A First Time at the Pipeline

An early experience at the Pipeline before I knew better about the break and the equipment needed to have any success there. Photo: Art Brewer

The first time I surfed at the Pipeline was in 1963 during my sophomore year in high school. My surfing partner, Tommy Chamberlain, and I were on the way to our class picnic at Pounders Beach in La’ie. The picnic was at the White Estate, a beautiful beach home owned by Pip White’s family. Pip was one of our classmates at Punahou Academy.

Pip and his family moved in the upper circles of O’ahu society; Tommy and I were at the other end of the scale, which was why we had made plans to go surfing before the social event of our sophomore class. Surfing in the early 1960s was still considered to be on the low end of recreational activities. The surfing boom that was just hitting California’s mainstream had not made it to Hawai’i yet. Surfers were still categorized in the same group as beach bums, con men, and gigolos. Parents frowned upon their children mingling with these social outcasts. My own parents reluctantly allowed it to continue in hopes that I would soon grow out of wasting time down at the beach and start thinking about important things like college.

Surfing was what Tommy and I lived for; we thought about it before anything else. La’ie was on the northeast side of O’ahu so going to the picnic by way of the North Shore with our surfboards was not out of our way. I was about fifteen years old, but Tommy was old enough to have a driver’s license and he had a Mini Minor station wagon. It was a perfect surf vehicle; both boards would fit inside with me sitting in the backseat. Surf racks weren’t invented just yet, but any seating arrangement that got us to the beach worked fine.

We both had Wardy surfboards from John Thurston’s Wardy shop on Kalakaua Boulevard, just down the street from our high school. Mine was a green-tinted 9’8” with a three-inch redwood stringer down the center; it was heavy, but it looked good. Tommy had a beautiful 9’6” with redwood panel rails, a skinny redwood center stringer, and a lightweight glass job. Tommy’s surfboard was half the weight of mine, but he was a much better surfer and could utilize the weight advantage. At my level of surfing, I would not notice the difference.

It was Saturday morning as we drove by Hale’iwa, Laniakea, and Chun’s Reef. But Tommy had the Pipeline in his mind so we kept heading north. We parked the Mini in the empty lot at ‘Ehukai and walked out to look at the waves. It was one of those pristine clear days when we could see all the way to Kaua’i. It was still early in the morning with not another soul on the beach. Glistening, clean white sand spilled all the way to the water’s edge.

A little way offshore, the waves were an ideal four feet. The wind was still and the waves were perfect: we ran back to get our surfboards.

The beach was empty as far as we could see in either direction. Tommy was an ebullient and expressive person, and he was whooping with delight as we jumped in the water. It was early fall, before any big swells had taken the sand away, and the waves were breaking very near the shoreline. That year was one of the flattest in North Shore history, but the size and conditions couldn’t have been more perfect for our first time surfing the notorious Banzai Pipeline.

I paddled for my first wave, but it stood up so fast that I buried the nose of my board when I tried to stand up. Back then we called that a pearl dive. Tommy laughed but did the same thing on his first wave. Now we were both swimming in to get our boards. The waves were steeper and faster than any other waves in our experience. Tommy, the better surfer, figured we needed to catch the wave sooner and stand up more quickly. That sounded good in theory, but it didn’t work. We both pearled on our next waves, and again we were swimming to the beach. This went on for half an hour and Tommy thought it was hilarious.

I was getting frustrated with one wipeout after another. I couldn’t keep from pearl diving on the takeoff. Fortunately the beach was close and the swim a short one. We had more success bodysurfing than we were having with our surfboards. Finally, after eating it so many times, we left our boards on the beach and just bodysurfed.

After a while we were surprised to see someone paddling out wearing a coconut leaf hat. We saw that it was Jock Sutherland, one of the best young surfers in Hawai’i. We knew him by reputation but hadn’t met him yet. After introductions all around, Jock proceeded to take the waves apart while we watched in stunned admiration. He had it wired; he never lost his surfboard or his coconut hat. We got so jazzed watching that we swam in and got our boards to try our luck again.

Jock told us to angle on the takeoff as we dropped in; don’t go straight down. We tried it and started having immediate success. The longboard designs back then were primitive by today’s standards. Our boards looked beautiful, but the shapes were not that different than an ironing board. Being straight and flat didn’t help on the steep Pipeline waves. With the tip from Jock, we soon were having the time of our lives.

We lost all track of time until we remembered there was somewhere we needed to be. We asked Jock if he knew what time it was. No one wore watches in the surf back then. Jock looked up at the sun in the sky and said, “It’s 11:46” How he knew it was 11:46 a.m without a watch we never knew, but the picnic was scheduled to begin at 11:00 a.m. and we were late. Thanking Jock for everything, we headed in. Three minutes later in the car, Tommy looked at his watch; it said 11:49 a.m.

We never figured out how Jock knew the time so exactly, but over the next few years, we figured out that he knew more than most people when it came to surfing. We became good friends and surfed together many times.

His style was unique, his surfing being both functional and progressive. No one came close to his surfing in the years when longboards reached their apex. Shortboards took over, and surfing went through the roof in terms of performance, speed, and covering more parts of the wave than ever before. Jock Sutherland led the charge in Hawai’i, inspiring every surfer of that new generation. His little tip about angling on the takeoff at the Pipeline would launch me into an intimate relationship with that spot that would last the next thirty years. It was a long and wonderful affair for me, some of the best times of my life. I will never forget how it all began on that one Saturday morning.

Art Brewer, Gary Busey, Rory Russell, and me looking at Sunset Beach through Art’s 1000 mm lens during the filming of the Hawai’i segment of Big Wednesday. Photos: Steve Wilkings

a. GALLERY

Miki Dora possessed a surfing style that was entirely his own, with moves so highly advanced yet so subtle as to often go unnoticed. Photo: John Severson

A speed-blur tube on a favorite board that didn’t last out the season and ended up where most Pipeline boards did: on the broken-board pile. Photo: Jeff Divine

Talking story on the beach at Sunset with Herbie Fletcher and Barry Kanaiaupuni. BK was the undisputed master of that break in the 1970s. Photo: Jeff Divine

Classic Ala Moana (with Diamond Head in the background), where i was during every summer of my misspent youth. Photo: Steve Wilkings

Don King, maybe the best water photographer of all time owing in great part to his superior swimming skills, lugs a heavy and ungainly 35 mm water housing up the beach for a film change. Photo: Jeff Divine

A classic pose: Miki Dora perched on the tip at his favorite wave, Malibu. Photo: C. R. Stecyk

When a surfer did it right at the Pipeline, it was a late drop to the bottom then a turn straight into the tube. Photo: Dan Merkel

An aerial shot of the Freight Trains break adjacent to the Ma’alaea small boat harbor. McGregor Point is in the background. Photo: Erik Aeder

A wave during the 1979 Pipe Masters, just before getting caught inside and experiencing a quite startling out-of-body experience. Photo: Jeff Hornbaker

Hanging out with J. Riddle and Billy Hamilton, both surfing doubles for Jan-Michael Vincent, on location in El Salvador during the second unit filming for Big Wednesday. Photo: Dan Merkel

Walter Hoffman on his favorite Matchless, sliding a turn on a dirt road of what is now Mission Viejo. Photo: Hoffman collection