Birth of The Endless Summer: A Surf Odyssey

By Jamie Brisick and Richard Yelland

“To be a surfer is to be a traveler,” writes former pro-surfer Jamie Brisick in the Scribd Original Birth of The Endless Summer: A Surf Odyssey.

As the tour guide through a series of stories (including his own) from surf luminaries and legends alike, Brisick takes readers on a breathtaking ride through intimate recollections of surfing life, from soul-searching and searching for the perfect wave to finding community across the globe. An impassioned voyage to destinations worldwide   ̶  including Teahupo’o in Tahiti, Pipeline at Oahu’s North Shore, Tavarua in Fiji, and Cape St. Francis in South Africa  ̶  Birth of The Endless Summer: A Surf Odyssey features the highs and lows of taking to the ocean. With reflections from surf pioneer Dick Metz and pro-surfers Rob Machado, Kassia Meador, Strider “Raspberry” Wasilewski, Nathan Fletcher, and Derek Hynd, to name a few, this is an odyssey that everyone can revel in.

Featuring a foreword from award-winning director Richard Yelland, whose documentary Birth of The Endless Summer pays homage to Bruce Brown’s historic film The Endless Summer and focuses on Dick Metz as he vagabonds around the world between 1958 and 1961  ̶  a trip that would ultimately lead to his discovery of the renowned “perfect wave” at Cape St. Francis  ̶ this Scribd Original companion book, just like both films, continues the “dream adventure that allows you to write your own ending.”

Each story in Birth of The Endless Summer: A Surf Odyssey is an eye-opening, exhilarating account of a surfer’s deep connection to the beauty   ̶  and danger   ̶  of the ocean’s waves and the road less traveled to get to them, as well as the impact Brown’s beloved The Endless Summer had on defining epic surf and travel culture for generations to come.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Everand Originals
• Release date: Jun 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9781094456096

Jamie Brisick

Jamie Brisick’s books include Dazzling Blue: Short Nonfiction; Becoming Westerly: Surf Champion Peter Drouyn’s Transformation into Westerly Windina; We Approach Our Martinis With Such High Expectations; and Have Board, Will Travel: The Definitive History of Surf, Skate, and Snow. His writings have appeared in The New Yorker, The Surfer’s Journal, and The New York Times. In 2008 he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship. He lives in Los Angeles.

Book preview

Chapter 1: The Odyssey Begins

It was 1975 and I was 10 years old, the youngest of 3 brothers. We were sprawled in front of the TV in our San Fernando Valley home. We’d just wolfed down whopping plates of the chocolate-chip pancakes that our mom made for us most Saturday mornings. My oldest brother, Kevin, looked up from the TV Guide and said, "Cool, The Endless Summer is on Wide World of Sports."

And so it began. Shimmering golden sea. That bright, surf-y soundtrack. Those peeling, smoky waves. It lulled us straight into a trance.

With slapstick narration, The Endless Summer frames surfing as wet, fun, playful, all in the realm of frolicking dolphins.

It tells us that the possibilities are infinite: you can stand-up surf, kneeboard, bellyboard, bodysurf, even sail. You can slide along on an ankle slapper, or you can hurl yourself off the ledge of a Waimea monster.

It’s so much more than just a sport. It’s a lifestyle. A life. And you can spend an entire lifetime doing it.

The ultimate thing to do in surfing is to be actually covered up by the wave, says the film’s director and narrator, Bruce Brown.

And it was then that I saw my very first tube!

Malibu is presented in all its sunstruck, carnivalesque glory. We watch Miki Dora, aka Da Cat, do his feline dance across the long, winding rights of First Point, a surf break rich in history and hilarity.

We watch a seal ride a wave with obvious jubilation — Nature’s greatest bodysurfer.

Then we meet Mike Hynson and Robert August, who embark upon their true Endless Summer. Clad in suit and tie, toting boards and briefcases, they’re both nerdy and James Bond–like as they travel to their first stop: Africa.

In Senegal, they pioneer a wonky reef break. In Ghana, they use sign language to get around and introduce surfing to a small fishing village. In Nigeria, they surf in ninety-one-degree water and steer clear of the deadly stonefish.

If you step on a stonefish, you die in about fifteen minutes, Brown narrates.

Then they cross the equator down to South Africa. In Cape Town, they meet local surfboard builder John Whitmore and hike to the top of the vertiginous Table Mountain. They hitchhike, make new surf buddies, ride horses on the beach, see giraffes and zebras and elands. In Durban, they surf with sharks.

Most memorably, and most triumphantly, they trek across three miles of Sahara-like sand dunes and stumble upon a dreamy, end-of-the-rainbow break called Cape St. Francis.

The waves looked like they’d been made by some kind of machine. The rides were so long I couldn’t get most of them on one piece of film….

Here’s Mike still riding that same wave at Cape St. Francis, as Brown describes it: On some of the rides, I timed them in the curl for forty-five seconds, he continues. The thing you can’t show is the fantastic speed and that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach. It’s the kind of wave that makes you talk to yourself…. I couldn’t help but think of the hundreds of years these waves must have been breaking here. But until this day, no one had ever ridden one…. Out of the whole day of surfing, we didn’t see one wave section or break in front of itself. Each wave was perfect.

From Africa, Hynson and August go to Australia. In Perth, they get skunked. At Bells Beach in Melbourne, they should have been there yesterday. In Sydney, they ride small, fun waves. We learn that good waves are fleeting, that surfing is very much about the chase.

They go to New Zealand and catch a bounty of trout and surf solo on Christmas Day at a reeling, left-breaking wave called Raglan. They go to Tahiti and surf a wave called Ins and Outs, where the waves actually break out to sea.

Then they travel to Hawaii where they go to Pipeline, a Roman gladiator’s pit so dangerous it almost defies description, says Brown. Often, a good wipeout will draw laughs. Not at Pipeline. We see a guy named Bob Pike exit the water bloody. His fellow surfers help him up the beach, as we learn that he suffered a broken collar bone and three broken ribs from smacking the shallow coral bottom.

The Endless Summer closes on a reflective, yearning note. The quivering sun meets the horizon. Cape St. Francis is hailed as the holy grail. Brown says, "With enough time and enough money, you could spend the rest of your life following the summer around the world. But for now, The Endless Summer must end. Thank you for watching."

I was deeply moved. My inner compass had been tugged. The message was clear. It wasn’t just a surfboard; it was a magic carpet. And the better you got at surfing, the more exotic places you’d get to ride.

I’d surfed a few times, felt little twinkles of its joy, but I was much more of a skateboarder. On the sidewalk, we emulated what surfers did in the water. It seemed inevitable. Skateboarding was the training wheels that we’d eventually shed as surfing took flight.

It happened on a family trip to Hawaii in 1977. My brothers and I rented banana yellow Morey Doyles (soft-top surfboards) from Kimo, a paunchy, dark-skinned Waikiki beach boy who had us set the boards on the sand, lay on them, mock paddle, and pop up to

Reviews for Birth of The Endless Summer

[David Bowen · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Insightful to share this connection of ocean shores and those who embrace it. Great read for one’s spirit ..

[Tony Grimminck · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I’m making my kids read this. They don’t surf (much) but that’s not really what the book is about….. loved it.