First light. Two figures stand on the boardwalk and scan the break. They look over a beach bleached of color, past wind-tattered WARNING flags, out to where waves are shattering against rock jetties. Then the two pick up their boards and shuffle across the snow and the sand and into the water, in a hurry to join the line of surfers bobbing offshore.

The winter season at Rockaway Beach, with its big waves and storm-fueled swells, attracts a devoted breed of surfer. The kind who wakes before dawn, who battles the A train, who navigates turnstiles with a surfboard, who — when the waves are right — will even surf in a gale.