The ancient Kahunas‘ hang out?

[BoMan]

Well by 2 weeks I was doing well enough it convinced me to just forget about paipo boarding although it took me nearly 2 years before I got to an equal level of where I was paipo boarding.

Good on you for taking a step back to get better! On every wave I have the chance to practice new skills or just have fun, and nearly always I choose the easier path. As the years pass I prefer being in the moment with nature and taking what the waves will give.

[oldmansurfer]

My second board was just a fortuitous accident. I was driving to the south side to look for surf and came across a woman and her daughter hitchhiking so I gave them a ride. Turns out their car broke and were trying to get home on the south side so I offered to take them home. In conversation she said she noticed a surfboard and was I a surfer? I said yeah that’s my dilapidated board and she said her husband made surfboards and if I was looking for one she could introduce me to him. At first I just thought “Oh no! I’m going to get involved in some domestic scene “. But then I figured I really needed a new board so I accepted her invitation. Turns out he was a really great shaper from Oahu and had taught Ben Aipa the basics of shaping. He talked to me about surfing where I was at , problems I had and where I wanted to be . Then in about a month he had me pick up a 7 foot long diamond tail single glassed in fin board with no leash. I think leashes were just coming out at the time. It cost me $90. This was a discount he said because there was a defect in the foam but I am pretty sure his wife made him give me a deal. This board was greased lightning. So fast it helped me make many waves and made me look like I was a better surfer than I was in bigger waves. It was the beginning of a long relationship.

[BoMan]

This board was greased lightning. So fast it helped me make many waves and made me look like I was a better surfer than I was in bigger waves. It was the beginning of a long relationship.

Great story! Do you still have the board?

My favorite board was a fat 5'11" fish with glassed-in twin fins that looked something like this. I bought it at college from a student who needed money to get home for Christmas and anticipated getting a new one from his parents. It took me a while to build a stronger paddle and figure out how to ride it, but I loved the tighter turning radius! I gave it away when my son was born and reluctantly gave up surfing for 30 years.

[oldmansurfer]

I rode my boards till they were falling apart. Had to get a new board when I graduated from college absentmindedly left it at the beach and had to get another. Quit surfing for almost 12 years and during that time had it in a storage shed. Hurricane Iniki hit and it got damaged, seriously dinged and after repairs I felt so bad that my other love of my life was damaged without even getting close to the beach that I found her a new home

[oldmansurfer]

After that first board from Joe who became my shaper, I met a fellow surfer and east side resident who said he was going to open a surf shop so I thought I would give him some business and had him make me a fish. He said it should be multiple fins but he didn't know how to do that so I told him just do a single fin since that is what I liked anyway. That board looked real nice but I never figured out how to use it so I took it to Joe and told him to make me one like this but that worked and Joe made me a swallow tail single fin. This became my slow board because it was quite obviously slower than the other boards. Now there are pluses and minuses for this quality and at first I didn't like it but after a while I realized it meant longer tube time although maybe not making back out as often as the other boards. But I grew to like this board too and all it could do. I could still make some of the fast breaking smaller waves but not so great for bigger fast waves. I learned to do a backside under the lip turn where I am upside down for a moment with the wave just inches away from my face as a way to get speed on bigger backside waves. It seemed like it was impossible but it worked well for me. One day I was surfing my usual spot which is Kealia and it was a big stormy day maybe 6 to 8 foot Hawaiian and perfect for me to try my new backside under the lip turn. I was paddling back out and one of the regular guys there paddled over to tell me that I was making the wave further than the rest of the surfers. I mentioned probably I am just getting caught in the inside and pushed in since that was happening to me and all those guys were better surfers than me as they had all been surfing since they were little kids and I just started (maybe 2 years). He said no I was making it further down the line than even the goofy foots. Well if they were watching they should have seen my backside speed turn or maybe not because the lip might occlude the view because I was doing it under the lip. Anyway this was with my slow board and I was sure with my fast board I would have been making it even further. I went in after a couple hours of these gnarly huge backside tubes and one of the best surfers on the island was there and came up to me and asked to use my board. Now I rarely ever let anyone use my boards. It would have to be someone who If they broke it then it wouldn't destroy whatever relationship we have. However this was one of the best surfers on the island and he is the boss to me so I say can I use your board? And he says no but "I like use your board." I try to dissuade him but he was hell bent to try it figuring I guess that it was the board that helped me make the waves. In part it was but it was my under the lip backside speed turn that did it mostly as the other surfers boards should have been at least as fast as my slow board. Then I figured Joe would probably like to get him as a client so I let him take my board out and stressed out on the shoreline while he tried it. I don't know if he liked it or not but I told him who my shaper was. In a week or two later I got a call from my shaper and he said it's time for me to get a new board and I was like oh no but I love these boards that I have and he was like yeah but they're getting old. I asked him if the surfer I let use my board had called him and he said yes. I still loved those 2 old beat up boards but got a new one that was even better. It was a 7'2" board and even faster than the rest and great in larger surf

[oldmansurfer]

I forgot between those two boards from Joe and the next one I made my own board. I wanted to try out some weird designs of my own so I bought a blank and resin and fiberglass and shaped and glassed my own board. It was a good experience for me as I learned about why they didn't make boards with the design elements I wanted. This came about because I probably felt some confidence having mentioned making rails with a shape similar to my paipo boards so they would hang on a steep wall better and the shaper said he had heard about something like that and would try to include it in my next board. I believe he called it chine rails. Anyway I made a 7 foot swallowttail with the last half of the board completely flat and the rails sharp with lots of flotation in the middle and thinning out more in the tail. When I finished making that board I had just polished it and not even taken it off the shaping/glassing stand that I built to make it when a friend of mine came by and said "Wow that's beautiful. Can I pick it up?" I was a little hesitant but said sure go ahead and he proceeded to drop the slippery board on the edge of a cement slab where I had been making it. Consequently it got a huge ding on the rail before I ever got it in the water. Anyway that board was limited in it's usefulness. It took more effort to turn it sharply like a cutback but hung high on a steep wall and became my tube riding board that I used in tubing areas with rocky shorelines because I didn't mind if it got dinged again since it started off with a ding. I broke the nose off the board once and the points of the swallowtail twice for each side It was after this that I started using a leash and the 7'2" board was the first one made with a leash plug. The other two boards I had the shaper put in leash plugs retroactively after making this board and destroying it.

[oldmansurfer]

That board I made myself was my most reliable tube riding board. It could hang very high on a steep wall and therefor could make really fast breaking big tubes. But it took greater effort to surf slower waves. I surfed it at Kalihiwai quite often where it got most of it's damage due to the break is in front of a cliff. The good side was I learned how to fix a nose or tail (not involving fin) that broke off a board. I burned it in a ceremony when I retired that board. The ceremony involved drinking much beer and being silly as surfers are sometimes. It was a fitting end for a board who started off with a ding before it made it out of the shop.

[oldmansurfer]

My 7 foot swallowtail had an interesting incident. I was surfing Hanalei at around 8 feet so walls about 16 feet give or take with some bigger sets coming in. I had caught several waves and was practicing making hard top turns and on this one wave when I got to the bottom there was a huge section in front of me pitching over and no way I was going to make it down the line but it looked like I could make it back up to the top of the wave to kick out where I was. So I shoot up this 16 foot wall and the lip was just slightly pitching over at the top and caught my board which went over the back of the wave but I was launched into the air maybe 15 feet or so above the wave (no leash). I could see the board under me and knew I was going to land on it and in the air there is no way to change your trajectory but I did move my feet to the side so I didn't land squarely on the board. This resulted in my heel hitting the edge of the board which put a ding in it which also cut my heel. I was very tired and my board was dinged so I went in. When I got to the shoreline I was so tired but there was a surfer I knew and I told him what happened and he said he wanted to see the ding so I grabbed the board and held it sideways so he could see the ding but my hands were tired and weak and the board slipped out and hit the ground fin first making a crack along one side of the fin. So tired and just dinged my board worse than it was originally it was depressing. But oh well went home and fixed the two dings . The rail ding was easy as I had done many such dings prior but I wasn't sure how to fix the crack along the glassed in fin so I ground away the glass on the side with the ding and replaced it with new glass. This seemed to work for a while. But then I caught a big wave and noticed the board vibrated and hummed as it went along. So I took it to my shaper and had him fix it. He fixed it good. The thing I should have done was to remove the entire fin and reset it. Apparently the resin under the fin was cracked and my patch didn't fix that. But you all don't need to worry about that since no one surfs glassed in fins anymore.

[BoMan]

I got my first board in the 60's with money earned from mowing lawns. It was a dinged up, 9 foot poly that was sooo heavy I could barely get it to the beach.

Speaking of dings, I had to retire this one after it was carried into a rocky cove after a fall. I thought about swimming in for it but the set waves were just too big. It was agonizing to tread water and listen to the sounds of my board pinballing between the rocks!

[oldmansurfer]

I suspected the 7 foot swallow tail was likely slower than my 7 foot diamond tail but ultimately surfing this freight train right that I was absolutely sure. The place I learned to surf is a mid sized bay with rocky coastline on both sides and sand in the middle. I learned to surf at a break over on the right side of the bay but once I was up to speed I went to the left side of the bay which was called the landing because it used to be a place for boats to dock although I have a hard time seeing how that worked out since waves break there almost constantly. In the middle part there can be various breaks of varying quality. About every three or four months it breaks in this very fast breaking right. To me it looked like it should be makeable as in a surfer should be able to ride it from the beginning to the end which ended near the landing break. Most of the surfers who would go there just rode the first part of that wave where it was a little slower. They would get in the tube and get closed out on or come out then get closed out on. It looked to me like you should be able to make the wave because speed turns are additive to a degree and depending on the board. So if you do one speed turn you are going faster and two in a row even faster, three in a row and faster yet. So I finally decided to give that break a try. The first wave I caught I dropped in and the wave "closed out" on me that is what people say when the break passes them by but on the next wave I paddled harder popped up faster made a quick bottom turn and got back up the wave and then it passed me by. So I kept working at getting a little more down the line until finally I was doing speed turns maybe one a second and made the wave and rode off the end of the wave but my speed was so great that I kept going and ran into the next wave coming in. My board dove into the wave and I jumped off standing up. When my feet hit the water they were jerked backward from my perspective and I did a cartwheel feet first then head then feet then head then feet again. It was very violent and scared the crap out of me. On the next wave I tried landing sideways and I spun sideways violently before slowing down. The next wave I tried to dive into the water and this was even worse. I traveled so far under the water and ended up just inches from the bottom. Then on the next wave I tried to land flat on my back and I skipped like a stone and did three skips and then spun around a bit but not as violently. Anyway I was getting some speed there and after I worked out how to do it I tried my other boards and my slow board in particular would get going fast enough to make the wave but once I quit making speed turns it slowed down noticeably and it never seemed to go as fast as the fast board. My fast board never seemed to reach a maximum speed and would keep speed for a long time after I sped up. My homemade board was somewhere in between the two but it held speed good after getting up to speed. That is when I started calling it my slow board. The first time I skipped 3 times one of the regular surfers paddled over to me and said that I was going 30 miles an hour. I asked how they knew that and he laughed and said because I skipped 3 times. I asked what about the time I went head over heels he said 50 miles and hour. I didn't appreciate the comments at the time but realized they were just acknowledging that I was getting some speed. I guess it was a frightening thing to me and I was still trying to find a safe way to end the wave. Probably I should have kept going down the line but I would have been surfing into the landing break area and maybe couldn't stop. Anyway no leash in those days or for sure there would have been strangulations or something bad happening

[BoMan]

Bob McTavish at 79 surfing Byron Bay. Inspiring for me!

[BoMan]

duke.jpg (6.56 KiB) Viewed 1572 times

Some Ancient Kahunas were waterman like this guy! I am definitely NOT a Waterman and would like to know what you think it really means.

I will say that for surfers it involves mastery of board skills (paddling, takeoffs, trimming, carving, maneuvers, gear) and a deep understanding of the ocean (tides, wind, swells, wave types, bathometry, knowledge of local breaks). The mental aspects are as important, if not more, than the physical. Beyond that, being a waterman also includes a similar mastery of other ocean sports like swimming, body surfing, kayaking, and diving,

Your thoughts?

[oldmansurfer]

I think waterman is a way to honor those who have dedicated their lives to the ocean.. They usually are masters of several aspects of ocean related skills. It's just a term and doesn't change who the person is. Duke was just an all around awesome person who just so happened to have lots of ocean related skills too. I think the rest of him was more awesome than his waterman designation. I leave it to those who wish to give this designation to others to come up with whatever they want it to mean.

[BoMan]

One can argue that fishing is a waterman skill.

I learned a lot about the ocean from my dad who was an avid kayak fisherman. He kept track of the shifting sands and paddled along the sandbars to cast his line into the troughs. He planned ahead for the effects of wind, tidal flows and big waves, and always had a safety plan for getting in and out of the water.

[jaffa1949]

My take on Kahunas , from Hawaiian friends, they were the leaders and teachers at a high level in all the aspects of Hawaiian society.
Craft kahunas crop and farming kahunas, weather prediction, and other aspects…….. mastery of combinations and in eventually all, meant
becoming a priest and high priest for all !

Those aspects are not what we have but aspire to !

[oldmansurfer]

there was a Waterman competition I saw a while back that involved a variety of surfing skills and canoe paddling. I don't think there were any fishing categories. I think if you are thinking Hawaiian waterman then you would have to include resource gathering from the ocean as surfing was a "sport" surfboards were also used to fish and dive and travel from place to place. So I would imagine a Hawaiian Waterman would also be an expert resource gatherer. However once again I am not qualified to say because this is a word that I'm only passingly familiar with. I think Duke was well versed in spear fishing but not sure about other forms of fishing or resource gathering however it was just a part of his life not a sport or competition and likely he did a variety of resource gathering since he was a kid.

[oldmansurfer]

https://www.instagram.com/p/CWHV__7lghO/?utm_medium=copy_link I actually did something like this but pulled off the landing. Just about this size wave

[BoMan]

Surfed yesterday with an ancient Kahuna bodyboarder.

She roamed around the inside sandbar picking off unridden waves and riding them all the way to shore. She held her position on the wave despite a strong outgoing tide and sweeping current. I was worried for her a couple of times when surfers got too close at the end of their rides but she did a great job paddling around the danger. She's the epitome of a local, having surfed the same break for 40 years, but feels no resentment for the "Covid crowds" and is very happy to just get in the water whenever she can.

I hope to find her again to hear stories about the 80's!

[BoMan]

Let's talk surf wagons! What was the first car you used to carry a board to the beach?

As a teenager, mine was a VW bug that sailed in the wind when I drove on the freeway or over the Richmond-San Rafael bridge. I usually didn't properly secure the boards on the rack and they shifted side to side. My friends and I took turns on overnight guard duty to protect our boards and hubcaps on weekend trips to Santa Cruz.

[jaffa1949]

Wow a picture of an Australian beach in the 60s withiconic Australian cars, when Australia had its own cars industries!
The majority were GMH Holderns, There is a Chrysler Valiant several Morris Majors, a Simca, a Morris Mini, there seems to be no VW bugs or Kombis, it is probably late 60s before things started going short if you review the fins, the houses were not yet renovated and were often made with Asbestos fibro cement sheeting,with roof terracotta tiles, corrugated fibro sheeting or corrugated iron , heat traps in

Holdens at DeeWhy one of Sydney’s northern beaches where I grew up

Here are Holdens at Boneyards south of Sydney
I can’t identify the beach in BoMan’s picture yet!

Just an addition a few of this vintage of cars are in one of the videos I posted.
We did not have Woodies, extremely rare!