Sebastian Inlet: Back When First Peak Was King

There are surf spots you visit, and then there are surf spots that become part of your life.

Sebastian Inlet was one of those places.

Before First Peak became a name every serious East Coast surfer knew, Sebastian was simply a wild piece of Florida coastline—a man-made cut through the barrier island where the Atlantic met the Indian River Lagoon. The inlet had been fought over by sand and storms for decades. Early attempts to keep it open went back to the 1800s, and jetties came and went as the ocean did what the ocean always does: moved sand wherever it damn well pleased.

By the middle of the twentieth century, things started to change. The inlet was blasted open in the late 1940s, and when the Pruitt Memorial Bridge was completed in 1965, Sebastian suddenly became a whole lot easier to get to. Fishermen and boaters had already figured out the place, but surfers were about to discover something nobody had planned on building.

A wave.

"Sebastian Inlet, Florida 001" by Leonard J. DeFrancisci is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

First Peak Is Born

The funny thing about First Peak is that nobody really designed it.

In the late '60s, improvements to the north jetty changed the way the incoming swell interacted with the structure and the sandbar. Instead of just making an inlet, engineers had accidentally created a surf machine.

A right-hand wedge started bending off the jetty.

And when surfers figured it out, they figured it out fast.

This wasn't some soft Florida roller where you stood around waiting for something to happen. First Peak had push. It had shape. It had a section that could stand up and throw. On the right swell, the jetty seemed to grab the incoming wave, squeeze it, and send it down the line with an extra shot of juice.

For guys riding the new shortboards of the era, it was about as good as it got on the East Coast.

Mike Tabeling was one of the early names to recognize what Sebastian could do. He was there when the wave was still becoming itself, and First Peak became a proving ground for a new kind of surfing—faster, tighter, more vertical and more aggressive.

That was the thing about Sebastian.

It made you surf better.

Or it made you look bad.

There wasn't much middle ground.

The Inlet Crew

By the '70s and '80s, Sebastian had developed its own kind of surf culture. You didn't just show up at First Peak and expect to get waves because you had a new board and a copy of Surfer under your arm.

You watched.

You waited.

You learned who was who.

And you learned pretty quickly that the locals knew every inch of that place.

The jetty wasn't just something you walked along to look at the ocean. It was the grandstand. The classroom. The place where surfers, photographers and characters gathered to watch the show.

Guys like Jeff Crawford, Bill Hartley and a whole generation of Florida surfers helped give the place its identity. Photographers such as Tom Dugan documented the sessions, turning Sebastian into one of the most recognizable surf spots on the East Coast.

Then the young kids started showing up.

One of them was a skinny kid from Cocoa Beach named Kelly Slater.

Before he became Kelly Slater—the world champion, the contest machine, the guy everybody knows—he was just another grom trying to figure out how to make a wave at Sebastian. Matt Kechele became an important influence, shaping boards and helping the next generation learn how to handle the Inlet's powerful little wedges.

That is part of what makes the history of First Peak so special.

It wasn't just a wave.

It was an incubator.

Surfers came there to get better, and the ones who could handle it went on to change surfing.

The Golden Years

By the early '80s, First Peak was about as hot as a surf spot could get.

The wave had become famous beyond Florida, and professional surfers were coming through for events like the Stubbies Pro. The level of surfing around Sebastian kept climbing, and the surrounding towns became a center of East Coast board building and surf culture.

And you could see the future in the lineup.

Lisa Andersen made her mark at Sebastian, winning the 1987 U.S. Championships there before going on to become one of the most important women surfers of her generation. The Hobgood brothers, C.J. and Damien, came through the same Central Florida surf scene. Cory and Shea Lopez made the drive over from the Gulf Coast. Plenty of other East Coast surfers made Sebastian part of their education.

But you don't need a world title to understand what First Peak meant.

Ask the guy who got one perfect wave there after waiting all morning.

That's the memory that sticks.

The takeoff.

That little pause.

The lip starting to stand up.

Then the whole thing sucking off the bottom and bending toward you.

You'd make that first turn and suddenly understand why everybody talked about this place like it was some kind of Florida miracle.

For a few seconds, you weren't in Florida anymore.

You were just surfing.

The Air Game

There's an old argument that First Peak was the birthplace of aerial surfing.

Maybe that's too strong.

Maybe it isn't.

But there's no question the wave became a launching pad for the progression of East Coast surfing. Its steep, wedging shape rewarded surfers who were willing to go vertical, and the section around the peak could turn a good bottom turn into a trip to the moon.

That mattered.

Remember, this was Florida.

We weren't supposed to have waves like that.

Most days, Florida surfers were dealing with wind, tide, sandbars and whatever little piece of swell the Atlantic decided to throw our way. Then Sebastian would turn on and First Peak would stand up like somebody had plugged it into an electrical outlet.

It gave surfers a place to experiment.

To try something stupid.

Then try it again.

And eventually land it.

That's how surfing progresses.

Not in laboratories.

In lineups.

Then the Wave Changed

Every surf spot has a lifespan.

First Peak had a damn good one.

For more than three decades, the relationship between the north jetty, the sand and the incoming waves produced the famous wedge. Then, in 2003, modifications to the aging north jetty changed that relationship.

The result was devastating for First Peak.

The wave that had helped define generations of Florida surfers was no longer the same wave.

That's the part younger surfers sometimes have trouble understanding.

They hear old guys talk about First Peak and think we're exaggerating.

We're not.

Well, maybe a little.

Surfers are notorious for making yesterday's waves six feet bigger.

But First Peak really was something special.

There are photographs.

There are magazines.

There are careers that started there.

There are enough stories from enough different generations that you don't have to take one old surfer's word for it.

The evidence is sitting right there in the history.

What Sebastian Still Means

The Inlet is still there.

The ocean is still there.

Surfers are still paddling out, still watching the horizon, still arguing about which peak is best and still telling somebody that the waves were better yesterday.

That's surfing.

The names of the peaks may change in importance. The sand moves. Storms come through. Jetties get rebuilt. New generations show up with boards that would have looked like science fiction thirty years ago.

But the spirit of Sebastian doesn't disappear that easily.

Because First Peak wasn't really just a sandbar and a jetty.

It was a place where Florida surfing grew up.

It was where young surfers learned to deal with crowds, currents, shallow water, steep takeoffs and the pressure of having somebody better than you sitting ten feet away.

It was where photographers found pictures.

Where shapers found customers.

Where pros came looking for waves.

And where kids like Kelly Slater got a taste of what they might become.

That's the history of Sebastian Inlet as I remember it—not just dates and jetty projects, but a bunch of surfers chasing a wave that wasn't supposed to be there in the first place.

Some engineer was trying to solve a navigation problem.

The ocean had other plans.

And for a few beautiful decades, it gave us First Peak.

For those of us who were lucky enough to see it, surf it, or even just stand on the jetty and watch somebody good absolutely light it up, that's something you don't forget.

You can change a jetty.

You can move sand.

You can lose a wave.

But you can't erase what that wave did to surfing.