Surfing at The Wall at Hampton Beach (photo by Ralph Fatello)
The first light of the day projects across the frozen New England ground. Along the shore stand shadowy figures whose misty breath mixes with the swirling steam rising from coffee cups in their mitted hands. They gaze into the icy water. Slowly, their numbers increase as more figures emerge from warm cars to observe the ocean movements. Translucent green waves roll through and smash onto the shore. And then, in ones and twos, snug in thick wetsuits, they smile and rush into the water.
For the surfers of New Hampshire, these small moments of community are one of the things they like best about surfing here. Many of them have been filming unbelievable surf at local breaks for decades, and for locals, the films capture memories of firing swells, frigid waters, and a community built wave by wave.
For surfers outside the region, the videos offer a chance to see the strength of a surfing community in an area often overlooked for its wave quality. Now, thanks to a number of local surfers-turned-filmmakers, the story of Seacoast surfing is being told nationwide.
Concord-based surfers Dylan Ladds and Ryan Scura are part of the trend. Their short film, “New England Blood,” screened at the annual New Hampshire Film Festival in October. The pair wrote, produced, and directed the film.
“When we started surfing in New Hampshire we soon realized that there was a very tight knit, historic community that had developed around surfing,” said Ladds and Scura via email. “Being filmmakers, we thought it would make a good subject for a documentary.”
“New England Blood” is just one of the short films they’ve made while working on a larger project called “The Granite Stoke,” a feature-length documentary about surfing on New Hampshire’s coast. Their goal in “New England Blood” and their other films is to convey the passion of local surfers, share their stories, and give audiences a small taste of the connection many surfers feel to the region.
With only a few miles of coastline and cold temperatures most of the year, local surfers bond not only over their common love of surfing, but their determination to catch waves against the odds, as often as they can. In the film, Ladds and Scura contrast cold-water waves with fall foliage, a nod to the fact that the best surfing in New Hampshire starts when summer ends and autumn begins.
“A lot of the clips were shot in autumn and have warm colors,” said Ladds and Scura. “When we’re editing, we are thinking about pace, composition and relation of each clip to the other clips. It’s difficult to say exactly how we pick each clip; we experiment and try different things until we like what’s happening.”
Six local surfers provide narration about what surfing in New Hampshire means to them. Dave Cropper, owner of Cinnamon Rainbows surf shop in Hampton, is one of those narrators. Surfers have to learn to appreciate the good surfing conditions, he says in the film, because they’re seldom here. “I love how the film is about the culture of being a surfer in New England, and how people stay stoked during the long cold flat spells,” says Cropper.
People think he’s crazy for surfing through the winters in the cold and snow, but he always tells them that if they saw how good the surf can get, they’d put on a lot of neoprene and do whatever it takes to get out there, too. “It’s a special community, and everyone knows each other for the most part,” said Cropper. “My friends and I have been sharing waves in New Hampshire for 30 years. When the surf gets good, I get just as excited as I did when I was a kid.”
Surfing at Seabrook (photo by Ryan Denning)
Surfing in New Hampshire is not easy. Bryan Johnson, co-manager of Pioneers Board Shop in North Hampton, said it’s “like a holiday” when good waves come to the state. The waves are inconsistent until the fall and winter, when hurricanes and snowstorms help fuel ideal wave conditions. By then, though, the water temperatures are at their coldest.
“To truly be a surfer here you have to be dedicated,” said Johnson. “That dedication puts you in a small group and you feel connected to it. You feel like you belong.”
Ladds and Scura aren’t the only ones making local surf videos. Hampton surfer Ralph Fatello started making movies and taking photos of surfers in the late ’60s, and made his first movie in 1971. Back then, Fatello said, he knew that if he didn’t document surfing in New England, no one else would. With so few days of good waves, he didn’t want a day of incredible surfing to be forgotten. He maintains a website, www.ralphspic.com, where he shares his photos and videos and local surfing news.
“Surfing has saved me more times than I can tell you,” said Fatello. “It has always been my therapy. My escape. My canvas. My world. I eat, sleep, and drink surfing here in New England.”
Fatello is nostalgic for the early days of New Hampshire surfing. He and his friends were discovering new breaks and surfing them for the first time in wetsuits and boards that were pretty shoddy compared to today’s gear.
“I’ve been surfing since 1964,” said Fatello. “(‘New England Blood’) was around four minutes long. I couldn’t possibly describe what surfing here in New England means to me in that short window. Next summer will be my 50th year of surfing here in New England.”
The community of surfers in New Hampshire is small, Fatello says, and because of the extreme winter conditions that make the best waves, the surfers who do come out are a “hardcore circle of wave riders who seem to know each other,” he says. And though it’s grown more visible since he started surfing decades ago, it’s still a tightly-knit community.
For Ladds and Scura, “New England Blood” is a stepping stone. The film has screened at five festivals during the last year, including a number of surf film festivals. At the San Diego Surf Film Festival this year, they received the “Emerging Filmmakers” award. Their work has led to a production company, Dooster Productions, and a few jobs. Ladds, a teaching assistant at Harvard University, and Scura, a videographer at Brandeis University, hope to make Dooster their full-time job within a few years.
“We are really humbled by the response from the Seacoast community,” said Ladds and Scura. “They have been very supportive throughout this project, and it was great to make something that many surfers could enjoy. People are picking up things that we didn’t explicitly lay out, like the community in New Hampshire and the general vibe in and out of the water.”
—Doug Robichaud