The EBNY Sean Collins Memorial Surf

I'm always keen to get out as early as possible, and if it weren't for wifey's grumbles, I'd prolly be out even earlier.  Maintaining New York time is a distinct advantage for dawn patrols out here.  I'm up, roughly at four, fitfully waiting until 5:30 or six when it has been deemed appropriate to actually rise and make whatever little noise I make. Matters are made more complicated as wifey's yoga class doesn't start until seven and she doesn't want to sit in the cold dark on the bluffs for a morning hour.  Usually when I'm here I don't bother to check the surf report on my iPhone more than the initial inspection, waiting to board the outbound airplane from JFK.  Once that initial digital check is done, I just look out the window in the subsequent early mornings knowing that I'll be heading down to Swami's or Cardiff or up to Old Man's or Cotton's no matter what I see.  But even that one look, that one peek owes some sort of debt of gratitude to Sean Collins.  I remember at one point a touch of hullabaloo about how such efficacious forecasting will ruin the art of the surf check, the marine radio report and any other manner of local knowledge.  I still hear the grumblings every now and then, and an art has perhaps indeed been lost.  But that is more or less a thing of the distant past.  Now it is simply accepted.  So it goes with things of use, things of true practicality.  And acceptance can only follow.  Here is to Sean Collins who was finally accepted and will be properly remembered.