Surfers in Rockaway Beach, New York took advantage of Hurricane Erin's large swells Thursday, despite warnings of dangerous rip currents. "This is like what you wait for all year. Like, this is it," said Rockaway Beach surfer Scott Klossner. "So yeah, super fun, challenging, really hard to stay in one place because there's a heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy rip," he added. Erin battered North Carolina’s Outer Banks with strong winds and waves that flooded part of the main highway, damaged a waterside motel and swirled under beachfront homes as the monster-sized storm slowly began to move away from the East Coast on Thursday. Forecasters predict the storm will gradually weaken over the next few days while turning farther out to sea. Beaches were closed to swimming Thursday in New York City, and some others in New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware were temporarily off-limits. These surfers said they understood the warnings but the thrill of the adventure was too big to pass up. "It's strong and I wouldn't advise anyone to swim, but if you know what you're doing, then it's just more annoying than anything kind of threatening or scary," surfer Zach Krieger said about the storm's rip currents. "I love to surf and we don't get waves like this so often so it's like you know this is this is the time of year that um that surfers want to be out here you know chasing the the relatively big waves for New York," Krieger said. Bob Oravec, a National Weather Service forecaster, said that even if someone thinks they know how to handle a rip current, it’s not safe.