“Every time I pop up and catch a wave, there’s a symbiotic moment in the water, I feel safe in my body in a way that I haven't always in life.” Shea Salisbury, 28, grew up near the water, but it wasn’t until early adulthood that she realized a simple fact: surfing was going to be a part of her life.

Like many 20-somethings, she landed in New York hungry not for waves, but to climb the corporate ladder. But over last summer the director and DP quit her job, and dove back into surfing with a friend Meredith Rogers as they thought about working on a creative project together. The answer, it turns out, was right in front of them.

In January, Salisbury and Rogers put out a call on social media looking for female surfers on the East Coast to be part of a film they’d be creating over the winter. They received hundreds of inquiries, and the resulting crew of women have spent the last few months together, shredding the gnar, so to speak, up and down the coast in freezing conditions.

There are the inherent risks that come with surfing: undertow, sharks, aggressive old men, cold water, and coral. But, less obvious are the personal risks it takes to feed into the obsession. Surfing is a sport that hooks your body and soul, with the potential to turn life on spin cycle in the process.

On a sunny March morning at Rockaway Beach, we roll up for the photoshoot. The waves are small, but the icy wind is whipping sand and hair alike. The crew is suiting up for battle, armed with a thick layer of neoprene and a gaggle of pastel-colored hard-top boards. Wiggling into their wetsuits, pulling on the hoods, tugging on booties, and lastly struggling into crab-claw gloves with the help of a partner. They run into the water, and start to paddle, crouching to catch the little crests as they roll by.

Though the group is both informal and newly formed—they’ve only been surfing together for a few months—there’s camaraderie that comes fast when faced with negative temperatures and a pumping swell. Each has a unique story that brought them to the sport, and to each other. Together, they’re reaping the rewards of going out on a limb, or rather, a wave.

For some, falling into surfing has changed the course of their lives. Sarah Belmer, a 29-year-old Rockaway resident (she temporarily relocated from Brooklyn this year), learned to surf in 2023 as a distraction from a catastrophic breakup. Quickly, the sport became the driving force in her life. “I've always been quick to move, or take a new job, or try a new relationship, but when it comes to my physicality and athleticism, I'm very risk averse,” she says. “This group has pushed to take waves I didn’t think I could.” While working full-time as the global marketing director of Tory Burch, she moved closer to the water so she could surf more. In doing so, they’ve also challenged the ways in which she sees herself. For Sarah, The community behind the sport has led to a deeper-rooted confidence and a shift in priorities that plays out beyond the board.

Others are finding a new relationship to the sport. “Being scared used to be such a big part of surfing for me,” says Sarah Fingerhood, a 25-year-old who grew up in the Bay Area and rode her first wave at 12. “The last couple years I was upset at myself for it, wanting to go for bigger waves and getting mad at myself when I'd hesitate.” She often surfed alone, struggling with her relationship to the sport as she came to terms with her sexuality and faced the politics of surf culture in San Francisco.

When she came out two years ago, she stopped surfing altogether. “Surfing represented being in the closet for so long,” she explains. “It was very subconscious, but I couldn't get myself to surf.” When she moved cross-country to Queens in October, she considered giving up the sport altogether. Then a friend introduced her to Rogers, and she was convinced to join the crew and surf her first winter waves out east.

“When you're so cold, everything else gets washed away,” she says. The fear was gone, and instead of being alone, she had to rely on other women—for emotional support, and to help her get her gloves on before hitting the water. “I moved here to be in a place where I feel comfortable being gay, and somehow I've ended up with more surfing and more fulfilling surfing while being able to be authentically myself.”

When Karen Song first learned to surf, it was rare to find another woman in the waves. “I was out there not knowing anything, with just the bad advice from my brother and his friends,” she explains. “I got into near drowning situations, I was in over my head.” She stopped, picking it up again as she was approaching 40. This time, it stuck. “Surfing has always been kind of an extension of who I am,” she says. “As a person of color, being from New York, there's so many ways in which I'm kind of othered in the world. How I've navigated my life and my career is a kind of surfing, too.”

Over and over in our interviews, I hear this group of women speak to the joy, support, silliness, and liberation that has come from their time together. While many grew up surfing mostly (or only) around men, there’s a refreshing energy that comes with a crew that is there just as much for the relationships as they are for the waves. “It’s not just about the movie, now it's about the relationships that we have formed,” says Virginia Tadini. “It's going to change the way I surf going forward.”

In a time where women's rights are threatened and compromised on a daily basis, there's something powerful in this group coming together—in what is typically a male-dominate sport—to cheer each other on. In February the group took a trip to Rhode Island. “We all paddled out together. It was so cool, because I saw these men looking around and they were outnumbered,” says Lydia Keating. “It has made me reckon with the fact that when I surf, I'm very aware of the space I'm taking up. But when I'm out with these girls, I feel very empowered because we're a group.” They're not fighting each other for the waves. They're just there to witness and encourage the success of one another—both in surf and in spirit.

Once the shoot wrapped, as our production team shivered our way back to the car to head home, the crew was just getting started. “We all went back in the water to surf a little bit more,” says Fingerhood. “We were like little kids giddy in the water. There was no surf, and we were having so much fun.”

Follow along on the journey of Shea and Meredith’s A Train Studios and the surf film by subscribing to their Substack and Youtube, and follow along on Instagram.