There's surf in Delaware.  I know there is, the Internet tells me so and shows me pictures.  But I can't prove it.

Family business took me to Washington, D.C., so I decided to hop in the rental car and head for the nearest beach.  The map showed a place called Dewey Beach and so I headed east.

The drive was beautiful--through small towns and farmland in Maryland and Delaware.  Green fields, blue sky, scudding white cotton puff clouds.

Three hours into what I thought was a two-hour drive, we arrived in Dewey Beach.  After a quick pizza lunch, my wife, daughter and I stroll the short block to the sand.

ARGH!  There are waves but they are small shorebreak.  No problem, I'll just ask the lifeguard where the surf breaks are.  He looks at me as if I'm from Mars.  "You can surf anywhere around here, as long as you stay 200' from the swimmers."  An official reply to an obvious tourist.

I look right, I look left.  Swimmers are everywhere.  "Sir," I'm thinking, despite the fact this guy's half my age, "I mean board surfing."  He thinks I'm an idiot--"Well, there's some board guys down by the river mouth."

To make a short story shorter, we plod back to the car, drive as close to the coast as possible and as far north as the next town without finding a river mouth.  We stop for T-shirts in Reheboth.  I ask the clerks in several stores for one with a surfboard on it.  "DUH!" their eyes tell me...it's a ridiculous inquiry.  I finally find one with a surf rescue board, buy it and give up.

Skunked.  Maybe it was the season or the tide or something else.  "What did you expect?" the wife (a non-surfer) asks in her best 'I told you there was no surf in Delaware and you've wasted most of the day driving here' voice.  "How many cars with boards on them did you see as we drove around?"

Sometimes non-surfing wives have a point.

Thanks, Micah!  I knew there must be something there!!
--Bill

I did find a web site for a surf shop in Dewey Beach.  Maybe I should have asked!