How long have you been in Grand Haven?
Probably six years now.
So, yeah, I didn't surf like, you know, when we first moved here. But it
was mostly.
Surfer in Florida. And you came up here. And what did you think when people first
mentioned that you could surf out here?
I thought they were kind of stupid. Honestly. It looked it looked really bad. And I
thought, no way, they're having fun out there.
Wind in your face, waves crashing on top of you and freezing cold water.
Why would anyone want to surf in the Great Lakes?
You're listening to Beyond the Shore from Michigan Public.
I'm Rebecca Williams. This is the second of five stories about the Great Lakes.
One story per lake, a snapshot that tells a story about each of the lakes.
A sort of microcosm of what makes each lake unique.
Chapter two Lake Michigan and the surfers who ride its waves.
Surfing anywhere is like dancing with Mother Nature in the most intimate way,
right? You have these big, beautiful masses of water that are literally
carrying you. And I think it's so elevated here on the Great Lakes because we're surfing
fresh water.
Surfing. Lake Michigan has always been a part of life for Ella Skrocki.
She caught her first wave when she was five.
Her family opened a shop, Sleeping Bear, Surf and Kayak in Empire.
She surfed all over, but surfing in a lake, she says,
it's definitely different.
It's like a gift.
You know, to think that we get such beautiful formations here on a lake that is widely
considered as inferior to its ocean counterparts is,
like unbelievably special.
And it almost feels like unreal when you're doing it.
So the act of riding a wave just feels like this very incredible spiritual connection.
You feel really weightless.
And it's like the most present, I think that I've ever that I've ever
experienced for sure.
For this episode, we sent Dustin Dwyer out to talk to Lake Michigan surfers.
Hey, Dustin.
Hey.
And Dustin, you did not just talk to surfers.
You gave surfing a try yourself.
Yeah, I had to check it out.
I mean, for journalistic purposes, one, because,
you know, you got a bunch of people saying that surfing is fun.
And I had to fact check that, of course.
But also like, I live here, I live in West Michigan and this beach,
not on days like today, but when it's warm.
I spend a lot of time here with my family, and we're always playing in these waves when
there are waves. And like, if there was just an opportunity to,
you know, experience Lake Michigan a little bit differently,
I wanted to go for it.
Okay. Well, we're definitely going to talk about that. But first, let's talk about these
waves. We know that Lake Michigan is pretty big,
but the first question everybody seems to have about surfing on the Great Lakes is
really, you can surf the Great Lakes.
How is that even possible?
Well, you can explain it really in one word.
Fetch.
So what we're looking for is the most amount of fetch possible.
Here's Ellis Grocki explaining it.
Since she's surfed these waves since she was five.
I met her at the beach in Frankfort, Michigan on a cold and snowy day this past
November.
So here at the Frankfort Pier, for instance,
we have a couple hundred miles between here and Chicago for wind to push up from the
south to drive energy here to the Frankfort Pier.
So the stronger, more sustained wind out of the same direction,
allowing the most amount of fetch, most distance that the wind can travel across
the water. That's the that's the key.
The ticket.
Think about like the ocean, right? You have a big storm comes along.
You have a strong sustained wind which pushes on the water and on the ocean that can travel
for thousands of miles, building up energy the whole way until it
finally crashes on the shore, on a lake.
You can get the wind, but by the time the wave forms,
it crashes and it's done so it can't get big.
But the Great Lakes have more fetch than small lakes.
Yeah, and that's the whole idea here, especially depending on where you are on the
lake. So like where Ella and I are talking at that point is at Frankfort up the coast.
And you know, from there it's on the north side of the lake.
So what you really want is a wind out of the southwest where the wind's coming from right
now up there, that wind is going to have more distance to travel.
So more fetch, bigger wave.
So you can get different surfing conditions in different parts of the lake.
Yeah. Like depending on where you are.
And you know, there's other factors too, like there's,
there's the air temperature, there's the water temperature,
there's the shape of the coast, there's the piers,
which a lot of Lake Michigan surfing happens off of piers.
And it's not just because it's easy to walk out on the pier and jump in the water.
It's also because the waves behave differently around a pier and surfers like
L.A. They've gotten to read those waves really,
really well. And which I have to say is much harder than it sounds.
As I discovered.
When you gave surfing a try yourself.
Yep.
All right, let's hear about it.
Okay. So it was a different day than today.
The the first problem was like finding people to go out with.
And who would lend me some gear.
So, you know, I kind of got that figured out.
And we finally talked to a surfer named Mark Hoeksema,
and we picked a day he thought the waves were going to be good.
It was actually a really nice day.
It was sunny. It was warm out here.
But we loaded up into Mark's van.
We parked right over there, and we were looking out at the pier.
And I mean, it turned out, actually, that the waves were not good on
that day, but as we're in the van, you know,
cozy and warm, we were looking out and we could see on the pier,
there's two guys out there trying to surf it.
I haven't seen them catch one.
Looks like they're giving up already.
Are they really?
Well, maybe. No. Maybe they're just getting back up.
No, they're walking back out on the rocks.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. A little hard, cause I remember when I was that age.
And I was just stoked out of my mind, and I would just go no matter what. Now I'm
like
Mark grew up in Muskegon, and he learned to surf there.
Or really, he learned to surf watching VHS tapes of surfers.
After that, he moved to California.
He worked at a surfing magazine for a while, and he tapped into the larger surfing
community, and it taught him the difference.
What makes Lake Michigan surfing special?
When you get great waves here, you so much appreciate it.
You know, serving in California, you get you get a great,
great day every, you know, day or two a week.
You get a good day, you know, a couple days a month,
you get a great day.
It was Lake Michigan. Surfing is surfing crappy waves every day so that you can enjoy
the good wave that you get once a year.
That's pretty much it.
Yeah, definitely.
Speaking of surfing, that crappy day we get out of the van,
those two guys we'd seen jumping off the pier,
they're out at this point, so we go talk to them.
My lips are kind of cold right now.
It's hard to talk, you know.
How long were you out there?
Oh, probably only like an hour.
This is Jack Baze, 19 years old.
He goes by Smitty with the other surfers.
We heard him at the beginning. He learned to surf in Florida. Now he lives in Grand Haven.
How long have you been in Grand Haven?
Probably six years now.
So, yeah, I didn't surf like, you know, when we first moved here. But it
was mostly.
Surfer in Florida. And you came up here. And what did you think when people first
mentioned that you could surf out here?
I thought they were kind of stupid. Honestly. It looked it looked really bad. And I
thought, no way, they're having fun out there.
His friend, the other guy in the water is Jack Ellis,
and it was his first time surfing.
Did you actually catch any?
I was able to like, get up and bodysurf one, but I wasn't able to stand up.
The current is way gnarlier than I would have expected.
Like my arms were cooked in like 20 minutes.
My. I was way out of breath and just smoked.
My expectations at this point are getting like even lower.
But there was one more person I had to meet before going in the water Ken Smith.
He owns a surfboard repair shop in Grand Rapids called No Coast Surf,
and he said he had a board I could borrow.
He's originally from South Africa, but out of all the people I met,
he was the one who everyone said would surf, even the crappiest of days.
My basic theory is, is you can only get better at what you do by doing the worst.
And so by surfing junky, what we call pile day.
You know, it just improves you for when there's good surf out there and you know, you
know, the conditions, you know, the sandbars you know where to sit.
So I've got my wetsuit.
I have a board. Mark and Ken are going to go out at the same time.
I'm ready. I think Jody hands me a GoPro to strap onto my chest.
I grab Ken's board and I'm in the water.
There's a shock at first when the cold water hits the wetsuit.
The water is about 40 degrees, but within a couple minutes the wetsuit does
its job and I'm warm. I walk out from the beach and start looking for a wave.
And at this point, there's probably a few things I should say about this.
Like first, Lake Michigan can be a dangerous place.
Every year people drown out here.
And one reason is because people sometimes underestimate how strong the currents can be
and how big the waves.
For me, I've spent a lot of time on this lake.
I've swam in this exact spot.
I also spent part of my childhood living near the ocean where I swam lots.
I've surfed before in bigger waves than this.
And I went out with two people who know how to surf.
I never went near the pier because I didn't want to get thrown against it.
And because it was my first time, I also never swam out past where I could
stand up. And for an hour out there, standing up is actually what I did the most.
Just standing there watching the Whitecaps, trying to decide if I should push the board
into any of these little waves by the shore.
I tried to catch a few waves.
Mark and Ken tried to give me advice, and a couple times I get the timing right and
the wave catches the board and I try to stand up and immediately fall over.
After a bit of this, I walked back to the beach and I caught up with Jodi,
who checked the camera.
Around out there. I don't know, it looks like you're having fun.
It's very fun. I'm having fun.
I'm not surfing, but I'm having fun.
I go back out and I keep trying.
And I keep failing. Eventually, after about an hour,
my feet got cold and that's pretty much when I called it quits.
Well, Dustin, you survived at least.
Yeah, I lived to tell the tale, but I was freezing.
Almost as cold as I am today.
And it was getting out was harder than the actual surfing itself.
Because by then you're cold and you have this thick, wet suit on and you've got to peel it
off. And I actually had to find someone to help me peel it off.
And I couldn't feel my toes.
And I had saved my warm socks for the car ride home.
But it was a long time before I could feel my feet again.
Do you think you're ever going to do that again?
I mean, yeah. I mean, first off, I didn't actually surf,
so I'd like to say that I actually stood up on a surfboard.
But you know, I've got to find the people again.
I've got to get the gear again.
I got to find a day when there's actually good waves out here,
which is not today, clearly.
Maybe when it's a little warmer.
I'll try it again. I hope.
How often are the waves good.
We know that the lakes are warming because of climate change.
Does that affect how big the waves get?
Okay, so that is actually a really good question.
And I looked into it, and when I asked Ellis Grocki,
who, you know, she surfed her whole life.
She's out there most days when it's warm, giving surfing lessons.
You know, I figured the lakes are getting warmer.
Not today, but the lakes are getting warmer.
Storms, it seems like, are getting stormier.
So that seems like probably you're looking at bigger waves.
But when I asked Ellis Grocki, she was like,
no, she she thinks it's actually been the opposite.
We've had a pretty wide decrease in the amount of surfable days here on the lakes and
in water temperature in the summer has actually increased.
But we're getting, I think, different wind patterns.
We have. It's so hard for me to answer this question because I've seen the changes,
but I don't really understand why or how.
Now Elon knows the lake as well as anyone, but she is not a scientist.
So I called up a scientist.
Can you hear me, Dustin?
Yes I can. Hello, this is Kari Troy.
He's in the engineering department at Purdue University.
My research focuses on the physical processes of Lake Michigan.
So I look at the waves, the currents, the temperatures,
how stuff moves around the lake.
A couple of years ago, one of his students, Nicholas Olsen,
did a dissertation on this exact topic.
Weather waves in Lake Michigan are getting bigger or smaller over time.
We threw a lot of different statistical tests at the at the wave time series that we were
able to generate, and we could not, you know,
see a definitive increase or decrease in the wave.
Then why would a surfer like Ella Skrocki have fewer surfable days?
We don't know. And you know, one thing that Carrie says to keep in mind is
that, you know, his study was measuring waves from buoys out in the middle of Lake
Michigan. Ella is experiencing waves on the beach when they're crashing on the shore.
And there could be things about, you know, the shape of the coast or the way
the sand has moved around underneath the waves that could be affecting that.
And also he said there was only two boys in his study.
That's where they had the data for.
And, you know, because we know conditions can be different at different parts of the lake,
you know, you might, if there could be a study that looks at many different places of
the lake, you might get a different result.
But what he does know, and what we all know is that climate change
is happening. We are seeing warmer lakes.
But what scientists are still trying to figure out is what that means for all
different types of things that are happening in the lakes.
And, you know, we don't have a clear answer right now for waves themselves,
whether they're getting bigger or not.
Yeah. No, I definitely don't think it's a dead end.
I think it's still a very interesting question that should be pursued.
And well, like either way, you have this community of surfers out there
catching the waves that they can.
And when Ella Skrocki thinks about it, she's not thinking about,
you know, the data points. She's not thinking about the buoys or the statistical analysis.
She's thinking about this community of surfers and she's thinking about,
you know, honestly, her mom, Beryl, who was the founder of Sleeping Bear
Surfing kayak, was a pillar in the surfing community up there.
She was a legend, really, and she passed away a few years ago.
And she was also so in love with this lake.
She was an environmental advocate.
She was. And I think her legacy is so rooted in joy and it's rooted in stewardship.
And this idea of passing forward what you love and hopes that they might love.
The beautiful gift that is Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes.
And that's what surfing is for her.
A way to experience the gift that is Lake Michigan,
even when it feels terrible out here.
I think probably my favorite days surfing here on the Great Lakes are right in June,
when we get our first swell of the season and everyone comes out here to the Frankfort
Pier, there's like kiteboarders, there's foilers, there's paddle boarders,
there's surfers, boogie boarders and everyone's like,
this is the best ever.
And you look at the water and it's like knee high wind chop.
But everyone's just excited for this opportunity to play.
And I think that's what's just really special about this culture of freshwater adventure
here.
Excited for the opportunity to play.
Yeah. And I feel like that's probably the part that I wasn't fully getting when I first
started. The story is like, you know, the surfers out here,
no one's out here thinking this is the greatest wave on the planet. They're not like
surfing barrels in Hawaii or anything like that.
It's just that it's such a gift to even be able to surf out here that,
you know, if you get that opportunity, no matter if the waves are terrible,
no matter if you're freezing cold like I am now,
no matter if you're like me and you can't even stand up on the board,
you know, if you have the chance, you take it.
Thanks, Dustin.
Thank you. We got to go warm up now.
Next time on Beyond the Shore, Michigan Public's Kate Furby takes us out on
a frozen lake to follow the story of an ancient fish.
Did you say that not to put our seatbelts on?
And is that in case we fall through the ice?
That is, in case the truck, for some silly reason, goes through. That
should not be the case today.
We're cutting 24 to 26in of ice.
But pressure cracks do open up.
Silly things do happen.
Very low. Very low percentage.
But in case that does happen, it's not zero.
An adventure to understand the Midwestern love for the dinosaur Sturgeon.
Dustin Dwyer reported and produced this episode with editing from me,
Vincent Duffy and Jodi Westrich.
Special thanks to Randy Keast and Mike King.
Support for the production of this podcast was made possible by the Charles Stewart Mott
Foundation as part of its Great Lakes News Collaborative.
Music by blue Dot sessions.
I'm Rebecca Williams. Beyond the shore is a production of Michigan Public.
You can find all of our podcasts at Michigan public.org slash.