(George Downing at Makaha, 1954, courtesy of SURFER magazine)
No matter the accomplishments of John Kelly, Fran Heath, Wally Froiseth and even Woody Brown, the Hot Curl surfer who most influenced later surfers is George Downing.
Downing was multifaceted: an innovative board shaper, Waikiki beachboy, mentor, contest director, environmentalist and all-around waterman. His most notable competitive accomplishments include winning the Makaha International in 1954, 1961, and 1965 and becoming the longtime competition director of the Quiksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau event atWaimea Bay .[1] He coached the Hawaiian surf team to victory in the 1968 World Surfing Championships and set numerous
paddling records from 100 yards to one mile.[2] Yet, his impact on our
sport is much more than the records show.
Downing was multifaceted: an innovative board shaper, Waikiki beachboy, mentor, contest director, environmentalist and all-around waterman. His most notable competitive accomplishments include winning the Makaha International in 1954, 1961, and 1965 and becoming the longtime competition director of the Quiksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau event at
Born
in 1930, the son of a marine machinist, George Downing began surfing Waikiki at age nine and spent his teenage years living
with hot curl surfer Wally Froiseth.[3]
“Well,
I was married to his aunt,” at the time, Wally told me. “I was living down Waikiki . So, one summer, his aunt asked me, ‘Hey, ah,
what about if my nephew comes down and stays with us for the summer?’
“The
war was on. I got caught at Johnson Island
when the war started, then I came back and we got married; ‘42-’43, around
there. And Georgie was about – I don’t know – 11-12 years old, whatever it was.
“So,
he stayed that summer, but he never left! What happened is, I eventually got
divorced from – you know – his aunt. But, he stayed with me all the time. I put
him through school, you know, cuz his father and mother kinda had problems. So,
he stayed with me and I tried to keep him so he’d graduate. I was willing to
put him through college, but he never did want to go. In fact, it was a hell of a time just keeping him in high
school.
“So,
he just stayed with me and he really wanted to surf. I told him, at that time,
‘If you really want to surf, that’s good. But, you got to be sincere. You gotta
do it with your heart and soul, eh? Otherwise, I don’t want to bother. I don’t
want to just teach you one year and next year you go and do something else.’ I
told him I didn’t have time for that, eh? I wanted to surf too much, myself!
Anyway, he stuck with it and eventually he got better than me!”[4]
Wally
taught George how to make surfboards and introduced him to Makaha. Along with
Russ Takaki, they became the first known surfers to ride Laniakea, on the North
Shore of O‘ahu in 1946, and Honolua Bay , on Maui , in
1947.[5]
To
earn money, George worked as a deck hand, taking tourists for rides on Woody
Brown’s Manu-Kai, co-designed and built with Alfred Kumalae.[6]
When
Wally took Downing under his wing, big-wave riding was still in its infancy;
“their day trips to Makaha and the North
Shore ,” wrote surf writer
Jason Borte, “were forays into uncharted territory. Downing not only rode
monster surf, he became its consummate student, intent on understanding and
refining tactics and equipment. His scientific design research helped him
create one of the earliest quivers with subtle variations in length, rocker and
volume. He also created the first system of changeable fins.”[7]
“George
Downing was not only in on many of the earliest forays into big wave riding in
the 20th century,” wrote surf writer Christian Beamish, “but also contributed
design discoveries that broke the barrier to 20-foot surf and beyond.”[8]
“One
of his earliest shaping projects,” continued Beamish, “was to take a redwood
plank given to him by ‘Uncle Brownie’ at Waikiki
in 1943 and make a more maneuverable ‘hot curl’ design, with help from his
friend Froiseth... By changing the vee through the tail section to a semi-round
shape, Downing was able to run a flatter bottom forward, and found what he
referred to as ‘the board of my dreams.’ Dubbing the board ‘Pepe,’ Downing rode
it all over the South and North Shores of Oahu ,
noting its amazing speed. The lessons he learned in altering the tail section
of Pepe would lead to experiments with skegs (including the creation of a fin
box) that would transform notions of what was possible on a surfboard.”[9]
“In
a time before surf trips even existed,” continued Beamish, George “sailed to California and spent two
months in 1947 surfing up and down the coast on his beloved Pepe. An
unfortunate collision with the Malibu pier damaged the nose section of the
board, but led Downing to learn about new materials called fiberglass and resin
from a like-minded designer—the enigmatic Bob Simmons. Upon his return to Hawaii , Downing
continued a systematic approach to gaining the knowledge that would allow him
and his friends to ride ever-larger surf. He began observing reef structure and
early weather charting technology to better understand the effect of swell size
and direction. He and buddy Walter Hoffman took turns wearing a face mask while
the other would ride past overhead so they could note how the water flowed off
the bottom of the boards they rode. His surfing life has been direct and
experiential.”[10]
It
was somewhere between 1947 and 1949, when George, Wally and Russ Takaki crewed
a Transpac sailboat to California where they bought a Model A Ford for $25 and
toured Southern California from the Tijuana Sloughs, to WindandSea and Malibu.[11]
George
built his first glassed, all-balsa pintail in 1951. Dubbing it “The Rocket,” it
featured a fin box with moveable fin. The fin box was of redwood, where the
wooden fin could be wedged in and moved foreward or aft. Using a trial and
error approach, he determined the correct setting and glassed it into permanent
position. He later explained that the use of fiberglass made an even bigger
contribution when used for attaching fins because it spread the load of the fin
torque across the greater bottom area, allowing for deeper fins and greater
maneuverability.[12]
On
this 10-footer, Downing was able to ride bigger waves than anybody before him
and “by the mid-50’s he and Froiseth, along with Woody Brown and Californian-born
surfers Walter Hoffman and Buzzy Trent, had cracked the 20-foot barrier at
Makaha.” Going even bigger, “Downing, Trent and Froiseth were the standout
riders on a glassy Makaha afternoon on January 13, 1958, when the waves were
roaring in at 30 foot.”[13]
“Hot
curls were difficult to get started (paddling),” Downing remembered of the
redwood boards that preceded the balsa, “but once you got going, you’d really
move along. Down the line you’d go fast. Your limitations were that once you
got locked into it, you could just ease down and back up again and still
maintain a lot of forward momentum. In ‘51 when I built my first glassed balsa
with a much flatter bottom and with a skeg... the only thing it allowed me to
do different was I could go for the top and trim down a lot easier, and the
transition to getting back on the rail again was real quick, you had enough
forward speed and you could climb back up into the hook. Whereas on the redwood
hot curl board, once you’d drop, you’d have a hard time coming back up. The
board just wanted to stay there.”[14]
While
at Makaha, Downing developed a patent dismount. “George’s technique of bailing
off the tail of the board,” commented Peter Cole, “diminished any chance of
being hit by the board.”[15]
“If
you say there were a hundred surfers here in the state [by this time],” Downing
said of the hot curl guys, “only a fraction of those people were like these
guys who had the interest, had the brotherhood with each other. They looked out
for one another; they had this feeling of togetherness. This is the kind of
energy that made the hot curl... it was during that period that Wally, Fran,
Kelly and I were into exploring the other sides of the island. We surfed all
the other shores looking for more size and power. The bigger the face we could
find to ride on those boards, the greater (the unwetted surface and therefore)
the freedom we had on them.”[16]
Skegs
– aka “fins” – had finally caught on, “allowing surfboards to be much shorter
and lighter.”[17]
I
once mentioned to Woody Brown that it seemed like it took a long time for the
skeg to catch on. “Yeah,” he admitted. “In fact, I didn’t want a skeg. I rebelled against it. We had shaped boards so they
wouldn’t slide ass, you know. And I said, ‘What the hell do you want a skeg
for?’
“‘Oh,’
they said, ‘It makes it better.’ So, I rode a board with a skeg on it and it
didn’t seem to make a difference. So, then George Downing and I made a super board for big waves at Makaha. We
had learned to flatten out the rumps a bit. See, you have to have a vee. If you
don’t have a skeg, you gotta have a vee or a round tail and then it won’t slide
ass. That holds it. But, the shallower you make the vee, the faster it is! The
trouble is, you flatten the vee, then it gets loose and then it wants to slide
ass.
“So,
we made one with a pretty flat back end, with little curves on the sides. And
so Georgie said, ‘I’ll make a slot, so we can put a skeg in or take it out. We
can try it and see the difference.’ So, we went Makaha. They were about 15 foot
peaks that day. He went out there without the skeg, first, and he rode it. It
rode beautiful; fine, oh, just no trouble at all. Georgie came in and said,
‘Well, let’s put the skeg in and just try it, anyway. See the difference. See
what it’s about.’ So, he puts the skeg in and went back out.
“It
looked like he was riding the same, but he came back in and said, ‘Hey, Woody,
it’s much better with a skeg.’ So, from that point on, he started putting skegs
on ‘em. I asked, ‘How is it better?’ He said, ‘Well, it’s not any faster, but
it’s more solid and you can turn it real
easy with a skeg,’ which we couldn’t do before. Our boards were real stiff turning.
“That
was the only trouble with the old boards. They were fast – my boards were
faster ‘n hell – but, oh, you couldn’t turn it. I couldn’t use my boards in
small waves, with other guys out, cuz I’d just mow everybody down. Once I set
it in at just kind of an angle like that, I couldn’t turn. All I could do was
drop down or climb up a little bit. But, as far as turning, I couldn’t turn it.
So, you couldn’t ride small waves with it. But, it had the speed on the big
waves! Man, I could get across where nobody could get across! Which sounds
right. Nobody wants to get caught in 20 feet of white water.”[18]
Surf
writer Matt Warshaw wrote that Downing “made a study of surfing, analyzing
weather maps to better understand swell formation, snorkeling over reefs on
windless days to learn how their topography affected the surf, calculating wave
intervals, observing wind patterns and ocean currents, and absorbing all there
was to know about surfboard theory and construction.”[19]
“All
of Downing’s research and theories made him peerless in the water,” wrote Jason
Borte. “Before him, survival was the only mission, but his speed-driven bottom
turns and arcs at huge Makaha redefined what was possible. Inspired by images
of Downing and Froiseth, among others, the first wave of Californians made
their assault on the Islands .”[20]
Downing
is modest about his design contributions:
“I
think we have been deprived of the opportunity to see the Hawaiian race in its
fulfillment,” emphasized Downing, “to where we also could get involved in it.
It’s only through certain things that we did, that we even got a glimpse of
what they had going. One example would be the Hawaiian ideas on the canoes.
Every time that we’d get to a place where we’d think that our ingenuity had
given us some kind of unique knowledge, we would find that they had already
been there before us, they knew exactly, and we were just trailing, hanging on
the tail of something that had already been developed.”[21]
In
1954, the Makaha International Surfing Championship became “the first major
surfing event in the sport’s modern history. George was the first Men’s
Champion and then the first repeat winner in years 1961 and 1965. He traveled
to Peru
in 1955 as a surfing emissary, winning their Championship and establishing
life-long relationships with hard-playing, wealthy Peruvian surfers. In all
facets of his life in the ocean: paddleboard racing, canoe paddling and
surfing, surfing big waves and small, instructing, renting surfboards, sailing
and diving, George has always been known as calculating, thoughtful, and
strategic in studying and understanding the forces he is dealing with before
coming up with a tactic to win with. This knowledge he’s passed down to his
children and now grandchildren. In addition to his unique big wave-riding
prowess, all through the war and post-war period, George won the Diamond Head paddleboard races, becoming a standard bearer
for that skill, and the fastest paddleboard racer in all distance categories
who… still happens to hold the record for the 100-yard sprint.”[22]
In
1960, George took over operation of the Waikiki Beach
Center , serving tourists
with rentals and lessons.[23] He later created “the
venerable Downing Surfboards,” wrote Christian Beamish, “which his son Keone
continues, and has worked to prevent the corporatization of the Waikiki beach concessions.”[24]
Downing
was named contest director for the Quicksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau contest
in 1985.[25] He subsequently created
the format for the contest at Waimea
Bay , “showcasing the
rebirth of big wave riding and offering the biggest winner’s check in surfing
history. The unique event protocol of not being held in less than 20’
conditions causes it to happen with unpredictable frequency, which lends each
actual competition added gravitas. George has steered The Eddie through the
normal entanglements which he has as skillfully navigated as he once did the
channel at Laniakea, knowing that the rip current there runs out underneath the
incoming waves, thus you must not dive down, stay in the white water to get in.
At least several times each season George makes the on-or-off call that itself
causes ripples around the world. From November through February, he remains
focused on the swell buoys. On mornings pregnant with possibility, he and his
pickup truck can be found in the gray of first light, overlooking the Bay, with
George keenly confirming his diagnosis so as to make the early call that is
necessary either way. The event that George has nurtured for over
two-and-a-half decades has helped reestablish the preeminence of riding big
waves within the surfing culture.”[26]
“Longtime
friend, Steve Pezman, noted, ‘Downing is very analytical in his surfing. He
thinks about what’s going to happen and how he’s going to play the game. George
combines athletic skills with innate and acquired knowledge of surfboard
design.’”[27]
“He
has been referred to the world’s most-knowledgeable surfers as ‘the teacher,’”
continued Warshaw. “’60s big-wave rider Ricky Grigg called him ‘the guru.’
Downing mentored dozens of top Hawaiian surfers over the decades, including
Joey Cabell, Reno Abellira, and Michael Ho. He worked as a Waikiki
beachboy from the early ‘40s to the late ‘70s, giving surf lessons, coaching
outrigger canoe teams, and running a beach concession stand.”[29]
From
a tiny office in the back of Downing Hawaii, the family store his son Keone
manages, “The Governor” (as Keone calls him) conducts behind-the-scenes
campaigns to preserve Hawaii’s most treasured beaches, reefs and surf breaks
that are continually under threat of “development.” In this role, also, George
has appointed himself as a protector to special friends vulnerable to land
sharks.[30]
Even
with all his activity and influence in the sport and culture of surfing, George
has kept himself as a private individual. Amazingly, he had not been profiled
or interviewed at length in the surf media until 2011’s video documentary The
Still Point. This lack of attention was due more to his aloofness than
a lapse on the part of surf writers and documentarians. Matt Warshaw gave this
example: “A note on the final page of Australian Nat Young’s 1983 History of
Surfing notes that ‘George Downing has been omitted [from this book] at his
request, although he has played a significant part in the sport.’”[31]
I
remember when I interviewed Wally Froiseth in the mid-1990s. I once suggested
to him that I might interview George. Wally indicated that I’d be wasting my
time. He wouldn’t be interviewed.
George
Downing appeared in a small number of surf movies from the 1950s and 1960s,
including Surf (1958), Cat on a Hot Foam Board (1959), Cavalcade
of Surf (1962) and Gun Ho! (1963). He was also featured on Duke
Kahanamoku’s World of Surfing, a 1968 CBS special.
George
Downing interview, The Still Point, 2011, part 1:
George
Downing interview, The Still Point, 2011, part 2:
[1] Warshaw, Matt. EOS, at: http://encyclopediaofsurfing.com/entries/downing-george,
viewed 28 January 2016.
[2] “George
Downing enters the Surfers’ Hall of Fame,” SurferToday.com, 22 June 2011, at http://www.surfertoday.com/surfing/5758-george-downing-enters-the-surfers-hall-of-fame,
viewed 29 January 2016.
[3] Warshaw, Matt. EOS, at: http://encyclopediaofsurfing.com/entries/downing-george,
viewed 28 January 2016.
[4] Gault-Williams.
Interview with Wally Froiseth, April 3, 1996.
[5]
Warshaw, Matt. EOS, at: http://encyclopediaofsurfing.com/entries/downing-george,
viewed 28 January 2016.
[6]
DowningSurf.com, http://www.downingsurf.com/?page_id=45,
viewed 28 January 2016.
[7] Borte,
Jason. Bio of George Downing for Surfline.com, October 2000.
[8] Beamish,
Christian. “SURFER Celebrates the 50 Greatest Surfers of All Time,” posted July
22, 2010 at http://www.surfermag.com/features/number_42_george_downing/
- Downing #42
[9] Beamish,
Christian. “SURFER Celebrates the 50 Greatest Surfers of All Time,” posted July
22, 2010 at http://www.surfermag.com/features/number_42_george_downing/
- Downing #42
[10] Beamish,
Christian. “SURFER Celebrates the 50 Greatest Surfers of All Time,” posted July
22, 2010 at http://www.surfermag.com/features/number_42_george_downing/
- Downing #42. Beamish
has the year as 1947, but various years are cited by different people. Most
sources have it as 1948.
[11]
DowningSurf.com, http://www.downingsurf.com/?page_id=45,
viewed 28 January 2016.
[12]
DowningSurf.com, http://www.downingsurf.com/?page_id=45,
viewed 28 January 2016.
[13]
Warshaw, Matt. EOS, at: http://encyclopediaofsurfing.com/entries/downing-george,
viewed 28 January 2016. Matt has the year of “The Rocket” as 1950.
[14] Stecyk, C.R. “Hot Curl,” The Surfer’s Journal,
Volume 3, Number 2, Summer 1994, pp. 67-68. George Downing quoted.
[15] Browne, Bud. Surfing
The 50’s, a videotape of the best of his 1950s surf films, ©1994. Peter
Cole’s testimony.
[16] Stecyk, and Pezman,
1994, p. 69.
[17] Marcus, 1993, p. 99.
[18]
Gault-Williams. Interview with Woody Brown, November 22, 1994.
[19]
Warshaw, Matt. EOS, at: http://encyclopediaofsurfing.com/entries/downing-george,
viewed 28 January 2016.
[20] Borte,
Jason. Bio of George Downing for Surfline.com, October 2000.
[21] Stecyk, “Hot Curl,” The
Surfer’s Journal, Summer 1994, p. 68. George Downing.
[22]
DowningSurf.com, http://www.downingsurf.com/?page_id=45,
viewed 28 January 2016.
[23]
DowningSurf.com, http://www.downingsurf.com/?page_id=45,
viewed 28 January 2016.
[24] Beamish,
Christian. “SURFER Celebrates the 50 Greatest Surfers of All Time,” posted July
22, 2010 at “http://www.surfermag.com/features/number_42_george_downing/
- Downing #42. Steve Pezman quoted.
[25]
Warshaw, Matt. EOS, at: http://encyclopediaofsurfing.com/entries/downing-george,
viewed 28 January 2016.
[26]
DowningSurf.com, http://www.downingsurf.com/?page_id=45,
viewed 28 January 2016.
[27] Beamish,
Christian. “SURFER Celebrates the 50 Greatest Surfers of All Time,” posted July
22, 2010 at http://www.surfermag.com/features/number_42_george_downing/
- Downing #42. Steve Pezman quoted.
[28]
Warshaw, Matt. EOS, at: http://encyclopediaofsurfing.com/entries/downing-george,
viewed 28 January 2016.
[29]
Warshaw, Matt. EOS, at: http://encyclopediaofsurfing.com/entries/downing-george,
viewed 28 January 2016.
[30] DowningSurf.com, http://www.downingsurf.com/?page_id=45,
viewed 28 January 2016.
[31] DowningSurf.com, http://www.downingsurf.com/?page_id=45,
viewed 28 January 2016.
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