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Whitney Hines loves her husband dearly. But lately, she’s been
getting a little over it. “He’s been doing a lot of pondering lately,” laughs
Whitney. “Like that scene from Zoolander,
‘Who am I?’ Jesse hasn’t really been complaining all that much, but every time
someone talks about how cold they got surfing, he would whisper, ‘Must be
nice.’ Little mopy things like that.”
Three months to the day after he snapped his right tibia and
fibula negotiating a dredging Avon shorebreak, Outer Banks, NC, pro Jesse Hines
has officially swept the cobwebs off his wintertime campaign, paddling out for
a private session this morning at Buccaneer Street in Kitty Hawk while his
faithful wife watched from the beach with his stepdad Lynn Shell. “Oh man,” Jesse
beams, “I’ve never been so scared to surf a chest-high wave in my life, but it
felt soooo good to finally get out
there. My leg muscles were a little sore from all the atrophy and rehab, but
the area of the injury itself felt fine. I took out this single-fin that Mickey
[McCarthy] had shaped for me and Brent McCoy a couple years ago, just because
it’s beefier and would probably keep me from doing something dumb out there [laughs].”
The surprisingly punchy, northerly wind/groundswell mix
served up chest to shoulder-high nuggets all morning, with dead to slight
offshore winds lasting until about noon — making for a very nice, very
warm morning trailing an abominably cold and flat winter. “Yeah, I guess if
there was one season to be laid up and out of the water, this was probably it,”
continues Hines. “But I won’t say the time’s gone by fast. I was just dying to
surf. My first wave, I got up to both feet and instantly went down. But then I
got it together and did a few turns.”
Matt Lusk, the local surf photographer who documented Hines’
solo sesh before heading down south to Rodanthe with Noah Snyder to do some
fisheye work, is a little more exalting: “On his last wave, Jesse got a nice
barrel — a pretty nasty one for town, actually — and followed it up
with a solid turn. You never would’ve known he had been so badly hurt.”
Hines reported that he plans on flying out to California in
the next few weeks to get his rhythm back in some warmer water and mellower
waves. And just like that, the Outer Banks’ most photogenic surfer is back.
Which basically means a little less tube time for you and
me. And a lot less moping in Whitney Hines’ living room.
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