The Rise and Fall of First Peak, Sebastian Inlet

Last month we learned how the Gold Coast of Australia became the world’s leader in sustainable coastal management, and how surfers there played a role in shaping policy.

Today, there is no shortage of surf communities that could adopt that playbook. At its core, the approach means encouraging civic leaders to recognize the cultural and economic value of surfing spaces, and to make long term plans to preserve them.

Florida’s Space Coast is one place that could benefit, especially given what happened to Sebastian Inlet’s First Peak, the wedge that made the Inlet the epicenter of East Coast surfing for four decades. Over 20 years have passed since First Peak was inadvertently destroyed. Its famed wedges are essentially gone, yet surfers still hope to bring the wave back.

The damage occurred in 2003, when a retrofit of the aging North Jetty disrupted the wedge-generating relationship between the jetty, oncoming waves, and sand flow that shaped the sandbar.

Matt Kechele, first peak wedge and inlet jump. Photos Dugan/ESM.

Like many surf breaks worldwide, First Peak was an accident. It formed after 1969 improvements to the North Jetty, a project designed to improve boating navigation, not create waves.

Human intervention at Sebastian dates to the early 1870s, when early attempts to open and stabilize the inlet repeatedly failed. In 1919, stakeholders formed the Sebastian Inlet District, a local government and tax body charged with keeping the inlet open. The first jetties were installed in 1924, but struggled against shifting sands.

After World War II, surplus Navy explosives were used to blast the entrance open, though Sebastian remained remote until 1965, when the Pruitt Memorial Bridge connected Brevard and Indian River counties. With access improved, Sebastian Inlet State Park became a busy destination.

Sebastian inlet pre-bridge circa 1963, and then circa 1965 during construction of the Pruitt Bridge.

At first, boaters and fishermen dominated. Then, in the late 1960s, following jetty upgrades, surfers discovered a mutant righthand wedge breaking consistently off the jetty. First Peak was born.

Within weeks, the lineup was fiercely competitive. The high-performance wave became the East Coast’s premier incubator, shaping world-class surfers from Mike Tabeling and Jeff Crawford to Kelly Slater, Lisa Andersen, and Satellite Beach’s Hobgood brothers, CJ and Damien. Andersen, who grew up farther north in Ormond Beach, won an amateur national title at Sebastian in 1987, underscoring the Inlet’s draw as a proving ground beyond its local crew.

CJ Hobgood, world champ, Inlet aficionado. Photo: Dugan/ESM

When the North Jetty was retrofitted in 2003, however, surfers had no idea the wave was at risk. There is no record of wave preservation being raised during public meetings, where the project was presented as a simple repair of a decaying pier.

“I was invited to look at the Army Corps of Engineer’s approach and blueprints,” recalls Matt Kechele. “The guy doing the feasibility study reassured us that no work on the footprint of the rocks at the tip of the jetty would take place, so it should not affect First Peak. But they dropped some big rocks to absorb wave energy at the tip. They pretty much bamboozled us.”

Those rocks created a damaging sand shoal that altered how waves hit the pier. But the real blow came from the redesign. The new pier was built on top of the old one, with pilings placed outside the originals. Those pilings acted like a filter, weakening the wave energy that once rebounded off the jetty wall. Incoming waves lost force on the way in, and the reflected surge was diminished on the way out.

Almost overnight, First Peak lost its magic. It took months, even years, for many surfers to realize the depleted system was the new normal.

Efforts to revive the wave have failed so far. While studying coastal engineering at Florida Tech, Justin Enjo was shaken by the loss and launched the First Peak Project. His idea was to restore the rebound by attaching reflective carbon fiber panels to the outer pilings, which could also foster marine growth.

Sebastian Inlet aerial view.

The project drew surf media attention in 2017, and Enjo met with inlet officials, but little has happened since. The First Peak Project website has been inactive since 2022. Meanwhile, the Cocoa Beach and Sebastian Inlet Surfrider chapters merged into the Space Coast Chapter in 2020, but organizing an effort to restore First Peak was not among their priorities.

“It’s gone pretty quiet,” says James Gray, the Executive Director of the Sebastian Inlet District. “I’m not a surfer myself, but I completely empathize with the surfing community and their loss.”

Gray wasn’t there when the wave was destroyed, or when the First Peak Project idea was first floated, but has reviewed it. “The problem with the panel idea is those would have put too much stress on something that wasn’t designed for it, and would accelerate its decay,” he said. “Realistically, that didn’t stand a chance of getting past the decision makers on the board.”

“That said, I’d encourage the local surf community to come to our public meetings so they can understand our district mandates, like navigation safety and sand budget balance, and engage with us for the longer term.”

While the next major North Jetty retrofit is a long way off the surfing community, and its growing list of surf scientists, would be wise to open dialogues sooner rather than later

To that end, Gray sees the Sebastian Inlet District, and their two decades of robust data collection as a public asset the surfing community can put to use. “Our data may not bring back First Peak, but could easily help surfers save another spot.”

Australian surfers on the Gold Coast actually benefited from the battle over Kirra in the 1980s, because it sharpened their advocacy blades. By the time Gold Coast officials committed to long term coastal protection, surfers had ensured wave preservation was codified in policy. They lost Kirra but gained the Superbank.

Given the prominence and prestige of Florida’s Space Coast surfing community, they could and should become vital stakeholders in any future plans. And if they do, they deserve the support of the global surf community.