Ocean Avenue:
Driving south on A1A from Indialantic, you’ll enter Melbourne Beach, one of Brevard’s older beach communities and more desirable neighborhoods. Mel Beach’s main break is at the end of Ocean Avenue, a street made famous by a now defunct surf shop and factory of the same name. Fortunately, the break survived, and it retains the OA tradition as a neighborhood spot as well as being home to the office of Eastern Surf Magazine. Ocean Avenue is an easy find marked by a four-way stop where A1A juts east a couple of blocks before steering south again. However, if you accidentally go straight, you’ll reconnect with A1A about a mile south. Just be careful and adhere strictly to speed limits — Melbourne Beach cops are really bored.
After turning left at the four-way stop, you’re on Ocean Avenue. Drive two blocks till you see a flagpole flying the American and Florida flags in the center of a small short-term parking lot overlooking the beach. Adjacent to that parking lot are sand volleyball courts, a pavilion and a second parking facility with no time limits or meters. Sand shifts over the course of a year, changing the break from a mushy outside wave to a strong shorepound. The break is most appreciated for being relatively deep, limiting the shutdown factor that plagues most Central Florida spots on large swells. When it’s small, the semi-mushy conditions and open lineup make Ocean Avenue a mix of old-school longboarders and Mel Beach groms. Most travelers either zip by or drive through the beachside lot for a quick peek on their way to Sebastian.
Spessard Holland:
After Ocean Avenue, Brevard becomes almost entirely residential, interrupted by the occasional restaurant, convenience store, gas station and one strip mall closer to town. If you’ve come this far, you’re most likely already speeding toward Sebastian or one of its close neighbors, but there are a couple of places worth checking along the way.
Watch your speed traveling from Mel Beach to the Spessard Holland Beach Parks. This area is heavily patrolled by police and has gained a reputation for dishing out speeding tickets. Spessard Holland’s North and South Beach parks are a block apart, separated by cabbage palms and a fenced radar station. A collection of oceanfront pavilions, boardwalks and bathhouses beyond easy striking range of Melbourne Beach’s residential properties, these parks are perfect locations for gatherings of all sorts. In fact, amateur surfing organizations often hold events here. When a swell has other high tide spots washing through, Spessard can be clean and throwing. A deep trough past the inside sandbar allows for steep waves to cascade over the drastic depth change, creating a mid-section with the feel and push of a shorebreak, but be careful of sharks sharing these same troughs.