Eccentric and pioneering surfboard shaper Mike Zeh-Croteau dies
“Mike was fearless in trying new designs and was known to snap shaped blanks in half if a board didn’t come out like he envisioned,” said longtime surfer Dan Young of Santa Cruz. “He’d then grab a new blank and start mowing foam again.”
Terry Campion, who owns Santa Cruz Board Room on 41st Avenue and Santa Cruz Apparel in the Capitola Mall, credited Zeh-Croteau with teaching him how to build surfboards in 1983, and motivating him to build a life in the business.
“He gave me my first crack,” Campion said. “Mike Croteau gave me the momentum to be able to live in Santa Cruz and raise a family and work in the surf industry. I respect him for that. That was a very cool thing and he gave me my chance.”
Born in Hollywood, Zeh-Croteau moved to Santa Cruz soon after graduating from high school. He called Santa Cruz County, La Jolla and Oahu, Hawaii, all home, said Denise Croteau of Watsonville, his wife of 31 years. Zeh-Croteau added his father’s surname, Zeh, to his own later in life. Croteau was his mother’s last name, Denise said.
Zeh-Croteau’s career included work designing wetsuits and clothing. But it was his drive to break barriers with surfboard foam – and teach others how to do it – for which he will be most remembered.
“He would be willing to make boards that weren’t very good because maybe every fourth or fifth or 10th one would be brilliant,” said childhood friend Guy Hansen of San Diego, who remembered visiting Zeh-Croteau in Santa Cruz and sanding his creations. Hansen said Zeh-Croteau would consult with sailboat designers, naval architects and DuPont chemists in his constant quest to build a better board.
Some of the ideas that Zeh-Croteau first promoted – like four-fin boards and multiple concave bottom contours – were originally considered outrageous but now are mainstream, fellow shapers said.
“His creativity has influenced a lot of people,” said shaper Randy French, owner of Surftech in Eastside Santa Cruz. “I certainly consider him one of the most creative shapers that probably ever shaped and designed surfboards.”
Zeh-Croteau’s boards often sported a simple-but-memorable bulls-eye logo. One can be seen under the arm of Shaun Tomson in the classic 1970s surf flick “Five Summer Stories,” Hansen said.
But Zeh-Croteau also shaped just to see how his boards would ride.
“At one time or another Mike basically shaped boards in Hawaii for all the leading riders,” Hansen said. “Sometimes they would put their sponsored logos on them and he didn’t really care. He just wanted to see how they would go out and perform.”
In his younger days, Zeh-Croteau also was known for wild parties and a fierce temper. A 1984 Sentinel story told how, while intoxicated, he plowed his pickup truck into the front porch of his Beach Hill home during a domestic dispute. At 6-foot-3 and 290 pounds, Zeh-Croteau swung the officers trying to restrain him from his arms.
“If you called around, everyone would say, Oh I’ve got Croteau stories,’ of which there are many,” chuckled French. “He was a very colorful character.”
But Denise said Zeh-Croteau’s later years were focused on family, surfing and his Christian faith.
“Right now I believe he’s actually putting concave foils on the frames of angels,” Denise said. “That’s how good he was.”
