Two First Responders Finding Balance in the Pursuit of World-Class Waves
By Darien Davies
Some say do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life. But what about building a life that makes room for what you love in the first place?
Most of us squeeze our passions into the margins. A quick run before work. A chapter before bed. We fit them in around careers, kids, and responsibilities.
For South Florida surfers Matt Oberman, 45, and William “Skeeter” Zimmerman, 41, it works differently. They chose careers with structure and flexibility, built strong support systems at home, and shaped their schedules so when the swell lines up, they’re ready.
And when it’s time to go, it’s rarely for a casual surf trip. They chase heavy reef breaks and waves of consequence, with their eyes always on the horizon.
“Surfing is the best and worst drug in the world. It’s nuts. I’m literally a different person if I don’t have it,” Matt said.
“What Matt and I are doing is a young man’s game and we have to stay fit. It’s very physical,” Skeeter said. “You can’t just say, ‘oh, I’ll just do it when I’m in my sixties and retired.’”
So, they are living their best lives now. These two watermen have crafted a life that revolves around the ocean, courtesy of their firefighter gigs.
Their childhood and early adulthood consisted of chasing after every wave they could, reaching a level where they were competing and securing sponsorships. Skeeter landed Quiksilver as a sponsor from his early teens through his late 20s. During those years, he launched Living Water Surf School while also working as a commercial fisherman before eventually joining the Boca Raton Fire Department. Matt also competed and secured multiple sponsors, including his current board sponsor, WRV. Prior to joining Palm Beach County Fire Rescue, Matt worked as a lifeguard, a natural transition into public service.
For them, surfing was never about the money. It was about the waves. If there’s to be one constant, it’s oceanic pull. But there’s a slight issue with their love for surfing: Good waves are hard to come by in South Florida.
While they both agree that living in South Florida, wave-wise, is less than ideal, they enjoy the freedom that the fire department affords them, which is the ability to follow their endless summer.
Matt and Skeeter both have schedules of 24 hours on, 48 hours off, and use this flexibility deliberately. But in South Florida, their coworkers are likely trying to do the same thing, and there’s always an opportunity to swap shifts. When you account for their “on” work situation to be saving lives, giving back to the community, and putting out fires, their “off” situation is entirely the opposite. But it’s a perfect yin and yang for these two.
Matt and Skeeter both tout the awesomeness of their wives as a major contributing factor to their surfing success, as well as their fellow firefighters. It’s especially a big, lovely back scratching situation within their individual units because they all pitch in to pick up when someone needs to drop down.
To no surprise, they track buoy readings and swell models obsessively. When everything lines up perfectly, they trade their shifts, grab their go bag, kiss their family, and hop on the plane.
And after this many “strikes,” they know exactly where to go, and aren’t telling.
“We, for the most part, stay off the beaten path. These locations that we know about that aren’t on the radar, we keep it to ourselves and we surf with just a couple guys or by ourselves,” Matt said. “Over the years, we’ve compiled our information and have a bunch of [go-to spots] where we don’t want to mix it up with fifty guys in the water and try to fight for waves.”
Quick trips could land them in the Caribbean or South America, but their go-to spots as of late include Fiji, Indonesia, and Tahiti. No specifics given, for obvious reasons, but they did recently surf Teahupo’o in Tahiti, widely regarded as one of the heaviest and most dangerous waves in the world. A thick Pacific slab breaking over razor-sharp reef with little margin for error.
Weeks, sometimes months, pass before the need becomes unavoidable. Even after scoring, the feeling only lasts for so long,
and the chase begins again.
“We’re looking for very specific types of waves. And if you fly all the way to some location and you don’t get what you came for, it’s also a huge letdown for us,” Matt said. “And it shouldn’t be. Because you just want to enjoy the whole experience and the trip, but once you’ve had those types of waves, you want to duplicate that. You need that or better to be satisfied.”
Skeeter admits that he loves the chase and the hunt of finding new waves, but what he really loves lies deeper than that.
“The adventure and finding new waves and surfing with my friends with no one else around… I’ve been doing more of that in the last ten years than I ever have. I’ve actually gotten the best waves of my life in the past five years,” he said.
At the end of the day, Matt and Skeeter put their lives on the line as first responders to do what they love most – surfing. Both worlds demand commitment. Both carry consequences.
The job carries emotional weight. The kind that doesn’t clock out when the shift ends. “We have bad nights, we don’t sleep, you see things that are difficult. But it’s an incredible career. Not many other careers that allow you that freedom,” Skeeter said.
They are surfers at heart, and they’ve built a life that makes room for it, one trip at a time.
