Keep Paddling

Paddleboarding made a big comeback in Hawaii in the 1980s. Photo: Erik Aeder

Paddleboard racing has been around the surfing scene for a long time. Big Dave Rochlen once showed me an entry blank to the first surf contest at Malibu in 1949. It was a paddleboard race, he said. As surfing events evolved over the years, there was always a paddleboard race included. Eventually it became all about equipment; some boards were simply faster than others.

In the 1966 World Surfing Championships, George Downing suggested holding a paddleboard race to determine a world paddleboard champion along with the surfing world champ. The California contingent readily agreed since they had Mike Doyle and Corky Carroll, both powerful paddlers with lots of experience and fast racing boards of their own. Australia, with a long history of paddle racing at their surf clubs, readily agreed. George Downing, ever a wily coach and a paddleboard champion in his own right, had an ace up his sleeve. On the Hawaiian team was Kiki Spangler, a formidable paddler whom George had taken under his wing to further develop Kiki’s natural paddling talent.

The secret weapon, however, was the board that George brought with the Hawaiian team. A hollow balsawood beauty shaped by Dick Brewer when he worked for Hobie Surfboards, it was equipped with a rudder and tiller assembly operated by the paddler’s toes. At that point in time, it was said, at least in Hawai’i, there was not another paddleboard that came close, and with Kiki aboard, they were an unbeatable combination. The story was, on the day of the race, Nat Young took one look at Kiki’s board and said forget it. The race was held, and Kiki did win, but without Nat, the race never gained any international recognition.

One summer in the mid-1980s, my wife and I were relaxing at our Pipeline house for the Fourth of July. Dennis Pang showed up early in the morning and announced that we were going to paddle in the annual race from Sunset to Waimea. He said he had a fast paddleboard for me to use and it would be fun. I had never even paddled on a race board but imagined it couldn’t be much different than paddling a surfboard, except easier.

Joe Pang, Dennis’s dad and a strong paddleboard racer and beach boy in Waikiki during the 1940s, accompanied us to the start and gave us a pep talk as we unloaded the boards. The board for me was a Joe Quigg shape, twelve feet long, flat, narrow, and unlike any board I had ever seen before. Dennis had borrowed another board from a friend in town. It was also a peculiar shape, and he said it was called a Waterman. There must have been almost a hundred people paddling on a wide assortment of boards, mostly big surfboards, but also a few specialized paddleboards. Someone had a dog on his board, a few had their kids with them, there were a bunch of girls—it was supposed to be a fun event.

We lined up out to sea and a horn sounded to start the race. Dennis took off like a rocket, his arms windmilling in a blur. Caught up in the excitement, I began to paddle as fast as I could too. It wasn’t long before I realized that if I kept up this fast pace I would pass out, so I slowed and tried to figure out the most efficient way to paddle my board. I trimmed my body forward until the nose began to go under, then moved back a bit. I kept an easy, smooth, long stroke going, regularly changing between alternate and double arm stroking. The field was spread out, and I could see Dennis far ahead, still maintaining his windmill stroke. Finally, rounding the point of Waimea Bay, I could see it was a short stretch to the beach and finish.

As we entered the Bay, I saw ‘Surfer Joe’ Teipel, a media personality and announcer of many local events, on a board similar to the one Dennis had, and he was passing me like I was dragging a bucket. He said something as he came by, but I was trying desperately to turn up the juice. I remember thinking that I should be able to keep up, after all I was in pretty top surfing shape, but Joe went right on by. Dennis was trying not to laugh as I staggered up the beach to the finish line. Later on he told me “it’s all about the board,” and the Waterman he had was the best board around.

With more information from Dennis, I tracked down the Waterman boards. A guy I vaguely knew in California owned the shape, so I gave him a call right away. Craig Lockwood, an avid paddler himself, had found designs from Tom Blake dating from the 1930s. He commissioned Steve Boehne, a well-known shaper and tandem surfing champion, to recreate Blake’s board. He took the board to Foss Foam and got them to build a mold to produce a molded blank using matte glass in the foam.

This was an old technique pioneered in the late 1950s to make a molded board that didn’t require shaping and would be stronger as well. It was one of those good ideas that didn’t really work. The problem was the addition of the fiberglass into the mold disrupted the foaming process of polyurethane foam and left huge voids in the blank. This was a general problem with the early surfboard foam makers and resulted in a high reject rate. While Foss Foam spent a lot of time working on perfecting this foam process with the fiberglass, Clark Foam worked at reducing its reject rate. By the time most of the different molded surfboards had failed for one reason or another—mostly because they wouldn’t stay watertight—there was a general consensus among the surfboard manufacturers that the custom board was a better way to go. Clark Foam, with the most advanced foam formula, soon became the most popular blanks for building surfboards for the next three decades.

Craig sold me two of his Waterman blanks and shipped them to Hawai’i. When I finally got them to my own shop on Maui and had a look, I was shocked. There were holes in the blanks that I could stick my whole hand into. This was the inherent problem with fiberglass in the foam mold and obviously Foss Foam had not come up with any solutions. I had no choice but to work with what I had. On the first one I attempted to fill the holes with a q-cell mix, but that ended up adding a lot of weight. For the second blank, I just glassed over the holes, trying to seal them as best as I could. Remembering that “fast” board he loaned me, I gave the first board to Dennis, and kept the other one myself. It was, as far as I know, the first Waterman on the island of Maui. It was also the first racing paddleboard to make the run from Maliko Gulch to the Kahului Harbor.

Rodney Kilborne and his Handsome Bugga Productions ran all of the surfing events at Ho’okipa Beach Park. He saw my paddleboard one day and suggested we have a race during the next surf contest. It was a good idea and the forerunner of many, now world-class, events on that windswept Maliko course. Rodney gathered a good field from the local Maui surfers. Laird showed up with a twelve-foot windsurf course-racing board. Kanoa Johnson, another local stud almost the same size as Laird, brought an Ole paddleboard. Everyone else had longboards of different sizes and shapes. My Waterman didn’t really attract any attention because, at that time, no one there had any experience with paddleboard racing or race boards.

Bill Boyum, his son Cyrus, and me paddling the Maliko run on some prototype paddleboards I made. Photo: Erik Aeder

It was a short course starting in Maliko Bay, down to Ho’okipa, a sharp left turn on the point between the rocky shore and the Pavilion’s surf spot, then a right turn around a buoy just off the beach, and a last sprint along the shoreline to a finish line between the end of the beach pavilion and a buoy offshore. Rodney started the race then ran to his car and sped down to Ho’okipa for the finish.

Laird and Kanoa pulled the entire field from the start and I slipped in behind. These two magnificent specimens of premier paddling conditioning battled each other going out of the bay and through the left turn out into the wind and swell. I easily kept a quiet pace behind them, letting them use up some, if not most, of their considerable energy. My strategy was to hang back until the end, then dash ahead on my faster board. It seemed like a good plan at first, but as I followed, I began to think about something else.

I had surfed with these two since they were kids and watched as they grew into men. There was a sense of savagery in both of them, a primitiveness that set them apart from the rest. It was more than sheer strength, though both were stronger than anyone else I knew in an almost inhuman way. It was that light that I had seen many times in both their eyes, a crazy shining that was the first indication that something explosive was occurring within their bodies, their minds, and, maybe, their souls. It was a scary light.

I could hear them both grunting as they exerted themselves to the maximum, each trying to gain an edge. Finally, Laird pulled ahead, and it was at that point that I threw my initial game plan out the window. If I waited until the end, no matter how much faster my board was, their minds were not going to let me win. They would dredge up some superhuman reserve and I’d be swept away.

Giving myself some sea room so Kanoa wouldn’t grab me as I went by, I slowly increased my pace and inched up behind him. I waited until I caught a good glide and went by Kanoa in hurry, getting some distance right away so he wouldn’t have time to think about what was happening. With him behind, I concentrated on Laird up ahead, and using the same tactic, I went around him as well. I figured I’d better build as much of a lead as I could while I was out in the wind and bumps, and steadily stroked away from the two of them. By the time I reached the corner of Ho’okipa and made my left turn, a glance back showed me that I had about a hundred yards on Laird, a sizable and, I thought, comfortable lead.

Rounding the point into the smooth water out of the wind, I could hear the cheering from the beach. There was always a big crowd at these surf contests, with all the different age groups as well as their parents and friends, and everyone was yelling as I came in toward shore. I made the right turn around the buoy and the crowd was screaming, I thought they were all cheering for me, so I waved a couple of times as I began the last leg of the course.

Right about then I felt a premonition, a little tickling in my inner senses that maybe something was behind me. Looking over my shoulder, I saw Laird less than a board length behind and charging like a mad bull, the whitewater boiling around him. With a startled yelp, I kicked it into gear and my Waterman took off like a jet. I could feel the Laird presence right on my tail even more than I heard his splashing and the yelling from the beach. Now I knew what all that noise from the Pavilion was: They weren’t cheering for me, they were screaming at the beast crawling up my rear. I managed to beat Laird by less than half a board length.

As soon as we crossed the finish line, Laird paddled up and said, “Lemme see that board.” We swapped boards, and he paddled off to give my Waterman a try. I never got my board back; I never even saw it again. Several months later, the phone ringing in the wee hours of the morning awakened me. It was a collect call from Laird somewhere in France. He called to say he had my board, had just paddled from Sardinia to Italy, and was planning to paddle the English Channel next. He did paddle that channel, but that is another story. And I did hear about my Waterman years later: It ended up in Biarritz and started a paddleboard-racing group of Frenchmen. Keep paddling.

Laird Hamilton and Buzzy Kerbox in Dover, England, still in their wetsuits and carrying the boards they used to paddle across the channel from Calais in France. Photo: Buzzy Kerbox collection

Buzzy and Laird on the beach at Calais, France, getting some advice from a local about which way to go to get to England. Photo: Buzzy Kerbox collection