Been in the water as long as I can remember, grew up on the beach. Started out body surfing and I still do regularly, body boards with straight out kamikaze drops - keep the nose up kid! - sand in the pants for sure. First stand up ride at age 10 or so (1988?) on a 6’ Line Drive, about 24" wide and 3" thick. All at Ventnor Pier in NJ.
Hooked harder than ever and it’s getting worse.
P
Santa Ana river jetty–1959–still partial to river mouths
i grew up bodysurfing at the pier in Narragansett RI and got my first board an old orange 9’-4" Surfboards Hawaii in 8th grade in 1970. there were some good surfers there, and i was surprised that some of them didn’t know how to swim. my most memorable day that year was during a blustery day in hurricane season, i was sitting way outside, very happy to finally be out and way too scared to head back in, when a pair of large waterspouts moved in. This gave me some courage; anything would be better than having my board sucked up a tornado, so i paddled hard and went over the falls. Unbelievable washing machine, but nice sandy bottom.
My first wave ride was on an army surplus air mattress in between the Waikiki wall and Queens in '67. We’d ride the wave all the way to and over the wall into the inside lagoon. My first ride on a board was later that year at Empty Lots in Ewa Beach on my neighbors 9’4" Greg Noll.
First wave: 1962 2-3’ stormy shorebreak Lake Huron, Michigan on an army surplus mat. First standup ride: 1964 Huntington pier north side foam, 8’4" Wardy. Started my two sons when they were 3 at Doheny (now 13, 16) both on a 7’6" Agua 80’s funboard. Just restored and packed away that board for their future sons. Thanks for starting this thread Ambrose, hearing others talk about their moms/dads who started them down this path 40 years ago is very special.
First waves - surf mats of course. First wave on a board - PV cove in 1964 on an 8’6" Greg Noll that my brother won by finishing first in the junoir lifeguard ironman. I still think Greg Noll is a bitchin guy for donating that board. Never thought about imprinting as far as surfing goes but 8’6" is still my favorite size for a longboard and I’d take a mat over a boogie board any day. Probably surfing as much now as ever. I love getting out there with my kids. They’ve given me whole new appreciation for small clean days.
I think my first wave was in a intertube at the silver stran. My first surf board ride was 1959 at windandsea, on a balsa Velzy, it belonged to a friends brother… It was so dinged up that we could only stay out for about an hour, then we had to come in and drain the water out before the other guy could take his turn. It took me 30 more years before I got my first Velzy. It hangs over my bed, I take it down when the surf is small, I still love the way it surfs.
I wish I could say I begun with my parents, with a surfmat at the beach down the street when I was a kid, but the truth is I live in Quebec, Canada where not much surfing can be done. Since I was 6 or 7 I knew I wanted to surf. At age fifteen, I went to Europe all by myself with surfing on my mind. I rented a longboard and tried to duckdive with it. Bad idea. I almost broke my nose. So after a quick piece of advice from the locals on not trying to imitate people who ride shortboards, the struggle finally led to my first ride. I remember it well. It was at sunset, the locals were very friendly and they all hooted when they saw me get my first wave after a long week of non-gratifiying beatings . So now, when I see a beginner (not implying I’m not still one a decade later) I try to do the same thing. I just love to see someone with big wide eyes finally “understanding” the feeling.
My dad lived near the Gold Coast during the 30’s and 40’s and taught me how to body surf at an age I don’t remember, early 60’s I guess. We moved, and next had a mat, surfing the back beaches of the Mornington Peninsula. We were in the shorey and the big guys with the boards were out the back catching the real waves. I wanted to do that.
Finally my first board in the mid seventies, 6’6" single fin, minus a fin. So I made one and fit it myself, had that board for a while and it never broke out. Stood up on my third wave, struggling to get to my feet quickly before the fin hit the sand probably twenty yards from the take off. Point Leo, Victoria. The next best sensation was riding my second, a board I’d made myself.
To this day I have never, and will never, forget the sensation of balancing and sliding down that small wave, feeling the water slipping under my feet, a challenge and self satisfaction I have tried to enhance ever since. There is no other sensation that compares to riding a wave.
As near as I can figure, 1965 or '66, Cape May, NJ, I had bugged my parents to get me one of those styrofoam bellyboards (as I remember they had extended finlike rails on the tail), which I took out and got a ride all the way in til I dragged in the sand. I still remember being stoked beyond belief. I rode that board for several days until I broke it in half, at which point I started bugging the folks for a surf mat. And so began my lifelong addiction to surfcraft…
For me, remembering when I touched a board first seems to stand out even more. I as 4-5 years old watching guys surf and one of their board’s washed to shore. Touching that board was real powerful.
16 long years later, while on vacation, I borrowed a Dan Heritage from the hotel owner’s son and that feeling came back again - I have not let it get lost again.
Most memorable ride was in Frisco, NC - Early stages of learning and I caught my first wave of any real size - 5 to 6 foot groundswell at the pier, riding a 6’7" T&C that was my magic board. It was a real transitional moment/ride.
HerbB
i was lucky to live a stones throw from the water ,south west australia my uncle was pushing me into waves on his 7’-10" single fin when i was 2 in 1970 my mum would stand at the shorebreak and save me before i got pounded ,i was so hooked mum reckons that all i did at every chance was grab an old foamie and run down the beach and surf …she would come down and get me and tell me off for running away without anyone to look after me ,then shed drag me home kicking and screaming ,as soon as i got a chance i would run away back to the beach,then she took my board away but i found another one in a holiday house a few doors down…she eventually gave up and the neighbors took turns watching me (heaps of old retired people),my uncles and cousins left there boards at our house coz we lived closest to the beach,so i always had a full quiver to choose from .i learnt to use resin when i was 9 coz they held me responsible for there dings…
i was “the little bastard who surfed all day”
the story continues…
regards
BERT
That darn Kuhio beach, September 1961 on a beach boy rental board, I was all of 110 pounds dripping wet, but the bug bit hard and deep! Nothing had even come close to the “only a surfer knows the feeling”
Place - Long Beach LI (I think it was Magnolia… but maybe Laurelton…) 1977.
Board. A 6’ something Pure Fun single fin double wing stinger loaned to me by one of the nicest surfers alive, Mr. Bob Landon, who at that time lived in my town on LI.
Two of my skate-rat friends and I went and knocked on his door after seeing boards in his back yard through the fence from the building next door (we ran into the back lot of the building to escape someone who was lawfully chasing us for some stupid thing we did - I can’t even remember the offense now). Landon gave one friend a board, told the other where to get one cheap, and, I guess he took pity on me, since he took me to the beach a few times that summer and taught me to ride soup and then waves.
He had a little Lis (I think) fish and the single. I couldn’t stand on the fish, but the stinger worked OK for me to learn on until I got my own board. It was his board for when there were ‘good’ waves.
I owe the man. I owe the man. I owe the man.
Last I saw him he was smiling after a session at OH Turtle Cove. His kid’s are now mainstays at the LB jetty’s.
Be nice to the grommets.
Eric J
Sometime in the late '50s, a piece of wood that had drifted up on the shore, small enough that small-child me could drag it to the water and play in the little stuff breaking just offshore. I found out about shorebreak early.
Where? Here on Cape Cod, off what was my grandmother’s beach shack and is now a museum exhibit. You could fish off the beach and get supper, dig clams in the marsh behind it for lunch, keep a few lobster pots in a marsh channel and you’d have all you wanted. The only sounds were the wind, the sea and an occasional dragger going by or a military jet flat-hatting on the way to dump practice bombs at a bombing range in the Bay.
Things have changed so much since then it seems like all that happened on another planet.
doc…
When I was 4, we moved to Monmouth Cy NJ, and I spent summers thereafter on the beach, every day, all day. We lived about 5 miles up the Navasink river. I had this little foam board covered with plastic - it was surfboard shaped - the goal was always trying to stand up on the 2-3 foot foam board. Many days a motorboat speeding by was the most exciting set of waves. Standing on a board with fins was a lot easier. The idols of all of us gremmies were the few teenagers that had real surfboards…shortboard singlefins then.
I’m the same age as Bert.
Ocean Grove, 9’4" Greg Noll from Bob Kislins in Asbury Park.
They wanted us to wear helmets.
My first? My dad and his service buddy Skinny…Imperial Beach,Ca…Bout 59-60 ,north of the Palm ave Jetty.They took me out on a canvas mat… I screamed and cryed the whole time…Kathy just laughed at me.
…it got better after that.
…You know back then the big attraction of I.B. was fishin’ the sloughs for large Orange Lipped Corvina .the only place known for this species of fish on the coastline(Salton Sea,upper Gulf of Baja California)…now,long gone…like the Bonita…sorry for the off track comments…Herb
June, 1962, as a 15 yr old, first year Fire Island (NY) ocean lifeguard, on a borrowed 9-0 Hobie which I kept “forgetting” to return 'til mid September.
The adventure continues…
bodysurfing in about `74-76(?) at Croyde beach, Devon England
bodysurfing Newport Beach
bodyboarding on styrofoam drugstore board, at Croyde `76ish
bogieboard in Newport
standup on a homemade board (6’2"(?) twin) got from neighbor for about $25 6-7th grade (`80-81?)
{that thing loved to pearl}
South swell storm swell out of baja, bodysurfing and boogie boarding the “Wedge” at Newport Beach (Highschool 82-86ish)
5’6"singlefin (still have) and tri (stolen in highschool) through high school
kneeboarded on the single fin once it got to small to stand on
`86-2003 no real surf activity, except a day or 2 here and there
2003 bought 9’0" longboard and got hooked
–4est