The Never Ending Journey

I remember the couple of days that perhaps contributed to changing my life forever. I was 17 years old, a skinny grommet, big ass head, (anatomically) long sun burnt hair, the same EE size ten feet and ruler of my home break; The Waikiki Wall. It was around three in the afternoon, I just finished my daily nutritious lunch at the local Jack in the Box. My mother used to give me one dollar a day. I used twenty cents on round trip bus fare and it cost me 83 cents for an order of fries and a milk shake. It was up to me to find three cents lying in the streets.

As I rested, this fire red head kid came up to me and asked me if I was going to enter the Point Panic Bodyboard Contest and proceeded to hand me an entry form. I instantly thought about my protective mother who confined me to riding just at The Wall as I had it wired and it was pretty safe. Well, like all good rotten kids, I occasionally rode one of the adjacent breaks, which were crowded with longboards, and shortboards, the very people she didn't want me to get injured from. I decided to make sure I would be on the very best of behavior before I hit her up. I cleaned the yard, stop beating up my older brother, stopped shooting the neighbors cats with my bb gun, (I think I switched to a less accurate slingshot) went on errands and went to bed on time, even though I was burning inside to watch my favorite Hogans Heros and Benny Hill. She finally figured out I was up to something when I actually took baths.

Mothers have these instincts that more often than not make decisions in the right direction. I hit my mom up with the idea to compete at Point Panic, a break I had never ever rode before and was three times more powerful than The Wall and way more dangerous, especially since its infested with sharks that follow tuna boats that enter the harbor. I think she knew I was on to something as I competed once at a contest and easily took home top prize. She also knew that I was doing something healthy and thanks to bodyboarding I was drug free. I was given the green light, one that almost turned red when I told her that I rode the adjacent break more than a few times.

The day of the contest she dropped me off at the contest site and without any Jack in the Boxs around I had a bag full of nutritious Hershey Bars, tuna sandwiches, coke and maybe even an orange. Team Morey was there, the same guys that I saw in all the cool ads. The one person that I wanted to meet, Jack Lindholm wasn't there but that seemed secondary as I got to meet and compete against some real pros.

Paddling out I remember watching these beautiful waves break in the same place and peel perfectly across the shallow reef. I also had logs in my pants, as I was terrified of sharks. After my first wave the tiger sharks lurking in my mind quickly disappeared. I did what I had to do and had a great time. I met Patti Serrano who was the big honcho at Morey at the time and was introduced to Mike Lambresi, John Blankenhorn and Scott Evans who were the visiting pros. At the end of the day my mother drove up and parked the family Valiant in the red dirt parking lot, just in time to see her son win the boys 15-17 division. I also got tons of prizes that Bob Thomas had distributed.

After the event my mom had to run some errands and she dropped me off at The Wall. Glowing in my achievement and feeling on top of the world, I paddled out to the adjacent break and had an absolutely flawless session. I idolized Jack Lindholm for the drop knee stance but I also loved Shaun Tomson for his grace and tube riding skills, Mark Richards for being the style master and Ian Kanga Cairns for raw power. Each wave I rode I felt like I had something from each and every one of them.

To cut a long story short a couple weeks later a guy named Roger Cundall, the local rep for Morey said that Serrano wanted to invite me to compete in the US Nationals in the professional division. My parents, understanding and loving, scraped up six hundred dollars from whatever means they could and sent me on my way. Two weeks later after leaving Hawaii I walked back in to my parents house with the shiny first place trophy, six hundred dollars first prize which I gave to my parents who instantly refused to take it, insisting that I use it for the following year when I would go and defend my title.

The rest just rolled and flowed from there. Mom knows best, very true but so did that red head kid. When I close my eyes really tight I see his freckly face, big gap between his two front teeth and big ass protruding ears. Could it have been Alfred E. Newman?

Equipment Progression

A general complaint many veterans claim are that waves during the old school days were better. They say that they remember consistent swells, clean conditions and of course less people to clutter lineups. Whether this statement bares any truth or not is extremely debatable. Could minute reef growths or deteriorations have that much effect? Are climate changes really preventing storms to develop and follow the same patterns they normally take? Are ecosystems thrown off that radically when houses are built on beachfronts? Is the fact that as you get older you become more selective and thus your wave riding hours are cut down which gives you the feeling that youre not getting as many good sessions? As a grommet youre more than certain to fight for scraps that the older, wiser and stronger crews wait for but on the same note youre out there hours on end, stoked that youre doing something you enjoy. Ahh, some things to think about and debate instead of digging your nose the next time youre bored.

As a whole bodyboarding has progressed since it was created some thirty-five years ago on the Big Island of Hawaii. Competition, videos, magazines, web sites, role models and new generations of riders willing to push the old one aside and go one step further, have all been instrumental. One more debatable topic is what or who should be credited to this development? Which one of the aforementioned holds the most importance to bodyboardings evolution? Im not a bodyboard shaper although I have, like many other (ex) pros dabbled in it from time to time, only to find my caffeine affected hands cut lines as crooked as a an offshore banker. Still, one factor that I think has greatly contributed to pockets of progression is board design.

In thirty five years, from when Tom Morey took that piece of packing foam in his loft, kitchen knife, Sunday funnies and clothes iron and hacked away a mammoth 50 inch board, the general shape really hasnt changed that much. What has though are materials and tail designs. Modern day boards average 42 inches in length and its underside possesses a slick surface made of surlyn polymers, high-density polyethylenes or other agents that serve as stiffener and helps water flow quicker. Moreys original idea of vacuum track rails hasnt changed much either, with the exception to angles and ratios. Three dimensional points, being nose the smallest, wide point being somewhere between the second and third fourths and tails being somewhere in-between nose and wide point are another peculiarity that hasnt changed much.

Tail design evolved little the first fifteen years or so. The first board had a flat tail and nothing but a big bevel cut, a design that stayed standard. Around 1982 we saw some changes, first from Morey Bodyboards who introduced the Mach 7 and its crescent tail. Although I felt an instant difference in board performance, I still wonder if it was due to the new tail design or the first mass-produced slick bottom. (18 months before the first Mach 7, Kavan Okumura and I were experimenting with polymer agents and brushing it on our Morey Pro Line boards, thus giving it a slick bottom). Scott Hawaii collaborated with Bobby Szabad and came up with the Foil design the next year. It looked like the original design before the Mach 7, but with more tail taper. Years went on before anyone came out with a solid design. People farted around with rounded tails and some went back to flat backs, mostly to complement small wave contest riding, which was in around that time. One day the master Stewart introduced another of his innovations with the bat tail. He took a page straight out of Cheyne Horans book who was extremely secretive with his winged keeled fin surfboards. He would come down to Off the Wall with several versions of design, rip waves to shreds, come to shore, get another board and cover the old one with towels. While Stewart was doing this, a crafty photographer took a photo of the board, which ran in Riptide Magazine a couple months later. It wasnt long after that every board company pirated the Maestros design.

The latest trend in design is in foam cores. Its come a long way from the spongy materials the first boards were made out of. It also took a lot of skill to ride these things. Companies are making claims that their new cores are the latest, greatest breakthroughs and perhaps many of them are viable declarations. Still, I wonder why Jack Lindholm was able to crank those legendary bottom turns at beastly Pipeline on those flex models and with the exception of Kainoa McGee, no one has been able to duplicate this feat, even with all the technological advance in design and material. Ahhh, stop digging your nose and think about it.

The Winners Circle
By: Keith Sasaki

Competition has existed for trillions of years, in every shape and form, be it microscopic organisms vying for better positions, which would enable it to break away and morph into some other form. Dinosaurs devoured smaller, weaker species with frail defenses and ruled the cold planet. (I think of them every time I fill my crappy car with gasoline. Poor bastards.) The miracle of life itself is a feat of competition where billions and billions
of spermatozoa (depends on what you ate a few days before) blindly, but instinctively vie to be the single warrior that will mesh with its awaiting cyclic counterpart.

The Mike Stewart International Pipeline Pro has evolved over twenty-one years as the world's most prestigious event. Three years ago it was only fitting that Stewart take over sponsorship when previous owners changed direction. Appropriate as, Pipeline to Stewart are synonymous partners, much as Augusta is to Tiger, Centre Court Wimbledon to Pete and the Pyrenees to Lance (Damned Americans).

Bodyboarding at Pipeline is relatively new, as is modern wave riding, compared to traditional sports. On the surface, our Caldwell's, Patterson's and Lindholms may not hold the same household weight as Palmer, Snead, Ashe, Le Monde or Ali, but those who know our history will contest this. Where would we be today if the visionary Caldwell got tired of landing on his head in his quest to invent the el-rollo? * A lot of media hype was directed towards a small band of surfers whose pursuit was to ride Kaena Point and Waimea at its limits. Along side them was JP Patterson who was always one up on them. He didn't have television stations following him, boats and lifesaving crews to back him up, yet he was prepared to paddle out into the same lineups, from shore, solo and ride those same waves. One day he and three surfers got caught out at Waimea. It's a little documented fact that JP continually let others into the helicopter rescue basket while he braved mountains of moving water, risking his life so others could reach safety before him. JP's big wave antics kept bodyboarding on the map for years tocome. Let's not forget Sir Jack "the Ripper" Lindholm. All odds against him, in 1977, he took his Morey Boogie 132 BE, flex model and would crank the biggest bottom turns on the biggest, meanest waves at Pipeline. I doubt that today's generation can fathom the degree of difficulty and skill this took. It's also a safe bet to say that NO ONE will ever repeat that feat.

All three of these watermen along with Stewart possess one quality; they master Her Majesty Pipeline.

Other sports may have events that act as media darlings, offer more prize money, brings out all the "beautiful people" and exudes a Hollywoodian atmosphere. Bodyboarding is no exception to the rule. Winning one of the glitzy events will bring you your fifteen minutes of fame under the sun. It may even put you in the record books, but to purists the Mike Stewart International Pipeline Pro is more a prestige event, one that everyone
wants to win, to be added to the honorable list of champions, to walk in the footsteps of Stewart, McGee and Tamega, those that have changed high performance bodyboarding forever. Attaining this is not an easy feat but he who comes out on top has no doubt felt the same eerie sensation of history, that Stewart has, nine times.

* Caldwell and Stewart have been co awarded as inventors of the el-rollo. Caldwell practiced and mastered it on the shores of Sandy Beach in front of hundreds of locals while Stewart simultaneously mastered it on obscure breaks on the Big Island of Oahu.