Vacation Land | The Wrap-Up

This swell has been pretty disappointing, whether it was the funky sandbar or the wind not cooperating – something just didn’t pan out back home with Leslie. I had been in contact with a buddy from Maine named Tom and he was keen to get some shots up there with his buddy Miles who was visiting from Nantucket as well as another friend of mine and Rye local, Harrison.

Now to start, I had just recently been bugging a few old friends about a spot they had taken me back in high school. This spot was somewhere on the central Maine coast and I couldn’t remember, for the life of me where this place was. All I knew was that I had an image of the parking lot and entrance and it had a big metal gate that we couldn’t get past. Well funny enough, Tom gave me directions on where to meet him (1.5 hours south of his home – we would head there after) and as I arrived it all came back to me. Same spot, same friggin’ gate.

Unlike my previous winter visit, Maine is still in season I guess (lifeguards and all) and it was $6.50 for entrance fee. I pulled up and took a look while I waited for the boys to park another car at a nearby beach. It looked good, backlit morning green and the wind was offshore. I’d been driving around NH for the past few days and I was just stoked to see some real waves. (See photos below)

2 hours later we headed North up to Tom’s house, a beautiful home located on a mean looking left hand slab about an hour and thirty minutes North of Portland. The plan was to take his boat out to a remote island with another ledge, shoot from the boat at sunset and hopefully not die. Thankfully the word was that Tom’s Father Tom Sr., would captain the journey so I wouldn’t have to be multi-tasking in the boat. As we left the harbor the wind kicked up to about 35 knots. After a grueling, wet 15 minute journey out there we had arrived to the ledge. It was just blown to shreds, you could see a defined slab for sure but it just wasn’t working.

From skiing I’ve learned that if I don’t go and look or I don’t go up and check a spot, I’ll always be thinking – could it have been better? Was I missing out? Well, we scored down south and I had enough content to be happy…the wind and tide were looking good and the sky was still blue. It seemed like the right idea to head up and see if it was working, if it was it would be mental. If it wasn’t (%#%@!!!), well if it wasn’t I already had 20 gigs of content from earlier and I got a beautiful boat ride in a place I’ve never been.

So it was a long day but an awesome experience all in all. Thanks to Tom and his family, Miles, Harrison, Tim Horton’s magical Canadian fast food, my gear for not malfunctioning and especially Harry Fallon for letting me borrow his telephoto lens, if it wasn’t for him I would have been S.O.L. Thanks buddy! Promise I’m taking care of it haha.

As for that gnarly slab, I’ll be back another day for sure. (Not pictured in this feature)

Well I guess this isn’t a proper Wrap-Up without a video….I’ve got a bunch of footage stockpiled and cut up in the editor right now. I’m going to wait to release it on a whim that this next tropical swell is good to us. The video will include the Vacation Land trip as well as some random shenanigans around the Seacoast, sunrise stuff AND footage from Casey Lockwood and Matt Colby at Fox (Tuesday morning session). Thanks for checking out the site, spread the word!