WINGNUT’S COMPLETE SURFING

By Robert “Wingnut” Weaver Scott Bannerot

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Copyright © 2009 Scott Bannerot and Robert Weaver
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-07-149706-0

Contents

Chapter One

Surfing Success A PREVIEW

by Scott Bannerot

In surfing, as in anything worth doing, proficiency comes with practice. Practice in our case means picking up a purpose-designed fiberglass “board,” walking to the water’s edge, and literally taking the plunge. This plunge will cost money, time, and considerable energy. Since this book is designed to help you do this with the least pain and the most fun, we’ll naturally present the topic in some detail. But before we get into the how, let’s address the why. Why go surfing?

Can you remember, as a child, giving yourself wholly to the pursuit of an activity that brought you joy? It might have been swimming, shooting baskets, fishing, or some more sedentary activity, but while you were engaged in it hours would melt away unnoticed. When we come of age and in all likelihood are forced to spend an inordinate amount of time earning money, we forget the timeless joy of undistracted engagement in an activity pursued for its own sake. We forget how to play.

Surfing takes you back there. It makes you feel like a kid again. Even for the average, garden-variety participant, surfing is such a unique synthesis of physical exercise and conditioning, intellectual stimulation, and immersion in natural beauty, and is just so downright happy and thrilling, few who experience it can ever let it go. Surfing makes your soul smile.

Defining Success

Whether you start playing the guitar, taking golf lessons, training for marathons, acting, writing, learning martial arts, or participating on a sports team, you usually have an ultimate goal, conscious or unconscious, and you keep running and rerunning a cost- benefit analysis relative to that goal—prospective pain versus prospective gain. When will you consider yourself successful? When you receive an award, a trophy, or public acclaim?

Surfing is hardly immune from this sort of thinking, but success in surfing is fundamentally different. Maybe this is because of surfing’s malleable, highly fluid nature and the fact that success is so completely defined by the participant. Surfing is an intensely personal activity—just you, your board, and a wave. Every day is different. All you have to do is catch the wave, stand up, ride, and do it again … three times, five times, ten times. You win. It doesn’t matter whether you’re surfing a one-foot wave on a sandy beach break or a roaring hollow monster at Pipeline on Oahu’s famed North Shore. Cameron Weaver and Ryan Bannerot started before their third birthdays. Many continue into their seventies, a few into their nineties. It’s the cheapest life insurance around. Success is measured purely by the personal happiness you generate. There is no obligation to impress others, win accolades, or even worry about what anyone else thinks.

This makes surfing about as close to pure fun as our species can approach on this particular planet. Other crazes come and go, yet the popularity of surfing has never waned since the modern worldwide explosion that began in the 1960s. There’s a wave out there for every-one—every generation, race, and gender—and each surfer comes out a winner. Success in surfing is wrapped up in that infectious attitude of making every day great over the largest possible variety of conditions.

And in the Beginning …

Watching a superstar perform often triggers questions about how it all began. Wingnut grew up in Newport Beach, California, not far from a fairly consistent and reasonably friendly break known as Blackie’s, between the Newport Beach Pier and a rock jetty. While he had boogie boarded and body surfed since a young age, he didn’t actually surf on a board until age sixteen, not long before his seventeenth birthday, during the summer between his junior and senior years in high school. He was on the high school wrestling team, weighing in at a mere 115 pounds, and his coach lent him a 1960s-era “log” in the form of a forty-pound Dave Sweet longboard. Wingnut took to it instantly. Already accustomed to the hard part—catching a wave—he started out by paddling vigorously onto the first few waves, and after experiencing the thrill of popping up and standing as the big board surged along at an angle to the shore a few times, he was hooked. Thousands of waves and twenty-five years later he can’t actually recall the very first wave, just the feeling that it was something he’d always do. Needless to say, his wrestling coach never saw the board again, and Wingnut became a regular at Blackie’s, often grabbing a ride with his next-door neighbor, a surfer who was also a firefighter. He has never looked back.

At six years Wingnut’s senior but with a lifetime wave count that will never put a scratch in his, I can easily recall my first wave. I attended junior high and high school near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (to this day undiscovered for surfing), and once participated in an exciting family beach vacation to Fenwick Island, Delaware. It was 1972, I was thirteen, and although I’d seen Endless Summer some years earlier and had the dream, it wasn’t until I saw my cousin Jack Glanville out in some small waves, sitting expectantly on a kid-sized Corky Carroll egg-style board, that I knew I was going to get a first shot. I was out beside Jack in a flash, where I learned that he hadn’t been able to stand up yet but that I could have a go. Beside myself with excitement, I paddled onto the first foaming white breaker, every bit of twelve inches tall, stood up shakily, wobbled in, and T-boned the beach moments later. Neither of us could believe it. Surfing was no problem; I had it down. Little did I know that that would be my best ride for the next twenty-three years.

The Worst Record in Surfing History

While Wingnut was rapidly honing his skills in California, I was accumulating what just might be the worst record in surfing history. In case anyone doubts me when I say that if I can surf, you can too, perhaps it’s worth recounting the highlights from that record:

* Summer of 1975, Waikiki, Oahu, Hawaii. I’ve been invited by high school friend Roy Stang to accompany him on a supercheap trip to Hawaii with his parents and a large group of elderly people. When Roy and I rent boards and paddle out into the surf, we notice right away that the two Hawaiian guys catching graceful rides on the long, slow swells have boards much longer than ours, but we don’t worry about it. Instead we paddle ourselves silly trying to catch waves on our rented shortboards, and we catch nary a one. We leave the beach feeling sad and defeated. As Wingnut’s friend, surfing legend Mickey Munoz, says, “There are no bad waves, just bad equipment choices.”

* Spring of 1986, Rincon, Puerto Rico. With a few days to kill between trips on a high-seas swordfish longliner, I rent a car and strike out for what I’ve heard is a world- class surf spot to get the monkey off my back once and for all. Pretty little right- handers (waves that peel to your right when your back is to them and you’re facing the beach) are breaking in a beginner-friendly area, but once more the only rental boards available are shortboards. Gamely paddling onto wave after wave, I experience hours of failure in every imaginable form, but not one ride. As I walk bedraggled down the street to return the board, an aging overweight surfer accosts me. “Man,” he says, “I’ve never seen anyone try so hard. I felt so bad watching you. You’ve got the wrong board to learn on. That thing is way too small. You’ve got to get on a longboard and you’ll be off to a real good start, no problem. Then, if you want, you can move down to something smaller and more specialized.”

* Late 1994, Miami, Florida. While I’m preparing my forty-one-foot sloop Elan to sail to the Pacific, my friend Dr. Jerry Ault implores me to take a surfboard or two. “You’ve got to take at least one board,” he says. “You’re sailing to some of the best surf spots in the world.” The surfing dream, tattered and faded, is still there, but I’m so overloaded with gear and boat issues that I never get around to acquiring boards.

* August 1995, Taapuna, Tahiti, and Haapiti, Moorea, Society Islands. With Elan anchored in lagoons inside these world-class reef breaks, I’m visited by longtime friend and surfer Dr. Mike Owens. He and I motor out in the inflatable dinghy to give surfing a try. In addition to his own board, Mike has brought with him an old single-fin short-board for me to use. It barely floats me, and for me the experience is just another replay of right waves, wrong equipment. The waves at Taapuna are quite small and manageable, while the Haapiti surf is nothing less than an epic, perfectly curling double overhead (wave faces twice the height of a standing surfer). I can only watch in total frustration as other guys—but not me—catch wave after wave at both spots.

* Early 1996, anchored at Christmas Island, Republic of Kiribati. A chance meeting with Hawaii-based surfer Eric Vogt leads to some detailed instruction, and Eric sends me an 8’2″ funboard when he gets back to Kauai. After a few absolute poundings and a lot of wipeouts at the reef break by the main pass, the day I’ve been dreaming of finally arrives—four rides in a row on smallish glassy swells. My pop-ups are not the quickest or smoothest, and I execute no turns or maneuvers, but these are bona fide rides, and I’m in heaven. Soon after, however, mere hours after Elan returns to Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas Islands, someone swims out and steals the board off the deck.

* September 1996. When Eric flies to Pago Pago, American Samoa, to help me sail Elan to New Zealand, he brings a 7’5″ gun, which is a big-wave shortboard. He leaves it with me as a gift, telling me to hang on to this one and threatening to return and take it back if I don’t get out there and use it. I make some progress at sandy beach breaks over the next four years but often watch longboarders whizzing by on wave after wave while I only catch one once in a while. I also try to take on heavier conditions ill- suited to my low skill level, with poor results.

* First half of 2001, Republic of the Marshall Islands. While Elan is moored in Majuro, traveling surfer/sailors T. C. Cardillo and Paul McGrew take me to a couple of reef breaks with challenging conditions, and I can’t get anywhere with the 7’5″ gun. They advise me to back up a step and surf a longboard in conditions that permit me to pop up and get some quality time standing and riding, and only then think about tougher conditions. It’s the same advice I received from the aging surfer in Puerto Rico fifteen years earlier—a measure of my intervening progress. T. C. and Paul highly recommend the epoxy Tuflite boards from Surftech for their strength and durability. These boards, they say, will survive ocean passages on the deck of a sailboat. They also strongly recommend the split-toe boots a surfer wears around sharp coral. (I am trying to surf with dive boots at this time.)

* Early 2002, Pago Pago, American Samoa. I finally decide to do this thing properly before I die of old age. With the help of Robert August, Wingnut, Surftech, and the Hawaiian shop Surf-N-Sea, I order the Surftech versions of a 9’6″ Robert August What I Ride longboard and an 8′ Randy French Hybrid. I also order split-toe boots, rash guards, leashes, proper board bags by FCS, spare fins … the works.

* September 2002, Malololailai Island, Fiji. While I care for my ill first wife and my three-year-old son Ryan, the new boards have yet to get wet. Accosting me at the Musket Cove Bar, young surfer/sailors Andrew and Chris Krajacic inform me that I need to be ready the next day at 5:00 a.m., as they’ll be swinging by to take me to Wilke’s Pass, just north of famed Tavarua. Drew helps me wax up the longboard and install the fins. My total score is one wipeout on a pretty big wave, but I can sense I’m getting closer.

* January 2003 to the present, eastern Australia. Despite two long work sojourns back home in Florida, Elan‘s base on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland finally affords the perfect combination of lovely point breaks and sandy beach breaks. Possessing the right gear and the enthusiasm of a little kid at Christmas, I enjoy consistently successful surfing at last.

So What’s It Really Like?

Wingnut describes the thrill of surfing as well as anyone. He describes it, for example, in the beginning of his three-part DVD series Wingnut’s Art of Longboarding, which I regard as a must-have (and if you just can’t wait for shipping of the DVDs, you can instantly download them to your iPod or iTunes library from thesurfnetwork.com). It’s that timeless thrill of the downhill ride—often experienced and perhaps best and most purely appreciated as young kids—on a skateboard, snowboard, skis, bicycle, or sled. It’s a dazzling rush down the slope that you want to experience again and again, so much so that you’ll take risks and go to great lengths to do it, to the point of utter exhaustion. Speeding down and across that smooth, unbroken wave face, your mind is focused on something pristine, dynamic, captivating, refreshing, titillating, all-encompassing.

An added bonus is that, most of the time, suitable breaking waves adorn picturesque wild environments—beaches, rugged promontories and shorelines, oceanic reefs, passes, and islands. You paddle back in to shore from a great surf outing, step out of the water, board under your arm, and there’s usually no place you’d rather be and no people you’d rather be with. In short, there’s no place like here, no time like now.

I’ve already contrasted Wingnut’s smooth cruise into surfing success with my own far humbler and thornier path—a path that this book is designed to prevent you from traveling. No matter the path, however, the destination is similar. So let me tell you what that destination felt like for me when I finally reached it. Just as the soul group En Vogue introduced their live version of “This Is Your Life” a while back, “it goes a little something like this.”

I was pedaling along on my bike, transporting my then three-year-old son Ryan southward along the beach road to preschool from the marina where Elan was docked. This ride was our morning ritual. Perched on his kiddie seat, Ryan chattered happily. I could hear the roar of heavy surf—a sound almost as compelling as my son’s glad stream of words—but I was focused on my mission. After dropping off Ryan, I swung over to have a look. Huge, back-lit aqua breakers were closing out the entire beach front (collapsing along lengthy sections, making them very difficult to ride comfortably or at all). Yet I knew the rocky promontory to the north would be a different story, so off I went, my excitement growing. I rode up to the lighthouse on the cliff and gaped at the enormous swells wrapping around the point. A few surfers were dropping down the massive, near- vertical wave faces, then shooting off on spectacular rides.

I got to thinking. Yes, certainly these surfers were mostly either better or far better than I, but there had to have been a day when they took the big plunge. I’d frequently ridden my bike along the river inlet jetty that faced the incoming surfers. Weeks before, I’d finally grown tired of being an onlooker and, on a day of small to medium waves, had taken the step up from safe sandy beach breaks to the steep peeling waves and rocky bottom of this particular point break. Now the monster breakers in front of me were crashing along similarly to waves I’d ridden here before. Granted, these waves were much, much bigger, but the mechanics of paddling onto a wave face and popping up would be the same. The main difference between the surfers below and me was that they were doing it and I wasn’t. I made the decision to go for it.

I pedaled back to the marina, hopped aboard Elan, and made ready—donned a wetsuit, waxed the board, unlocked the dinghy, and cranked up the outboard. I’d decided to take the 9’6″ Robert August longboard, since it had served me so well for every step up I’d taken in surfing, just as T. C. and Paul had said it would. A stable platform that easily catches waves means less to control and worry about, freeing the rider to concentrate on the new aspects of whatever he or she is taking on. Plus, I knew from watching Wingnut in Endless Summer II that a longboard could definitely surf these big waves very well, at least with the right pilot at the controls. And, as Wingnut later pointed out to me, my familiarity with the break and the board was critical.

I rounded the bend in the Mooloolah River with butterflies in my stomach. Those butterflies rose in a pronounced flutter when an enormous breaker cascaded across the entire mouth of the inlet in front of me. The expert surfer riding that swell was dwarfed by it. I had a sudden impulse to turn around then and there, but I pushed that notion away. Motoring out through the surf zone during the next lull, I swung around to anchor far outside the break.

The waves that had appeared so large from the cliff top looked colossal from sea level. I felt small and alone, my pucker meter definitely pegged. I wished someone was with me, if for no other reason than to recover my body and take it to my family. Then I looked over at the spectators clustered along the jetty and decided I was sick of being in that crowd. I reminded myself that each one of these surfers had experienced a first time. They had survived, and so would I. I even had a realistic chance of success.

I dropped the board in the water, fastened the leash, jumped on, and began paddling. Huge green mountains swelled up as they marched around the rocky headland, exploding in white fury on the rocks. The deep-throated roar of the crashing break was like thunder. Offshore wind gusts whipped spray backward off the towering crests, creating miniature rainbows in the sunlight. The few surfers out there were young—considerably younger than I—and chiseled. Equipped with high-performance shortboards, they were screaming and cheering the wild take-offs of their buddies on immense wave faces. It was like strapping on the pads and running out under the stadium lights for a football game—or, more accurately, like wobbling out on a cane while younger, fitter players rushed out around you. No turning back now.

(Continues…)

Excerpted from WINGNUT’S COMPLETE SURFINGby Robert “Wingnut” Weaver Scott Bannerot Copyright © 2009 by Scott Bannerot and Robert Weaver. Excerpted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.