

Beachcomber Bills Grand Prix

Beachley, Layne

beavertail

Becker, Phil

Bedford-Brown, Stuart

Belgium

Bells Beach

Bendall, Ma and Pa

Bennett, Barry

Benson, Becky

Benson, Blanche

Benson, Linda

Bermuda

Rhode Island's rugged 40-mile coastline is trimmed with a disproportionately high number of good surf breaks, along with yachts, polo fields, lobster traps, 50-room summer "cottages," and free-range old-money aristocrats. 

Weather extremes are a hallmark of the all-year Rhode Island surfing experience, with average air and water temperatures hitting 70 degrees in summer, then plummeting to the low 30s in winter, at which time determined local surfers in head-to-toe wetsuits will sometimes pick their way across snow-covered rocks and beaches to get to the waves. "You don't get any better in winter," a Rhode Island surfer told Sports Illustrated magazine in 1969, "because if you try anything new you might fall off." 

Fall is usually the best time to surf in Rhode Island, as the state's south-southeast-facing coast is particularly receptive to seasonal hurricane swells. Autumn surf will sometimes hit six foot for days in a row, and can occasionally pump up to 12 foot or bigger. 

Rhode Island's famously notched and jagged shoreline meanwhile not only houses a full range of beach-, reef-, and pointbreaks, but ensures that the wind will always be blowing offshore or sideshore at one break or another. Top Rhode Island surf breaks include the variegated peaks and walls in Matunuck, the sand-bottom tubes of Narragansett Town Beach, and the inconsistent but soul-stirring Ruggles Avenue, a right-breaking reef in the heart of blue-blood Newport generally regarded as the East Coast's premier big-wave break. 

Although Hawaiian surfer and gold medal swimmer Duke Kahanamoku gave a surfing demonstration in Rhode Island in 1924, the sport didn't take hold here until 1960, when natives Chuck Fogerty and Matt Chrostowski returned from a visit to Southern California with a pair of new surfboards and began driving the harbor- and inlet-filled coast in search of breaks. A Hobie Surfboards outlet opened in Narragansett in 1963; two years later the inaugural New England Mid-Winter Surfing Championships were staged at Narragansett Town Beach. Rhode Island beach communities had meanwhile issued some of the toughest surfing laws in America, demanding that all surfers have a swimming certificate and a full wetsuit (in winter only), and ride with a partner at all times. 

Rhode Island was in the grips of a mini-surf boom by 1967, with five surf shops in Cranston, six in Narragansett, and two in Newport; four years later there were no surf shops open anywhere in the state. Sid Abruzzi opened the Surf Store in Newport in 1973; Peter Pan followed two years later with the Watershed in Narragansett; both shops are still open. As of 2003, Rhode Island was home to 10 surf shops and about 500 resident surfers; hundreds of out-of-state surfers, mainly from Connecticut and Massachusetts, drive in regularly. 

Pan, the garrulous regional longboard champion from the mid-'70s to the early '00s, is Rhode Island's best-known surfer, along with the late Colin Couture, president of the Eastern Surfing Association (ESA) in the '70s and '80s. The ESA holds about seven contests in Rhode Island each year. The state is featured in Couch Tour, a 2002 surf video; The Stormrider Guide North America (2002) details the Rhode Island surf.

Rhode Island

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

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