Since Sheboygan’s natural topography juts out five miles into Lake Michigan, winds of at least twenty to twenty-five miles per hour across the bay between North Point and North Pier create the ideal wave conditions for those in search of an ice-cold adrenaline rush. Those conditions have earned Sheboygan the reputation for getting bigger, better, and more plentiful surfing waves than anyplace else on the Great Lakes. Although the biggest waves one can sanely consider riding are around ten to twelve feet high in Sheboygan, most are in the four- to six-foot range. Anything bigger would be deemed deadly, with the really big ones, the twenty-four-footers, located about five miles offshore.
The thought of riding big waves was all Lee and Larry could talk about as Christmas vacation neared. Walking home from school one blustery afternoon, they were flagged down by their mother, who was waving her arms profusely at them nearly four blocks from home. At first they feared something had happened to one of their older brothers, or perhaps Dad had been injured at the shipyard. Their fear switched to excitement when they got close enough to hear her cry out, “It’s here. You’ve got a package, Lee!”
Lee’s new surfboard had arrived from the Soul Surfboard Shop in Huntington Beach, California. The board had artwork featuring two angels overlooking an elegantly dressed queen, exactly as pictured in the catalog he had ordered from a few months earlier. With the entire holiday break ahead of him, Lee was going to surf the daylights out of that board, regardless of the grim weather predictions.
The next afternoon, Lee, Larry, and Kevin found themselves at the edge of an icy embankment overlooking the perfect, six-foot glassy wave patterns of Lake Michigan. It was nasty cold, something like seventeen degrees late in the day, with a wind-chill factor of minus twenty-four and twelve-foot icebergs bobbing among the waves. Stepping into the water, each of them let out a yelp from the thirty-three-degree water—an uncontrollable reflex no matter how often they had done it in the past. Since the shadows were growing longer, the receding sun no longer warmed their black wetsuits, causing their bodies to chill quickly. Under these harsh conditions, the water was never inviting to beginners—only to advanced surfers and idiots. Hoping to reserve their limited energy, Lee predicted, “I give us twenty minutes before hypothermia sets in.”
One by one, the three hardy souls moved deeper into the water. As they straddled their boards, patiently waiting for the next great wave, an encroaching snow squall from the west shrouded their visibility on the water to less than twenty feet. Snowflakes stuck to their moist wetsuits. Knowing their window of opportunity to surf was quickly closing, Lee bellowed, “This is cool, but what I really want is to be the first to surf off an iceberg.”
“You’re nuts,” Larry replied.
“Good luck getting on top of one,” Kevin added, knowing the ice was slicker to climb in a frozen rubber wetsuit.
Mentally projecting his path up the mass of ice, Lee approached the iceberg undaunted. At the base, he stood in chestdeep water, delicately balancing his weight on his board while grasping at the ice. His grip on it broke as waves kept washing over him, forcing him to readjust his grip several times. The waves also shifted the iceberg’s center of gravity—and his own—tossing him back into the water like a bucking bronco.
“You definitely didn’t inherit Dad’s rodeo skills,” Larry scoffed.
Unfazed, Lee asked Kevin, “Can you get me a blanket?”
Kevin raced to the shore and returned with a ratty beach blanket from his trunk. Although it got waterlogged the moment it was tossed into the water, Lee threw the blanket over the side of the iceberg. After launching his board up onto the icy shelf, Lee climbed up the blanket as if it were a stainless steel ladder. Standing atop the iceberg’s peak nearly ten feet above the water, he looked down, realizing what he was about to attempt. The image of himself as a bloody pulp being peeled off the side of the iceberg overtook his initial visions of grandeur.
Lee realized he was at a crossroads that could potentially impact the rest of his life. He had to choose between climbing off the iceberg with his surfboard between his legs and live to surf another day or suicide-launching off the ten-foot-high ledge and landing in Sheboygan surf immortality.
As the next five-foot peeler rolled by, Lee grasped his board and clenched his teeth. He had only a split second to decide. Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, he launched himself toward the wave. The frothy crest nearly bucked him off until he adjusted to find himself zipping down the face of the set’s biggest wave. From where Larry and Kevin stood, Lee disappeared behind the set’s first wave, but then he rolled over the top of his wave with the grace and glide of a roller coaster. Successfully riding the wave to its inevitable end along the shoreline, Lee let out a roar of triumph. He had won the bragging rights. Knowing he had flirted with death to face another day, he stood at the same icy embankment from which he announced his vision quest and cried out, “That was awesome, let’s do it again!”
For the next hour, the three teenagers took turns jumping off the iceberg. Despite the snow accumulating on their wetsuits and a definite chill beginning to overtake their common sense, they continued throwing their boards up on top of the iceberg. Even as exhaustion overtook their adrenaline, they refused to quit. When the icy edges broke loose, dumping them back into the water, they lifted themselves up again, only to have another chunk of the edge break off. It was no big deal. “Just lift yourself up again,” they encouraged one another, only to have another ice ball break off in their hand. The constant lifting of their waterlogged bodies onto the icebergs exhausted them, rendering their rubbery arms useless if needed to keep from drowning. But there was no time to rest if they wanted to get in a handful of runs before sunset.
So when Kevin skipped his turn to climb atop the iceberg for his last ride of the day, Lee and Larry were confused.
“What’s the matter?” Larry asked.
“My board’s under that ice cube,” Kevin replied. “How’d you pull that stunt off?” Lee said.
“When I wiped out,” Kevin said, “it got lodged underneath.”
Although losing one’s board after wiping out was common during the days before ankle leashes, losing a surfboard underneath a floating chunk of ice and snow wasn’t. Kevin felt his brand-new seven-foot-long Hobie three-stringer pintail deserved a better fate, but he knew his options were limited.
He couldn’t swim underneath to retrieve it because his old SCUBA suit would leak like a sieve, and in a few seconds he’d get the worst ice cream headache ever. As each moment passed, their core body temperatures sank slowly into dangerous territory.
“If you take two steps toward it, you’ll be in over your head,” Larry said. He knew from personal experience with icebergs that the chances of retrieving a board from the frozen slush were not good. No matter the size of a Lake Michigan iceberg—whether two feet, ten feet, or twenty feet high—the physics of its creation was always the same. Whenever waves crashed into it, little by little, the energy of the waves rolled back and scooped out all the sand, much like someone on a beach hand-scooping sand into piles when building a castle. With all the displaced sand forming unnatural sandbars, a surfer standing knee- to ankle-deep in front of those icebergs one moment could easily be flung underneath when a wave knocked them head-over-heels. Trapped in icy darkness only a few feet from the sandbar’s edge, the surfer would be unable to decipher his whereabouts in relation to the severe drop-off, unable to touch bottom.
Those conditions would wreak havoc on the human senses. Trapped beneath the iceberg, the person’s sense of direction and judgment would be immediately compromised by the frigid temperatures. Regardless of his swimming talents, he’d find it nearly impossible to navigate to the top. With the floating iceberg overhead blocking any light from the surface, the lake bottom’s whereabouts would be a mystery, even if it were only an arm’s length away.
With the surfer’s core temperature plummeting, his body would begin shutting down in self-preservation, restricting mo
vement of the extremities—specifically the arms and legs—to protect the heart so it can continue pumping blood to the brain. The surfer would start losing consciousness, beginning with the loss of rational thought. When the heart starts pumping blood harder and faster to keep it warmer, the body tires out faster, depleting energy levels until it is completely compromised and exhausted. Then it’s only a matter of time before the person begins to drown.
Compared to the risks involved, trying to recover a two-hundred-dollar surfboard lodged beneath an iceberg verges on suicide—but never underestimate a teenage boy’s belief in his own invincibility.
“I can do it,” Kevin said.
Lee shook his head. “Even if you’re lucky enough to swim in and find it, can you get it out of there?”
Larry agreed. “And if you can’t get the board out, will you have enough time to get yourself out?”
Kevin thought for a moment, looking at the faces of his friends. Finally he said, “You’re right. I’m not getting it.”
Lee looked at Kevin, then at Larry, with a glint in his eye. “Well then,” he said, “if I pull it out, I’m keeping it. And don’t think I won’t.”
“Fine, I’ll get it,” Kevin conceded. “But if I don’t come out, you’ll come get me, right?”
Lee and Larry looked at each other before Larry said, “If you don’t come out, there’s a reason you’re not coming out and we’re not coming in after you.”
Frustrated, Kevin shook his head for a moment before swimming over to the edge of the iceberg. Taking a deep breath, which he hoped wouldn’t be his last, he dove underneath the icy monolith, leaving behind only a ring of slush. On the surface, the perception of time practically stopped for Lee and Larry. As each excruciating moment passed, the question of how long he could stay submerged in those frigid waters lessened. At what point do they go in after him in hopes of still recovering a body to resuscitate? Or do they not go after him out of risk of drowning themselves?
As the early stages of hypothermia began setting in for both Lee and Larry, their only concept of time came from how many times per second their purple lips quivered while waiting for Kevin to surface.
Both concluded he wasn’t coming out but said nothing. For what seemed like an eternity, they waited in their own shivering silence, hoping for the best but fearing the worst.
Suddenly, the surfboard popped out from underneath the iceberg, arcing across the sky with the grace of a dolphin. It splashed down and skimmed onto a nearby cluster of smaller icebergs, where it came to rest alone without an owner. A few seconds passed.
“He’s not coming up,” Lee finally said to Larry.
Just then, the water alongside the iceberg began to stir. Air bubbles broke the surface. Kevin’s eyes peeked above the waterline, peering across at Lee and Larry like an alligator. Thrusting himself onto his back, Kevin started sidestroking toward them, spitting out water in a steady, fountain-like stream of celebration.
Lee and Larry broke into uncontrollable laughter: “You’re nuts. You’re freakin’ nuts!’
“What about ‘em?” Kevin said with a grin. “They’re not frozen yet.”
“Let’s quit while we’re ahead,” Larry said.
“Let’s quit while we’re alive!” Lee quipped.
Before heading home, the three boys ventured to Burger Chef for hot chocolate to celebrate Lee’s trailblazing accomplishment and Kevin’s near-death experience. Located three blocks from the beach on Indiana Avenue, the restaurant was accustomed to hosting sand-crusted crowds during the summer, but this was the dead of winter. When the three of them lurched in like frozen Frankensteins wearing their ice-crusted wetsuits and dripping slush and water from their thawing appendages, the teenager behind the counter looked confused. “Can I take your order?” he politely inquired.
Keeping the tradition alive, Lee, left, and Kevin Groh venture out to surf on Christmas Day, 1990.
Lee, Larry, and Kevin just stood there a mere four feet from the counter, close enough for the server to hear the combined chorus from their chattering teeth. “Three hot chocolates,” Kevin mumbled through his frozen, purple lips.
“You boys sure look cold,” the teen said.
“Cold?” Larry replied, fondling the Adam’s apple on his neck. “If I was any colder, both of my testicles would’ve climbed up here.”
Slightly warmed after watching the Burger Chef attendant turn a dozen shades of red, the three managed to saunter to the seating area, lay their surfboards against the table, and shoehorn their frozen stumps into a booth. When the server delivered the steaming hot cocoas, all three boys cupped the Styrofoam containers for a long moment, hoping the heat would run up their arms and warm their bodies. After the cocoa hit their lips, it actually burned on the way down. It could’ve been at room temperature, but since their core body temperatures had dipped so dangerously low, they could feel where each ounce of hot chocolate settled in their stomachs. At that moment all three agreed that it was a good day.
Chapter Five
Conquering the slush-covered waves of Lake Michigan that winter afternoon in 1970, Lee, Larry, and Kevin joined a Great Lakes surf legacy that was nearly four hundred years old. Formed nearly twelve thousand years ago after the glaciers receded north during the last great Ice Age, the Great Lakes began hosting surfers as far back as 1612 when local lore has it that French fur trader Etienne Brule surfed the waves on Lake Huron.
The modern era of Great Lakes surfing can be traced back to a local Grand Haven, Michigan, legend, when an unidentified G.I. returned home after World War II and began surfing Lake Michigan. While stationed in Hawaii, Doc “Makaha Dave” Seibold started building surfboards out of balsa wood from US Navy surplus life rafts, covering them with the crude fiberglass of the time. When he returned home to Grand Haven in September 1955, he and his longboard paddled their way into freshwater surfing history.
When the American surfing revolution of the late ’50s and early ’60s exploded, with movies like Gidget and music from the Beach Boys, dedicated individuals began experimenting with surfing on the Great Lakes from Grand Haven and Erie, Pennsylvania, to the internationally renowned group from Wyldewood.
The Wyldewood Surf Club was founded in the summer of 1965 on the sandy shoreline of Lake Erie in Port Colborne, Ontario.
The American and Canadian teenagers all shared a bond known simply as “the stoke for surfing.” Like many of those early experimental surfers on the Great Lakes, they also constructed their own short boards from discarded construction materials while wearing old sneakers as their wetsuit booties. Each year in the fall, the group would meet at founding member Don Harrison’s house for the annual Surf Club meeting, which included screening their Super 8 surfing movies while sharing stories and photographs from the year’s accomplishments. Like many of those grassroots surfing groups forming all over the Great Lakes, Wyldewood thought they were the first. In fact, surf scenes were emerging all along those inland oceans.
One of the most popular Great Lakes groups surfed along the easily accessible, well-formed waves on the south side of Grand Haven’s famous pier. For kids like Lee and Larry, Grand Haven was the center of the Great Lakes surfing universe. Already bustling with a thriving subculture of bohemians living on the beach, Michigan’s west coast surfing scene was where you would meet other aspiring surfers, see the newest boards, and actually walk into one of the oldest known surf shops on the Great Lakes, the Beach Point Surf Shop. When several of the local surfers began traveling to Hawaii, California, and Mexico, often bringing boards back to Michigan, they began organizing surf contests along their favorite spot known as the “Rock Pile.”
While Rick Sapinski was promoting the Great Lakes Surfing Association along the shores of Grand Haven in 1966, the granddaddy of all road-trip films introduced a new generation of American teenagers to the sunny innocence and endearing spirit of surfing. Bruce Brown’s documentary film The Endless Summer chronicled California surfers Mike Hynson and Robert August
on their global quest to find the perfect wave. The film reached beyond its own surf-friendly geography as screenings in cities like Wichita, Kansas, and Syracuse, New York, found moviegoers lined up in the snow to attend multiple showings during the dead of winter. By the time Newsweek named it one of the ten best films of 1966, the film had surfed its way into the collective consciousness wherever it showed. From the opening images of shimmering orange sunsets and silhouetted surfers gazing at tubing waves to the star surfers seen hiking over sand dunes under a hot African sun, Brown’s film had introduced a mythology to Middle America.
Lee surfing near Grand Haven, Michigan, in 1990
The momentum of The Endless Summer brought forty-four Great Lakes surfers together in Grand Haven that fall to compete in the first Great Lakes Surfing Championships. But efforts to spread the word about the benefits of freshwater surfing through mimeographed newsletters failed to truly unite the various Great Lakes surfing communities dotted along the shores of Lakes Superior, Michigan, Ontario, Erie, and Huron. Left isolated from one another, they weren’t united until the first published photograph of Magilla Schaus riding on Lake Erie was seen in Surfer Magazine in 1969—the first national recognition lake surfers received.
Some Like It Cold Page 9