Swell of the Season
SWELL OF THE
SEASON
WITH BROAD STREET
Words by Ry Murphy Photos by Henry Michaelis and Noe Font
In August of 2025, Hurricane Erin reached its max intensity in the southern Caribbean as a Category 5 hurricane, undergoing a record breaking 24-hour intensification and becoming one of the largest storms ever recorded in the Atlantic. Erin’s North Atlantic peak took place off of the coast of Virginia Beach, with NOAA Buoy 171 recording its third-largest wave heights on record with a highest individual wave height of 40ft. The storm reached its max size and power south of Jamaica, crossed the island nation over 36 hours and wreaked havoc across the Antilles. Erin then began tracking northeast towards the Gulf Stream and Northern Atlantic, shooting through the gap between Bermuda and the Outer Banks, a path so many storms in East Coast surf lore have traveled. This path, as any seafaring Nantucketer knows, sends the tropical storm’s energy directly towards our southern shores.
On August 19th, Nantucket’s nearest buoy peaked at 10.6ft @17sec, resulting in consistent double overhead surf with the occasional 15ft sets. This significant wave
height was coupled with two days of howling offshore winds to produce some of the largest and best surf to ever grace our sandbars. Where on Nantucket does one go to wrangle a swell like that you may ask? While the exact location is no secret on-island, it certainly will not be disclosed in this essay. However, the Island really only has one spot with the bathymetry to handle a swell event like Erin. The secret to this spot is a deep underwater pit just inside the Rose n’ Crown Shoal and a few hundred yards past the sandbar that is able to funnel the swell towards the beach without obstructing its power. This pit is our junior varsity version of a deep sea canyon like those off of Black’s Beach or Nazare. Coinciding with this underwater pit is a sandbar that is just the right depth to produce hollow, heavy waves without being too shallow and making them unrideable like the rest of our local spots when the waves reach a certain height. Finally, top those features off with a wetland valley and a large bluff that combines to provide somewhat of a defined deep channel and you have what some would call our Crowned Jewel of a wave, albeit a fickle one.
What did all of this mean for Nantucket? In the days leading up to the 19th of August the hype began to grow. Online surf forecasts of 30-foot surf, and perfect wind began coming across the apps from Californian oceanographers who don’t quite understand the Island like we do but love a huge hurricane. Beachside parking lot Nostradaumuses claimed impending doom on a Hurricane-Bob-scale while cracking their third road soda, asking, “ya want one?” Traveling pros began calling the local boys after studying the map of Erin’s swell path, curious what happens when a storm of Erin’s magnitude hits our little southerly exposed Island. Locals, anxiously stoic about it all, prepared their equipment, began cooking up excuses to cancel all prior commitments and tried to convince significant others to do double chore duty the following week. For a brief moment in surf-time, it seemed that all eyes would fall on our little Island sandbars and we would get our supernova moment in the social media surfsphere.
What really happened? Depends on who you ask. Some say it was the biggest ever. Some say it got bigger in the 90s. However, all were in agreement— it was absolutely pumping. While we didn’t get the perfect 30-footers
some thought might come, what unfolded was arguably the best wave riding our surf community has ever seen. Performance on-island reached a new level and was pushed by a lineup of the usual local crew (donning their newly acquired flotation technology), expat locals flying home to get a piece of their mother Island in all her glory, East Coast pros with jet skis towing each other into waves previously deemed unridable due to current and wave speed (if you’re reading, thanks for whipping the local boys into a few), South African rippers lucky enough to have their employer’s yacht docked on Nantucket at the time, one madman water photographer who swam out to the impact zone with nothing but a high res camera and a pair of flippers and, of course, a select few seasonal residents grabbing one last squeeze of that sweet Nantucket Nectar before the season’s end. While the surfing itself wasn’t necessarily groundbreaking on an international scale (although a few waves ridden may have reached that mark) the bar for Nantucket surfing was undeniably raised.
As for our supernova moment? A few viral rides certainly made their rounds online, putting us on the international surf map for a brief moment in time. Luckily, the co
Section surf detectives mostly narrowed our location down to "somewhere in New Jersey" so our not-so-secret spot is safe for now.
Looking back, three things were learned from Hurricane Erin. Number one: although she's a fickle and sometimes maddening Island to call home as a surfer, when the waves are really pumping Nantucket gets as heavy and as good as any world-class beach break.
Number two: the skill level of local surfing is reaching new heights and new levels of confidence. The future is bright for Nantucket's surfers and we can't wait to see what the next 100-year storm has in store.
Lastly and most importantly, lesson number three... we really need to get a jetski.