August 6, 2011 - Nauset Beach, Orleans, MA

There's something about the beaches on the Cape that are so much more like being in the wilderness than other beaches. Our annual Cape camping trip had us slated to go to a "warm water beach on the south side, so my only chance to surf was to wake up at the crack and hit it. I got there about 7:00 AM. I knew it would be high tide, so surfing at all would be a crap shoot. When I looked, there were about 4 people surfing way down the beach and the area I was in looked like the waves were breaking kinda close to the beach, but it was surfable, so after pondering, for probably too long, I hit it. Waves were about waist-chest and you had to wait for a larger, further out wave, to avoid bailing in shallow water, or so I thought. I caught a few nice rides, but the bailout was not really a problem. The waves were actually pretty easy to catch and the drop-ins were really fun! Rides were about average length. Wore my full suit, but water temps were not that cold. Wind out of the SW at about 10. There was someone pointing a camera at me for a while, but I couldn't get anything going. More surfers kept arriving as I was leaving, some were stand-up paddlers. Also had a seal friend. The tide seemed to drop when I got out, but the waves didn't get any better. Surfed for about an hour. It was nice to catch some slightly larger waves in cloudy weather, solo in the early AM.  Not bad picture quality for a camera phone.