No Translation Needed: ERGO

Since its 2004 founding in California, PaddleAir Products Inc. has been helping surfers around the globe paddle longer so that they can surf stronger and longer. The popularity and functionality of PaddleAir is swelling with the introduction of the ERGO as this video from Spain's SportHitec demonstates.

No translation is necessary to achieve the same results: Just a board, surf, and ERGO.

The Juniors Take Makaha and Meet The Duke

This is the third and final excerpt from Paraffin Chronicles about the first year the Wind an Sea Surf Club went to the Makaha International Surfing Championships. The Characters in this story are all in their 60s and above, and those who are still alive are still part of the surfing brotherhood that was formed some 50 years ago. Long live Wind an Sea.

The next day they planned to run the men's division. It was huge. Twenty-foot Makaha Point Surf, what a sight to see. We all climbed up the judges towers to get a view. Oh man, it was scary. That point I mentioned, Clausmeyers, it had morphed into what they call a cloud break, because the waves break out so far they look like clouds. We heard that Phil Edwards had lost his board on a big wave and that it had drifted all the way out to Clausmeyers and broken in half. Phil was out.

The one guy who really ripped that day was Mickey Munoz. He caught some huge waves. Joey Cabell was good, too. They both surfed for Wind-an-Sea, and Joey ended up winning the men's division.

The junior final was held days later in smaller surf, the kind we all would have loved, and Fred Hemmings won.

The day after the contest, they bused us all into town and we got to surf Waikiki. It was wintertime, of course, and there wasn't much surf. But we had a great time just being on hallowed ground. Diamond Head reaching up to a dark blue sky. Clear, warm water. The hotels lining the beach. We were charged and ended up paddling all the way out to Number Threes, just for the fun of it. It didn't take much to make us happy, and the occasional three-footer that came through would be attacked by a dozen whip-cut gremmies with red trunks.

Herb Torrens at Mailie, 1964. Photo by LeRoy Grannis.

That night, a famous local photographer, Clarence Maki, had a party for us at his house and Duke Kamanamoku was there. I'm assuming you know who the Duke was. If not, let me just say that he was a Hawaiian legend. Make that surfing legend. Oh hell, he was legend of legends. I mean it. He helped introduce surfing to California in the first part of the 20th Century. He won Gold Medals for swimming in the Olympics. He made movies with Johnny Weissmuller, who also was a Gold Medal Olympic swimmer and played Tarzan. The Duke. One of a kind. Real man. Real surfer.

Anyway, there we all were with the Duke himself holding court. Great party. Hawaiian style. There was kalua pig and lome lome salmon and poi. And, we all got to wear lava lavas. You know, those little wrap-around skirts. Okay, they made us wear them. Clarence took our pictures with Duke, a couple of which made it back home to appear in the local newspapers. Pretty cool. I remember Duke being very soft spoken and humble in a way. Yet, he had an aura of royalty. The look in his eyes when he smiled, the smooth texture of his voice, his wavy white hair, the Duke was an icon and we were all honored to be in his presence.

A couple of days later, we got to go to the North Shore. Thor rented two vans to take us there with our boards. We were charged, but when we came over the top of the hill and caught our first glimpse of Haleiwa, our excitement turned to shock. It was closed-out. Meaning, the waves were breaking out so far that none of the regular spots would be rideable. A huge north swell on a blustery side-wind-type day. Pete Johnson told us the only place we would be able to get in the water was, you guessed it, Waimea Bay. Oh man, I already had enough of big surf.

Of course, that's where Petey Johnson had made his name. So it looked like we might all be talked into going out there. We looked at Haleiwa first. No way. It was closed out, and outside there was this big cloud break they called Avalanche. Yeah, they surf it now, but this was before jet skis, and cords. You had to be crazy to go out there. Maybe you still do.

We made our way out to Waimea and were kind of surprised to find a sort of peaceful little bay with just a few waves breaking off the point. It didn't look so bad, at first. A closer look showed a horrendous shorebreak, which meant the waves outside were bigger than they looked. Much bigger.

Petey was Right
We hiked out on to the point and gathered at a spot where we could see the outside waves. There was no one out, so it was hard to tell how big they were. Petey said they were 15-plus, but then someone said no way. An argument broke out with Petey getting really mad. We must have been arguing for about 15 minutes out there when some one suddenly jumped up and said there was a guy paddling out.

A set came wrapping around the point and we strained our eyes for a glimpse of the lone surfer braving Waimea. We saw him paddle up a wave that had to be four or five times overhead. Then someone said, "Hey, that's Strada!"

Strada? We looked at each other. Larry Strada had been with us when we started the argument about the waves, then he just sort of disappeared. So, here's Strada scratching to get out over this set. And we were all jumping up and down. Petey was yelling "I told you so."

Luckily Strada made it out without getting caught inside. Then one of the seniors, Mike Burner, grabbed a board and paddled out. We couldn't believe it, Larry Strada paddled out alone at Waimea, and Burner went out to see if he needed any help. Burner got outside and then they both ended up paddling in without catching a wave. I always wondered what they said to each other out there.
(Note: I ran into Mike years later, after this book was published, and he said “yeah I read it, and you were wrong about Waimea. It wasn’t that big and it wasn’t even breaking yet.” Well, what can I say? I was 14, and it sure as hell looked big to me. You can ask some of the others who were there, but I’m sticking to my story.)

There was no way anyone else was going out, so we went up the valley to Waimea Falls and jumped off the cliff. It was fun, but man that water was cold. Colder than the mainland water in winter.

That afternoon, we were on our way back to Wainai when we saw that the huge surf on the North Shore was also wrapping down the west side of the Island. We stopped at a place called Maili Beach, made famous by Phil Edwards and Mike Hynson in Bruce Brown's "Surfing Hollow Days." It turned out to be the best surf of the entire trip. Perfect four-to six-foot rights with the sun shining through the back of the waves. We surfed until dark. That was what Hawaii was all about.

Those two weeks in Hawaii seemed like a lifetime. We all returned to the coast with a different attitude. Some how much older than when we left. We'd seen the big waves, felt the majesty of Hawaii and shared times that none of us would ever forget.

The Junior Take Makaha: Part Two

This is next installment of Paraffin Chronicles that looks at how the Juniors did in the big surf and how important the famous Hawaiian watermen can be when the waves are big. And they got big, and then they got bigger...

Francis Thompson became a close friend that day. He was experienced and so damn funny and relaxed about it all that it helped me forget my fears. There were lifeguards out in the water. Big Hawaiian guys on huge tandem boards. Some were in the channel and some were out on the point. They told us where to go, and what to watch for on the horizon.

I listened to them and managed to paddle out around the bowl. I didn't want to go way out on the point, my plan was to sit as far outside as I could get and then paddle in when the heat ended. Good plan. But then a set came cranking around the point. I just remember these huge green walls. I paddled over the first one. There were a couple of guys outside of me and two of them swung their boards around to take off. I thought the wave was going to break on me, which wouldn't have been a real bad thing. Hey, if I survived the wipe-out, I could swim in with no shame.

The guys paddling for the wave couldn't catch it, and one of them yelled at me to go. I don't know what exactly happened except that I was suddenly turning my board around and stroking in to the biggest wave I'd ever even seen. That out-of-body thing again. A little terrified voice inside of my head screaming "what are you doing?" Then the body just taking over. "All hands on deck...battle stations."

I couldn't believe the feeling of catching that wave. The speed, the wind. I did my Peter Cole stance, this time it was entirely appropriate. The drop was iffy. Like jumping off a two-story building and trying to keep your balance through the air. My trusty Jet board hung in there and I made it to the bottom of the wave in tact. I turned and was flying--I mean it--flying across this big wall. A few seconds of pure ecstasy. Oh what a great feeling. Then I see the famous Makaha Bowl waiting for me at the end of the line like a big cat, ready to reach out and smash me with its claw. I slid down the face and made it as far as I could before straightening off.

Makaha Rules

The rules of the contest, Makaha Rules, took points off if you touched your board so I remained standing and widened my stance. The soup hit me and knocked me back, but some how I made it out still on my feet. I could see the calm water of channel ahead so I leaned in and bombed the whitewater in that direction. Somehow I emerged on this really nice eight-foot shoulder. I made a cutback, then a bottom turn and another cut back. Hey, this was fun!

I rode that baby all the way to the shorebreak and even walked up and hung five before the end of the ride. It was the greatest feeling. I stroked back out the channel, actually hoping to get another ride. I was about half way to the bowl when another big set came through. One of the lifeguards in the channel looked at me then told me to paddle over toward him. I did, and then he instructed me to cut across the break a little and pick up one of the shoulders if no one was on it.

That was scary, but I followed his instructions and sure enough I got a nice big shoulder and rode it in. Drop-knee cutbacks and big bottom turns. It was great. I got one or two more just like it and never did get back outside again. At the end of the heat I came in and was very stoked.

A couple of the guys came up and I told them all about catching the inside waves. At the end of the day, we got the heat results. Four of us had made it into the semi-finals: Francis Thompson, Curt Slater, Mark Hammond and me. It was pretty cool, for a brief moment there, actually about two days, we were the kings of the juniors. No one was making fun of my Jet board anymore.

On the morning of the semis, I remember waking up and thinking about what I was going to do. I was laying in my bunk when someone came in to the room and said that the surf had come up. Come up? Oh man, how big was it? It was big.

When we got to the beach, we saw solid 15-foot point surf. They were talking about postponing the juniors, which I was all in favor of, but I'm pretty sure Fred Hemmings talked the judges into running the heats. It was his kind of surf and he was a local boy.

I'll never forget putting my jersey on and waxing my board that day at Makaha. I had to piss really bad. Nerves? Heck yes. I peed my pants and it was all I could do to try and hide the big wet spot as I was running down the beach to jump in the water.

This time I wasn't even going to try and make it outside. I didn't want any part of those monsters out there. Francis Thompson was with me again, and I had told him about my plan. I was going to hang in the channel and when a set came in, I would cut across in front of the bowl and catch a big shoulder. Good plan, right?

Well, Francis thought so. We were there straddling our boards when this huge set comes around the point. We made our move, but miscalculated the size and power of the waves. When surf gets big, the whole line-up can change fast. So, here's Francis and I paddling across in front of this big set. We were smiling and all stoked. Then the first wave looms out of the deep water. I looked over at Francis and his eyes are bugging out. I'm sure I had a similar look on my face.

We both realized that we had made a huge mistake. The wave exploded about 20 yards in front of us. We were definitely screwed. There was nothing to do but dive off our boards and get as deep as we could. The classic move for that was to stand up on your board and then dive off. Francis was about 20 feet further out than I when we both stood up on our boards preparing to dive. The last thing I saw was Francis standing up and then tripping on his foot. He fell on his board and got eaten alive by the soup. I dove and swam as deep as I could. The soup was killer. It was like a monster with huge arms coming down from the sky and grabbing me. Then I was being tossed about and dragged. My lungs were exploding. The pure violence of nature.

After an eternity of being thrashed around, I flailed up to the surface. I looked around and no Francis. Then a couple of seconds later here comes this brown head popping out of thick foam, and it’s Francis. Man, you should have seen his eyes. Like silver dollars! Then we both laughed. The next soup got us again, and it wasn't as bad as the first. I guess we'd been swept in a good distance. We made it to the beach, and saw both our boards being swept out to sea in a huge rip. They were headed for this big point south of Makaha called Clausmeyers.

Somehow we managed to swim out and get our boards, but that was all for the contest. We were out, but we had some stories to tell. The surf kept coming up and up.
In the next installment, we will see who the real men were when it came to riding big waves. The Juniors get to go to the North Shore, shave ice, and more…

The Juniors Take Makaha

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This is the second installment of excerpts from Paraffin Chronicles in honor of the Wind an Sea Surf Club’s 50th Anniversary in 2013. It was December of 1964 and the Wind an Sea Surf Club was about to make its “international debut” at the Makaha Championships.

The Juniors Take Makaha

The highlight of that year was going to Makaha to surf in the world's most prestigious surfing contest. Makaha, of course, is the world famous big-wave surfing spot on the west shore of Oahu in Hawaii. Thor Svenson organized a raffle and we all sold tickets to earn our way there. It was kind of hard for those of us up the coast to sell tickets for a raffle in San Diego. I think I only sold two, so my parents chipped in, as did Dr. Nuuhiwa. In the end, both David and I got to go. Oh what a trip that was.

Photo by Tom Keck

It started at old Lindbergh Field in San Diego (Now San Diego International Airport). My parents dropped me off in the care of our chaperones, the Senior division. Butch, Hasley, Root Swan were all there. Not all the juniors got to go, but most of us made it. Peter, David, Dickie Moon, Huey McIntosh, Ricky Ryan, Rullo, Close, Strada. We took off about midnight headed for Honolulu on a chartered Saturn Airlines propjet.

Jet, my ass! It was what they called a rubber-band airplane. Fourteen hours of drowning propellers and tight accommodations. Can you imagine? All of us kids having pillow fights and food fights up front, while all the seniors sipped cocktails and flirted with the stewardesses in the back. It was a scene. Nobody got any sleep.

I remember being glued to the window all the next morning trying to catch a glimpse of the islands. Sometime the next day, we landed in Honolulu. Aloha. Yeah, the Hawaiian girls were all there in hula skirts, putting leis around our necks and giving us kisses. You should have seen Butch lay a huge kiss on this one hula girl.

They piled all of us juniors on a school bus and headed out to the west side. That was about a two-hour ride in itself. Still, with the adrenaline pumping, we were feeling no pain. In fact, even though we were staying in Wainae, we talked the bus driver into driving us straight out to Makaha, just to check it out.

When the bus pulled up in front of the surf spot, we all ganged to the windows. The surf was just like I'd remembered in the surf movies. About six-foot, beautiful aqua green waves, with a huge backwash. It was crowded. Really crowded. We watched a couple of waves and then saw this one guy really ripping, super style, radical cutbacks. Petey Johnson immediately identified the rider as Phil Edwards. We were impressed. Actually, later we learned that Phil hadn't even made it over yet. The rider was a young Australian nobody had ever heard of, Nat Young.

Later that afternoon, we arrived at the Wainai Church Camp and got word that getting to and from Makaha was going to be a problem. There would be a bus once a day. Other than that we were to hitchhike out there two or three at a time. Thor gave us small tokens of a little wooden foot, with the big toe sticking up. Hawaiian good luck charm for hitchhiking. Can you believe it?

That first afternoon there was no way any of us could get to Makaha, so we went exploring. Sure enough, we found surf. Pokai Bay was some type of military installation that had a nice beach. It had a little reef break outside. Kind of mushy with not much shape, but we attacked. The waves were thicker than mainland waves and they moved to the beach with more speed. We all had a little trouble judging the waves at first. It wasn't good surf, but there was something about the place, the warm water, the color in the afternoon that was way different, and very exciting. It sort of set the tone for what was to come.

Dave Rullo got the wave of the day. A clean four-footer on the outside. He ripped it up pretty good and the next thing you know, we were calling him the King of Pokai. After we all surfed, we gathered on the beach. I remember everyone kind of checking each other out. Most of the guys had new boards, made just for the trip. Many were already sponsored by board makers.

I wasn't. I was riding my second Jet board, which I'd had for about six months. It was nine-two and a little beat up. Actually, Quigg had done a little remodel job on the nose. He cut about two feet off the front and shaped a new, more pointed tip. It had some additional belly to it as well as some more kick in the front. I was stoked when he did it, but that afternoon, looking at all the new boards, I felt like I was wearing hand-me-downs. There was some comments, but I shrugged them off. Tough crowd.

There was an odd feeling that afternoon. Here we were a bunch of guys from all up and down the coast who hardly new each other, thrust into a situation 3,000 miles from home. Youngsters from different tribes, come together. Mark Hammond and Erik Murphy from Santa Barbara. Denny Tompkins from the South Bay, Jeff George from Malibu and David and I from Orange County. Most were from San Diego: Dickie Moon, Dave Rullo, and Larry Strada from the Shores. Francis Thompson, Curt Slater and Steve Jenner from Pacific Beach. Brad Owens and Hank Warner also from PB. Hugh McIntosh and Ricky Ryan from Ocean Beach.

We stayed at the Wainai Church Camp sleeping five or six to a room. It didn't take long to form alliances and give each other nick names. Soon we were banding about, playing pranks on each other's rooms.

Dinner with the Duke
On the first night, they bused us all to Waikiki to eat dinner at Duke Kamanamoku's famous restaurant in the International Market Place. Man, was that fine. Duke was there and the Martin Denny Band was playing "Quiet Night." The food was Luau style and really good. That night, they passed out our team gear: Wind-an-Sea T-shirts, red trunks with club patches and a whole bunch of other stuff, like the little wooden foot I mentioned. It was a grab bag full of goodies.

Thor Svenson gave the juniors a talk about conduct and how we were representatives of surfing. I didn't know what to think about Thor then. He was a small guy, probably in his 40s. He had dyed blond hair and wore a crew cut. Obviously not a surfer, but some how drawn to the surf culture. He was very good at what he did, and that was to organize and direct.

He orchestrated us. Told us what to do, how to act. He was the one who gave us the schedules, planned field trips to "Town" and the North Shore. He was strict and he had a way of talking to you that was very serious when you screwed up. He was a good guy though, and worked well with what had to be an outrageous band of wild kids.

The tone was set that first night at Duke Kamanamoku's. We were going to be a well-oiled surfing machine and we were going to show the world that surfers were good citizens. That, according to Thor.

The next few days we split our time between Pokai Bay and Makaha. The days at Makaha were great. The surf was usually about head high to slightly overhead. We watched as Buffalo, the legendary Hawaiian surfer, and his family of friends just ripped the place. I've never seen one guy have one spot so wired as Buffalo at Makaha. It was like he and the wave were of the same energy. He just flowed with the wave and knew exactly when to do things. Unbelievable.

We saw a lot of great surfing. Nat Young, Barry Kanaiapuni, Fred Hemmings were all in the outer limits, and guess what? They were all surfing in the Junior Division! Yep, Makaha Juniors were 18 and under. Maybe 17 and under, but whatever, all three of them were in the Juniors.

That kind of dampened our spirits a little. Even David was out-classed by these guys at Makaha. So we set our sites on having fun, and that we did. Learning how to turn around the back wash, and just enjoying the great speed of the Hawaiian waves. It was like the board became alive under your feet. Turning, nose riding, everything was easier.

Then the day came. Contest day. We arrived at Makaha early in the morning, the waves were the biggest we'd seen all week. A solid 10 foot. Point Surf as they called it. A whole new ball game. We watched in awe as Fred Hemmings rode a huge wave all the way from the outside point through the infamous Makaha bowl.

I never even knew what a "bowl" was, but I found out quickly that it was a place in the wave caused by a shallow spot in the reef. A bowl typically jacks up higher and throws out further than the rest of the wave. At Makaha, you had to rush through it before it broke, or straighten out in the soup. Nothing on the mainland had prepared us for a 10-foot Makaha bowl looming like a giant claw at the end of the wave.

Somehow we mustered up the courage to go out in our heats. I should say I mustered up the courage. Many of the San Diego guys were ready for it. I'd never been in waves this big. My big surf experience was limited to one day at Sea Side Reef in Cardiff that was about eight feet. Still, in the spirit of the day, I went out when my heat was called.



The next installment of Paraffin Chronicles  looks at how the Juniors did in the big surf and how important the famous Hawaiian watermen can be when the waves are big. And they got big, and then they got bigger...

Wind an Sea Surf Club...The Early Days

In honor of the 50th anniversary of The Wind an Sea Surf Club, we are publishing several excerpts from the book Paraffin Chronicles, written by PaddleAir’s Herb Torrens, a charter member of the Wind an Sea Junior Division.

Big Names from Wind-an-Sea

Late that winter, a guy named Gary Cook moved to Newport from Pacific Beach. Cook, a smooth and stylish goofy-foot, had been in several magazines and won a couple of contests in San Diego. Nice guy, too. He was immediately accepted into the Newport echelon, and like everyone else, was quite taken by David's prowess on the surfboard.

When Easter Week of 1963 rolled around, a bunch of Cook's friends came to visit from La Jolla. Probably came for the famous Newport partying that used to go on during Easter Week. They called it Bal Week back then, because hordes of tourists mobbed every inch of Balboa, and Newport. The main thoroughfare, Balboa Boulevard, would be bumper-to-bumper from morning to midnight. There are lots of stories about the goings-of of Bal Week. Wild parties, wild people, wild music and wild times. And, most of it was true as I recall.

One blown-out afternoon during Bal Week, we were hanging out at my house. David Nuuhiwa was there, and we were just doing kid things like trying to reshape the nose of this old Gordie with a shovel. There was a party going on next door and over the back fence we could see a bunch of guys drinking and talking. One of them was Gary Cook. He sees us and what we're doing and he motions to his friends. They check us out and start laughing.

Then Cook tells us to come over and meet some of his friends. We stayed on my parent's side of the fence, no use getting in any trouble. Right? So, he says "guys I'd like you to meet a couple of my friends. This is Mike Diffendiffer, Butch Van Artsdalen, Dave Willingham and Mike Hynson."  We look at them and say "yeah right." You have to realize, we are a bunch of little smart asses. Anyway, we call bull shit on them and they sort of get mad. Diff even takes out his wallet and shows us his I.D.

We were still skeptical. Plus, we'd never even heard about any Mike Hynson. That upset them even more. So Diff says that if we don't believe them we should come with them to the premier of a John Severson movie that night and see all of them on the big screen. We say: "Is it free?"

Sure enough, that evening we all pile into Diff's stationwagon and go down to Laguna Beach High School to see "Going My Wave". John Severson, himself, let us in. We were all somebody's little brother. Okay, you're probably thinking what kind of parents would let their 14-year-old boys go down to Laguna with a bunch of 20-somethings who had been drinking all day. Well, it was just a different time, that's all. I wouldn't do it today with my kids. No way.  But that was the way it was then.

What a heady night for us walking in with a bunch of big-name surfers. The movie, indeed, starred all the guys we were with. The highlight came when they all went out at Pipeline. It was only the second time anyone had ever ridden the wave. Phil Edwards rode one wave there for a Bruce Brown movie, but he really just rode the wave in survival mode. This time, these guys ripped it. Willingham and Hynson going backside on huge waves. And, of course, Butch getting the tube ride that defined tube riding at the time. When the movie was over, we were all believers. And, Hynson became one of our new heroes.

That night helped set the stage for what came next. Actually, it took a while. It was the following summer, when those same guys and their friends formed Wind-an-Sea Surf Club for the first-ever Malibu Surf Contest. No, I wasn't on that infamous bus-ride, nor was David or any other junior for that matter. Good thing too, from what I hear.

Okay, I should explain that for those of you who have not heard about "the bus ride."  The story goes something like this. The wild bunch at Wind-an-Sea decided they wanted to surf in the first-ever club contest at Malibu. Hey, it was Malibu! So, they formed a surf club on the spot, and rented a bus to drive them to the contest. What went on during the bus ride has grown to legendary proportion. Let's just say, they all had a really fun time and, miraculously, were still able to win the contest the next day!

Actually, after Wind-an-Sea's success in the contest, the crew got the idea to form a real surf club. A respectable surf club.

This was at a time when surfing was considered sort of a degenerate life style. The whole surf bum thing, probably extenuated by the character Kahuna in the movie Gidget. Society had a rather dim view of surfers in general. Our parents, for the most part, thought surfing was a phase and that we'd grow out of it. So much for that.

Wind-an-Sea Surf Club

Wind-an-Sea Surf Club, a titan at the Malibu Contest, became an instant force. Surf clubs were not yet popular. Mostly cliques of locals who had somehow pooled enough money to buy jackets or sweatshirts. Newport had the Newport Surfers in the early '60s. There were also the Dapper Dans from South Bay, Swami's from Encinitas, and there were a few others.

Wind-an-Sea President Chuck Hasley was quick to see that a sustained effort might help improve the surfing image. Of course, he wanted to have fun, too. And, Wind-an-Sea Surf Club was always fun. Chuck helped organize a junior division. He gave senior members the task of hand-picking a crop of hot up-and-comers to join the club. Gary Cook was one of the Wind-an-Sea Seniors.

Cook, still living in Newport, asked David and I to join. It was a giant step in a direction that led me away from my Newport surfing roots.

Other junior surfers from up and down the coast were asked to join, again hand-picked by one of the Wind-an-Sea seniors.  We got word to report to a meeting in Pacific Beach at a restaurant called Uncle Suzie's. It would be a long trip, on a school night if I remember right. My parents were supportive, as always, and somehow my dad arranged to car pool with some of the other parents. I don't remember how David got there, but I rode down with Howard Chapleau and Billy Hamilton. My dad and I drove down to Laguna and from there we all piled into one car with Billy's mom driving.

What a ride. I knew Billy and Howard from the beach, although not that well. Howard was a little older and was one of the kings of Doheny. Great drop-knee cutbacks. Billy was my age. Billy could do it all, and, just to piss guys like me off, he always had this big smile on his face. I remember surfing with him at Doheny, and he'd run up and hang ten, big smile, just looking at the rest of us as if to say "top that!."  It was a good show. Yeah, he had style, and still does.

That ride down to Uncle Suzie's took forever. No freeway in those days. Down the coast highway through Blood Alley, the stretch of road from San Clemente to Oceanside. It was three lanes. Cars going either direction could use the middle lane to pass. Oh yeah, it was named appropriately. Head-ons were an everyday deal on Blood Alley. Then you had to go through all the little towns in North San Diego County. Oceanside, Carlsbad, Leucadia, Encinitas, Cardiff, Del Mar. They just seemed to go on and on. Torrey Pines Grade was a big deal back then. It was a giant hill that cars and trucks had to chug up. Finally, you went over the top and down to La Jolla and Pacific Beach.

We were beat by the time we got there, but then the pure energy of the group took over. Man, what a scene. Here were about 20 or 25 of the hottest kids on the coast all in one room. Peter Johnson, Dickie Moon,  David Rullo, Jon Close, Larry Strada, Francis Thompson, Hank Warner, Hugh McIntosh, Ricky Ryan, Denny Tomkins, Mark Hammond and Curt Slater, just to name a few.

What a night. The energy was unbelievable. Probably the most famous junior then was Peter Johnson. He had been featured in the movies surfing Waimea Bay when he was about 11. And, of course, he was known as Phil's protégé. But, in that room, he was just one of the gang. Everybody was hot. Everybody had something to prove. What a great feeling.

We not only formed a pretty good surf club that night, we formed bonds that will forever hold us together. Those of us that are still alive will always have a special feeling for each other. Like I've said, the bonds of surfing last a lifetime.

Under the direction of President Chuck Hasley and advisor Thor Svenson, we created the Wind-an-Sea Club Junior Division. Jon Close was elected president. Our agenda was to dominate the USSA surfing contest circuit, and for awhile we did just that. Contests became the focus, and my parents would drive me up and down the coast every weekend to surf. Everywhere we went, the Wind-an-Sea juniors made an impression. And, we had the time of our lives.

Next Installment: “The Juniors go to Makaha”

Teahupoo Meat Grinders!

I just saw the video "Biggest Teahupoo Ever," (see below) and I'm still in shock. It was filmed August 27, 2011 by Chris Bryan using a "Phantom Camera," whatever that is. Anyway, it features big, gnarly virtually unrideable waves, that of course guys are riding now days.

What is it with these guys? Seriously, this is beyond comprehension. A friend of mine said it was the most "interesting, but boring video" he'd ever seen. In some ways, I agree. This is like watching someone grind meat on a hand-cranked meat grinder!

Bryan did an incredible job shooting and editing this piece of work, but to me--an old school guy--I have to wonder: "Did anybody make any of these waves?" Not in this video. I don't know, I think there's a mentality today that just wants to take it as far as they can until they get killed. Yikes!

 -- posted by Herb Torrens