Northeastern Aloha
Stoked From New Hampshire To Maine
by Zach Weisberg

The last time the US Surf Team won a World Championship in 1996, the head coach hailed from New Hampshire. He also won six U.S. surfing championships. His name is Kevin Grondin, and he showed us his home in Hampton Beach along New Hampshire’s beautiful coastline.

“We’re so spoiled here,” says Grondin pointing to a calendar comprised of twelve flawless shots – starting with one of his home breaks.

“We don’t have the regularity of swell that they have on the west coast,” continues Grondin over a two-lobster dinner clocking in just shy of $14.00, “but it keeps us clear-headed in the way we appreciate waves when they do come, and it amplifies our stoke. It just gets so good here.”

It was apparent to us that New Hampshire, in its almighty fourteen miles of coastline, has a heap of frothing surfers. When we drove into town twenty minutes before sunset, a teenage girl rushed out of her driveway wearing booties and a hood, threw her board in the truck, and raced off to the beach despite the thermostat reading thirty-two on the dot in the fading daylight.

“It’s a complete surf town here,” says longtime Cinnamon Rainbows Surf Shop employee Phil Cary. “During the summer there are about three hundred surfers out on any given day and it drops down a bit during the winter, but we’ve got a large and prosperous surf community.”

Phil Grondin likens it to the Aloha State:

“The joke goes that it’s like East Coast’s Hawaii with the true aloha spirit. If you need a place to crash, you crash. Around here people love the ocean and are fully into it.”

I never expected an analogy comparing Hawaii and New Hampshire unless it was antithetical, but after seeing it firsthand – it’s true; Grondin put us up in his home decorated with enough wetsuits hanging in the bathroom to sustain several families through the coldest of winters, and the crew at Cinnamon Rainbows Surf Shop adjacent to The Wall stocked enough surfboards for a summer rush on Huntington’s Main Street.

The opening page of the 2009 New Hampshire Surf Calendar said it best:

“A complete community celebrates the surfing lifestyle in the midst of an oblivious outside world. The shortest coastline of any US state brings surfers together like no other state in the nation. With no thoughts of accolades we quietly continue our pursuit.”

And in some cases, that quiet pursuit does win gold.

After indulging in all things New Hampshire for the day, we finally accomplished what we set out to do, and often doubted: we arrived in Maine.

After meeting with our host, local surfer and NE Firewire Rep Chris Carey, who reached out to us as a resource as soon as he caught wind of our trip, we found ourselves in the water at Higgins Beach in Scarborough, Maine.

The knee-high sets rolled to shore and an offshore wind lightly wafted the sea. With just a few hooded surfers out, we surfed until the sun set over the pastel point. My hands were as red as lobster claws as we trudged back, and it felt good to be cold. The Northeast aloha spirit was thawing into my bones.

- Zach Weisberg
Online Editor

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