It’s funny when you have your own children and take in their first experience in the surf. Dumped, nearly drowned, tears, screaming “My eyes are stinging”, sand up their bumcrack so they can’t walk etc.
My mind wanders back to my very first surf experience.
My Dad was in the Army and had this air mattress he used in Vietnam called a Li Lo. It was basically a dark green 3 chambered thing with individual black air bags that you slipped in and a pillowcase slip attached. I was 5 years old and he made me blow it all up and off I went. I found out that you couldn’t ride it with the pillow slip underneath and facing backwards = sea anchor and thrown off every time, but folded in half I would have the time of my life.
I got pounded by 1’ beach break at good old Busselton Jetty. Sand in every crevass, salt in my eyes and burnt to a crisp by the sun.
It must have had an effect on me because I’m still doing it only with my kids.
Good old lilos! The best ones had no pillow. My first surf experience was when I was three, in a small pram dinghy at Milford beach in small onshore waves with my grandfather and father. It was the maiden voyage. As soon as the first waves hit I leapt out into the shorebreak and yelled “I’m drownding, I’m drownding!” I saved myself and progressed to a polystyrene lifering and then a polystyrene flutterboard to which I was soon addicted.
Nice clean high tide beach break rushing up over the sand. Upside down inflatable boat! paddled well and made the drop but no chance of turning. And glides across the wet sand like nothing else (apart from a skimboard!)
Got me hooked on the feeling, progressed to a foam bodyboard and that was the end of a ‘normal’ childhood.
Oh yes foam boards, I progressed to a Firestone Coolite, it was Red, White and Blue with channels. I use to turn it upsidedown and use it like a skimboard.
As I remember, the red colour was probably the blood pouring out from my nipples.
Didn’t have rashies then, or sunscreen, or boardshorts, the memory still haunts me…wanted to surf but it was too painful to lie down…
It was also painful getting back in Dad’s car after being locked up in the sun for 4 hours. Vinyl seats, direct sunlight, bare legs…hmmm those were the days…
The guys next door used to put their coolites in a tight cheescloth tube. We painted ours which helped the rash factor. Later as groms we had horrendous 5mm Mitchell dive springsuits with front zips and got ghastly bleeding rashes. In winter we froze in the springsuits, and the manager of the natural hot salt water pools at the Mount Maunganui main beach used to let us jump in with our wetties on. The hot salt water on the raw rashes was incredibly painful.
1967 … ‘surf mats’ [rubber… yellow, with red stripes. and two black rubber handles at the front - if my memory serves me correctly!}
1968/9 … “foamies” , with a ‘ridge’ down the bottom of the rear of the board, instead of a fin
1971 … my first FIBREGLASS surfboard ! I think THIS was probably when it REALLY began for me !
… I can still remember standing up on my first unbroken wave , and the STOKE I felt !! [some things NEVER change !!].
This was on the blue board in the attached photo. My brother Simon scored the deluxe double stringer ‘egg’ …woohoo… [looks new, eh ?!]
Appropriately enough, this all took place at Freshwater beach, Sydney, where Duke introduced surfboard riding to Sydney’s northern beaches , about ? 57 years ? previous to my first stand up and ride experience. [I skateboarded on a “surfer sam” from the age of about 7, I think that helped me get used to wipeouts !!]
I first bodysurfed at 4 or 5 and boardsurfed around 9. All on vacation in Hawaii, probably the Kaanapali Marriott. Dug my dad’s AMF/Voit beavertail out of the basement for a go at Stinson with a rental board around age 12. Since then, not a week has gone by without thinking about surfing.
…no, but if I’d had girls like that to surf with, I may never have progressed to standing up !
What I rode was probably the Aussie equivalent , I’d be guessing…I think in the “busting down the door” book [rabbit’s bio], there’s some similar devices in one of the photos maybe.
ben
ps- that’s a good name you’ve got there too , mate !!
'64, sophmore on the JV football team, no one liked surfers, so I skipped practice and hung at Santiago St., where I knew some surfers from hangin there at night.
They let me borrow a 9’6" popout, and I walked into chest deep water, turned around, jumped into the soup, stood up and rode to grind the fin.
Rode about 5 more into shore, but since I never put my head underwater, I didn’t paddle out. Of course, I’d prolly NEVER make it out, it was about 5-7’ outside and none of the surfers could make it out thru the whitewater.
Pre wetsuits, 55 degree waters, OceanBeach, San Francisco.
My first surfing experience i was about 13 yo, i bought an old (when i say old, i mean old! spiderwebs and all) 5’10’’ blue fish for 25 bucs. It had no nose or tail (they were completely gone), just some duck tape were they were suposed to be. I grew up prety fast and i was 5’9’’ at the time. Needless to say, i never could stand up on the god dam thing, but i was stocked just being out there, later got a new board, and eventualy surfed!!!
Hard to recall, but it had to be on one of those styrofoam bellyboards they used to sell at every drug store in socal. Rental mats at huntington were the best when I was 9 or 10 though. Smooth, and never broke.
Oceanside Harbor, March 63’. One of those clear cold mornings. No wetsuit. Had bought a beater board from a neighbor. I remember riding the whitewater and was hooked. Had my Dad take me over. That day ended my baseball career and I started a surfing life. Still surfing to this day.
daytona bch, about 1968. i had bought a 9’6 greg noll for $2.00 from another kid that needed glass repair on nose.i fixed it,so my parents made my older brother (who didn’t surf,he was still into muscle cars & high school football)take me to the beach. i remember small glassy waves cominging in long lines. i never stood up the first few rides(that board was like a parking lot to a 12 yr. old)but the speed and the way that board hummed as it flew towards the shore had me hooked. after that board was a shorter Hobie made with orange colorflo cloth i used to take down to sebastian inlet, or jetty park when you could surf inside the jetty (nice rights).
'64, sophmore on the JV football team, no one liked surfers, so I skipped practice and hung at Santiago St., where I knew some surfers from hangin there at night.
They let me borrow a 9’6" popout, and I walked into chest deep water, turned around, jumped into the soup, stood up and rode to grind the fin.
Rode about 5 more into shore, but since I never put my head underwater, I didn’t paddle out. Of course, I’d prolly NEVER make it out, it was about 5-7’ outside and none of the surfers could make it out thru the whitewater.
Pre wetsuits, 55 degree waters, OceanBeach, San Francisco.
jeez leeDD,now i remember my first wetsuit, definatly not designed for paddling or laying on a board. Sleeves stiff as hell, and the beaver tail had to go!
august 2003, Indian Head, Oregon on a rented 9’ Bic. Got up on the first wave that I paddled for. Spent the whole day learning to trim and turn. And got a fluke noseride from a steep set that rolled in. From there surfing has just sucked me right in… found closer spots (NW Wash.), built and started riding longskates, and just finished my first board this summer. Which had it’s first test on saturday. she is one easy rider, almost more so than what I remember that Bic…
there was a similar thread a while back-may be in archives.anyway, '62 as a 5year old tow heade skinny little bastard in the beach break in front of our house.soon gravitated to the point up the beach and have sat there ever since…
