This meant two things: bad sailing weather off New England and good surfing weather in Gloucester.

I called Drum Boy back.

"We're going to have to wait a few days for this little system to blow through before heading out. What do you say we meet at the Crow's Nest in Gloucester tomorrow morning, check the waves at Good Harbor Beach, surf if it's any good, and then leave at dawn on Wednesday?"

"Sounds good, Eric." he said. "I haven't surfed since last Saturday. I almost forget how."

"Yeah right," I chuckled.

"No, seriously, I was trying to remember my last full-on barrel, and I couldn't," he said in his earnest way.

I said enviously, "You never remember your barrels."

"That's true. I only remember my wipeouts."

"You and me both, my friend."

Next, I called Dancer and Helena and the trip was planned for keeps. This would give me a full day to check the boat and stock up on canned goods, water, Power Bars, cat food, turtle food, plenty of ale (Harpoon IPA, brewed in Boston, of course), and fish oil tablets, which I take every day. Fish oil and Green Tea, food of the gods.

I take fish oil tablets (and eat fish) because it's very good for your overall constitution, and it's said to help with moods. My moods swing like a giant pendulum, but I was in a good mood today. Green tea with a hint of lemon is not only tasty, it makes you live longer.

I build houses in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. I always liked the old wood-shingled Cape houses and stately Colonials that dot the landscape around southeastern New England. Now I build them. I grew up surfing in Southern California and I never visit, I have no desire to. Instead of driving or flying to San Diego like every would-be surfer from the East Coast, I go out on commercial fishing boats every now and then, when carpentry jobs temporarily dry up, and I surf the faraway shores that we happen upon. My life is pretty good, but I felt something was missing. It was when the island in the center of the sunrise burned itself onto my mind for one full day that I realized I still hadn't found something. What I hadn't found, I didn't know, but I thought it was on that island.

--

I always like the air a few hours before the storm hits. It's moist, cool and grey, a little scary. The trees seem to brace themselves against the freshening southwest wind. The tall grass on the bluff outside my front door bends gracefully, and in waves, reflecting the growing chop on the ocean just beyond. The clouds move fast across the sky, low, so close that I feel if reach up, my fingertips would come away with dew drops on them, the beginning of the storm.

I can't wait for the storm to hit. But I also can't wait for it to pass, because with storms come waves.

All ridable waves are created by wind, and a 40-kt. northeast wind blowing 800 miles from Gloucester will send overhead, long-period waves to Good Harbor Beach. I knew this would happen, it always does. And I've been on those waves many times, as the wildly spinning storms make tracks for the Grand Banks.

So today I prepared to sail, and tomorrow, we would kick off our trip to the mysterious island in the center of the sunrise in perfect fashion: I would surf with Drum Boy, Dancer, and Helena. I felt something was going to happen, something beyond my range of experience. Something huge.

Outside my window, the wind picked up.

--

My crew assembled at my house the previous evening, alternately entering dripping wet and glowing. We all get a charge out of a strong storm.

Drum Boy came in as he always does, with shards of almost visible energy emanating from all sides, and his eyes bright. He carried his bongos and said, "Hi Eric." He looked big because he carried himself like nothing ever got in his way. Then when he stood next to you, you realized that his large stature was an illusion created by his dynamism. The chicks loved him.

Dancer came next, gliding under the transom. She wasn't hard to look at by any means, and even though she was born into riches, she didn't carry herself with haughtiness or pride. She didn't have to. She didn't use any of them. She lived in her three-room wooden cottage on Cape Cod and, after teaching children about the wonders of the world, she surfed every day there were waves. The dim light in my living room didn't dull her radiance at all. She was a tall, slender woman, but very strong, as evidenced by her surfing talent.

When Helena entered, her face under her rain hood, like an angel's, was flushed, her eyes big and sparkling, and drops of water lined her eyelashes like stars. Damp locks of auburn hair poked out around her hood, framing her face like flickering flames. As usual, I couldn't take my eyes off her for more than a few seconds. Her face always appeared as if in a mirage, but I was really seeing it.

I looked away.

Nobody slept too well. How does one sleep when one is about to depart on the adventure of a lifetime?

--

We decided to surf at dawn. The storm had blown through fast, leaving only showers and ensuing cold air. I was a little worried that it wasn't moving fast enough for us to sail, but we'd figure that out in the morning. Even if we had to wait another day, northwest winds would be blowing hard off the cold front that always passes after a nor'easter wreaks its havoc and ambles away like a mugger who just beat someone up. Hopefully we'd find a safe, secure mooring by nightfall. If not, with big high pressure settling over the waters off New England after the passing of the storm, night sailing would be a breeze.

The four of us pulled up to the estuary that separates Good Harbor Beach from the wood-frame homes that cling to the edge of Cape Ann. We were speechless, except for Drum Boy. He only said very softly, "oh my god."

Here is why he said this: the Atlantic greeted us with a roar that was at once both deafening and at the same time strangely almost silent, the kind of sound that goes to the back of your mind and rests there for a long time. We knew the waves were big and fast. The only question was: how many rides and how many barrels would we get?

We couldn't wait to get on it. During the excited rush to get into rashgaurds, wetsuits, boots, gloves and grab our boards, no one said a word, not even Drum Boy. We were all ready to go at about the same time, and we walked in single file across the wooden foot bridge that traverses the estuary. The air became saltier, clinging, and it was colder near the water, but we liked it that way. The air grew louder with the sound of thick lips of water booming onto the surface before them as they curled slowly over upon the breaking of the wave. The low roar that lay beneath that was constant and ominuous. On top of the intermittent booms, the whitwater hissed. It's a weird symphony.

It's the twilight before dawn. The storm had turned into a big one, blowing up off the New Jersey coast and becoming a bona fide nor'easter that had produced cold torrential rain on Martha's Vinyard and Nantucket, grazed the elbow of the Cape with fierce downpours and 50-kt. wind, and sped off toward Sable Island and the Grand Banks. Here in Gloucester, the beach sand was pocked-marked with tiny craters from the heavy rains, which strafed the beach all night. Small tree branches littered the roadway, loosed by the winds. The houses stood dark and silent, and seemed relieved the storm hadn't hit any harder.

I've surfed Good Harbor Beach in just about all conditions, from knee-high and glassy, hard up to get in the water in the middle of summer, to overhead and dredging, big and scary on high tide in January, waves jacking up fast with steep 8-foot faces, and then shutting down in a hurry.

This, today, was the best I'd ever seen it.

In the pale early morning light, when the air is pure, without traffic, chimney smoke from wood fires burning in the little houses near the coast, and without heat from the sun, waves always look their best. It's as if they thrive in the night time, growing in the dark, and when light comes, they have flowered, and they greet the dawn with gusto and power.

The four of us watched as big, clean lines entered the mouth of harbor, which is about a mile wide and sits between two large, rocky points. The sandy beach is the land's boundary, it's frontline against the sea, inside the bulky rock points on either end. A small, domed island with scrub oak and hearty grasses at its peak lies just offshore, a solid hump of land anchored beyond the frothing waves. It's a pretty spot, full of families and elderly people on warm summer weekends, when high-pressure keeps the waves small and permits safe wading and sun bathing. It's the placid summer sea that's why most people don't know there are big, surfable waves in New England. They go to the beach only when there are warm temperatures, sunshine, and others enjoying the peaceful calm of July. In the fall and winter, storms make waves, and we had just had a doozy.

Once we reached the wet sand, packed like concrete, at the water's foremost progress, we put our boards down and stretched. I looked at the waves, which were quite beautiful. Out past the rows of big whitewater boiling in toward us, I saw three or four rows of bigger open-ocean swells racing in from the deep. I watched as a ruler-straight wave bent forward in slow motion, its peak arcing forward and falling gracefully like a smooth grey-green curtain onto the flat water an easy ten feet below with a sound like a clap of thunder. And the faces were smooth as a pane of plateglass, only you couldn't see through them. My stomach got it's little scared but exhilarated twinge and ignited the spontaneously created energy that grows from there to my limbs and head.

I was stoked.

The paddle out wasn't too bad, considering the size, and once we were all outside the impact zone, slowly rising and lowering as the swells passed under our boards, we breathed easily and smiled. Nobody else was out, which was surprising, since a few other souls usually ventured out on a good swell in March. We didn't really think about it at the time though. Gloucester is weird that way. Maybe everyone was one beach to the northeast, Long Beach in Rockport.

A set started to show on the horizon, lumpy lines bigger than those around them. They appeared and disappeared like a mirage on a hot day. When they reappeared they were even bigger and closer than before. I paddled a little to my right, since the peaks looked to be headed that way. When the first wave of the set was 50 yards away and coming on fast, I sat up on my board. I counted the tops of three waves behind it, bigger and bigger. I paddled out a few strokes so I'd be positioned to get on the biggest, the last one of the set. The first surged beneath me, lifting me as I sat on my board. The second was stronger and lifted me higher. I spun after this one passed, and after glimpsing a very large piece of the Atlantic Ocean coming at me like a the side of a ship. It was wide too, about 75 yards long from end to end and not a blemish on it.

I was even more stoked as I began to paddle toward shore, waiting for the acceleration from the moving mountain behind me.

Then, the nose of my board started going downhill and speeding up fast. The tail of my board lifting faster, I jumped to my feet, leaned to my left (I'm goofyfoot), dragged my left hand on the wave face, bent my knees and looked ahead. What I saw was something that always amazes me. I looked down the length of a solid curving expanse of smooth water that appeared not to move and barely changed its shape, although I was flying along it like a rocket sled, with no friction under my feet.

And as I'm speeding along the big face of this wave, using faint pressure on my inside rail at times with my toes to move up and down that seemingly motionless wall of water, I see above me a thin lip begin to throw out, the beginning of the barrel. I eased a little of my weight on my back foot to stall, to enter the tube. I see the lip move ahead of me and now I'm under it, still flying along at warp speed. I never got fully covered on this one, just covered up. I still saw open space to my right and behind me. But I wasn't complaining as I carved up the face of the now shoulder-high wall, snapped off the lip, as I knew without seeing, spray exploded from my board and over the back of the wave. I did one more bottom turn, and then kicked out over the back to paddle back out.

After such an epic journey on one lone wave, I didn't think I could keep going at the same pace, but I caught a few more just like this and paddled in.

Sometimes you don't notice your friends while you're out there, especially when everyone gets spread out on a beachbreak. I knew they were getting waves like mine and I was happy for them. On one paddle back out, I spotted Dancer's backside a ways down, along an overhead wall, and she was expertly working her board up and down the face. I saw Helena duckdive the same wave just behind Dancer, and then pop out the back like a big and quite shapely seal. Drum Boy was nowhere in sight the whole session, probably ripping along at his own relaxed pace on the northeast end of the beach.

When I got out of the water and back to the car (I was the first one out), I looked back. Helena and Dancer were just walking up the beach, talking and laughing. Just then I saw Drum Boy dropping on a wave that stood out from all the rest I had seen or surfed that morning. He pushed himself to his feet in a fluid motion and lay on his inside rail. The top of the wave was at least 8 feet over his head as he crouched and leaned over. I knew he would get slotted on this one. He flew down the line, then it happened. He disappeared behind the lip, which had begun to peel off with exploding whitewater from its impact, a perfect tube inside the wave. Drum Boy was hidden for what seemed forever. Then he burst out of the barrel in a halo of spitting mist, and proceeded to throw fans off the top and gouge big bottom turns along the rest of the remaining head-high wall. He did this with a rhythm few people have -- he was Drum Boy, afterall, and he was making beautiful music on this wave. Even more than most surfers I have met, Drum Boy understands the rhythm of the wave, and the rhythms of the Earth. He has his own rhythm that rarely seems out of synch with his surroundings, whether he's surfing, walking through a meadow, or playing his bongos.

Everyone got at least covered up a few times, and we were feeling good about the session. We were relaxed, feeling the peace that only comes after a good surf. When you come out of the water after waves like this, your arms are tired, your legs feel like you've walked a few miles, your mind is clear, and you don't feel the need to really say anything. You've nothing to prove and nothing needs to be done right away. You can slowly change out of your wetsuit and reflect on a timeless trip through gleaming tubes and you can remember getting pounded by a heavy liquid fist. Nothing on Earth is more relaxing to a surfer than a good long morning in the waves.

Ahead of us lay mystery and adventure on the ocean. What would happen to us out there? Would we find the island? Would we find waves? It didn't matter much because the journey alone was worth the weight of my sailboat in gold. Whatever we found would be a bonus.

The storm was well past, but we waited one more day, just to make sure. Nothing quite like getting caught the tail end of a wicked nor'easter in a 42-foot sloop. The sailors rarely live to tell about it. Instead of sailing after our session, we drank cheap beer at the Crow's Nest, shot pool like pros (this also happens after a good session), and rested. It had been a good morning and we were in no rush.

The next day, at around noon, as we set sail on a fresh northwest wind, headed east out of Boston Harbor, Drum Boy softly beat his bongos, as he sat on the bow, looking forward, out toward the open Ocean. The rhythm was a complex Carribean-style salsa beat, a soothing sound, and a fitting backdrop as we glided silently across the harbor. Dancer began to sing softly, barely audible, and her siren's voice meshed perfectly with Drum Boy's rhythm. No one else spoke, we didn't need to. The rhythm of the drum carried us over the water as if on the downy wings of an angel.