From space to sandals: Popular surfer Bob Freeman takes final ride with wave forecasting

Hillard Grossman
Florida Today

Shiny shoes and sleek suits have given way to shaggy hair and salt-sprayed sandals. 

Retirement has never felt so comfortable for champion surfer Bob Freeman, whose weekend wave forecasting column — which he has provided to FLORIDA TODAY since 2002 — is taking its final ride today. 

Cocoa Beach’s Bob Freeman had a string of 26 consecutive first-place finishes in his age group at ESA competitions during the 1980s and ’90s.

"Now I'll be able to watch other forecasters and chase a big swell, and I won't have to wait until my two-week vacation," he said, laughing. "I'm looking forward to taking it easy and surfing the local breaks with my best friends."

Nine years beyond his Social Security milestone, the surfer who has seen hammerhead sharks circling his boards, dogs catching waves and wild pigs roaming the beach is still in top physical condition.

"Surfing is all I do," he said. "I've never been much of a workout guy, but I've tried gyms. I just try to not mistreat myself too much."

While his surfing has been considered legendary — he won 26 straight amateur events over a three-year span and was part of Ron Jon's first iconic surf team in 1967 — his wave forecasting has been well-respected since the early 1970s.

While working at the Ron Jon surf shop that was situated at Canaveral Pier, Freeman provided radio station WKKO (860-AM) with afternoon wave forecasts.

"The disc jockeys still remember they were outrageous," Freeman said. "All the guys would come into the shop and I'd be doing this live feed, and they'd all be yelling in the background, like, 'Hey, Miami boys, go home, we got no waves here,' or, 'Stay away, this guy knows nothing,' but I'd be looking out the window of the shop at the wave breaks."

The largest waves he's predicted in Brevard County probably would be 10 to 12 feet, usually associated with passing hurricanes.

And like his business-suit space center career, which lasted until he got laid off after Apollo 14, Freeman treated his wave forecasting and his wave-riding ability like rocket science. He never took forecasting lightly.

He even "launched" his own Dawn Patrol Eye Ball Visual and Detailed Analysis website in 1999, featuring the first live video feed from Cocoa Beach Pier.

"I try to take a true meteorological approach, and try to read maps, markers and lines, and what they mean and how they can interact," Freeman said. "And then I'd look at the NOAA weather forecast, to see how close I was. It became a hobby, trying to do that with raw work.

"But, say, if a cold front arrives five or six hours hours earlier, or later, it changes everything. I'd send my forecast in on Thursdays, thinking, hopefully it sticks."

One of 'The People of Apollo'

Freeman grew up in Outer Banks, North Carolina, where he once had to be rescued by the Coast Guard after an ironic surfing session with a hurricane named Faith.

"We were crazy back then," he said, laughing.

After graduating from high school, he moved to Cocoa Beach in 1966 in hopes of getting his degree in engineering so he could get a job at the Space Center. He started by going to technical school to get an electronics certification.

"Seeing my first rocket launch was amazing," Freeman said. "I had a little AM radio that I had built myself. I brought it down from North Carolina with me. I had roommates I didn't even know since the company had arranged it all. But I heard on the radio that a rocket was going up. 

Bob Freeman in the office of his Melbourne home, with a Saturn V model on his desk. He worked on the Apollo program from 1967-69.

"I looked out the window, and I remember the Beatles playing 'Good Day Sunshine,' and then I ran on the beach and saw the rest of the flight. Right then, I thought, 'I've landed. I'm here.' "

He became part of the space scene when North American Rockwell hired him in 1967 as an intern.

He soon was moved up to an engineering clerk, then an engineering tech.

"My first day as an engineering tech I was assigned to the propellant utilization part of the second stage of the Saturn V launch vehicle. I had a seat in the launch control room," he said. "It was fun stuff, hard work, long hours. I needed to look nice, trimmed up with shiny shoes and suits."

Bob Freeman seen sitting at his console in the launch control center in 1969.

Freeman was recently featured in FLORIDA TODAY's award-winning documentary on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, "The People of Apollo," where he talks about how he, as a 20-year-old, worked his way into a space center job and where he was on July 16, 1969, the day Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins rocketed to the moon.

"I think my favorite story Bob relayed was how after Apollo 11 blasted off just after 9:30 in the morning, he did some routine checks, then headed straight to Cocoa Beach to go surfing," said "The People of Apollo" producer and USA TODAY-FLORIDA NETWORK Video Strategist Tim Walters. "That anecdote was Bob Freeman to a T. I've known Bob for many years because of his surf report, but when I found out he worked on Apollo 11, I had to hear his story. It was well worth it."

Unbeaten for nearly three years

Freeman learned to surf in North Carolina back in the '60s, "when there was no one surfing," he said. "Truly, we were the very first surfers there. Several of us were beach boys and backup lifeguards at Atlantic Beach, and one day we saw some guys with surfboards.

Veteran surfer Bob Freeman attended the Florida Surf Museum's Big Board Show 2 earlier this year at the Ron Jon rental store in Cocoa Beach.

"We found out we could buy them in Wrightsville Beach (100 miles south) and drove down to the Ocean Surf Shop, where Frankie Spruill  worked, and my best friend and I ordered these 9-6 (9 feet, 6 inches) surfboards. A month later, we returned and picked them up. They cost $125.

"We were such kooks. I hate to admit it now, but it took us a week to figure out we needed to get rid of our sun-tanning lotion before we got on the boards. We ended up buying paraffin (like Gulf wax) that they used for sealing mason jars and it was hard as a rock. The first winter we surfed without a wetsuit."

Later on in life, as a diversion to his work life, he'd go surfing.

"I had just gotten back into it," he said. "My son, Bobby, was about 14 or 15 at that time and he was surfing heats with (Kelly) Slater, (Danny) Melhado and (Todd) Morcom.

"I saw they had divisions in my age group, so one day I figured, 'Why not?' "

Bob Freeman competes in the Legends longboard event at the 52nd annual Cocoa Beach Easter Surfing Festival, an event he won a dozen times.

Freeman went undefeated for nearly three years and still today would be hard-pressed to find good competition at his age. He became legendary around Cocoa Beach.

He won the National Kidney Foundation's Labor Day Surf Festival 16 times, was a 12-time winner of the Easter Surfing Festival, placed fifth in the 1996 U.S. Surfing Championships and was an original Ron Jon team member in 1967.

And while he lived in Cocoa Beach much of his time before retiring to Melbourne, he's been invited to several Cocoa Beach High and Merritt Island High class reunions.

"People have sworn I sat next to them in class," he said, laughing. "But I went to high school back in North Carolina."

Freeman also has been credited with naming Second Light beach, the area often known as Brevard's hottest surf spot, but he said he shouldn't receive the credit.

Across from Patrick Air Force Base, it used to be called "AP (Air Police) Shack," because of the police-manned guard house to the base, he said.

"One day, (well-known photographer) Larry Pope wanted to take pictures of me surfing and I told him to meet me at the AP Shack," Freeman said. "He asked, 'Where is that?' and I told him it's the second light coming south (from Cocoa Beach). Surfing magazine picked that up and shared that, and when the base started to name the beaches there, they named it Second Light. Just by accident."

Now, he's free and easy to surf. Three or four times a week. Maybe.

"Now, it takes me a day to recover after a good surf session," he said. "This old body can only take so much."

Contact Grossman at 321-242-3676 or hgrossman@floridatoday.com