It is November and the gales have arrived on the Great Lakes, with gusts up to 96km an hour, the very conditions that 30 years ago this month sank the lake freighter Edmund Fitzgerald. At this time of year, as the temperature drops and the wind wails dirges for another lost summer, swells of 3m or more can build. And when they do, a handful of hardy surfers in cities and rural communities from Lake Superior to Lake Ontario will ride them.
They are men like Magilla Schaus, a 54-year-old firefighter in Buffalo. On a Sunday earlier this month, as 50-knot winds lashed Lake Erie, he organized a surf contest in southern Ontario. Wearing thick wetsuits and hoods to ward off the chill, Schaus and a half-dozen others paddled out under pewter skies to ride ocher-colored waves heaving up 1.8m along a rock reef a hundred meters offshore.
In the end, the wind and currents were too powerful for competition. A few surfers caught rides, but Schaus, the Great Lakes district co-director of the Eastern Surfing Association, canceled the contest.
Standing 2.3m and weighing 97.5kg he is a powerful man with a near unshakeable confidence in his skills as a waterman. But he conceded that carrying his 3.4m longboard along the beach with the winds so strong was "like wrestling a giant lizard."
Meanwhile, at a break 32km farther east along the Canadian coast, with the Buffalo skyline in the background, a dozen surfers rode overhead waves in front of an audience of less intrepid people sitting in cars.
And so it goes for Great Lakes surfers: One spot may provide rides, another may offer nothing, and still another may leave men scratching for the safety of the shore. Finding the best waves is an odyssey.
"That quest, it's a metaphor for your whole life," said Vince Deur, a surfer from Grand Haven, Michigan, whose film, Unsalted, documents surfing on the Great Lakes. "To be ready, to be in position, to have the skills to paddle out and drop in and ride the wave -- you can't control it; you're along for the ride."
For some Great Lakes surfers, riding waves is more than a metaphor for life. Take Schaus. He has been surfing since 1964 and insists he was the only youngster in Buffalo to get a surfboard as an eighth-grade graduation gift the following year. He began riding in front of his family's cottage on Lake Erie and eventually was married on the same stretch of beach -- by a surfing minister.
"There's an old saying," Schaus said. "`Surfing is like the mob. Once you're in, you can't get out."'
Others on Lake Michigan, especially in Grand Haven and Sheboygan, Wisconsin, had also discovered freshwater wave riding during the early 1960s. Both communities retain strong surfing scenes.
Despite the 40-year history of Great Lakes surfing, fewer than 500 men and women surf the lakes today, according to Deur, and they are spread over a vast area. In fact, many people -- in Buffalo, Cleveland, Chicago, Milwaukee and Toronto -- have no idea as to the thrills available just offshore.
That was the case with 18-year-old Sebastian Duque. Last May his parents moved to Toronto from Florida, where he had surfed fanatically. But in Canada, without waves, he fell into a funk. Then, in August, he awoke to news reports of dangerous surf on Lake Ontario caused by the passing remnants of Hurricane Charley. Grabbing his wetsuit and board, he got on a bus bound for the waterfront, enduring puzzled looks from other passengers. Once at the beach, authorities tried to keep him from the lake, but he ran past them and surfed for hours.
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