The ancient Kahunas‘ hang out?

[jaffa1949]

Miami Beach Car Park at Mandurah Beach Western Australia the other side of Oz from where I grew up!

[jaffa1949]

The beach with all the Holdens is Miami Falconers‘ beach Mandurah Western Australia, the opposite side of Australia from Jaffa‘s home beach!

[BoMan]

My first wetsuit looked something like this. Why did I bother?

[jaffa1949]

I can remember the flap chaff !

[BoMan]

In pre-wetsuit days, my Dad and I warmed up for the ocean together. The Northern California water was cold enough to sting our feet in the Winter and we couldn't just paddle out. We ran about 50 yards on the shore to get our blood flowing and of course this always became a race. I never came close to winning until I entered high school and could finally turn the tables. We started in the sand, went again at ankle depth and finished by wading up to our waists.

These days it's a 5mil suit and booties!

[BoMan]

Nancy Meherne is 92 and has been in and out of the water for 40 years and an inspiration to many. "She likes to see a nice big one coming and a gap. You can’t get on one little wave after another. You wait until you see a big wave and then you come in on that. I love just speeding in. You’re moving so quickly, it’s really good.” She credits her long life to being a keen vegetarian, a sugarless diet, and her life philosophy: “You’ve got to have fun.”

It's good to know I might have 20 more years to slide!

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/28/other-surfers-respect-me-the-92-year-old-still-riding-waves-in-new-zealand

[billie_morini]

Sign me up

I'm 70 and...

BoMan, I know you. We've visited with each other and shared meals and stories about your children and grandchildren. But, there is absolutely no way you can convince me that you are 70 years old. billie

[oldmansurfer]

9 years ago I wrote this "The ocean was like a washing machine today. I must be so clean need to go get in the dryer now."

[BoMan]

Back in the day did you protect yourself from the sun?

As a kid I surfed and swam on a community team. The only protection I ever used was zinc on my nose and now I'm paying the price. These days I have to see a dermatologist twice a year to treat pre-cancerous growths on my face, arms and back. I've been careful in the last 20 years but there's no undoing the damage from my youth!

[oldmansurfer]

Well I got sunburned several times as a child but as I got older I tried to work up to a longer exposure to the sun building a base tan. Lately my outside exposure is reduced with sunscreen and rash guards. Think I have 2 short sleeved and one long sleeved. I try to surf before 11 am thereby reducing my exposure to the sun. Lately there is no problem avoiding the sun because I am just too busy. As a kid my scalp was darker than my hair which now is dark brown but it was bleached out brown before or slightly greenish if I was swimming in the pool.

[oldmansurfer]

Oh wait my hair used to be dark brown but now it's gray LOL

[BoMan]

Any Kahuna skateboarders? What did you ride and where?

[BoMan]

hobie.jpg (51.61 KiB) Viewed 877 times

In 6th grade I rode a Hobie like this and carved the hills above Berkeley, CA. The runs were long and so was the walk back up if we couldn't hitch a ride! Rough streets forced us to watch the pavement carefully for rocks and potholes or suffer road rash. The only trick I bothered to learn was a 180 because it helped control speed on the steeper sections. Of course helmets and protection of any kind wasn't cool.

[oldmansurfer]

I used to do a side slipping turn kind of slaloming back and forth down steep roads so going from one side to the other then crank a hard turn pushing the rear foot causing the clay wheels to slide sideways and slow the board down then back across the road and repeat. I learned to do that fairly early on in learning skateboarding because a surfer went skating with me on this steep hill and showed me how to do it and I learned it after just one or two tries the first time I went down that hill. This was before I surfed on a surfboard.

I was just thinking I remember so much about some of the waves I caught like this wave 40 something years ago. I had taught myself to do a backside inverted turn under the lip. So I did this mostly when a section was pitching over and I needed speed. If I tried to do speed turns backside under the lip or in the tube the lip would frequently contact my head and push it down till I fell off my board. Anyway this is about trying it out frontside. I went out at Hanalei which is a fast breaking right so frontside for me and the waves were about 4 to 5 feet so around 8 to 10 foot faces. The first time I tried it the lip smashed me in the chest and pushed me back down the wave. I was surprised to not fall because it smacked me so hard it sent water flying all over the place. I tried it again and same story and I did not fall again. So it was kind of fun because really I was getting smashed by the lip and all it did was push me back down the wave sort of helping me complete the maneuver. So I just kept doing it over and over and over till on one wave I guess I was hitting the lip with my chest where it wasn't quite pitching over and it just grabbed me and held me and my board fell away under me leaving me hanging caught in the lip with my legs dangling below me and the board somewhere under me. So when the lip let me go I was preparing to get speared in the back with my fin or something awful but instead I landed softly on my board with my feet facing down the line. I was just completely amazed to be safe and back on my board and realized I needed to do something because the wave was going to tube out in front of me so I grabbed the rail and pulled the board into a higher line and got tubed laying flat on my back. I was looking down the line initially and the lip was well in front of my board so I figured I would be eating it shortly so I relaxed and looked up at the lip. I could see the sky through the lip and it was a beautiful sight. Suddenly I came out of the tube and up ahead I could see it was going to tube again so I thought boy wouldn't it be neat if I stood up and got tubed standing on that part of the wave? So I stood up but wiped out. Some surfer was paddling out right there and he was saying "You got some fancy tricks there. What's that called?????" I answered "falling down" and he said "No the thing on your back....oh yeah the coffin. That's it the coffin." I told him about the getting caught in the lip and falling on my board. He was like "Oh yeah that's still pretty awesome. I would probably wipeout." It took me a while to realize it was awesome and not necessarily a total failure. I still remember how deep I was and how beautiful it was to look up at the sky through the lip.

[oldmansurfer]

Here is an incident from like maybe 50 years ago. It's probably something most long time surfers have done as we are the de facto lifeguards. Back when I was just out of high school one of my friends managed to get a new surfboard. It was the latest design a "stinger", something I had only heard about and not ridden till then. Here it was and I had no clue how he got the board since he had no money as far as I knew. I didn't press him for an answer as to how he got it since I really didn't want to hear it figuring he had done some kind of shady deal. But my friend knew I wanted to try the board out and see how it worked so he offered to let me try it out one day at Kealia Landing.



I surfed on it for about an hour and then decided I wanted my board back so I went in and waited on the beach for my friend to come in. The board was ok but I still preferred my own board. While I was waiting I saw a guy running down the beach from the Kapaa side of the beach. I started worrying that maybe this was his board and my friend stole it so I made up my mind that if that was the case I would just hand over the board. As he gets closer I hear him yelling at me and I think Oh my gosh it is his board so I kind of hold it out away from my body so he can take it easily but he stops by me and catches his breath a little and says his friend is drowning and and needs help while pointing down the beach to the Kapaa side more than 100 yards away. I guess he was so out of breath from running that I couldn't understand what he was yelling as he ran. I look down at the Kapaa side of the beach and there are 4 people in the water so I say "Looks like someone else is already out there helping your friend." He responds "Those guys don't know what they are doing. Come on! Help out my friend he's drowning" motioning me with his arm to follow him and then he runs down the beach so I follow him. At about a third of the way back to where his friend was the guy got completely winded so I continued on by myself.



By the time I get there there are only 2 people out in the water so I jump in and paddle out. One was outside the break and the other just inside of the break. I could not tell which one was having problems so when I got to where they could hear me I yelled "Which one of you is having problems?" The guy closest to me, a fit looking haole guy says "Me,Me,Me, I am!" So I put him on my surfboard and start pushing him in. There was a slight current going out right there but I was a strong enough swimmer to overcome that even pushing the board in and swimming behind it. I figure that is why he got into trouble this slight current was more than he could handle. He starts yelling at me "We're not getting closer to the shore!" I tell him calmly "We are." He says "No we aren't. We're hardly moving." I told him to relax and we were getting closer and that he was on the board so he wouldn't drown even if I did. Then I hear the other guy yelling "Help! Help!" So I ask the guy I am pushing in if the other guy was having problems too? He says "Yeah. I swam out to help him and got a cramp in my leg." I screamed "Why didn't you tell me?" Then calmed down and said "I have to leave you and go help that other guy. Just hang on to the board and I will come back and get you once I help the other guy." He was screaming at me that he didn't want to die and that he was going to drown. I pointed out that he had the board and He could float till someone else came for him if I drowned.



I swam out to the other guy who was a big Hawaiian guy. He seemed OK and because he was big he floated well so I asked him if he was in real trouble or just tired. He said he was tired so I told him I would take him in through the surf. I asked if he could hold his breath and he said he could so I told him that we were going to get hit by waves but if he could hold his breath it would be OK. He agreed so I proceeded to tow him into the breaking surf. The waves were only about 2 to 3 feet (4 to 6 foot faces) in that area and not big enough to pound us too hard but would help us get in. I watched and when a wave was coming I would tell him to take a deep breath and then as it hit I would push him up as high as I could and the wave would push him in then I would go get him and make sure he was OK then repeat this till we were well inside the break. By then my friend who had seen me go down the beach came down to find out what was up and paddled out to me. I told him what the problem was and he offered to take the big local guy in on the board he had (my board) so I swam back to my first victim and helped him get the rest of the way in.



The haole guy who had swam out to help the local guy disappeared without saying a word once we got to the beach. I went to the big local guy and asked if he was OK and offered to go call an ambulance or anyone else if he needed. He said he didn't need anything else and that he was so thankful that I helped him, he wanted to give me money for it. I told him not to worry and that if I was in trouble and he could help me I am sure he would have so don't worry about it. He kept saying "Thank you , thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you....etc" I decided to leave before he got his breath and tried to force me to take money so I asked if he was OK again and he said he was and endless thank you's after that and I got my board back from my friend and we went back to the surf.

[BoMan]

Gluing fins to a matt...I never thought of that.
Genius!

[jaffa1949]

Gluing fins to a matt...I never thought of that.
Genius!

A great Aussie invention, not the fins, the surfoplane was invented in high inflation strong rubber as you see there by Dr. Ernest Smithers in 1933 they were often inflated a at the local beach service station ( read gas station for Americans) . Very popular until,the 1970. when soft mats and the earlier boogie boards became popular. There is currently a resurgence.
BTW the finned models were around for a while the first ones being done with bicycle tyre repair patches but later made by the manufacturers !

[oldmansurfer]

I wrote this 9 years ago and very likely was surfing all by myself in waves in the range of 4 to 6 foot Hawaiian . " Nice little 30 minute outing at the beach. Fun waves, not too small not too big, sun was shining, water was comfortable, sharks didn't eat me and I didn't drown.... overall a good session."

[oldmansurfer]

This is about a surf trip I took when I was at University of Hawaii. Most often I would walk to the beach from the dorm. It took me about 20 minutes but hey that was better than not surfing and the beach bus actually took longer. I had a friend Gregg who had a car and sometimes he would take me surfing on Tuesdays or Thursdays when I only had a class in the afternoon. We went to Diamondhead which is off the iconic mountain in Waikiki photos. You park at the top and walk down a long path to the bottom. When we got there, I saw a nude girl laying flat on her back with her mouth wide open. I was worried there was something wrong with her so I approached her and asked if she was okay. She said she was fine and asked why I wanted to know. I said because she was laying there in an odd position so it was concerning. She mentioned that she was trying tan the inside of her mouth. I said "Why?" and she explained it was because she thought it was healthy. I told her "You know the sun causes skin cancer?" and she answered "Yeah but I eat organic so I will be okay." I knew lots of people just like her from spending time living on a commune a few years earlier so I just went on the check out the surf as it was pointless discussing anything further with her..

The waves were breaking just overhead in the range we would call 3 to 4 feet. While the waves looked good it was crowded in the two spots we had surfed before but there was a wave breaking on the inside that looked pretty good and no one was riding it. It was a fun little left and I was getting tubed regularly. Gregg on the other hand was not doing so well. At one point he accused me of stealing all the waves but I told him he was in the wrong place to catch the wave and I was letting him try to catch waves but he wasn't catching them so I would catch another one. He didn't want to come out a little further to where I was and catch the waves there and still accusing me of taking the good waves. Well by then I had caught lots of waves and gotten tubed numerous times so I told him I was going in and he could have the waves to himself for as long as he wanted.

I went in and found a group of local guys drinking beer they greeted me and I approached them and they offered me a beer. So I hung out with them and drank beer while Gregg tried to catch waves. These guys were just like the guys I knew back on Kauai. We got along pretty good but we had a few beers and they started getting angry at the girl nude sunbathing. When they got to the point of trying to decide if they should rape her or just beat her up I decided it was time to do something. She was now standing on her head and spreading her leggs wide open which I didn't have to ask her why she was doing that from my earlier conversation with her. So I just told her she should leave. She said why? and I told her those guys were getting drunk and angry with her for nude sunbathing and who knows what they might do with a couple more beers? It took a bit of convincing as she was sure she never had any problems there before and I said that didn't matter because she was about to have problems now.

She put on her clothes and I accompanied her back up the path to the parking lot and and left so I waited there for Gregg. When he arrived I asked if he caught any waves and he hadn't. Oh well I told him what to do. Weird outing LOL but I had fun.

[oldmansurfer]

Gregg had a fear of taking off another 10 to 15 feet outside where I was lined up. To me it seemed like the perfect place to take off on that wave but apparently he tried it and had a bad experience although I can' imagine what happened as it seemed to be the kind of waves that I was completely unafraid of. This incident made me rethink about a couple outings we had at Maili point. This was a fast breaking left and both times we were out it was in the 6 to 8 foot range and to me much scarier than that little break. I took some heavy poundings there although not enough to discourage me from surfing there. He said he enjoyed it. I don't recall seeing him riding any waves but both times there were lots of waves and I was riding the wave further in than him. There was a shallow hollow section about two thirds of the rideable wave in and while you could just do a couple speed pumps and be on the other side of the section I wanted to get tubed so I was working on the timing to get tubed there and make it back out. The water sucked up the face a lot in that area so it slowed you down. It was near the end of the second time surfing that break before I got the timing down. But anyway I was messing around wiping out or making it through and surfing the wave way in so I figure he had caught a wave and paddled back out by the time I got outside again. But after the above incident I wonder if he was just waiting for the waves that I would never take off on because they weren't steep looking waves? Anyway those waves scared me but the waves at Diamondhead did not.