Smorgasboarder_12_July-2012

Exceptionally keen surfer, home board
builder and luckily for us - smorgasboarder
reader - Mike Roberson was kind enough to
let us into his life surfing the Great Lakes in
the United States of America.
WORDS & PHOTOS: MIKE ROBERSON
TOP: Surfing Mike’s homebreak of Grand Haven takes a lot
of love and a plenty of rubber.
ABOVE: Mike with one of his personal surfboard creations
90 jul/aug 2012
California has long been the hotbed of surfing in North
America and the East Coast has many decent breaks too.
Unfortunately, I live over a 1000km from either ocean, yet I
am a surfer. I am one of the fortunate few that surf America’s
third coast - the waves that break along the shores of the
Great Lakes.
The Great Lakes are a chain of five large bodies of fresh
water located in the Midwest part of the United States. But
these are no ordinary lakes. They are hundreds of kilometres
long and wide and have a total combined coastline of over
17,000km with waves just waiting to be surfed.
I live in Grand Haven, Michigan - a quaint tourist town on the
eastern shore of Lake Michigan. Grand Haven is a popular
vacation spot known for its beautiful beaches and is quite
possibly the birthplace of lake surfing. People first started
surfing in Grand Haven as early as the 1940’s with a growth
in popularity in the 1960’s that continues today.
People are often surprised to hear that it is possible to surf
the lakes, but due to their large size we do occasionally get
pretty decent surf. In an average year there are over 100
surfable days. Of those, about 30 days would be considered
very good and about 15 days of excellent surf. Most days it
is knee to waist high, but occasionally we have chest high or
bigger surf.