Paid to Surf

“I needed a job that would pay me to travel and surf,” Chuck Bragg says about his decision to join the Navy. He’s surfed Hawaii, Baja, the east and west coasts of Australia…but as a forward-deployed meteorologist for the Navy, Lieutenant Commander Bragg has had the opportunity to ride in Palau, Hong Kong, and the United Arab Emirates in the Persian Gulf.

Chuck began surfing over 30 years ago in his hometown, Cocoa Beach, Florida. He moved to San Diego with friends, set up a home in an apartment on Newport Avenue in Ocean Beach, and never left. His 22-year-long career in the Navy keeps him riding waves around the globe, but he always comes back to O.B.

“I surf mostly the beach here every day before work…. I love the community. It’s all about the community. The people, our church, home [are] here, our friends are here, everybody we know is here…my wife. My kids grew up here.”

His worst wipeout was in 2004 when he severed the arch of his foot on the fin of his flipped-over board.

“I came up, wiped out, and the board just flipped up and I just happened to step right down on it.” He was off his feet for four months because his foot “just opened right up.”

Fukushima, Japan, stands out as his favorite trip.

“My son, he was about 15 or 16 years old, and we went with a couple of Japanese friends and went and spent a week up there surfing in the August/September time frame.… It was perfect surf, but more importantly, I think I watched my son grow up; kind of go from being a boy to a man. I remember sitting there and just watching him just change during that week.”