My story post 31. Significant surfing days.

It was a late summer day in September 1967. Warm, sunny, with light variable winds and some how I ended up at the beach when the tide was about to make its turn from a low of around 1.5 feet.

The sand was of course all filled in from the summer months so there were no cobles showing along the point. With no leashes back then, and never a thought of one, with the lower tide and only sand along the beach made a lost board a casual swim to the beach knowing your board would wash up on sand instead of a frantic one with worries of your board being washed up over rocks.

I went down to the point alone in my 61 VW bus, the ultimate surf car. When I arrived it just so happened that one other local guy, Steve Shaw, was there too. Steve “pee wee” Shaw was a good surfer, one of the crew, with some notoriety from a picture that made Surfer Magazine of him on a clean Stanley’s wall. One of the very few published pictures of surf from that now long extinct surf spot.

So what greeted our visit to the point that afternoon? To our stoked amazement we saw perfect 6 to 8 foot faced waves stacked up like corduroy reeling down the point with not another soul around. School had already started so that explained a little but still… was there a tidal wave alert or something? How cared? We where on it in short order.

Having surfed all these years days like this when everything has lined up so perfectly get etched in your memory, it doesn’t matter how long ago, they are available for recall at the mere thought. This was one of those days.

Just me and Steve paddling out and over wave after perfect wave casually working our way around the line up for the best take off spot and dropping into the biggest and best waves of every set. Laying out bottom turns with everything we had, racing down the line under feathering wave faces, hanging through sections planted on the nose, cutting back and doing it all again on the same wave, then paddling back out to the line up. We where like yoyos on a string from Figueroa St. to well below Palm St. until we had our fill.

I still remember my last wave. Coming down the line and executing a big roller coaster on the inside wall off and riding to the beach in the white water left from the long ride that started way up the point.

As I walked back up the beach I was greeted by one of the local guys that had just showed up and witnessed my last ride. He said “I didn’t think you would make that last move”. It was only one of many being pulled off by Steve and I for at least the last couple hours. And, I don't think either one of us ever swam for a lost board.

D.R.

Days to remember