surfing and wave sailing

trundlebum ,
I am finding it hard to keep up but I’ll give it a try. Let’ start with some great (wind surf) spots that I have visited and would love to sail again. I don’t think that between us we will have any trouble coming up with 50 classics. They may not all be “down the line” wave spots though. But classic in their own rite, when they are in condition.
Punta San Carlos, and Punta Abreojos, (Baja Norte)
North Beach at Los Barellies, La Ventana, and Cabo Pulmo ( Baja Sur) Pulmo has sick granite bouldering very XXX over pounding surf,
Cape Sebastian, and The Rock at Pistol River (Southern Oregon Coast) there is also great beach bouldering,
Cape Mendocino (Nor Cal coast),
Lake Mc Conaughy, (W. Neb.)
Ft Pierce North Jetty, and Stuart Causeway, (South Fla. east. coast)
John Martin Res. SE. Co. (Great bouldering!)
South Padre Island (Texas)
The Delta (Cal.)
Swell City, Hatchery, and Doug’s Beach. The Wall, Rufus, Arlington, Three Mile Canyon (Columbia River George)
To name just a few of my personal favorites.
There are so many more great destinations, in the Caribbean, Central and South America, Africa, and the list goes on and on.

Both Kaulk and Waltze are pioneers of "Our" sports and I regard them as friends and I respect each of them for their vision and achievments. I mentioned my history with Waltze in a prior post. Ron Kaulk and I worked as wall riggers for ABC Wide World of Sports on three separate occasions. Talk about a great gig! Good, money, locations, and crew. Along with Ron we had Dale Bard, Mike Hoover, the late Beverly Johnson, Bruce Sposi, Ron Matous, Brent Bingham, Rick Ridgeway and Mike Carmichael all were on our crew on various occasions.

Was that surf photographer that you mentioned,Eric Aeder, by any chance?

You mentioned the late Clean Dan Grandusky. I have a bit of history with Dan over the years both climbing and working.

I haven’t seen Johnny V. in a while. He bought some property over Kaupo way. He was telling me a story about some bad JU JU with a “newbe agro” park ranger on his way home that caused him considerable grief!

I can relate to your story about flying fish swarming like mosquitoes, getting plastered to your sail and landing on your board.

How about being wound up, fully sheeted in feet in the straps while bearing off the wind and barely hanging on. When a sea turtle pops up out of nowhere and you have no time to avoid him and you feel like you have hit boulder in the water that send s you flying. That will shake a knot in your tail!

One day on the Sea of Cortez my buddy Paco and I were out on our sail boards about a mile off shore. We were ripping of the wind and simul-jumping the chop on the rolling wind swells, you know what I mean. When all of a sudden I noticed dolphins, lots of dolphins, thousands of dolphins. We were completely surrounded as far as the eye could see. I have seen plenty of dolphins but I have never experienced anything like it before or since. We put the brakes on and slogged for a long time. While this giant pod of Bottle Nose dolphin migrated through the area we were sailing. We were so stoked! It was like a dream only we were awake and both experienced it!

Some years back I framed this awesome house at Hubbard’s Creek near the town of Port Orford, Oregon. Port Orford is out on Cape Blanco and a remote, utopic little fishing / artist village. It’s the kind of place you pass through on your way to somewhere else and never give it much thought.
Hubbard’s Creek has a very territorial and aggro group of local surfers. That’s another story that I should tell. It’s about how grown men can act when they feel that their surf territory is threatened by strange surfers from 25 miles down the coast. That sounds funny unless you are the one about to get the shit kicked out of you, in your wetsuit, at 6:30 am, just for having a cell phone in your hand.
My partner on the framing project was Victor “the inflictor“ Roy. Victor is the world champion in masters division in downhill skiing and he is also a wind surf legend from the early days in The Gorge.
Victor had the task of waking very early every morning and analyzing the barometric gradient models for the Columbia River Gorge. He would then record his wind forecast for that day and phone it in to a radio station in Hood River. Victor’s forecast would be aired hourly throughout the day so the wind surfers in The Gorge would know where to go for the most favorable conditions.
Little did anyone in The Gorge know that Victor was actually hanging out with the Pistol River gang down on the south coast. We were living large and having a blast while framing a really cool house, surfing and wave sailing, every day.
Every morning I would wake to the sound of Victor’s gravelly voice saying “Good morning sailors, the best conditions will be from wherever to wherever bla,bla,bla.” Then I would hear his van door open and the next sound would be him kicking the side of my van saying “Surfs up! Let’s go!”
I would roll out of my sleeping bag and drive about a quarter mile down to the beach at Hubbard’s Creek. Victor would already be there and have his wet suit on waxing up his surfboard.
My wetsuit was usually still wet from the previous evening’s session. It was harsh pulling that wet, cold rubber thing on having had hardly enough time to wake up.
We would paddle out before the sun came up every day and surf whether it was good or not.
Hard as it was to get motivated, I never regretted it after the first wave hit me in the face.
We rarely surfed for more than an hour on those mornings so we were out of the water, dried off and had our stoves going making coffee and pancakes on the beach..
After we finished the morning surf and breakfast rituals it was serious attention to business, nose to the grind stone, power framing until around one o-clock. Usually, at about that time one of us would get a call from one of our gang with a wind/surf report from Pistol River ,about 25 miles south of Hubbard’s Creek.

One particular day we got a call from, I think it was Dana Miller saying (in a sing song and tempting manner)” Gale’s back in town!” Meaning that the wind on the ocean is blowing gale force and it’s time for the troops to rally at Cape Sebastian, one of the Pistol River area’s two wind surf launch sites.
We dropped our tool belts and buttoned up the job site. We were on the road in about five minutes.
The home owner, who was a windsurfer as well, wasn’t far behind us.
On the drive down to Pistol I had a good chance to check out the ocean. It was howling! Gale was defiantly back and she was in a foul mood!
High surf and gale warning flags were flying outside the Coast Guard station at Gold Beach.
I didn’t figure that anyone was going out on the ocean that day. It was just too gnarly.
I pulled into the Cape Sebastian parking area to find all the gang assembled and rigging small sails.
I checked out the ocean and it looked big, but doable, so, I rigged a sail as well.
It was odd to me that there was such a big difference in the ocean from what I had observed on the trip down from Hubbard’s.
With the direction that the wind was blowing, the cape and the small island in the bay had created a comfortable wind shadow and things had toned down to a seemingly manageable level.
I sailed for a while and rode several medium sized waves. Then this monster cleanup set came through that completely annihilated me! I was separated from my gear and I was swimming and getting worked by the following waves. I wasn’t the only one to get nailed by that set and it seemed as though every sailor out was caught off guard by that set.
Victor, who had been charging to punch through that same wall of a wave that took me out, had been denied as well, only, he, still had his gear. And my stuff wound up fairly close to him.
Victor saw my situation, I just looked desperate! For what reason I still to this day can’t explain why but Victor grabbed my rig and was holding it along with his own while I swam over to retrieve it. By this time the next set was about to show up. I was terrified by the idea of the two of us and our sailboard gear being caught in the same mast high wave! As swiftly as possible I grabbed my rig from him and water started just as the next equally massive wave was bearing down on us. I shoved my feet into the straps and pumped my sail to try to get some power in it before the monster devoured me. My timing was better this time and somehow I made it over the first wave of the set which allowed me access through the next three waves. My adrenaline was soaring by the time I made it safely outside the impact zone.
Looking back I noticed that I was the only one that had made it through that last set and the Ocean was littered with swimmers and loose gear was bouncing everywhere in the frothing white water.
I was in the straps, hooked in and my board was on a steady plane. I was heading farther out to sea and trying to relax a bit when I realized that I was in the shadow of the island that I mentioned earlier. The further I sailed the lighter the wind became un till it was gone all together and I just fell over backwards. It was so still! There are a few places that I wouldn’t recommend swimming and the spot where I was is one of them. A nice lonely patch of still water in an otherwise violent sea felt like just the place where the landlord would look for a snack!
Although it was very still, every now and then a puff would swirl through and give me a little hope of a water start. I tried to keep my rig in a water start position but it was so fluky that I just seemed to go around in circles. The gusts of wind spilling around the small island were coming from every imaginable direction. I swam my gear through the seemingly endless calm until I felt the first puff. I smiled and raised my sail so that it filled a little then set my back foot on the board and this way I navigated with a little power and some resemblance of control. I was still moving farther out to sea. I was hoping to clear the shadow of the island and get a fully powered jibe on the outside, and charge through the dead air using the (apparent) wind generated in my sail. I’d had enough of this particular brand of fun and I was ready to go back to the beach and have a beer with the gang!
As I sailed farther from the shadow of the island the wind picked up to a comfortable velocity and then without a signal, Gale came from her hiding place and hit me like a bomb! The force was so great that I was flattened! Luckily, I still had a firm grip on my rig. There was no way that I could have survived those seas without a flotation aid!
I had been in strong, violent ocean conditions in the past but this was clearly beyond anything I had previously experienced. It was defiantly” Victory At Sea” conditions!
Panic was not an option! Every time I attempted to water start I would be launched so hard that the rig would be nearly torn from my grip, or, I would be violently flattened back in to the water. I realized that sailing was out of the question. I had to hang on to my gear at all cost! My life depended on it! On one my attempts to water start the force of the wind ripped a hole in my sail. I was actually happy about that because it made the sail less powerful.
I came to the realization that I was in the grips of energy that I had no hope of controlling! My one and only hope of salvation was to keep my wits about me, hang on to my rig and go with the flow!
I accepted the fact that this just might be the end of the road! This was it! This is how the story ends! So sit back hang on and enjoy the wild furry of nature unleashed!
After accepting that I was in a very tight spot, I realized that my efforts although totally futile were resulting in a small amount of progress and that I was actually unknowingly heading toward the next island and that if I could hold some resemblance of a coarse I might be able to work my way into the shelter of the lee side of it. A lot of things had to go right in order for that to happen and none of them were.
M y fleeting glimpse of hope vanished when my attention turned from the distant island to what was right in front of me!
The Oregon Coast is a visually striking scape with its rugged sea stacks that project from the water with the pounding wind swell colliding with them creating a visual extravaganza that will stay with a person for a life time as one of the truly great memories of nature’s power! This day I had a front row seat!
Now, this was not that first time that I had ventured into this arena and I thought that I knew where all the sea stacks were but with the size of this wind swell, rocks were manifesting in places that I had never seen before and I was drifting out of control directly toward one that was typically submerged.
Terror once again took over. I was drifting in giant waves, powerful current and nuclear force winds toward an aircraft carrier sized rock that was being periodically exposed and dry only to be swallowed again by the next swell.The sea has no conscience and it was about to deposit me right on top of it!
Once again my mortality came to the surface and I accepted my eminent demise!
I wasn’t going without a fight! SO, I made a hasty plan that when the wave deposited me on the rock,I would pick up my rig and charge with power and determination,as fast as possible for the far side of the of the rock.Bare feet or no this is life or life. My only chance was to make it to the far side before the next wave swallowed and crushed me in to the rock’s exposed razor sharp surface.
Now that I had a plan it was time to execute!
Get Ready,I’m Coming In Hot!
The monster was getting closer and closer! As Yoda said “There Is No Try!!!”
I was up and then down in the mountainous swells drifting on a collision course! The rock was only meters in front of me.I was wide-eyed and anxious for it to happen when the timing of the swell lifted me completely over the jagged slab without the slightest contact.
I couldn’t believe it! Emotion swelled in me beyond any that I have ever experienced.
The violent winds that drove me to my near demise subsided a little bit at the same time as I passed over the rock.
I was in a total state of adrinalized euphoria. I water started my damaged but still serviceable sail. I sailed straight in to the beach. I was a mile down the coast from where I launched not more than an hour ago.

I have no words for how I felt after reaching the beach that afternoon. I was physically and emotionally drained.
I took a moment and noticed the sky, the sand dunes , rock formations, drifted logs, even bird foot prints in the sand, the green forested hills were greener than I ever noticed, and a variety of other things that I typically took for granted on a daily basis were, Ever So Much More So! Greg had driven down to give me a ride back. He looked at me with a big grin and said” Man we were watching you from the beach with binoculars! We thought you were a goner!"I responded” Me too Dude, That was way too close!”
Greg said, “Throw your rig in the truck and I’ll give you a ride back to the launch.”
I responded” Thanks, but I think would like to walk back and I’ll carry my stuff, I need a little time to digest what just happened and let my soul catch up”
He looked at me and said “cool dude, ever y one is already de-rigged and heading for the Crows Nest. Take your time and come on down and I’ll buy ya a beer. K?”
“I’ll be along in a bit.” I said, as I lifted my board and sail in the head carry position and started the mile walk down the beach in my wetsuit and barefoot reveling in the fact that I was issued an extension pass to live yet another day.

Jebus. I have the shakes after reading that. Powerful stuff.

A GIMONGUS swell has arrived here on the north shore of Maui.With the strong "Kona" winds it will be PRO's Only on the ocean today! I'm going to see if I can get a parking spot at Lanes and watch the show!
Pat Caldwell wrote:
"Outlook through Monday Jan 19: the very large northwest swell will produce surf above the 25 foot warning threshold along the north shore and west shores Wednesday through Friday morning. The swell will be reinforced by another west northwest swell, therefore large surf will persist through the weekend and likely drop below the 15 and 12 foot advisory levels on the north shore and west shores by Monday."

wooo hoooo... I am envious !

Big Lanes on a strong Kona day... yeah baby.

I am a goofy foot surfer, those rare days when you get down wind lefts (with out having to go over to Diamond head)...One in a thousand.

Olaf if the swell is huge (and northerly more than westerly) and strong kona winds ...
what about a day (for the mortal sailors) on the west side up at secrets or there abouts ?

Trundlebum,It's good to see you back!
We have high surf warnings posted for the north shore!
There's a lot of west in this swell and with the strong Kona winds the upper west side should offer great sailing conditions.
It looks conditions will be favorable at select spots all the way down the west side of Maui.
My girlfriend "Karen" is heading over to Kehei for kiting today.
I have opted to sit this one out since my knee is yet untested in battle.
My take on the navy's wave models is that it's gonna be a great event from Oregon to Baja.There should be a lot of happy surfers not only in the islands but all the way down the west coast.

True to all predictions we are in the middle of a classic, strong Kona wind, Gimongus, wave event!
The view from my house upcountry is a solid white line, with no visible channels, from the harbor to way past Hookipa I am sure that Jaws it going OFF, big time today!
Check out my buddy Giampaolo’s blog post from yesterday. mauisurfreport.blogspot.com I was hanging with him on the cliff when he took most of these shots.

BTW, Coach says that my rehab is going well and if I sit this swell out, I can dress out and”POSSIBALY PLAY??” in the next game!I am sooo stoked!!!

I need to sit down and carve out some time for some serious writing for this thread
(as you have done to get it going Olaf)

So Mark Nelson, and Olaf:
"Mark, what a coincidence, I started surfing at N/S Jetties at Fort Pierce and Sebastian Inlet. Some great surfers come from that area..."

I don't know you two guys other than interacting here on this forum, but maybe you are of the vintage to know an important mentor of mine?
His name is Larry Tuttle. He surfed Sabastian all through high school and for many years after until he left Forida as a young man. For years now Larry has been building high performance, trapeze, dinghies, particularly 505's.

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A bit back in the thread...
Katy H said:
"...surf at Pavones! Longest left in the Southern Hemisphere is what I hear!"

I'm bet'n she's a goofy foot 'eh ?

Let's hear back from yah Katy, let us know how the surfari went ;)
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J.Thomson goes on to talk about standing or river waves....
got a story there but just not the time right now...

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I bought a snow board at a garage sale last weekend and yesterday went up to Mount Charleston and did about 6 slides down and 'hoofs' back up the bunny slope before they kicked me out ;)
It was fun till this big burly dude named Kent decided I had enough free fun for the day.
I could see getting into it, but I could totally see becoming a fresh powder or untracked run, snob as the slippy/slidy ride on packed slush is not very interesting to me.

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This is a fun thread ;)
bumpity bump

SWEET!!!!!!!!!!!!!! God I miss surfing!! Stopped when I moved out to Colorado back in 2001. Born an east coast surfer and surfed most of the east coast. Spent a lot of time in NC surfing as I went to school about 10 miles from Wrightsville Beach. Gave my nephew my boards when I moved out here.

Thanks for the video. One day I will get back to surf again, climbing and skiing are great, but there is nothing like dropping in on a beautiful glassy wave, dragging that hand in the water, ohhhhh gotta go change my shorts now!

Hey trundlebum....
I'm excited to hear your standing wave story!

I'm going to be in Vegas for the month of March...I've got a couple of partners lined up....and would be psyched to rope up with you, if you'll have me!

Also...isn't Mt. charleston on Forest service land?
If so they can't actually kick you off...you are technically one of the owners...just don't go riding the lift!

josh

trundlebum wrote:bumpity bump

Got a call from one of my buds; hittin it before school, the weather setup was perfect & a bluebell day. I had to put my wetsuit on; biting cold, tell-tale cold, spiritually ominous; a day remembered.

The day of the Challenger.

Boy, you guys are nuts. I'm a lake surfer and the most extreme thing I've been through is planeing on Blue Mtn Reservoir in a hailstorm with lightening striking all around.

Tried it on the ocean when I was down in Grand Cayman and once in the US Virgin's, but there was very little wave action to speak of. This is a completely different sport that you guys do, we just happen to use similar equipment.

Mark Nelson:
"The day of the Challenger."

Yes I will remember that day forever as well.
I was working for a small sail maker in the Boston area. I was the 'hand work' man/dept which meant I sat on a bench all day listening to a walkman or the radio. I followed the live radio broadcast as it happened.
It was a fateful day indeed.

Scott Mossman:
"most extreme thing I've been through is planeing on Blue Mtn Reservoir in a hailstorm with lightening striking all around. "

The most violent conditions I have been through that were threatening...
(I don't consider riding out a squall on a maxi boat very threatening)
...Was one year during Marblehead race week, I was crewing on a 505.
We had a line squall come through that was a doozy. As the old adage goes the rain came before the wind and it screamed.
Race week typically has three starting lines, inside middle and outside. Our class was on the middle line. We got our start off, rounded the windward mark and started off down the reaching leg. Shortly before the reaching mark the wind died and the rain started. Then the lightning. Many bolts were close enough that you could hear the arcing sound. The rain was coming down hard enough to create 'sea smoke'. It was getting pretty scary, standing in calf deep bilge water with a stainless and alloy rig.
We made the decision to leave the race aside and creep over towards the outside line as at this point they were close by. So for the worst of it we sat in the shadow of a couple large keel boats with much bigger rigs. When the lightning mellowed we hobbled back towards the reaching mark arriving back on course just in the nick of time.
We were sitting at the reaching mark, in the fog with barely a breath of air when all of a sudden out of the fog, about a 1/4 mile back up the reaching leg comes 5 or 6 Hobie 16's with both crew members out on the wire and making tracks. In hot pursuit was a half dozen Tempest class boats. They were flying chutes and had the crew on the wire and were planing like dinghies. I looked up, saw this and thought 'Oh f*&^%' and my skipper who was much larger than me started to say "yah Know maybe..." I was already out of and handing him the trapeze harness. As he came over the traveller with the harness in hand I was grabbing the tiller extension and jumping in the back of the boat. Sure enough the boats and breeze caught us moments later, we had just started down the second reach of the course. As we anticipated the wind built in a matter of seconds from zip to well over 40 knots with severe gusts way beyond that.
With the owner on the wire and me hiking my ass off (on a broad reach) I drove down to the leeward mark. At that point all seemed under control so we rounded up and attempted to beat our way back to the weather mark. Fat chance! The best we could manage was barely a beam reach and that was with full hiking, the main completely luffing and the jib drawing but with a large luff in it. I tried a few times unsuccessfully to tack the boat. Each time I would get as much speed as I could and slam the helm down. As soon as the boat came into the wind it just stopped and would not come all the way around. I decided I would give it one more go and if again unsuccessful I would then do a 'back down' tack. During the next attempt to tack, the jib was luffing so violently that it took the slack in the jib sheets and welded them in some funky 'roodabaga knot' on the shroud. With no control of the jib we capsized but that was not so bad we righted the boat on the new tack. It was a no gain situation and very strenuous to maintain so we decided since there really was no more 'race' at this point we would head for a lee shore on a large island. While running down to this island we were under a fair amount of control and could actually take a breather and look around a little.
I saw some pretty wild things. I watched one crew of a 420 class boat capsize. They were reaching and moving so fast and went over so fast that both the skipper and crew were separated from the boat. Before they could swim the short distance to the boat the wind on the hull pushed it down and got under the center board and it looked like it would actually be strong enough to make the boat 'turn turtle'. It did way more than that... the windage on the center board pushed the boat over quickly enough that it actually came up on the other side. Now with the rig out to windward it was but a second or two and wham, the boat literally launched in a manner akin to pole vaulting on it's own rig. The boat did a full 180 with just the tip of the mast left in the water, flew about 20 yards down wind and finally came to a rest. I saw the same but not as dramatic, happen to a couple Laser class boats.
We hit this steep cobble stone beach and beached the boat. The light keeper on the island had been watching and came down to the beach. He told us his anemometer was holding at high 40's (knots) with violent gusts well above hurricane force (72kts).
After the line squall passed it was a pleasant, light air sail back to the harbour. Enroute we saw many, many swamped boats being towed back to the harbour. It's a strange sight to see three guys bailing water out of a 30' keel boat that is down to rails in the water. There was a Soling class boat that actually sunk in that squall and divers used to joke about how it was sitting on the bottom under full sail for weeks before being raised.

J.Thompson:
"I'm excited to hear your standing wave story!"

Ok here's the standing wave story:
In the early 80's I lived in Santa Cruz. At this particular time I lived on water street as it went uphill out of town. My house was a small three bedroom that was of post and pier construction. The front of the house was level with the street but the yard immediately fell away so the house stood about 4 feet of the ground. There was nothing between the back of the house and the levee of the San Lorenzo river.
In short while I lived there I experienced what was probably a 25 if not 50 yr rain storm. The san Lorenzo became so swollen that it threatened to top the levee behind the house. Normal water level was a good 15 or more feet lower. It was a serious enough situation, the peak was looking to happen late night/ early morning. I went to bed that night with my board leashed to the leg of the bed and my wet suit as a pillow.
The river never did breach or top the levee but for a few days was close. So the day after the peak rains I was out wearing my wet suit and bombing around town on my cruiser in the rain with my buddy. We checked the river mouth first then heading back towards my house we were stopping at each bridge over the river to watch the drama of the rivers flotsam bombard the bridge uprights and abutments.
There is one bridge over the San Lorenzo where the upright supports are a big transition curve like a half pipe. Well the volume of water was such that there was a standing wave on the uphill side that was about (east coast) 20', (west coast) 16', (hawaiian) 8'. It was chucking this top to bottom stand up barrel. But I say 'chucking' because it was a standing river wave, it would build over a few seconds, get top heavy, belch out this primo barrel and then collapse and do it all over again. The whole process would take maybe 12 - 20 seconds producing a couple - 6 second barrel.
I know... "did yah surf it?"
No way was I going to try!
Bear in mind there were no jet skis around, the water was a mucky, muddy virus petri dish. It would have been a one shot deal. Jump in upstream and paddle like a madman as you get swepped down stream then make a super critical, one chance take off. If you blew it then you had a good chance of getting 'sifted' on hung up flotsam down stream. Trying to surf it at the time would have been extremely bold for a pro surfer and down right foolhardy for the likes of my noodle arms.
So we sat and watched. It was so fascinating we sat there for perhaps a couple of hours just watching this thing pulse out it's fresh water barrel, collapse regain energy and do it all over again. As we were watching, speculating as to the outcome of an attempt we started to get creative.
This was at the time when the 'Survival of the fittest' was on NBC (or whatever) and a few years after the disappearance of 'Roller Ball'. Well there was a spoof movie on Roller ball called 'Kill Ball'. It was akin to Roller Ball but was savage, there were spikes on the walls to impale competitors on etc...
So after a little hippy lettuce and some wild eyed speculation we had dreamed up a savage, X-sport. We envisioned a standing wave like we were watching but, there would be spikes all on the surface of the concrete upright and after that, down stream there would be multiple gates that would lead to a possible death or salvation. So if you surfed the wave without wiping and getting impaled then you still had to luck out downstream on the other side of the bridge.
Now that would be a true spectator sport !
What a silly imagination 'eh?
But ever since I have not understood why people haven't gotten together and built standing wave generators/reefs in rivers.

Well, preparing my family's spring pilgrimage to Nosara, CR. Last year we had an incredible run of surf. Here's a link to photo's from last year surfingnosara.com/index.php…. I was about 10 meters away from the big guy with the broken red board. We took a big cleanup set on the head and it broke his board. It was the first session of his trip. Later in the week I helped the same guy off the beach after he got nailed by a sting ray in the heel. Ouch!

Hey trundlebum, I have good memories of surfing first peak at sebastion inlet and spanish house during spring break trips in the early 80's. We always camped at the county park down the road from the inlet.

Fat Paul:
Those are fabulous images, yer making me jone'z ;)

Hi
You mention windsurfing with Paul Mindich. Is that Paul Mindich from New Jersey? If so, I grew up surfing with him and his brothers in Monmouth Beach, NJ. They owned a surf/sailboard shaping company in Long Branch called Water Borne (Surf)/ Air Borne(Sail). They shaped my first board, a 4'11" twin fin. This was about 25 years ago. I know Paul spent a lot of time in Hawaii.

Damn I was tapping out this huge long winded response...
KISS I tell myself and start over:

Yes Ryan, Paul Mindich from Jersey.

I was sitting here trying to remember his company name...
Yes thank you, Waterborne and Airborne.
Your first board, a 4'11" twin ?
What were you like 11 years old and weighing in at under 100lbs ;)

I met a lot of that Jersey cru through ice sailing.
In my second season of ice sailing we made a couple trips to Jersey to compete. It was during those competitions (hosted by Paul and FreeSkate) I met Renee' Eckert.
When I moved to Maui Renee' moved out shortly after and we lived together for a while. Later, after she and I broke up I wound up living with her sister RayBelle as my roommate.

To this day I have the pride of saying that my ice board design the 'Icetope' has won more open class ice board events than the FreeSkate. Jeffrey Brown (as far as I know) still holds the speed record (something in the high 60's mph) on which he sailed my deck.

Paul and I had a little rivalry there. But he was always a good sport about it as he knew I had no interest in marketing the Icetope. He would let us sail in FreeSkate class competitions but our results did not count. However when Paul held an 'open' event .... we ruled ;)

I will never forget going out too the bar (The "Beach House" perhaps) which subsequently burned down but was rebuilt with a donation from Bruce Springstein. That was huge fun, dancing in the club and stepping out on the beach to burn and cool off ;)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So yeah...
It was only a few days after I relocated too Maui that Mindich showed up for two weeks to sail. It was just a after we both got there that Henderson took us on that killer Peahi-Ho'okipa coast run.

I don't think I have seen Mindich since :(

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I have a funny Mindich story:
At that time, Henderson, who was mister distructo through negligence to his periphery gear, ie: his vehicles would just rot out from under him with salt and sand.
Ok Henderson had just bought a brand new Isuzu Trooper. At the time Paul's main 'cash cow' was industrial grade fiberglass coating of existing pool decks. Here was Paul looking at it and saying "Jeff let me do you a huge favor, you pay for the materials and I will put a thick layer of glass on the roof of your Trooper. It will give you years more service I promise!"

I said to Paul "you can't be serious, a big, thick coat of ugly commercial glass on the roof of a brand new Trooper?" He said I was new to Hawai'i and had no clue about the salt damage and I was no way taking into consideration Mr. Destructo's hideously fast degradation of descent equipment due to lack of maintenance"

Paul was soooo correct.
Henderson trashed that vehicle in under three years !

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Paul told/taught me a couple things about the surf/beach life in Hawai'i that would pan to be true. Cars melt, you know your a bonified bum when you usual surf jams, you can't tell what color they are any more and your other (dress jams) are pretty good but have a rip or stain or two but at least you can tell what color they are. LOL he was right about that one !

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I would love to have a copy of:
Paul has a great shot of Himself surfing way outside O'ahu. I can't remember if it's outside 'Log Cabins' or 'Avalanche'. But it is a way cool hero shot. He is blazing on this massive (perhaps triple overhead) freight train, just charging down the line. That was in the late 70's way way before any 'tow in'. This wave was about as big and meaty as you could possible get into without a tow. I was very impressed.

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Paul (and brother Mark?) are super guys and I would love to bump into them again.