THE ELECTRIC WETSUIT DRAMA

1-17-07
By Corky Carroll

Today I was kicking back in my hammock basking in an afternoon breeze and the afterglow of an amazing morning surf.  It was one of the perfect surf days where the wind was offshore and I was able to catch one of my favorite spots with only a few friends out and really good waves.  Actually excellent waves.  These days it is so hard to catch one of these kind of sessions without about 87 megazillion other people out there all fighting over every little morsel of a wave that comes through.  But today was one of “those” days.  Blue skys, perfect waves and only a few pals out.  It was wonderful.  

So after about four hours of intense surfing and then a filling lunch of last nights left over Linguini and a big glass of mango juice I was ready to relax.  So I grabbed the Jan issue of SURFING magazine and climbed into the hammock for a tranquil afternoon and possible a little nap.  When you get my age naps become a way of life.  

A few pages into the magazine I came to an O’Neill wetsuit ad that featured a dude in a bright neon yellow wetsuit.   I was sort of surprised to see this as I was under the impression that neon colors had gone out of style many years ago.   There was a time when neons were really popular.  I just can’t really put my finger on exactly when that was, but I know it was quite a while ago.   And this brought me to a sort of funny, well at least now it is funny, experience.

I once had with a bright neon colored wetsuit.   At one time I was approached by a water-ski based wetsuit company out of Canada to design a line of surfing wetsuits for them.  The name of the company was BARE and they flew me up to Vancouver for a week to come up with some wetsuit designs that they hoped would get them into the surfing market.  At that time neon colors were “in.” 

I did the styles and they had somebody that worked there come up with color schemes.  I think it was a semi-fried bleary-eyed hippy chick that was working in the gluing department.  She came up with some pretty bright color schemes.  

When the line was ready they sent me one each of all the styles for my personal use.   The full suit was a combination of just about every neon color they had with just a tiny bit of black in it.   I was actually sort of apprehensive about wearing it as it was really way to “out there” for my taste.  But I figured that I did need to try it out to make sure that the fit was right.

A few days later I went down to surf at Cotton’s Point, my favorite spot at the time.  It was a very small morning and there were only a few people out so I figured that this would be a good time to try out the almost glowing new wetsuit.  

As I was paddling out there was a girl surfer sitting there glaring at me.  As I went by she distainly said, “So does that wetsuit come with batteries or what?”

Trying to make the situation funny I came back with, “Yeah it does, it is a new electric wetsuit and really keeps me warm.”    I thought she would laugh but she didn’t.  She just sat there and stared at me with utter disgust in her eyes.   Oh well, I thought.  This will be the only time I wear this thing.

A few minutes later I caught a wave and was coming across a sort of lined up little section.  The same girl was sitting on the shoulder.  She looked me right in the eye and turned around and dropped in on me.  But as she stood up she fell off and her board went right under mine.   I tried to cutback and miss it but it was too late and I ran it right over.  The result was a nasty ding in her board.

She was outraged.  She totally went off with a whole tirade of obscenities and name-calling.  I will save myself the agony of repeating all the things she called me.  But the gist of the thing was that I was an “old man” and that I should take that stupid looking wetsuit and plug myself in and shock myself to death.  

At first I tried to reason with her.  After all she had dropped in on me and fell off.  It was totally her fault not mine.  But she was having none of it.   Then I lost my temper and called her a few less than nice names and turned around and paddled back out.   She went into the beach to access the damage in her board.

A little while later I was riding an inside wave and was fairly close to shore when all of a sudden I got hit right in the leg with a rock.   The angry surf chick had thrown a rock at me and connected.  Nice arm for a girl, I had to admit.   Then she flipped me off and took off up the beach.  

Needless to say that was the last time I wore the electric wetsuit

STRAGE AND INTERESTING SURFBOARDS ~ THE WAVE

by Corky Carroll

Over the fifty odd years that I have been lurking around the surfing world I have seen some pretty amazing looking surfboards.  Some bizarre, some exotic, some revolutionary, some beautiful, some really ugly and this includes the Con Ugly model, some sleek and some just plain stupid looking.   I thought it would be fun to take a little walk through this memory closet and see just what falls out.

In the early 1960’s there was a surfboard company named Dwaine.  They had a board with sort of bumper rails around it and they claimed that this was the worlds first and only “undingable board.”  There was an event held at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium one December that was called the “Surforama.”  Some surfboard manufacturers had booths there to show off their boards.  Dwaine was one of those.   They had a hammer and one of their undingable boards and would let you hit the board and try to ding it.   I thought this was a pretty interesting challenge so I decided to give it a try.   So I took the hammer and put it high about my head and as I swung it down with all my might I rotated it around so that the claw end was forward.  That thing sunk all the way into the deck of that board. There was a guy that I knew who lived by me named John Murphy running the booth.  John was a good surfer but had a bit of an Irish temper.  The next thing I knew John was chasing me all through the auditorium.  I am not sure how I got away except probably just out of sheer fear for my life.

About the same time Gordie, of Gordie Surfboards right here in Huntington Beach, made a thing that he called the “Banjo board.”   It was shaped just like a banjo and colored to look like one.   This board had absolutely no redeemable qualities as far as being designed to surf on.  It was almost anti-surfable.  But it did look just like a banjo.  I am not sure if Gordie was a banjo player or not.  It did look cool though and got a whole lot of attention. 

When boards first went short there were all kinds of unique designs out there.  One of my favorite experiments that I came up with was the “self shape.”   One night, in a moment of absolute clarity and vision with a footnote that this was the mid-late sixties, I laid down on a surfboard blank and had Mickey Munoz draw an outline around my body.   Then we straightened out the lines and cut it out. Some turned down rails and a big fin later I was out riding the “Me Model” at Cotton’s Point.   To make it really cool we should have had a full color airbrushing of my body on it.  But we didn’t have that good of art available in those days.   Not that I have an artful body, don’t get me wrong.  I mean we didn’t have anybody doing airbrushing then.   The board kinda worked even.   It was one of hundreds of experiments that we did in those days that sooner or later led to a legitimate surfboard design.

Then there was this dude, who I am not going to name just in case he is still alive and would probably be embarrassed if he read this, that used to surf Chun’s Reef on the North Shore of Oahu.   He only surfed Chun’s.  And Chun’s is a strictly small wave spot.  He was known for surfing speed shapes and one time came up with this super fast ultra narrow mid sized gun.  It was like 8’6” and only 15 inches wide.   Exactly the opposite of what you need for small waves.   But this dude like to think of himself as a demon of speed and thought this board would give in blinding speed on 2 to 4 foot mushburger waves.   He even shaved every hair on his body and only wore Speedos so he could go yet even faster.   One morning he was pushing through a wave at Chun’s and a big eel bit right into his cheekbone.  Its teeth had to be surgically removed.  That was the last time we ever saw that dude.  

Now you have to take into consideration that these comments are coming from a true art surfboard connoisseur.   Who else do you know that rides a board that is airbrushed to look like a cow?