Encyclopedia of Surfing Excerpt | Books

The Encyclopedia of Surfing

(excerpts from the “M” entries)

Maalaea

Temperamental right-breaking reef wave located on the south shore of Maui, Hawaii, renowned as the world’s fastest ridable wave. Although surf at Maalaea often breaks with machine-like perfect form, less than one-in-four rides here are completed; for most surfers, the object at Maalaea is to simply take a trim position inside the tube and try to keep pace with the falling curl for as long as possible. “It’s just pure, unadulterated speed,” Maui photographer Kirk Aeder noted, “that never, ever lets up.” Maalaea often comes into top form just once or twice a year, only when a distant wave-producing storm lines up perfectly with an eight-mile-wide gap between the island of Kahoolawe and the southwest tip of Maui. Prevailing winds at Maalaea are straight offshore and usually blow at 20-30 knots; the bottom is coral-lined and fairly shallow. Maalaea rarely gets over six feet, and is best on an incoming tide. The wave itself is divided into four linking sections, beginning with Off the Wall, then moving through Impossibles, Freight Trains and Down the Line; a single ride from Impossibles to Inside Section -- one of surfing’s rarest feats -- lasts for more than 300 yards.

Maalaea was first ridden in the early ‘60s, but the unwieldy longboards of the time weren’t suited to the wave. Not until the shortboard revolution of the late ‘60s did surfers begin to cover any real distance at Maalaea. Local surfer Joseph “Buddy Boy” Kaohi was so highly regarded of Maalaea in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, that the break was sometimes referred to as “Buddy’s Bay.” Top Maalaea riders over the decades include Maui residents Brad Lewis, Lloyd Ishmine and Chris Lassen. Surfing magazine in ‘89 listed Maalaea as one of the “25 Best Waves in the World.” No surf contests have been held at Maalaea.

Maalaea has been featured in several surf movies, including Angry Sea (’63), Adventures in Paradise (’82), Amazing Surf Stories (’86) and Maui ‘99 (‘00). Developers have periodically introduced plans to expand the ‘52-built Maalaea Harbor, and it’s generally assumed that any such expansion would either compromise or ruin the surf. Maalaea: a Cry for Help, a documentary on the break’s ongoing problems with developers, was released in ‘02. See also Maui.

Machado, Rob

Laconic goofyfooter from Cardiff, California; world-ranked #2 in 1995, and generally regarded as the smoothest-riding surfer of his generation. Machado was born (1973) in Sydney, Australia, the son of a general contractor/real estate father and a school teacher mother, and began surfing at age nine, five years after his family moved to Cardiff. Machado compiled a string of good results in the US Surfing Championships, placing 1st in the menehune division in ‘86, and 3rd in the junior’s division in ‘89 and ‘90. In ‘92, one year after placing first the Op Pro Junior and turning professional, Machado began winning events on the Professional Surfing Association of American (PSAA) tour, and was also featured in Momentum, the debut video by San Diego filmmaker Taylor Steele. In ‘93, Machado became PSAA champion, finished 8th on the world pro tour -- the highest finish ever by a tour freshman -- and was named rookie-of-the-year.

As one of the founding New School surfers, the 5’ 10” 140-pound Machado was almost by definition aggressive and acrobatic in the water. But more so than any of his peers -- and perhaps more so than any surfer of the shortboard era except Tom Curren and Gerry Lopez -- Machado’s riding was based on flow, form, subtly and composure. He often arranged his arms and legs into near-balletic positions, and occasionally slouched into a motionless Zen-like stance while racing across the wave face. Early in his career, Machado was tentative and ineffective in bigger, harder-breaking surf, but he eventually was able to draw his elegant lines in all but the gnarliest conditions. Meanwhile, his cool demeanor and angular features -- “Catch his face at a bad angle,” surf journalist Ben Marcus wrote in ‘94, “and he looks like a Cubist portrait of himself” -- helped make him a surf-chic trendsetter, featured in more beachwear ads than virtually anyone of his period.

Machado finished 5th in the world in ‘94. The following year, he and defending world champion Kelly Slater met in a championship-deciding semifinal heat at the Pipeline Masters, the last event of the season, traded tuberide after tuberide, and staged what was universally agreed to be the most exciting match in pro surfing history. Slater won the match, the contest and the world title; Machado finished the year ranked second. He placed 11th in ‘96, 4th in ‘97, 13th in ‘98, 14th in ‘99 and 3rd in ‘00. The following year he dropped to 46th, after missing part of the season due to a broken wrist, and failed to qualify for the ‘02 world tour By that time he’d won eight world tour events, including the ‘94 Marui Pro in Japan, the ‘95 US Open, and the ‘00 Pipeline Masters; he also won the ‘95 Billabong Challenge in Western Australia. Machado placed runner-up to Slater in the Surfer Magazine Reader’s Poll Awards in ‘94, ‘96, ‘97, ‘99 and ‘01.

Supremely photogenic, Machado has appeared in more than 50 surf videos, including Momentum (‘92), What’s Next? (‘96), Thicker Than Water (‘99) and Shelter (‘01). Drifting: the Rob Machado Chronicles, a sponsor-funded video documentary, was produced in ‘96. The Rob Machado Surf Classic, a contest and beach fair, was founded in 1997. In ‘98, Machado, Slater and La Jolla surfer Peter King, recording as The Surfers, released “Songs From the Pipe,” an Epic CD with Machado on guitar; that same year he performed onstage with Pearl Jam in Queensland, Australia. Machado is married and has one child.

Malibu

Definitive California pointbreak, often described as the “original perfect wave,” located on the northern arm of Santa Monica Bay in Los Angeles County; the sport’s technological and cultural center from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s. “Malibu,” surf journalist Paul Gross wrote, “is the exact spot on earth where ancient surfing became modern surfing.” Malibu’s south-facing cobblestone point is roughly 400 yards long from the famous wooden pier to Malibu Lagoon, and is divided into three connected surf breaks. First Point is the long, evenly-breaking wave that made Malibu famous; Second Point produces bigger, faster, less predictable surf; waves at Third Point, furthest out, are bigger yet. First Point has since the mid-’80s been ridden almost exclusively by longboarders, while shortboarders dominate Second and Third Point. Malibu generally breaks best from late summer to early fall, in response to swells generated from Pacific Ocean storms located anywhere from Baja Mexico to New Zealand. The surf here is generally between two and four feet; on the rare days when it hits eight foot or bigger, waves can sometimes be ridden from Third Point to the pier. Warm, dry weather prevails throughout the surf season, with water temperatures usually in the mid- to upper-60s; afternoon westerly winds bring only a slight reduction in surf quality. Malibu is also an incorporated city, and a number of other surf breaks are located along its 21-mile coastline, including Topanga Beach, Big Dume and Little Dume, and Zuma Beach.

“Malibu” is the English version of “Hamaliwu” (“the surf sounds loudly”), the name given to this stretch of beach thousands of years ago by native Chumash Indians. Surfing innovator Tom Blake, along with friend Sam Reid, became the first to ride Malibu, in 1927, two years before this section of coast was open to the public; top California surfers like Pete Peterson and Gard Chapin rode Malibu in the ‘30s, and by the time America entered World War II, Malibu had earned a reputation among America’s two or three hundred surfers as the best wave on the coast. Advances in surfboard materials after the war encouraged new thinking in board design, and Malibu area board-makers -- particularly Bob Simmons, Dale Velzy, Joe Quigg, Matt Kivlin and Dave Sweet -- quickly did away with the heavy, finless, redwood-lined “plank,” and developed the “Malibu chip,” an all-balsa board covered in fiberglass, thinner and lighter than the plank, with a stabilizing fin that allowed riders to maneuver, instead of just cutting a fixed angle across the wave. (Australian surfers still refer to all longboards as “mals” -- short for “Malibu board.”) While Hawaii remained the ultimate place for big, challenging surf, Malibu was viewed as the ultimate high-performance wave. Malibu surfers meanwhile gave the sport a cultural makeover as well, with the regal archetype set by Hawaiian surfer Duke Kahanamoku replaced by the kind of bleach-blonde, wise-cracking suburban California teenager who began piling into Malibu by the hundreds in the late-’50s. The Malibu Colony, a private beachfront community located just past Third Point, gave the surf break a touch of glamour, and a small number of resident Colony movie stars -- Peter Lawford and Cliff Robertson among them -- were Malibu regulars. Columbia studios producers soon recognized the sport’s commercial appeal, and bought the rights to Gidget, Frederick Kohner’s best-selling 1957 novel based on the experiences of Kathy “Gidget” Kohner, the author’s plucky teenage daughter, who learned to surf at Malibu. Life magazine ran a photo feature on Kathy Kohner and Malibu in ‘57, and two years later the movie version of Gidget debuted, kicking off an American surf craze fueled by beach movies and surf music, with Malibu holding position as Surfing Mecca. Another precedent was set as Malibu became the first break to be spoiled by crowds, with up to 150 surfers in the lineup at the same time by the summer of ‘61.

Hot-dog innovator and surfboard magnate Dewey Weber was a Malibu regular in the ‘50s and ‘60s, as was Lance Carson, the master of the noseride, and beachside master of ceremonies Terry “Tubesteak” Tracey. The Malibu Surfing Association, formed in ‘62, counted among its members some of the best surfers in the state, including Butch Linden, Johnny Fain, J Riddle and Jackie Baxter. But it was Mickey Dora -- the dark-haired and cynical “Black Knight of Malibu” -- who was and remains most closely associated with the break. Dora’s jittery but elegant riding style is still being copied by longboard surfers, and his hustling antiestablishment disposition helped shape the basic surfer character. Since the early ‘60s, “Dora” (or “Dora is King,” or “Dora Rules”) has been graffitied again and again in huge letters on the beachfront wall at Malibu.

The Chevy Malibu, introduced in ‘64, opened up the marketing possibilities for the world’s most famous surf break, with Malibu Barbie, Malibu Gum, and Sizzler’s Malibu Chicken Sandwich among the dozens of like-named products the followed in the decades to come. Malibu meanwhile lost its position as a cutting edge surf break in the late ‘60s, after the newly-introduced shortboards encouraged surfers to ride more challenging breaks. The Malibu surf remained just as crowded (and locals like Allen Sarlo continued to ride impressively), but tuberiding had become the ultimate surfing maneuver, and the focus changed to hollow-breaking waves like the Pipeline in Hawaii. The Malibu experience was further diminished when it was learned, in 1969, that the up-canyon runoff had fouled the Malibu Lagoon with sewage and waste. The Surfrider Foundation environmental group was formed in ‘84 as a response to Malibu’s ongoing environmental problems.

The Malibu Invitational, held from ‘62 to ‘67, was the first major surfing tournament held at Malibu; subsequent events included the ‘73 United States Surfing Championships, the ‘75 Hang Ten Women’s Championships (mainland America’s first women’s pro surfing event), the ‘79 Sunkist Pro, and the ‘81 US Pro (the first men’s division world circuit event in California). As longboarding came back into vogue beginning in the early ‘80s, the lineup at First Point Malibu, a shortboard break for nearly 15 years, was quickly filled with surfers on 10-foot noseriders. The ‘86 Summer Reunion Longboard Classic, honored Malibu longboard surfers of the ‘50s and ‘60s; the World Longboard Championships were held at First Point in ‘94. Top longboarders at Malibu in ‘02 included Jimmy Gamboa and Kassia Meador.

Malibu has appeared in more than 75 surf movies, videos and documentaries over the years, including Search for Surf (‘58), Cavalcade of Surf (‘62), Strictly Hot (‘64), Endless Summer (‘66), Cosmic Children (‘70), Going Surfin’ (‘73), Follow the Sun (‘83), Legends of Malibu (‘87), Great Waves (‘98) and Super Slide (‘99). Big Wednesday, the Warner Brothers box office bomb in ‘78 that later became a video cult favorite, was co-written by Malibu surfer Denny Aaberg, and is a lightly fictionalized account of Malibu in the ‘60s. An exhibit on the history of Malibu surfing, including 40 vintage surfboards used at the famous break, was presented by the Santa Monica Heritage Museum in ‘93. See also Lance Carson, Mickey Dora, Gidget, Matt Kivlin, Terry “Tubesteak” Tracey, Los Angeles, Malibu Invitational, Bob Simmons, Dale Velzy.

Matson Line

Los Angeles-based shipping service used by America’s Hawaii-bound surfers from the 1930s through the 1950s. The Matson Steamship and Navigation Company introduced its first passenger ship, the steamer Lurline, in 1908. California surfing pioneer Tom Blake was almost certainly the first surfer to use the Matson line (whose boats were easily recognized by their red-brown hulls), making the six-day journey to Hawaii in 1924. “The ocean air was clean,” Blake later recalled, “and the journey quite enjoyable.” Sam Reid followed in ‘25; Pete Peterson, Lorrin Harrison and a small number of other surfers did so in the late ‘20s and ‘30s, as did virtually all Hawaii-bound American surfers until after World War II, when DC-6 planes cut the travel time to 12 hours. Even with air travel available, surfers in the late ‘40s and ‘50s often chose to sail. Matson-traveling surfers generally booked into the budget-priced below-deck steerage class (about $100 round-trip), then trespassed freely onto the upper levels. Meals, included with the ticket price, were a highlight of trip, and in one of Greg Noll’s late ‘50s Search for Surf movies, a group of surfers are seen doing on-deck calisthenics in order to build an appetite for dinner. “The goal,” Noll later recalled, “was to have the waiter hand you a menu and you’d look the whole thing up and down, hand it back and say, ‘Yes, that will do.’”

missionaries

Christian-based religious proselytizers who, as a rule, travel to foreign lands to set up semi-permanent installations -- missions -- for the purpose of converting natives to the their faith. As known to the surf world, missionaries were a group of American-born Calvinists who for most of the 19th century presided over a catastrophic decline in the health and well-being of native Hawaiian, and brought about the near-termination of surfing.

In 1778, British explorer Captain James Cook became the first westerner to land in Hawaii. Indigenous Polynesians were then living by the kapu system, which regulated everything from agriculture, to weather forecasting, to surfboard- and canoe-building. The kapu system was shaken during 40 years of post-Cook contact with western explorers, whalers and traders, and the entire system broke down in 1819. The first boat of American missionaries sailed into Honolulu the following year, with group leader Hiram Bingham, in a journal entry filled with pious shock and disgust, describing the Hawaiians as “chattering and almost naked savages,” who had the effrontery to meet the incoming brig with bare feet and uncovered heads. Bingham’s group, and several who landed in Hawaii the next few decades, built churches, gave sermons, translated the Bible into Hawaiian, and in general set about transforming the natives into industrious suit- and dress-wearing Calvinists. Surfing, along with most other traditional pastimes, amusements and recreations, wasn’t prohibited, but frowned upon and presented back to the Hawaiians as dangerous, time-consuming and licentious (gambling and sexual maneuvering were both byproducts of the sport), and thus against the will of God. Hawaiians were meanwhile dying by the thousands of Western-borne diseases like measles and small pox, and may have been too sick or depressed to think about surfing or any other for of recreation. Missionary leader Bingham nonetheless wrote that “the decline and discontinuance of the use of the surfboard, as civilization advances, may be accounted for by the increase in modesty, industry and religion....” Nineteenth-century missionaries stationed in New Zealand, Tonga and elsewhere in the Pacific had much the same effect on local natives. But small numbers of Hawaiians continued to surf, and by the late 19th century missionary influence was fast waning. American-led agriculture and tourism would soon replace religion as the driving forces of Hawaiian politics and culture, and when the first generation of Waikiki hoteliers recognized that surfing be used as a marketing tool for vacationing mainlanders, the sport was quickly turned into a symbol of Hawaiian beauty, romance and pride.

About 100 missionaries total were dispatched to Hawaii in the 19th century, mainly to Honolulu, Lanaia and Hilo. Most brought their families, or began families in Hawaii. Much of James Michner’s best-selling 1959 book Hawaii takes place during the missionary period. See also Hawaii, religion and surfing.

Morey Boogie

Short, soft, flexible wave-riding craft introduced in 1973, touching off a hugely popular surfing sub-category known as bodyboarding. “The Morey Boogie,” Surfer magazine wrote in 1999, is “is the most popular wave-riding vehicle of the century.” Southern California surfer and board-designer Tom Morey, working out of a friend’s garage on the Big Island of Hawaii, made the prototype bodyboard in 1971, using an electric carving knife to shape a 4’ 6” by 23” beveled-railed board from a slab of Dow Chemical polyethylene packing foam. He called his new invention the SNAKE Machine -- a cryptic acronym for “Side, Navel, Arm, Knee and Elbow.” Two years later, Morey was in Carlsbad, California, building a business around his newly-renamed Morey Boogie. Early advertisements for the Boogie noted that the board was designed to ride where surfboards couldn’t -- over shallow reefs, in board-prohibited zones, and in closeout shorebreak surf. The safety advantages of the Boogie were also obvious, as the unbreakable three-pound board was no more dangerous then a big, wet sponge (“sponge” would in fact become a derisive nickname for the bodyboard). Morey would later take a far more expansive view of his product, comparing the Boogie to the spoon and the Gutenberg press as one of mankind’s greatest inventions.

The original Morey Boogie cost $45 assembled, or $25 for a do-it-yourself mail-order kit that arrived with Morey’s own hand-lettered assembly instructions. It was a commercial success, and something of a democratic success as well, introducing wave-riding to hundreds of thousands of people who otherwise would have likely remained on the beach. “The Boogie was a great equalizer,” the Surfer’s Journal said in 1999. “If you could ride one at all, you were riding it correctly.”

Morey sold the Boogie to toy-maker Kransco in 1977; Kransco was bought by Mattel in ‘94; Mattel was bought by Wham-O in ‘98 -- with Morey brought along the whole time as a consultant. Dozens of other bodyboard companies have meanwhile come and gone since the mid-’70s. It was estimated that as of 2001 more than 20 million bodyboards total had been sold worldwide. See also bodyboarding, Tom Morey.

Murphy, Jack

Florida surfing champion and convicted diamond thief/murderer. Los Angeles-born Jack Murphy arrived in Miami Beach in 1955, at age 18, where local lifeguards, impressed by his wave-riding skills, nicknamed him “Murph the Surf.” Murphy won the ‘62 Daytona Beach Surfing Championships, one year after making a short appearance in Bruce Brown’s film, Surfing Hollow Days. Murphy owned a south Florida surf shop and also promoted surf movies at local halls and auditoriums. When his shop failed he turned to crime, and on a rainy October night in ‘64 he and a partner broke into New York City’s Museum of Natural History and stole the 563-carat Star of India diamond; “a chapter in criminal history, the New York Daily News reported the following day, “that rivals anything in fiction.” Murphy was caught and convicted, and served two years at Rikers Island penitentiary. He was later arrested for a double murder in Florida, again convicted, and returned to prison for 16 years. A born-again Christian when he was released in 1986, Murphy began a mobile prison ministry, and returned to surfing. “It’s always good to go someplace where we can both evangelize and surf,” one of Murphy’s ministry associates said in 2000. “It’s sort of a double blessing.” Murphy was featured in "Gangs and Gangsters: the Illustrated History of Gangs from Jesse James to Murph the Surf,” published in 1974. Murph the Surf, a low-budget Hollywood thriller starring Don Stroud, was released the following year. Murphy was inducted into the East Coast Surf Legends Hall of Fame in ‘96, where it was noted that he was “a much better surfer and he was a jewel thief.”

mysto break

A surf spot that rarely breaks, and is even less-frequently surfed; often a deep-water, big-wave-only offshore reef, but can also be applied to spot that requires a highly unusual set of conditions -- a minus tide, a huge swell, a rare wind direction, for example. “Mysto” is short for mysterious. See also bombora, cloudbreak.

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