[Excerpt]: The two longboards jammed between the hull and the wheel-house seem oddly superfluous. Two miles out in the bay, and sheltered from the choppy Gulf of Mexico by the sandbar of Galveston, the murky green water slaps gently against the hull of our tiny Boston whaler, glinting in the early morning sun. On the face of it the chances of a wave are minimal. But we don’t have long to wait, not only for a remarkable ride, but also the powerful image I’m looking for that illustrates the utter dependence of modern-day surfing on crude oil, and the vulnerability of the lifestyle now that supplies are about to run short.
The surfers who brought me here are even more oil-dependent than most. For James Fulbright, a Galveston-based board shaper and film maker, and his lifelong friends Peter Davis and John Benson, petroleum is fundamental to their grand obsession, a type of wave that can only be found at secret spots way off-shore in the shoals that surround the Houston ship channel…
First published in Surfer’s Path, November 2007
