Sea to sand, lip to trough, paddle to ride - transition is everything. Photo: Frock. Inset: The Family Haynes. Photo: Nomates

In This Issue

2007 was the worst year of my life.  

Being 33 years old, that's saying a lot. Try to understand, I'm not a cynic. I'm a realist. Whether the glass is half-full or half-empty, it still has a ways to go before it's really a glass of water. And it still has to be cleaned either way. Maybe that's why we put so much emphasis on New Year's Resolutions -- to strip ourselves of whatever baggage might be keeping us from being the men and women we truly want to be. A didactic constitution for a better life. Personally, New Year's has never been about resolutions for me. It's about regrets. 

I know, I know. "You should live life with no regrets." People love broadcasting macho horseshit like that. Because it sounds like a cool thing to say. Usually the nostalgic blather of some pretentious, aging rockstar after he's made exorbitant sums of money off meager talent. Hey, you engulf enough eightballs, groupies, and handles of Jack over time, and it's easy to escape all the mistakes you've made to have "no regrets." But for those of us who live on Planet Earth and have a conscience, regrets come as naturally as a bitter cold front. God knows 2007 gave me my share. 

I regret chasing away a person who loved me, driving my car after too many glasses of cabernet, and letting ambition cloud my sense of happiness. I regret being snappy to those who deserved decency, and being decent to people who probably deserved a kick in the ass.  

I had some pretty bad surfs, too -- red tide hack-fests, gromapaloozas, and general kookiness on my part. But you kow what? That's one area of my life where I have absolutely no regrets. None. Zero. Nor have I ever second-guessed any surf session. Which is weird, because when I rewind the little black box in my mind at the end of each year, the should'a-could'a-would'as play themselves out, one after another. Because I'm only human, and all humans have regrets.  

Or so I thought until Christmas Eve, when I first met Kingston Dylan Haynes -- who had been born four days earlier -- the 7 lb. 2 oz. baby boy of Lori and Nigel Haynes. You may have heard Nigel's name before -- second generation Outer Banks ripper, FCS rep, cool dude... Nigel and I go way back, about 20 years or so. So naturally, when I flew home for Christmas, I couldn't wait to meet his and Lori's lil' guy. Gazing down upon Kingston, the first thing that came to mind were his initials, KDH. Same as their hometown, Kill Devil Hills. Was it planned? Irony? Probably somewhere in between. The second thing was far more epiphanous: Here's a person who has made no mistakes in life. How wonderful that must be -- to have the world as this infinite, blank canvas on which to make your mark. 

But Kingston represents more to me than limitless potential and innocence; he represents the passing of a crucial legacy. Quite simply, his father is one of the truest flesh-and-blood surfers I've ever known. Even as a child, Nigel was a stocky, fluid goofyfoot with a Tom Carroll-like affinity for the rail and, like a lot of Outer Banks kids, an uncanny tube sense. We both enrolled at UNC Wilmington in 1993 (before Ben Bourgeois made headlines and word got out about the place being a "surfer's college"). While I embraced academia and surfing with equal fervor, Nigel had grown disenchanted with between-class sessions at Masonboro and the odd weekend trip back to the Banks. Shortly after freshman year, he packed his bags for California, where he would spend the next seven years picking off canyon sets at Blacks Beach and basically becoming a one-stop Cali hostel for all our friends. Whether you were a lifelong bro or just an acquaintance of an acquaintance... didn't matter to Nigel. Just grab a piece of floor at Casa de Haynes and be ready for the dawn patrol the next day. The surfing brotherhood was that sacred to him. A few years later, during a trip to Indonesia with some of our closest friends, Billy Hume, Justin Brown, Nigel, and I paddled out for a dusk session at a kegging righthander off Nusa Lembongan. With my wave count falling miserably short of my more skilled pals, Nigel pulled back from the biggest peak of the session, and let me have it -- which turned out to be the best barrel I've ridden since. He had no business giving me that wave. 

Sitting in the Haynes' living room that day, I swear I saw the same look on Kingston's face that I saw on Nigel's when he backed off that dark set of Indian Ocean energy almost eight years ago -- an odd blend of pleasure and a taunting kind of fear that whispered, "Go ahead, I'll get mine soon enough. But this is a good one, so don't blow it." Amazing. 

Kingston won't surf for years to come. But one day, he'll be an adolescent, then a teenager, then a man. Soon enough, he will start having regrets in life, just like the rest of us. But if he turns out to be anything like his daddy -- and I'm certain he will be -- he'll never regret the one thing that really matters. 

Paddling out.

By Matt Pruett