A long time ago, about 4 years or so, my good friend Chad Heller started to teach me how to surf. After I was hooked we would often plan morning surf sessions before work, where we worked for the same organization. At the time I lived in a small development called Captains Cove and Chad lived in the large suburb, Modest Town, VA. Every morning would start off with dragging my lifeless body out of bed and to a computer to check SurfLine only to hear Dennis with the local report say the waves suck.

One day I decided that there must be a way that we could get the report before getting out of bed. So I looked into buoy data sources and weather station data sources and saw that NOAA was updating all their data and letting anyone access it. So I instantly started programming.

The first part I programmed was just a basic display of the current conditions in tabular form that used the data from the Deleware Bay buoy. The data was off by a foot and sometimes two. I didn’t take into account how far out to sea the buoy was and how far away Assateague is from Deleware Bay.

Utilizing Chad’s knowledge of the surf, I developed an algorithm that pulls data from the Deleware Bay buoy, the Virginia Beach buoy and multiple weather stations along the cost. After much tweaking the data became more and more consistently correct.

My next task was to somehow get the data sent to our cell phones early in the morning so we could check our phones and roll back over and go back to sleep. Once I figured out how to achieve the task a set it up and let a few other friends join in. Everyone seemed to really like the reports, so I thought maybe other people might find it useful as well. So I registered the domain, surfassateague.com, and the site was born.

I set it up to allow people to sign up for 3 different reports; 5am, Noon, and 5pm. I set up the main page to display the current conditions and the tide info. Shortly after that I started adding webcams to the site. Sadly no webcams exist for Assateague on both Maryland side and Virginia side, so I was forced to use Ocean City cams and broaden the report to include Ocean City.

Since its initial development Surfassateague.com has not changed much beside a couple features added here and there such as; a tide calendar, the beach cam array, a tropical weather section. Surfassateague.com became my hobby site where I would tweak and adjust little things just to make life a little easier for surfers and myself.

I have often flirted with the idea of shutting the site down now that SwellInfo is around and almost every cell phone can browse the web now. Surfassateague.com was never meant to compete against any other site. The only purpose it has and will ever have is to be simple and free and to fill a niche that allows me to sleep in.

The future of Surfassateague.com is SurfDelmarva.com. Using the same basic algorithms developed for SurfAssateague.com. DelMarVa will be broken down by beach with its own report and web cams. SurfDelmarva.com will use a completely different approach to web development by utilizing the mainstream social media sites. One of the new and exciting features will be Scout Reports, which will let anybody who has signed up to submit a live report, photo, and even video from the beach with their cell phone.

SurfDelmarva.com and Surfassateague.com will always be free and always remain humble no matter how awesome they become.

For more information on SurfDelmarva.com check out Surf Delmarva’s Facebook.