“I talked my mom into
buying my first board… a nine-foot, six-inch Velzy and Jacobs balsa board with
thirty-two ants in the glass job. Velzy
told me the ants wouldn’t hurt anything and I believed him. I remember my mom’s words: ‘This board is
probably just like everything else you want.
You’ll use it for a week and throw it away.’
“I showed her! We still laugh about it. Mom painted a totem pole on that first board
and later I sold it to the real Gidget for fifteen bucks...”
-- Mike Doyle [1]
“Nobody taught me. Does anybody teach anybody? It’s kind of like learning how to ride a
bike. Somebody gives you a push, then
watches you crash into a pole.”
-- Pat Curren [2]
“There’s no way to
express the look on the owner’s face when he came the next month to collect the
rent. Needless to say, Meade Hall was short lived.”
-- Fred Van Dyke [3]
“I named Velzyland when I first began making
movies in ‘58… I also named Pipeline, and Severson came along and
renamed it Banzai Beach . As a compromise, it became Banzai Pipeline. Now it’s Pipeline again.”
-- Bruce Brown [4]
“In the fifties, the North
Shore was a dream. It was all so new. And so cheap to live there. You’d find every way you could to stretch a
hundred bucks. The deal was, who could
get the cheapest house and get the most people in it? You could rent a house then for sixty to
seventy dollars a month. With twelve
guys sharing the rent, that hundred bucks went a long way.”
-- Bruce Brown [5]
“It used to be that all
the guys who rode big waves were good watermen -- good swimmers, sailors or
paddlers who knew the ocean, the currents tides. You could get into a lot of trouble, get
sucked to the wrong side of Waimea Bay , if you didn’t know what you
were doing…”
-- Bruce Brown [6]
“There was fierce
competition -- on a friendly basis, of course -- among the big-wave riders:
Peter Cole, Pat Curren, Mike Stange, Jose Angel, Ricky Grigg, Buzzy Trent, George Downing and myself. This was the nucleus of guys during my time
who really enjoyed riding big waves.
Each guy had his own personality and his own deal.”
-- Greg Noll [7]
“‘Yeah. Got any wax?’“
-- Mike Stange [8]
“I’d love to say
something heroic. I’d love to say we
made history. But basically it was a
bunch of guys parked around the Bay there, and somebody grabbed a board and
went surfing, and it looked so good the rest of us guys said, ‘Hey, we got to
get in on this.’“
-- Greg Noll [9]
The years 1956-58 were pivotal in the further
development of the modern surfboard – the board that Bob Simmons had primarily ushered in,
along with the help of Joe Quigg. These
were the years of experimentation with polyurethane foam as the primary floatation
factor. The use of “foam“ and fiberglass would replace balsa and fiberglass; just like
balsa had replaced redwood/balsa planks; just like redwood and balsa
strip combination boards had replaced redwood which had replaced koa.[10]
The year 1957 was the last official
year of the balsa era. Even so,
it is good to keep in mind that much of the technological advance with foam and
fiberglass occurred somewhat clandestinely while balsa still reigned. Sure, we can say that 1956-58 was the
development of the polyurethane foam board.
At the same time, we have to keep in mind that the rest of the tribe
didn’t catch up to these changes until a year or two after it was a fait
accompli – a done deal. That puts it
more at the beginning of the 1960s than the end of the 1950s.
Although foam did not immediately
replace balsa, by late 1958 and 1959, it became evident to most of
those on the inside that this was the way surfboard manufacturing was to go. Leaders in this new technology included Doug
Sweet, Hobie Alter and Grubby Clark .
No one knew, during 1957, that the
year would mark the end of an era and that surfing would change radically
because of foam. The primary technology
on most minds that year might have been rocket and satellite science, as it was
then that what was the U.S.S.R. -- the Soviet Union -- successfully launched
Sputniks I and II, the first artificial earth
satellites. The fact that the Communist Russians had done
it first was threatening to the western democracies.
By the time the year was over for
surfers, the big news was Waimea. Since Dickie Cross‘s death there in 1943, there had been a voodoo
associated with the place. Not to say
that people no longer surfed the spot; just that those who did were few and far
between. It took transplanted
Californians like Greg Noll and Buzzy Trent to add Waimea to the list of
big wave surf spots. It was in November
of that year that the old spell was broken and a new one begun.
Meanwhile, in the Land Down Under...
Oz Malibu’s
A year after Tommy Zahn, Bob Moore, Mike Bright and Greg Noll left their “Malibus“ behind in Australia,[11]
Ampol Oil films of the Americans’ surfing demonstrations
were still being shown throughout the urban areas of Australia. The viewings at surf lifesaving clubs Down Under caused a
revolution in Australian surfboard design and marked the beginning of
contemporary Australian surfing. In
addition, Greg Noll’s movies of the trip helped spark interest in Oz. As testimony of the impact that the Americans
made in Australia , in 1956, and the ensuing change in
Aussie board design, even today, longboards in Australia
are still often referred to as “Malibus .”[12]
Several of the Australian surfboard
manufacturers wrote to companies in Equador in attempts to import the
necessary balsa wood. “They
were instructed to contact Arthur Milner,” wrote Nat Young, “who came to Sydney to discuss exactly what size
timber was required for the expected boom.
Business arrangements took a long time in those days and it wasn’t until
the summer of ‘58 that their first shipment arrived.” The local shapers then began to learn the
unique properties of balsa wood. “The
lightest planks were the whitest,” continued Young, “with flecks of dark gray
grain running through them; the hardest, but heaviest, were the greener, darker
ones. Selection of the planks was an
intricate part of the process; you used the lighter ones down the center, the
heavier, more durable ones towards the rails.
A scarf joint to give lift was the same as
Simmons had devised 10 years earlier. As
most of South America’s good quality balsa was going to the USA , Australia was sent some pretty scratchy
shipments. By 1958 the established manufacturers
had moved out of Sydney ’s
densely-populated eastern suburbs to the northside and the recently opened
industrial suburb of Brookvale. At one end of Brookvale was Barry Bennett; at the other end, Gordon
Woods; and in the middle, Bill
Wallace. Bill Clymer was in a garage in Manly where he and Joe Larkin did some beautiful work,
using stringers, nose blocks and tail blocks made from cedar and redwood to set off the blond balsa.
“Gordon Woods remembers the days of the bad
balsa shipments only too well; he made it a rule to always inspect the load on
the truck. On one occasion he found it
all to be greenish, heavier style. He
turned the shipment straight around, realising that one heavy board could ruin
his reputation.”[13]
The Mainland
What would become a surf music
standard in the beginning of the 1960’s, 1957 produced a song by the Champs
called “Tequila.”[14] It is still often heard, today, on “the
Oldies” radio stations.
Dale Velzy introduced the “7-11“ series. Named for their length, these boards caused a
minor sensation for a couple of years and then disappeared.[15]
Wetsuits were still under development,
although dry suits had been available in kit form since after World War II. Bev Morgan is generally credited with
first introducing surfing wetsuits via Buzzy Trent in 1953.[16]
To deal with the cold factor involved
in surfing California
waters, fires were generally made on the beach to warm bodies
between go-outs. “Typical burnables at Malibu ,” wrote C.R. Stecyk, “included boards from the
big fence; flotsam and jetsam like boxes, automobile tires and tree branches.”
On a foggy March 8, 1957, a burning “mistake” was made
when “Dale Velzy is horrified to find Mickey Dora burning his new wooden camera
tripod, carrying case and several reels of just-shot movie films. Dora ran from Velzy, claiming innocence. ‘Jesus, Hawk, I thought the stuff was just
driftwood.’“[17]
Another Malibu incident occurred several months
later, on September 30th:
Velzy-Jacobs
“Ever since the days of Simmons and
his aggro bicycle race challenges, the sporting life has
flourished at Malibu . Today’s combatants are the ever humble Miki Chapin Dora, driving his clean Iron Mountain-bodied wood 1949 Ford station
wagon, and Hap Jacobs, who will pilot his brand new
premiere issue 1957 Ford Ranchero. The course will be the Malibu drag strip (which to outsiders might
be better known as Highway 101). Side by side, the drivers sit waiting for the
start signal. Many observers wonder if
Miki has any chance against Hap’s newer, sleeker car. Local lore relates that the stakes are two
cases of Dundee Scotch against a new Velzy-Jacobs surfboard. As they come off the line Hap lunges ahead,
but as he slams into second, the old woodie screeches into the lead leaving
Jacobs in the dust. No contest. Later, Dora’s car provides a couple of clues
as to just how this upset victory was accomplished. Velzy notices that as Miki revs up the
engine, there is such immense power transfer and torque that the entire car
twists and flexes. This bending of the
old woodie is so severe that the half inch bolts which hold
down the specially treated phenolic resined wood panels are actually coming
loose during acceleration. A pop of the
hood confirms all suspicions, for grafted into the engine compartment is a new
Briggs Cunningham prepped V8 392 Chrysler
Hemihead, featuring over 400 horses of
brutal acceleration.”[18]
On December 11, 1957, “A television mogul wearing a stiff,
pin-striped suit barges into the shaping emporium of Velzy and Jacobs,” wrote
C.R. Stecyk of another incident that year.
“The stranger’s aggressive behavior and peculiar speech mannerisms
instantly launches Hap into hysterical laughter. Dale, always ready for a good joke, pumps the
interloper for info. An executive from a
popular TV
show says, ‘Babe, the man Steve-O Reeno needs a hep cat surfboard custom built
immediately, it will make you both famous.
The guys and dolls will break down your door begging for boards just
like it.’
Jacobs is now incredulous. ‘You mean Steve Allen surfs?’ he asks. Velzy is no longer amused. (Being more famous than he cared for already,
and being 80 board orders behind... well.)
The TV man realizing that he’s being shut out, quickly changes
tactics. He begins sobbing, ‘Come on
guys it’s my job, you’ve got to help me, I’ll pay anything.’
Hearing these words, Dale, ever the
humanitarian, especially if you’ve got the cash, says, ‘OK, maybe we can work
this out.’ Hap and Velzy now spend days
trying to figure out how to construct a surfboard that can be ridden in a TV
studio by a kook that cannot even stand up. Their ingenious answer -- a full sized balsa,
South Bay shape, complete with hidden roller skate wheels
allows Steve Allen to ‘surf’ across a sound stage pulled by a rope. The bit will be exhibitioned 35 years later
by the Museum of Broadcasting as art. Velzy and Jacobs don’t recall ever being paid
for this job. Later, some wag was heard
to ponder whether this was truly the first televised occurrence of
skateboarding?”[19]
Mike Doyle’s First Surfboard
Mike Doyle‘s first board was bought
around 1956.
“I talked my mom into buying my first
board then,” recalled Doyle, “a nine-foot, six-inch Velzy and Jacobs balsa
board with thirty-two ants in the glass job.
Velzy told me the ants wouldn’t hurt anything and I believed him. I remember my mom’s words: ‘This board is
probably just like everything else you want.
You’ll use it for a week and throw it away.’
“I showed her! We still laugh about it. Mom painted a totem pole on that first board
and later I sold it to the real Gidget for fifteen bucks. At the time, my father was in the Navy at Point Mugu. He drove past Malibu every day -- a great deal for
me! I became ‘Malibu Mike’ and was at
Malibu during the sixties, during the renaissance era of surfing, when Mickey
Dora, Gidget, the Beach Boys and all the excitement of
surfing was coming on strong. In those
days, when the Big South started pumping, every hot surfer on the coast would
come to Malibu, the true proving grounds.”[20]
Coast Haoles Takeover the North Shore
By 1957, surfers surfing the North Shore were predominantly visiting
Californians and California
transplants. “In the winter of 1957,”
wrote Nat Young, “the Californian surfers in Hawaii included Greg Noll, Mike Stange, Mickey Muñoz and Del Cannon. Some Californians had already made the move
permanently: Ray Beatty, Bob Sheppard, Jose Angel, Fred Van Dyke, Pat Curren, Peter Cole, John Severson, Bruce Brown, Jim Fisher, Buzzy Trent and a few others...” Yet more waves followed as “Still more
Californian surfers began leaving the mainland, with a dream of riding giant
island waves: Kemp Aaberg, Mike Diffenderfer, Al Nelson, Little John Richards...”[21]
John Severson’s Patriotic Waves
“Both John Severson and Fred Van Dyke had come to the Islands
through their enlistment in national service,” wrote Young. “‘Silvertongue’ Severson had been clever
enough to persuade the army to let him start a surf team of which he and Van
Dyke were the first enlistments. On
strict orders to go out and surf for their country, they proceeded to ride waves
all over Oahu.”[22]
“An unknown but aggressive surfer,
John Severson, appeared in 1957,” wrote Fred Van Dyke. “I think he was one of the first to hot-dog big waves...
“He was in the army, an artist, and salivating
profusely at the thought of riding Hawaii.
As a hobby, he took 16mm surf films and painted
watercolors of island seas, especially abstract surf impressions. John used to sit at Waikiki on weekends, and sell a
watercolor of a surf scene for two dollars.
It paid for film to shoot surf and for gasoline from Waianae to the North Shore.”[23]
“Severson remembers his first brush
with big waves only too well,” Nat Young continued. “He paddled out at Makaha on perhaps the first big
swell of the year. Perfect ten to twelve
feet, glassy bowl surf with no-one out.
After pushing back all the adrenaline induced by steady doses of Fred
Van Dyke‘s scrapbook and Fred’s
stories of Waimea Bay closing out, being sucked
into a lava tube, and being dragged out to sea by rip tides, John
finally found the line-up. A big blue
glassy peak showed about half a mile out and he paddled around to a take-off
position, trying to keep his appointment with his first big-wave
experience. Without knowing about the
infamous Makaha bowl, John stood up just as the wave was leaping
up to form the bowl. The board and John
parted company, John falling through space until he hit the wave again and was
pitched over the falls. Eventually he
came up very alone and a long way from shore.”[24]
Pat Curren’s Meade Hall
“Pat Curren was a classic character as
well as an amazing surfer,” credited Nat Young.
“He camped on a vacant lot near Pipeline so he could go surfing
whenever he wanted to.”[25] But Curren was a surfer long before the North Shore . He had begun in Mission
Beach and later La Jolla:
“I grew up bodysurfing and belly boarding in Mission Beach ,”
Pat Curren told Steve Yarbrough in 1993. “In World War II guys started with
balsa-redwood boards. In the early ‘50s I moved to La
Jolla and got really serious about it. At Wind ‘n Sea Buzzy Bent, Towny Cromwell, Buddy Hall and the Eckstrom brothers were riding 10-11 foot planks. Buzzy was one of the first to ride the Quigg
chip, a fiberglass and balsa surfboard nine feet long, 22
to 23 inches wide, turned-down rails, trying to get rocker with a pretty flat bottom.”[26]
“To be a La Jolla surfer in the ‘50s,” wrote
Bruce Jenkins, “meant you never held
back: in your drinking, your partying or especially your surfing,
where the test of skill was a double-overhead day at Windansea. Nobody savored that life, or typified it
more, than Patrick King Curren.
“Everyone... in California knew there
was something different about the La Jolla guys: Curren, Mike Diffenderfer, Wayne Land, Al Nelson, the Eckstrom brothers, Ricky Naish, Buzzy Bent, Tiny Brain Thomas, Billy Graham, Butch Van Artsdalen.”[27]
“The most rebellious group of people I
ever met,” said Fred Van Dyke. “I’m sure some of them came from rich
families, but they rejected that kind of life, ridiculed it. If a guy made some money, he’d go out and buy
everybody food and drink, and the next day he’d be scrounging for a cup of
coffee. They
were like wild animals.”[28]
“With the Mexican border beckoning,” continued
Jenkins, “groups of them would go on blind-drunk Tijuana rages for days, waking up on
some roadside without a clue where they were.
Pranks and daredevil stunts were the very essence of
their lives.
“They all surfed big Windansea -- out of sheer
determination, if not raw talent -- and when the first films and still photos arrived with
big wave images of Hawaii, nearly all of them made the pilgrimage. Curren didn’t even start surfing until 1950, the year he turned 18, but
by 1955 he was among the first serious wave of
California surfers to take on Makaha and Sunset.”[29]
“Nobody taught me,” Curren said. “Does anybody teach anybody? It’s kind of like learning how to ride a
bike. Somebody gives you a push, then
watches you crash into a pole.”[30]
“Curren was a little older than the
rest,” wrote Jenkins, “and with his lifestyle honed by the La Jolla days, he set the tone for
North Shore living.”[31]
“He molded it into a state-of-the-art
lifestyle,” recalled Greg Noll. “He had
this terrible old ‘36 Plymouth , probably the shittiest car of
all time, and the cops gave him a
bunch of crap about having the front windshield knocked out. Pat always had this way about him, getting
from Point A to B in the shortest distance, without getting real complicated. So he just jerked out one of the side windows
and wedged it onto the driver’s side, and he got away with that for a couple
months. That was his idea of a
windshield.”[32]
The North
Shore was mostly just farmland back
in those days, “and you basically had a bunch of local people growing food,
raising pigs and chickens,” recalled Noll.
“When Pat and I went on patrol, there wasn’t a chicken or a
duck that was safe. I can still see us
running down the beach at Pupukea with a big fat chicken in
each hand, calves burning in the soft sand with a couple of pit bulls on our
ass. We’d barbeque ‘em up later and have a hell
of a dinner. Pat was also a pretty
decent fisherman and a great diver. So
between the ocean, the chickens and the ducks, he got along pretty good.”[33]
“I started shaping boards in 1956-57,” Curren said. “I was walking down the beach at Waikiki and a guy at a rental board place asked me who had made
the board I was carrying. I said I
did. He asked me to make 20 rental
boards. So I rented a shop in Haleiwa and got into it.”[34]
“They lived out of cars and panel
trucks,” surf writer Bruce Jenkins continued his description of North Shore
surfer life in the mid-1950s, “slept on the beach when all
else failed, and occasionally got to rent an actual building. In a truly inspired moment, Curren created a
surfer’s palace that came to be known as Meade Hall.”[35]
“It was mostly Pat and the La Jolla guys -- maybe 10 guys
altogether,” said Fred Van Dyke. “It was
a three-bedroom, fully furnished place for $65 a month across from Ke Iki Road. Pat went in there like always, checked it
out, didn’t say anything. Then he lined
up everybody for a meeting and the plan unfolded. Two days later, they had completely gutted
the place. Just tore the insides out of
it. With the leftover lumber they built
surfboard racks along the side and a giant
eating table down the middle. Pat got
the Meade Hall idea from the old King Arthur books. That was the meeting place for all valiant
gladiators.”[36]
“Ala King Arthur,” Van Dyke wrote, “the
Knights of the Round Table and the meeting place known
as ‘Meade Hall,’ Curren proceeded to convert [the] place in like fashion. He took on a number of roommates, mostly
surfers from La Jolla , California , like Mike Diffenderfer, Al Nelson, Wayne Land and others. They razed all the inside separating walls,
except the bathroom. With the lumber,
they constructed surfboard racks from ceiling to floor, and
built a huge rabble with connected benches on both sides. It stretched the length of the one big room.
“When it was finished, Pat stood
back. ‘I think this will do; I’m going
surfing.’ With that, he strolled into
the backyard, picked up a machete, and hacked a couple of
branches from a Hale Koa tree. He tied these to the top of his battered car
and secured his board to the new rack.
Pat disappeared in a cloud of fumes, headed toward Sunset.”[37]
Ricky Grigg said Curren would sit at the head of the
table, often wearing a mock Viking helmet, “and he’d pound on the
table, going, ‘Ahh! Eat! We hungry!
Gotta surf big waves tomorrow!
Take wife and pull her by hair into room!’ Just totally joking around. I mean, the most Pat would ever say in a day
was about eight words, and I just said all eight of ‘em.”[38]
“There’s no way to express the look on
the owner’s face when he came the next month to collect the rent,” wrote Van
Dyke. “Needless to say, Meade Hall was short lived.”[39]
The Challenge of Waimea
“I named Velzyland when I first began making
movies in ‘58,” Bruce Brown -- surfer and surf photographer -- said. “Velzy sponsored me and made my
boards, so I named this spot on the North Shore after him. John Severson, who founded SURFER magazine, was also making movies at
the time and named the same place, only used a different name. But Velzyland is the name that stuck. I also named Pipeline, and Severson came along and
renamed it Banzai Beach . As a compromise, it became Banzai Pipeline. Now it’s Pipeline again.
“In the fifties, the North Shore was a dream. It was all so new. And so cheap to live there. You’d find every way you could to stretch a
hundred bucks. The deal was, who could
get the cheapest house and get the most people in it? You could rent a house then for sixty to
seventy dollars a month. With twelve
guys sharing the rent, that hundred bucks went a long way.
“As Greg developed as a big-wave
surfer, he’d work on all these schemes that were supposed to help a guy survive
a wipeout in big surf -- miniature aqualungs, tiny breathing devices. No one ever tried them out, but we all talked
about it a lot. You weren’t sure what
would happen in an extreme situation, other than that you would most likely
drown. Getting out into the lineup
during big surf was a big part of the battle.
No one would have thought of using a boat to get out, or a helicopter to get in.” [40]
“It used to be,” Bruce Brown
continued, “that all the guys who rode big waves were good watermen -- good swimmers, sailors or
paddlers who knew the ocean, the currents tides. You could get into a lot of trouble, get
sucked to the wrong side of Waimea Bay , if you didn’t know what you
were doing. If you get caught in a rip
at Sunset Beach you can almost do laps trying
to get in. The rip runs along the beach,
sucking you with it. If you know what
you’re doing, you can aim your board out to the break and the rip will propel
you out there towards it.
“At Waimea, the surf would come up fast
and make real serious sounds. I remember
one night when it made the windows in our house rattle. That same night, the surf covered up the
telephone poles with thirty feet of sand.
This tells you Waimea is closing out.
“A lot of people have surfed big waves
once or twice, then ended up preferring smaller waves. Greg became such a dominant big-wave rider
that I can’t even remember how he surfed little waves... even if no one had
been buying boards or shooting pictures, Greg still would have been out
there. The same holds true today among
big-wave riders. Their enthusiasm never
dies. They’re eternally stoked.
“Surfing won’t ever die, because
people get too stoked on it. I worry
about the guy today who starts surfing later in life. Like a kid, this older guy wants to surf
every single day. Pretty soon, he’s got
no wife, no kids, no job. He’s living
out of his car. Every surfer seems to go
through those first couple of crazy, devoted years, like we did as kids,
surfing every day because you never get enough of it...
“I don’t think Greg Noll is aware of the legend he
created. A few years ago he called me
after he had taken a trip back to the North Shore. He said, “Guess what? People remember me!” I said, “Noooo shit!”[41]
“There was fierce competition,” wrote
Noll, “on a friendly basis, of course, among the big-wave riders: Peter Cole, Pat Curren, Mike Stange, Jose Angel, Ricky Grigg, Buzzy Trent, George Downing and myself. This was the nucleus of guys during my time
who really enjoyed riding big waves.
Each guy had his own personality and his own deal.”[42]
In Greg
Noll‘s DA BULL, Life Over the Edge, Noll
recalled the first time Waimea Bay was “successfully” ridden by surfers following
the Hot Curlers of the 1930s and ‘40s. It was November 5, 1957.[44] It was
the beginning of Pat Curren’s enduring reputation as “King of The Bay.”
“Downing
and Trent had helped establish Makaha as the No. 1 big-wave or any-size-wave spot in
the Islands ,” Noll wrote. “Up to this time,
the winter of 1957, no one
had ever ridden Waimea.”[45] This was
not entirely correct. Waimea had been surfed by the Hot Curl surfers in the late 1930s and beginning 40’s, but
after Dickie Cross’ drowning there in
1943, the spot
was considered voodoo and rarely -- if ever -- surfed.
“For three
years I had driven by the place,” continued Noll, talking about Waimea, “on my
way to surf Sunset Beach. I would
stop the car to look at Waimea Bay. If there
were waves, I’d hop up and down, trying to convince the other guys, and myself,
that Waimea was the thing to do. All the time, I was trying to build up my own
confidence.
“At that
time the North Shore was largely unexplored territory. We were kids
who had heard nothing but taboo-related stories about Waimea. There was a house
that all the locals believed was haunted. There were sacred Hawaiian ruins up in Waimea Canyon. And of
course, the mystique of Dickie Cross dying there. We’d drive by and see these big,
beautiful grinders... but the taboos were still too strong.”[46]
“The
forbiddenness of the place is what made Waimea Bay so compelling. I wanted to
try it but didn’t have the balls to go out by myself. So I kept promoting the
idea of breaking the Bay. Buzzy Trent, my main
opponent, started calling me the Pied Piper of Waimea. He said,
‘Follow Greg Noll and he’ll lead you off the edge of the world.
You’ll all drown like rats if you listen to the Pied Piper of Waimea Bay.’
“One day
in November, we stopped at Waimea just to take a look…”[47] What the
crew saw intrigued them, but Noll and company continued on to check Sunset, only later to return when
they heard it was being ridden.
It was “Harry Schurch, a
mild-mannered history teacher [and lifeguard] originally from Seal Beach,”
Steve Pezman reminded me, who “actually rode the first wave that day. The story
goes, he was maybe 10-15 minutes behind the Noll/Stang group that had stopped,
checked the Bay, and then drove on to check Sunset. He, too, stopped to look at
the Bay, but he had to get to work, and instead of leaving, he decided it
looked doable and paddled out, rode a couple, came in and left. Didn’t think
that much of it. “The guys at Sunset heard someone was out at the Bay, from
someone who had driven by, and hurried back, arriving just as Harry left. The
rest has become history.”[48]
“I was following Noll, Stange,
Curren, Al Nelson, Mike Diffenderfer... and Mickey Muñoz...” wrote Fred Van
Dyke, about the group that returned, after Schurch had left. “We always checked
it because it looked so glassy and clean, but then [usually] drove on to
Makaha. That day we stopped and got out of our cars. ‘Neat break, but a board
racker,’ said Nelson.
“Muñoz mumbled, ‘It didn’t look too
big anyway.’
“‘Too
peaky, no wall,’ said Curren. Noll was jumping up and down. His wife, Bev, was
trying to calm him.
“‘I’m
going to paddle out and just look at it,” said Greg. Noll was always the
stoker, the initiator, and Stange usually followed suit.
“Mike went
with me,” continued Noll. “We were the first [of our group] in the water. I was
the first to catch a wave. I had paddled for one outside and missed it, so I
took off on a small inside wave. By then the other guys had come in too. Pat
Curren and I rode the next big wave together. And
that was it. It was simple. The ocean didn’t swallow us up, and the world
didn’t stop turning. That was how Waimea got busted. By me, Mike Stange, Mickey
Munoz, Pat Curren, Bing
Copeland, Del Cannon and Bob Bermell.”[50]
... and Harry Schurch.
According
to Van Dyke, “They all hit the water and Munoz was first to paddle by the deep
spot where the point swings in on top of you and it looks like a mountain ready
to break, and then it heads back to the point because of the deep spot. Munoz practically fainted when he saw the size of
that first wave up close. What had appeared as a small peak from half a mile
away now loomed as a gigantic 20 plus wall. Munoz went off first on a 20 footer
and dug a rail half way down.
“Greg
screamed. ‘Jeez, it looks like a mountain.’ Curren ended upside down on a late takeoff. Stange
and Noll got the wave of the day, Stange taking a cannonball spin out from inside of
Greg, coming up 100 yards inside of where he wiped out.”[51]
To
Curren’s recollection, no one really made a wave successfully that session. “We
thought it was maybe 12 feet. We got a big surprise when we got out there. I
don’t think anybody made a wave.”[52]
“Within
minutes,” wrote Greg Noll, “word
spread into Haleiwa that Waimea Bay was being ridden. We looked across the point
and saw cars and people lining up along the road watching the crazy haoles
riding Waimea Bay. There
must have been a hundred people -- a big crowd for that time.”[53]
“I’d love
to say something heroic,” Noll admitted in Surfers,
The Movie, “I’d
love to say we made history. But basically it was a bunch of guys parked around
the Bay there, and somebody grabbed a board and went surfing, and it looked so
good the rest of us guys said, ‘Hey, we got to get in on this.’“[54]
The guy who first grabbed his board
this November 5, 1957 was Harry
Schurch. Next, it was Greg Noll and the “rest of the guys.”
“The irony
of it all was,” Greg Noll remembered, “it wasn’t a very big day by
Waimea standards. Just nice-shaped waves. I spun out
on one wave and wrenched my shoulder. It’s still screwed up from that first day
at Waimea. We were using ridiculous equipment, boards
that we had brought over from the Mainland.
Definitely not made for big waves. We had a long ways to go in big-wave riding
and big-wave-board design.”[55]
“When we
first surfed Waimea,” Noll continued, “we weren’t conscious of making history,
other than on the level of that particular time. For me the excitement came
from competing with the other guys and from riding as big a wave as I was
capable of riding... The irony was, at the end of the first day, when we were
all sitting together rehashing our rides, everybody wondered, ‘Why the hell
have we been sitting on the beach for the past three years?’ It wasn’t a huge
break that day. Waimea was just trying to be itself. Later we were introduced
to the real Waimea.
“To be
Waimea, the
waves have to break fifteen to eighteen feet before they start triggering on
the reefs. To be good, solid Waimea, it has to be the type of break that rolls
around the point, with a good, strong, twenty-foot-or-bigger swell. A lot of
big-wave riders disagree on a lot of things, but I don’t think any of them
would disagree about this: to be good Waimea, it has to have more than size. It
has to have a certain look and feel. A little bit of wind coming out of the
valley, pushing the waves back, holding them up a bit.”[56]
Fred Van
Dyke remembers the waves that day being much bigger
and went on to write about surfing Waimea Bay back in the late 1950s, in
general:
“Even
though I love ‘The Bay,’ I
admit, deep down, the best part of surfing Waimea on a huge day -- one over
twenty feet, which is not very often -- is when you are walking up the beach,
thinking back over the waves, the wipeouts, the rip that takes you toward the
huge boulders and threatens to smash you upon those boulders if you don’t make
shore before the other side of the rock the kids dive from in summer. Yes, for
me, walking up that beach, safe for another day -- alive -- is the payoff.
“Many
years ago, when Sunset Beach closed out, we packed up our boards and headed
for Makaha. I remember
that we would drive by Waimea Bay, stop,
and look at the wave breaking off the point. The consensus, since nobody had
surfed ‘The Bay,’ was that it wasn’t big enough, and who would want to surf
such a narrow peak? Besides, it looked as though it broke exactly on the rocks,
a definite board racker.
“Greg Noll was the first to paddle out [from the group
that had returned after Schurch left]. Whenever a place was tried for the first
time, Greg usually stoked us to go out. On this particular October day in 1957, ‘The
Bay’ was challenged for the first time by a group of Californians. Al Nelson, Pat
Curren, Mike
Diffenderfer, Mike
Stange, Mickey
Munoz and later, after school, by me.
“‘The Bay‘ won, but
a new surf spot was opened for exploration. The takeoff was nearly impossible,
jacking up ten feet after you dropped in, and the wipeout in deep water so
thick that you were held down long periods and pushed along for a hundred yards
in thick soup.
“One thing
we found out on that first day -- it being over twenty feet -- was that when
you lost your board most of the time it popped out in the rip and drifted right
back to you. We also found that our boards were totally inadequate. A new
design had to be created to handle ‘The Bay.’”[57]
“After
that first day in ‘57,” Greg
Noll concluded, “Waimea Bay joined Sunset Beach, Noll’s
Reef and Laniakea as accepted North Shore surf spots. Pipeline, at that
time, was still a ways down the road. All the great spots that are still the
great spots today were established within our first four years in the Islands.
After that, surfers surfed and named every ripple along the North Shore.”[58]
And that
was how the thirteen year old tabu associated with surfing at Waimea was broken
in mild (by Waimea standards) 12-to-15 foot surf. But, as Noll declared many
years later, “There were some hairy days to come.”[59]
Greg Noll is most often given credit
for being the first one to ride Waimea after Dickie Cross died there and Woody
Brown nearly ate it there. This is in good part because Bud Browne was there to
film Noll’s crew riding Waimea and crowds of people watched from the road.
Similar to how Phil Edwards is credited for being the first to ride the Banzai
Pipeline because it was shot on film. Steve Pezman is quick to point out that
the generally recognized history of that first day is “not the real story. What
Greg and Harry’s versions do agree on was that it wasn’t a big deal. Maybe a 15’
day, just beginning to crumble on the outside. The real heroics there would
come later —- with a lot of the same players, except for Harry, who after
riding it first in the modern era, got out of the service, went home and never
came back. Until...
“On one of the years I was
introducing the invitees to the Eddie at Waimea, I invited Harry to join me on
the trip (at Quiksilver’s expense) and introduced him at the opening banquet to
all the current day heroes. After he told his story they stood and gave this
older scholarly looking gentleman a standing O, then the evening wound down,
the crowd went home, and that was that.
“Except that for Harry, who had been
overlooked all those years, it was closure. He didn’t care about the act
itself, called it overrated, no big deal, but, being a history teacher, it
bothered him to hear the inaccurate versions go into the books.
“It was Munoz who answered, ‘Actually,
it was a guy named Harry Schurch!’, when I long ago asked him who took off
first. Knowing Mickey, that figures.” [60]
“For many
years Waimea was surfed only on those few days of the year when everywhere else
on the North Shore was closed out,” Fred Van
Dyke wrote, bringing the story of
The Bay up to present day. “Now, the
cord [leash] makes it possible to surf it from hot dog size all the way up the
scale. This creates a false impression,
by some, that they have ridden ‘The Bay.’
“... [big
wave rider] Ken Bradshaw put it succinctly. A young kid came into Karen Gallagher‘s surf shop across from
Kammie’s market and bragged to Bradshaw and
others that he’d just ridden Waimea.
“Bradshaw
looked at him and said, ‘Waimea hasn’t broken in four years.’“[61]
[1] Noll,
Greg and Gabbard, Andrea. DA Bull:
Life Over the Edge, ©1989 by Greg Noll and Andrea Gabbard, pp. 19-20. Mike Doyle quoted.
[2] Jenkins,
1995, p. 76. Pat Curren quoted.
[3] Van Dyke,
1989, p. 33. Van Dyke places Meade Hall
in 1957.
[4] Noll,
1989, pp. 77-78. Bruce Brown quoted.
[5] Noll,
1989, pp. 77-78. Bruce Brown quoted.
[6] Noll,
1989, pp. 77-78. Bruce Brown quoted.
[7] Noll,
1989, p. 75.
[8] Van Dyke,
1989, pp. 31-32.
[9] Surfers,
The Movie, circa 1990. Greg Noll
quoted.
[10]
See Gault-Williams, Legendary Surfers website at
http://www.legendarysurfers.com
[11] Bob
Burnside was with them, but didn’t bring along a board, like the others
had. See “Malibu Boards Seed Down
Under,” in previous chapter.
[12] The
Surfer’s Journal, Volume 1, Number 3, p. 43. C.R. Stecyk.
[13] Young,
Nat. The History of Surfing,
©1983, 1987, Palm Beach Press, 40 Ocean Road, Palm Beach, NSW 2108, Australia,
pp. 89-90.
[14] Other
notable songs, although not linked with surf music, included, in order of
popularity: “It’s All In The Game,” by Tommy Edwards; “To Know Him, Is To Love
Him,” by the Teddy Bears; “It’s Only Make Believe,” Conway Twitty; “All I Have
To Do Is Dream,” Everly Brothers; Nel Blu Di Pinto Di Blu,” Domenico Modugno;
“The Purple People Eater,” Sheb Wooley; “Chantilly Lace,” Big Bopper; “Twilight
Time,” Platters; “Topsy, Part 2,” Cozy Cole; “Lonesome Town,” Ricky Nelson;
“Get A Job,” Silhouettes; “Tears On My Pillow,” Little Anthony & The
Imperials; “My True Love,” Jack Scott; “(At) The End (Of A Rainbow),” Earl
Grant; “Book of Love,” Monotones; “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine,” Jimmie Rodgers;
“Secretly,” Jimmie Rodgers; “Whispering Bells,” Dell-Vikings; “Over The
Mountain; Across The Sea,” Johnnie & Joe; “Young Blood,” Coasters;
“Shangri-La,” Four Coins.
[15] The
Surfer’s Journal, Volume 1, Number 3, p. 52. C.R. Stecyk.
[16] The
Surfer’s Journal, Volume 1, Number 3.
C.R. Stecyk.
[17] The
Surfer’s Journal, Volume 1, Number 3.
“Humaliwu,” by C.R. Stecyk.
[18] The
Surfer’s Journal, Volume 1, Number 3.
“Humaliwu,” by C.R. Stecyk, p. 49.
[19] The
Surfer’s Journal, Volume 1, Number 3, pp. 46-47. C.R. Stecyk.
[20] Noll,
Greg and Gabbard, Andrea. DA Bull:
Life Over the Edge, ©1989 by Greg Noll and Andrea Gabbard, pp. 19-20. Mike Doyle quoted.
[21] Young,
1983, p. 79.
[22] Young,
1983, p. 79.
[23] Van Dyke,
Fred. Thirty Years Riding the World’s
Biggest Waves, ©1989 by Joseph Grassadonia, Ocean Sports International
Publishing Group, Inc., 204 Poo-Poo Place, Kailua, Hawai`i 96734, p.31.
[24] Young,
1983, p. 79. See also
Gault-Williams, “Pat Curren, King of the Bay,” Volume 2 of Legendary Surfers.
[25] Young,
1983, p. 79.
[26] Surfing
magazine, August 1993, “Legend: Pat
Curren,” interviewed by Steve Yarbrough, p. 34.
Name spelling corrected.
[27] Jenkins,
Bruce. “Father, Son, Holy Spirit,” Surfer
magazine, Volume 36, Number 3, March 1995, p. 76.
[28] Jenkins,
1995, p. 76. Fred Van Dyke quoted.
[29] Jenkins,
1995, p. 76.
[30] Jenkins,
1995, p. 76. Pat Curren quoted.
[31] Jenkins,
1995, p. 76.
[32] Jenkins,
1995, p. 76. Greg Noll quoted.
[33] Jenkins,
1995, p. 76. Greg Noll quoted.
[34] Surfing
magazine, August 1993, “Legend: Pat
Curren,” interviewed by Steve Yarbrough, p. 34.
Name spelling corrected.
[35] Jenkins,
1995, p. 76.
[36] Jenkins,
1995, pp. 76-77. Fred Van Dyke
quoted. See also Van Dyke, 1989,
p. 33. Fred says the house was “near
Sunset, on Kam Highway.”
[37] Van Dyke,
1989, p. 33.
[38] Jenkins,
1995, p. 77. Ricky Grigg quoted.
[39] Van Dyke,
1989, p. 33. Van Dyke places Meade Hall
in 1957.
[40] Noll,
1989, pp. 77-78. Bruce Brown quoted.
[41] Noll,
1989, pp. 77-78. Bruce Brown quoted.
[42] Noll,
1989, p. 75.
[43]
This section taken from “PAT
CURREN: King of The Bay,” updated July 2011.
[44] Date as
marked in Surfers, The Movie.
[45] Noll,
1989, pp. 75-76.
[46] Noll,
1989, pp. 75-76.
[47] Noll,
1989, pp. 75-76.
[48]
Pezman, Steve. Email to
Malcolm, May 10, 2011.
[49] Van Dyke,
1989, pp. 31-32.
[50] Noll,
1989, pp. 75-76.
[51] Van Dyke,
1989, pp. 31-32. Fred has this opening up of Waimea in October of 1957.
[52] Jenkins,
1995, p. 80. Pat Curren quoted.
[53] Noll,
1989, pp. 75-76.
[54] Surfers, The Movie, circa 1990. Greg
Noll quoted.
[55] Noll,
1989, pp. 76-77.
[56] Noll,
1989, pp. 76-77.
[57] Van Dyke,
1989, pp. 84-85. Fred has it in October, but it was November 1957.
[58] Noll,
1989, p. 77.
[59] Surfers, The Movie, circa 1990. Greg
Noll quoted.
[60]
Pezman, Steve. Email to
Malcolm, May 10, 2011. This section taken from “PAT CURREN: King of The Bay,”
updated July 2011.
[61] Van Dyke,
1989, pp. 84-85.
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