nun's beach

Tonight I was on the phone with my mother, and she was kind of glancing at the Cape May County Herald while she was talking to me, which is the free weekly local paper, and is a beautiful work of small-town art. (See particularly the Spout Off section, which sometimes contains true gems. Also, for the longest time they published the arrest records, which mostly were for public urination. Best one ever: same guy getting arrested for public urination twice in the SAME NIGHT.)

And while reading the Herald, she goes, "Did you know about the Nun's Beach surfing competition?"

There's a convent in Stone Harbor, at 111th Street and the ocean, called Villa Maria by the Sea. It's not actually a convent really -- it's a retreat for nuns from the order Immaculata IHM, and it doesn't have any heat in the buildings, so it's only open during the summertime. The beachfront along its edge has been called Nun's Beach for ages, and there's a designated surfing beach just a block down from it. A few years back, t-shirts that said "Nun's Beach" and had a picture of a nun (in a habit) surfing on the front showed up in surf shops. HUGE hit for a couple of years.

And somehow, in spite of having gone to this town every summer for my entire life, I had not know that there is a surfing competition every September. (Possibly because the last time I was there in September, I was about ten.)

Nun's Beach Surf Invitational

Apparently every September they have this competition and sell t-shirts to raise money for the seashore retreat for these nuns. The t-shirts, my mom tells me, have had slogans on them ranging from "Pray for Surf" to "Surfing is our Habit". How can you argue with that brilliance??

Or this picture:



Delightful in every possible way.

Photo from here.