Surfing lost a real renaissance builder and enthusiast when Roger Wayland passed away from a sudden heart problem while kayaking on February 25, 2006.
Some of you may be familiar with work Roger did through my website vagabondsurf.com or Rod’s Paipo forum. Included in that is a basic primer for making wooden handboards and paipos plus photos of a huge variety of designs Roger played with. Among them are planshape re-creations of a Newport Paipo board (photo below); Greenough’s Velo, made out of plywood, replete with fin boxes; and a bizarre variety of hydrofoils. These works were created out of readily available materials and ridden in the Huntington Beach/Bolsa Chica areas of Southern California.
http://vagabondsurf.com/WaylandGallery.html
Roger was a complete waterman who enjoyed all manners of surfing, recently got into surf fishing and then surf kayaking, and studied the complete cycles of water and the socio-political ramifications of water issues in modern life…and that’s just the part of him I knew about from a friendship based on playing in the ocean and sharing the best of it by communicating with other people. He also sadly leaves behind a family and, perhaps not so sadly, leaves a full-time career…how he had time to work with all his other interests is beyond me.
There will be a memorial and paddle-out at Bolsa Chica State Beach near Huntington on Saturday, March 18, 2006, at 11:00 A.M. The location is at surfboard station 19, which is also known as lifeguard station 22 - there will be signs on site.
