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Wedging sand-bottom jetty break adjacent to the north side of Sebastian Inlet State Park, 15 miles south of Melbourne Beach, Florida; one of the surf world's high-performance hot spots, and home to at least three generations of world-class surfers, including Mike Tabeling, Jeff Crawford, Matt Kechele, Kelly Slater, and Lisa Andersen. "Part talent show," Swell.com said of the notoriously crowded Sebastian Inlet scene in 2000, "part photo studio, part boxing ring."

While boardmaker Dick Catri and future diamond thief Jack Murphy rode storm waves between the inlet jetties in 1959, the break didn't really come to life until 1969, with the completion of a south-angling rubble jetty extension. The wave's wedging effect was the result of a rebound swell bouncing off the extension and vectoring across the following wave, which in turn created another rebound swell, and so on. First Peak, Sebastian's premier spot, was a frequently hollow right-breaking wave that formed just a few yards north of the jetty. (A 2003 remodel on the jetty reduced the wedge effect to a point where surf journalist Matt Walker called it the "death of Sebastian"—an exaggeration, but not by much.) Three more spots—Second Peak, Third Peak, and OK Signs—follow just to the north, and are usually less defined and shapely than First Peak, but also less crowded. Monster Hole, the outside break located beyond the south jetty, is occasionally ridden on bigger swells.

Sebastian is generally best in late summer and early fall; low tides are preferred, and west winds are straight offshore. It's Florida most consistent break, and can hold form even on the rare six- to eight-foot days. The flat-topped Sebastian jetty, usually lined with fishermen casting perilously close to the surfing lineup, makes an ideal vantage point for spectators and surf photographers, which in turn drives the surfers to fever pitch. Rides here are mostly fast and short, with waves often spilling into an oncoming section; Sebastian has been called the birthplace of aerial surfing.

Sebastian Inlet came to the attention of the surfing world in 1969, when locals Mike Tabeling, Kiwi White, and Gary Hook were arrested and fined for illegally surfing within 200 feet of the jetty. Dick Catri then led a successful crusade to have Sebastian opened to surfers. Within two or three years, Sebastian earned a well-deserved reputation as the East Coast's most localized break. "The pecking order was brutal," photographer Larry Pope later recalled. "Somebody had to either die or leave for you to move up."

The first Eastern Surfing Association Championships were held at Sebastian Inlet in 1970 (although the contest was aborted at the halfway mark); Sebastian also hosted the Waverider Magazine Florida Pro, mainland America's only world pro tour event in 1976 and 1977; the 1981 Stubbies Pro East; the United States Surfing Championships (in 1986, 1990, and 1994); the annual Quiksilver King of the Peak contest, founded in 1995; and a series of WQS events during the '00s, including the Globe Sebastian Inlet Pro and the O'Neill Sebastian Inlet Pro. Florida's best surfers have always been drawn to Sebastian, beginning with Tabeling, Greg Loehr, and Jeff Crawford, moving on to Matt Kechele, Jeff Klugel, and Charlie Kuhn, followed in turn by Kelly Slater, Lisa Andersen, CJ and Damien Hobgood, Shea and Cory Lopez, David Speir, Bill Hartley, Phillip Watters, Todd Morcom, and Aaron Cormican.

 magazine named Sebastian in 2002 as one of "15 Waves that Fuel Surfing's Future." The break has been featured in more than a dozen surf movies and videos, including 

 (2002). A part-time treasure hunter, diving in eight feet of water about 100 yards out from First Peak in 1994, found $1 million worth of jewels and gold coins from a Spanish galleon that sank there more than 250 years earlier.

Sebastian Inlet

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