IB is a good place for floaters

Name: Peter Ramseier

Age: 47

From: Imperial Beach

Occupation: Airplane mechanic

Peter Ramseier rolled out to surf with his two sons and their friends just hours before the Christmas Eve festivities. They surfed by the Imperial Beach pier and showed off to their family on the East Coast.

“I’ve posted some pictures [on our social media],” he said, “I get a kick out of it, especially now that they’re getting blasted with that cold air from Canada.”

It was 65 degrees out in IB.

“The wave in IB is a little bit faster you really have to get up and get in,” Ramseier said, “you can’t hang out on your board for too long.”

He’s got five surfboards in his collection and he favors the Rusty Piranha 6’11” board for the two-foot waves this day.

“This is a good place for floaters,” he said. “The floater is when you come in, make a bottom turn, go back up the wave, ride the top of the crest, then drop back down into the wave, and keep on cruising.”

Locally, his favorite place to surf is at Sunset Cliffs on a winter swell, because of “it’s nice easy channels for paddling out and nice form coming in.”

Ramseier has surfed in Hawaii and Guam thanks to his job as an airplane mechanic at the Los Angeles International Airport. “I get to travel a bit and I took my kid down to Costa Rica last year,” he said. “We both surfed and the water is nice and warm. [Despite] it being all touristy now, no amount of new construction is going to ruin some nice breaks down there.”

Ramseier had his craziest “slam-and-bam” wipeout a few feet away from where we interviewed. “In 1997 I hit the bottom and it drug me along the sand for about 200 yards. It was gnarly and I didn’t think I was gonna make it up.”