Shooting Seas with Coffman

VanSant surfboat - Mike Coffman, Dave Williams and Rick Dove after a collision with another boat.!

I had many partners during 29 years of lifeguarding but one fearless and wiry partner in particular was stand partner and childhood friend Mike Coffman. We became rookies the same year in 1970, when we made "the beach." Slang for surviving rookie school and passing rigorous rowing, swimming, running and surf dash tests. Both interested in rowing, as having rowed 8 oared crew shells in Ventnor Heights while students at Holy Spirit High School in Absecon NJ. We naturally took to the challenges of learning to row the surfboat. The VanSant cedar on oak lapstrake surfboats were 17 feet long, had excellent flotation.  The stable boats weighed 350 to 400 pounds and were crewed with either singles rowers or doubles teams. Many nights long after we had gotten off work, we would hungrily pulling our boat up the beach on rollers as summer twilight set in, thinking about dinner.

 Boat on rollers. Guard on side is brother Tom Dove.

We worked as lifeguards on Vernon Place in Brigantine, both of us light in the pants.  Mike was about 135 and I was about 150 pounds. The practice paid off however on one particularly rough day. All the equipment was put away in the huts except for our oars and as we headed down to the boat a few of the other guards heckled us.  “You guys are going crazy going out in that huge surf, you are going to get killed!”  Our first attempt, found a monstruous wave break over the bow, sinking the boat immediately and pounding us back to the shore. We barely heard shouts and laughter above the roar of the surf from the guys watching from the hut, and pride told us to try again. Once again we launched our boat and once again we were forcefully driven back up onto the beach filled with water and a bit unnerved. We flipped the boat over onto her side, dumped the water out and reset the oars. 8 and 1/2 foot white ash stern oars laid carefully on the seats, 9 foot white ash bow oars placed on top of the sterns. We pulled on the bow and stern tholepins for all we had and got a running start. I pivoted into the bow while Mike pushed one last time on the stern and jumped over the transom. We managed to get into a steady and strong ryhthym, rowing as one. The combination of speed and a slight lull in the surf enabled us to make it out side of the pounding surf. We did ship a large volume of water, getting hit several times with large whitewash and waves but were prepared, and baled it out with a bucket we had carefully tied into the boat. The waves were thick as I recall, and breaking quite a distance out on a sandbar, reforming and breaking on another bar further in and reforming once more and breaking almost on the beach.

The waves Coffman and Dove rode looked like these. Ricky Yates and Joe Mufferi - Atlantic City Beach Patrol

They were well formed waves due to the mild westerly winds often associated with late August on the Jersey shore. A gurgling sound and then a loud boom could be heard as the wind forced the wave to compress before it crashed down on the bars. We were too young to be afraid, I was 17 and Mike 16. We had just finished baling and saw a group of waves called a set coming at us.  We quickly turned the boat towards the beach and took the first and what turned out to be the biggest wave I ever rode in a small boat. Three or four strokes is all we needed as the adrenalin rushed through our bodies. The huge wall of water lifted the stern and plunged the bow almost vertically down the face of the wave. Mike was just barely visible as the broken white water crashed around his body as he sat braced on the sternsheet steering straight to the beach. I felt water spraying onto and over my back as the point of the bow sliced under water. This was it, "pitchpole" time I thought. To "pitchpole" is probably one of the worse incidents that can happen in a surfboat. The velocity at which the boat is flipped end over end gives an oarsmen very little time to react. Many serious injuries have occured either by pitchpoling while attempting to make it out, or while attempting to make it back in to the shore as we were. The Atlantic County VanSant family who designed and constructed the cedar on oak surfboats, Moth sailboats and numerous other craft, knew their trade. Years of experience in battling the unpredictable Atlantic had been molded into these boats. The bow which was kniving deeper and deeper beneath the sea, managed to level off. With several inches of water in the boat, the momentum of the wave shot us forcefully out ahead of the whitewater.

This often happens when the conditions are right, and the wave speed is fast. Getting shot ahead of the wave is at once an exhilarating experience and a scary one. Anyone who has body surfed, belly boarded,  or windsurfed can attest to the sheer joy of riding out in front of a large wave in this manner. The scary part is the quick reaction required when the transom of the boat is pushed out of a perpindicular plane to the wave. This position makes it easy to broach, fill with water and possibly flip. Again luck was on out side, or was it skill developed due to the many hours of practice we had put it over the past summer. We shot straight on the wave and as the whitewater caught up to us we rode at great speed,  The whitewater was so high it buried Mike and dumped more water into the boat.

As if yesterday the vivid memory and strong adrenalin rushing through my body still lives on. Now the wave reformed and down a second drop we went. The bow knifed below the trough of the wave once again, but not as severe, we only took one eighth the water as the first nosedive. Leveling off, we were rocketed ahead of the whitewater with almost as much force as the first time. At this point we were both yelling and laughing with joy and it was hard to concentrate as the whitewash caught up to us trying
to make us broach. Mike had it locked in as straight as an arrow as the whitewash again buried him beneath the foam filling the boat with more water. Down the last drop of the shorebreak, with the tide and the monster wave we sped. All the way up high over the berm we landed with a jolt and tumbled into the front of the boat. Jumping out we danced around, hooting and hollering while our fellow guards on the hut porch did the same. As we calmed down a bit we could not help but wonder at the amazing sea worthiness of this fine surfboat and the good fortune we had been given on this beautiful late August day. Glancing over at the VanSant surfboat I noticed that the water was over the seats and almost up to the gunnels. What a boat! The reddish orange sun was setting and twilight was starting as we rolled the boat up the beach, flipped it and stored the oars in the hut and locked up for the night. Exhausted, we went home, eat dinner and fell into a long well deserved sleep, dreaming about the day that only happens on rare occasions.

Special thanks to Atlantic City lifeguard and friend, Mickey McNesby for posting the picture of Atlantic City rowers Ricky Yates and Joe Muffieri.