If you follow Brett Barley’s web show, you’re used to seeing the man find his way into world-class waves all over the world. Typical protocol amongst surfers whenever hurricane season hits is to think of all the spitting barrels first and the actual devastation those storms cause after. When we’re not the ones sitting right in a hurricane’s path, it’s pretty easy to look at it that way, so you wouldn’t be wrong to guess a Hurricane Florence-dedicated episode from Barley would feature… a bunch of really good waves.
This is not the case.
At one point, Florence was expected to pass straight through Barley’s Outer Banks community. People were, of course, advised to leave, but the East Coast surfer chose to stay. “The thing is if we were to leave we would have to drive 10, 12 hours away from here to get away from where this thing could potentially affect,” he said. “Who knows? If you leave a place like this, you don’t know when you’ll ever get to go back.”
So instead of surfing before Florence made landfall — which eventually happened just south of Wrightsville Beach — Brett Barley spent his time preparing his home for a potential disaster, filming all the preparation and early signs of the storm.
“There’s waves right now. But surfing’s not more important than being prepared for something like this.”
He took plenty of heat for posting footage of the storm’s early surges online and sharing that he and his family would be staying home through the hurricane. In the end, the OBX was spared and this is a great behind-the-scenes-style look at what it’s like to be prepared for the worst while still hoping for the best.
