Surf Sessions

By Shark2th

The sport of surfing is so much more than just a water sport or paddling out and catching waves. It becomes a lifestyle or a perspective of life for many. Why is this?

Surfing teaches one to flow with nature and the elements. In order to excel, a deep understanding of the ocean, weather, coastal topography, and even marine life must be grasped. Somewhat contrary to the psychologically programmed ideals of society and civilization, surfing teaches balance with nature and the environment and gives one a sense of mans true niche in our ever-changing world.

The first in a series, this book shares true, chronologically compiled surfing stories that span two decades.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524544034

Shark2th

Shark2th dropped out of college in the early 1980s and started a surfboard factory on the Central Coast of California with a high school friend. He was a computer science major with backgrounds in marine biology, mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc. After a few years, he returned to working in construction, which he had done as a teenager. Awhile after that, he became a project manager for a sizable construction company in Southern California that catered to movie stars and other celebrities. The company’s work has been featured in the Better Homes and Gardens Architect Edition. In 1990, he joined the United States Navy and was assigned the job of fire control of nuclear weapons. He became the only man in United States history that a president has ever made an unscheduled flight to meet in the middle of the night during a war. A few months later, during the Gulf War, he became the first man to ever successfully argue a case to be released from military duty in order to facilitate becoming one of the first fathers in the State of California to be awarded sole legal and physical custody of a child.

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Copyright © 2016 by Shark2th.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 09/22/2016

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

747090

Contents

Preface

Chapter One Starting Out

Chapter Two San Miguel Trailer Park 1974

Chapter Three K-55 And Northward 1974

Chapter Four The Ranch 1975

Chapter Five The Ranch 1976

Chapter Six Maili Point And Makaha 1977

Chapter Seven Ala Moana 1977

Chapter Eight South Jetty 1983

Chapter Nine Willow Creek 1984

Acknowledgements

The Simple Message That Most Fail to See

Preface

The sport of surfing has greatly contributed to my life. Experiences shared with friends and in the ocean have taught me lessons or brought about perspectives that cannot be learned anywhere else.

This book is a compilation of true surfing experiences from my younger years and the friends I shared them with. One learns to adapt to conditions and face the challenges when situations can often change from fun to dangerous. The ocean and all aspects of nature must always be respected.

Chapter One

STARTING OUT

When I was about eight years old, I received a skateboard as a Christmas present. I remember the click-click-click of the metal wheels as I would spend hours riding back and forth down the sidewalk that led from the back patio and alongside the detached garage to the alleyway behind the house. I thought that someday, I might learn to surf. After all, my mother was from Hawaii, and I thought that it had to be in my blood.

The new house we had moved to in the summer of 1967 was up in rolling hills, which provided excellent skateboard runs. I skateboarded a lot when I was twelve to fourteen years old back in the early 1970s. I eventually made friends with other neighborhood kids that liked to skateboard.

I had skipped over the era of clay skateboard wheels, and the companies Cadillac Wheels and Roller Sports Wheels were now making urethane plastic wheels that would catapult skateboard performance ahead dramatically. The grip and speed of the new wheels and the improved ball bearing systems, along with the design upgrades to the trucks, offered an incredible leap in performance.

Curtis, Bob, and I skateboarded and played baseball together; we actually played on opposing baseball teams. I got to be friends with them during our junior high years, although we attended different schools. We ended up attending the same high school. They encouraged me to learn how to surf while we skateboarded throughout the neighborhood.

I have to give credit to these two, as the friends that initially got me to start surfing. We skateboarded a lot in the neighborhood, and we became well known. There were actually days when younger kids would run up to us after we did high-speed runs down a long, steep road named Valley Vista. It was cool that all these kids knew our names, and they would sometimes ask us for autographs. I guess we were their local neighborhood heroes.

I recall the surfing magazines of the early to mid-1970s that covered skateboarding before there were any skateboarding magazines. The skateboard companies’ ads would be claiming speeds clocked at thirty-two miles per hour. We used to laugh at these full-page ads because we had friends chase us down a huge local hill in their cars to clock our speeds. We were easily hitting over fifty miles per hour back in those days.

Curt, Bob, and I began to surf together often. Our parents would drive us to Silver Strand Beach in Oxnard or wherever the waves were good in Ventura County. We usually surfed both days of the weekends, and we would occasionally make an afternoon session during the week.

Our favorite spots were County Line on the way to Malibu at the southern end of Ventura County and the Rincon at the northern end. Rincon Point was right on the border of Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties.

Our parents would have the patience to sit and watch while we surfed our two- to three-hour sessions. Sometimes they would just drop us off and come back later to pick us up.

Bob could get us onto Point Mugu Naval Air Station because he was a military dependent. His father was a marine test pilot— actually, one of the first on the F-14 Tomcat. His father also held the world record for g-forces pulled in the centrifuge. Bob’s older sisters or grandfather would often take us on the military base to surf an incredible spot called Pelican Point. The point faced due south and was made up of sandbars that created very hollow and fast lefts. Because of the topography of the ocean floor off the coastline, Pelican Point was almost always bigger and more powerful than anywhere else nearby.

Curtis’s father was an airline pilot, he had retired from the air force. He liked to stick around and watch us surf. His father had surfed when he was a kid, back in the days of the longboards. Curt’s mother would often take us surfing and spend time on the beach with Curt’s younger brother.

My parents couldn’t drive us to the beach as often. I was the oldest of six children, and Mom always had too many things to do. She was a schoolteacher. My father was always working to support our large family. He was a physicist for the Department of Defense. Because he was a civilian employee, he could not get us on the naval base to surf. He would occasionally take us all to the Oxnard beaches on weekends and watch the three of us surf for hours at a time.

In high school, we had dozens of friends that surfed and skateboarded. While my skateboarding was top-notch, I considered myself a novice at surfing, and it took a long time to get better like all my friends. I was determined to get as good as they were.

When I was fourteen, my first used surfboard was old and beat up. Bob found it for me for forty dollars. I didn’t need anything better yet. I wasn’t good enough to need a higher-performance board.

As I got better, friends gave me advice on what kind of board I should try to acquire next. After making my way up the ladder to better surfboards, doing a newspaper route on my bicycle for money, my father pointed out something to me.

He said, Those surfboards can get expensive. Why don’t you learn how to build them?

I was the oldest, and my father had taught me how to do many projects, including how to use power tools safely and responsibly. He loved to work with wood and had a big radial arm saw. When I was thirteen years old, he felt that I was skilled enough to use all the power tools unsupervised. My father would let me make custom skateboard decks for friends and would give me tips on power-tool use. I used mostly mahogany, oak, and ash wood. I even designed my own logo for Tube skateboards. Skateboarding was a daily routine back then. Some may call me crazy but over forty years later, I still skateboard on occasion.

One evening, my younger brother’s friend, Rich, brought up a book on surfboard construction. He had been surfing since he was young, so he loaned me his book. I read it and studied it every night for weeks after I did my homework. I became familiar with all the steps of surfboard construction and the terms used in the surfboard industry before I even attempted to build a board.

In order to shape my first surfboard, I bought an old beat-up longboard for cheap. I peeled the fiberglass from its polyurethane foam core and shaped my first board at fifteen years old. It was OK, but I didn’t know enough about design and