FROM FINLAND TO SKAGWAY

By Corky Carroll

A few days ago I got an email asking me when they first started putting fins on surfboards and who was the first person to do that.  So I thought it would be fun to take a little look at the evolution of the surfboard fin and it’s configurational changes through the years.  

There are some that hold to the belief that the fin was invented in Finland, by a Fin, and that is how it got it’s name.  Then are those who do not call the fin a fin.  They refer to it as a “skag.”  That group insists that the first dude to put a skag on a board was a surfing Eskimo from Skagway, Alaska.  While both theories are very interesting, and I hate to disagree with any kind of urban legend or myth, they are both wrong.  First off I don’t think they had ever heard of surfing in Finland at the time when the first fin was put on a surfboard.  Secondly, when referring to the fin as a “skag,” it is actually “skeg.”  I know that because I always related to that as “kegs” with the “s” stuck on the front.  A “skag” is something totally different that I will be polite enough to not get into here and now.  Of course if you are asking when the first “Fin” was put on a surfboard, meaning a dude from Finland, then that is a totally different question.  But that is not the subject we are looking into today.  

O.K., all joking aside, maybe.  The very first person to put a fin, or skeg, on a surfboard was Tom Blake around 1935.  At that time the boards were huge and weighed a ton or two.  They were made of solid redwood or combinations of redwood and other woods, all of which were heavy.  The state of the art of surfing was pretty much going straight, as it was near to impossible to do too much turning on these monster planks.  If the fin made a whole lot of difference on one of those boards its seems to be non apparent as they really did not catch on until much later.  It was after WW2 when boards started getting smaller and lighter that the fin became popular.  With the advent of the balsawood and fiberglass surfboard the fin came into it’s own. 

What the fin actually does is to keep the board going in one direction or another without “spinning out,” or sliding sideways.  With the new lightweight balsa boards and the addition of the fin the art of “hotdogging” was born.  People could make hard turns and could “walk the nose” successfully.  

At first there wasn’t a whole lot of science involved in the surfboard fin.  I think they just tried to copy a fish fin or something.  One dude would prefer the “shark” while another tended to like the “tuna” shape fin.  The Skagway dudes adopted the “salmon” fin.  In the 1960’s the shape, rake, and foil of the fins became more and more important as the boards got lighter and smaller.  Some of the designs were for function and some just for the look of it.  For instance there was the “Dewey Weber Hatchet Fin.”  It looked just like a hatchet.  There was absolutely, as far as I could tell anyway, no great advantage or function to that shape of fin other than to make the board look different than others.  Although I will admit that those fins made great “fish choppers.”  You could chop up a perch with one of those puppies in minutes.  

Multi-fin surfboards did not gain popularity until 1970 with the release of the “twin-fin” design by both myself for Hobie Surfboards and Mike Eaton at Bing Surfboards.  The first two-fin board I tried was made by Phil Edwards in the mid sixties.  It was a small and wide shape that he made for his wife at the time.  He put two small fins on the rails, which would have worked fine if he had not canted them in the wrong direction, which resulted in the board totally NOT working at all.  In 1967 I tried putting three fins on one of my “mini-models.”  The problem was that these were all big fins and three of them made the tail weigh about an extra ten pounds and created a ton of drag.  Almost, but not yet.

The first twin fins were a breakthrough in not only fin technology but also surfboard design.   The twin fin led to what is called the “fish” shape and is still in use today.  Actually I am riding the exact same twin fin shape today as I did in 1970, only a bit bigger.  The twin fin also led to the first “tri-fin” designs maybe within a year or so after the twins.  The original tri fin boards had a large, normal sized, fin in the center with two small fins on the rails. 

Later in the 1970’s a dude named Simon Anderson developed the design called the “thruster.”  That is pretty much still the main fin configuration on short boards, and some longboards, today.  There are now quads and all sorts of other interesting ways to do the fins too.  The fin design is just as important as all of the other facets of the modern surfboard.  

HUNTINGTON BEACH MEMORIES PART 5

By Corky Carroll

In honor of the 100^th year anniversary of Huntington Beach I have been doing a series on my own personal memories in that town.  I haven’t been around the whole century, it just feels like it.  For me its been over half of that though.

Last week I left off at the end of the 1960’s.  That was a real boom time for surfing and for Huntington Beach.  That would have been the period for which “Surf City” was officially born.  There were surf shops all over the place. 

That last year of the original incarnation of the United States Surfing Championships was 1972.  Things were changing fast during the early seventies.  The Viet Nam war was more on anybodies minds every day and surfing was on a national decline as far as popularity and also as an industry.  The bigger surfboard companies such as Hobie and Dewey Weber were loosing ground to what were called “underground” brands.  These were largely guys making boards in their garages or on a very small scale.  It seemed the whole vibe at that time was “tune in and drop out.”  Guys were either going to Viet Nam or doing everything in their power to not go to Viet Nam.  The whole surf scene in California took a huge dive.  The peak was probably 1968 or 69 and by 72 it was more or less over for the big competitions, making money as a surfer and for the surf industry as it had been. 

It seemed like a good thing for many Huntington Beach locals who were glad to have the whole circus outta town.  The focus of the surfing world left Surf City and beamed in on Hawaii and Australia.

This seemed like a good time for me to take a hike too.  At the end of the contest year in 1972 I retired and moved to the mountains to ski and work on an attempt at a career in the music business.  When I got back the whole scene had changed in town.  New guys in the lineup.  The hot guy was Buddy Lamas.  I played the Golden Bear a few times and surfed the pier a little bit.  But mostly I hung out in the south county area during those years and went to work as Advertising Director for SURFER magazine.

In 1991 I moved back to Huntington Beach full time.  It was a different place.  Downtown was a mix of old-time and totally modern.  Haight-Ashbury meets Nuevo Viejo.  It was a much safer place to take the family, that was for sure.  I was teaching tennis, playing music in restaurants and got a job managing surf shops on Main Street.  First at the old Windansea shop and then for Aaron Pai at Huntington Surf n Sport.  These were the two complete opposites in approaches to surf shops.  The Windansea shop was total loose business wise.  It was run more or less on a minute-by-minute basis.  Not a smart way to do it but it had its moments.  Surf ‘n Sport was all business all the time.  George “Mayor of Main Street” Lambert and I were given the jobs of managing their “Longboard” store.  We had a lot of fun and ran it as we felt was the right way.  I know between the two of us we sold a ton of surfboards. 

That was an interesting time in town.  The surfing industry was back in full strength and the competition circuit once again focused its main beams on Surf City.  Every top surfer on the planet came through town at least once or twice a year.  The local kids were hotter than ever.  The old trailor park gave way to a Hilton and a huge Hyatt Convention Center.  Smelly old rat infested Maxwells was torn down and a beautiful new Duke’s was built in its place.  I became the house band there.  Loved that job too.  I could stand behind my little tiki bar outside on the patio on summer evenings and see everybody in town walk by at one time or another. 

At one time downtown Huntington Beach was sort of a “surf ghetto.”  Lotsa drugs, hookers living in shabby apartments above the shops and extremely hard-core surf rats running rampant.  Today it is a clean and beautiful city and yet still maintains as hard core a surfing population as it ever did in the past.  Some will say it’s “lost its soul.”

But that is because they can’t afford the rent.  It’s very soulful if you can afford the rent. 

I absolutely love the place.  I have loved it from the first time I rode a wave there.  No matter where I am in the world my roots lead back to that peak on the south side of the pier.  To coffee and pancakes with David Nuuhiwa at Poor Richards, working on paddleboards with Steve Walden, playing music at the Golden Bear and at Dukes, Huntington Beach High School, Lindborg Tennis Club, the Bread Crumb, Surf ‘n Sport, the Sugar Shack and cold mornings starting up the surfing school with my partner Rick Walker so many years ago.  Times change and buildings go up and come down.  Faces change.  Some just get older.  The surf vibe is alive and well in Huntington Beach.  Surf City lives.

HUNTINGTON BEACH MEMORIES PART 4

By Corky Carroll

In honor of the 100^th anniversary of the City of Huntington Beach I have been doing a series on my memories of the past fifty something years that I have lived in and around that center of the surfing universe.   Huntington Beach is truly “Surf City.” 

Last week I left off with my freshman year at Huntington Beach High School.  It was the early 1960’s.  Right at that time surfing more than less turned into a huge national “fad.”  There were all these really silly “Beach” movies coming out like “Beach Blanket Bingo,”  “Ride the Wild Surf” and others that gave the people all over the country the impression that surfers were these wild and crazy beach beatniks that partied all the time and did crazy things on giant waves and in the back of “woody wagons.”  Before long there were pseudo surfers all over the place.  There were dudes who would stick a board in the back or on top of their car and cruise around pretending to be surfers when they never rode a wave in their life. 

And then there were the “ho dads.”  Those were the dudes with the greasy hair that seemed to look like the “Fonze” in the Happy Days television show.  One of those ho dads arrived in Huntington Beach one day in a candy apple green 1957 Chevy.  He was from Norwalk.  He took a look around and probably realized that the surfers were scoring the babes way more than the greasers were.  Voila!  Chuck Dent became a surfer.  I am mentioning this because Chuck became a huge part of the history of both surfing in this town and the downtown (Main Street) scene. 

Former surfing champion Jack Haley had opened a surf shop and was making surfboards.  Chuck got a job working for Jack and would eventually buy him out and change the business to Chuck Dent Surfboards.  Towards the later 1960’s he and his shop would become the focal point of the Main Street social scene.

It was also during those years that the country was experiencing what can only be described as one big “love-in.”  The “Summer of Love,” as it was, blossomed big in Huntington Beach.  Main Street was sort of like Haight-Ashbury south.  Paisley was running rampant.  Chuck was in the thick of it and wallowing like a pig in mud.  

Chuck’s boards were good but nothing out of the ordinary.  Chuck learned to surf but was at best intermediate.  But man that dude could rant.  He took over from Tommy Leonardo as the undisputed Top Mouth not only on the coast but also in the surfing world.  Many of us thought that Cassius Clay went to Chuck for verbiage lesions.  “I am the greatest” just sounded way too familiar to the local pier rats.   He was extremely funny to listen too.  I used to love to sit in the back of the pack and just laugh my butt off at some of his raves.  You did NOT want to be the target of one of those.  Chuck was way funnier than Leonardo was.  Yeah he could be cruel, that was a fact.  But geeze it was entertaining to listen too.  Sometimes you had to feel bad for some of his victims though.  Like the fat kid that came into his store with his parents to buy a wetsuit.  When no suit in the shop fit him Chuck said in no uncertain terms that, “ If little Freddy weren’t so fat he might be able to wear one of these.  But look at this baby lard butt freak….he couldn’t fit into a tent.”  Little Freddy ran out in tears.  I am not making this up either.  This is local lore.  

Chuck put together an all-star list of pro surfers riding his boards.  At that time there were surf shops all over the place in Huntington Beach.  The Greek was becoming a local icon with his shop around the corner on Pacific Coast Highway.   Also Plastic Fantastic.  David Nuuhiwa was the best surfer in town, and beyond, and was the surfing version of a rock star.  Big white Jaguar and always decked in the latest “mod.” 

There was also the “Golden Bear.”  This was a music hall that seemed to feature just about everybody in the rock, blues and folk music scene at one time or another.  You could surf the pier in the morning and go hear Jimi Hendrix in the evening.  Or Janis Joplin, Jackson Browne, Elvin Bishop, Linda Rhondstat, on and on and on.  It’s hard to think of anybody who didn’t play there other than the Beatles and Elvis. 

Those years were good to me as I won five Overall United States Surfing Championships in a row along with three Men’s titles.   Those were the surf glory years in town. 

Stay tuned next week for part 5.

HUNTINGTON BEACH MEMORIES PART 3

By Corky Carroll

In honor of Huntington Beach turning 100 years old I am doing a little series on my memories of growing up in and around our wonderful “Surf City.”  Last week I left off just as I was entering Huntington Beach High School as a freshman in 1961. 

Our high school was more or less divided up between surfers, jocks, soch’s (social-lites) and greasers (a.k.a. “hodads”).  I am not sure who was in the majority really.  Somehow everybody coexisted fairly well considering the huge social differences between these different factions.  There were some very talented surfers that went to school there through the years.  At that time there was a full line up of excellent local, and better than local, talent.  These included Robert August, who was also student body president and generally considered the “prettiest” kid in school.  Robert always had the hottest babes.  There was also a dude named Denny Buehl who was  a very hot goofy-foot and dominated the group on the south side of the pier.  Denny was a senior and was known as the “guppy.”  Great guy.  He had an extreme about of nerve.

My favorite Denny Buehl memory was from one day when I was in Social Studies class.  It was the period right after lunch.  There was a girl in that class that was really hot looking named Alma.  This one day we were right in the middle of a test when all of a sudden Denny opens the door and came walking right into the class.  He scanned the room for a moment until he spotted Alma.  Everybody, including the teacher, was just sort of staring at him and wondering what he was doing there.  He casually walked down the row to where Alma was sitting and then leaned over and gave her this huge kiss.  The full on tongue in the mouth romantic sexy kinda kiss.  It lasted a little while too.

We were all just sitting there slack jawed in awe.  Then he stood up and casually walked out the door.  Nobody said a word.  The teacher just sat there staring at the door with this “I can’t believe he just did that” look on his face.  I was thinking “this dude is very cool, I gotta hang out with HIM.” 

Along those same lines was the day Dick Dale showed up in the parking lot after school one day.  Dick Dale was this great guitar player that had the band that played at the Rendezvous Ball Room in Balboa.  He was known as “the King of the Surf Guitar.”  Fantastic musician.  One day I was standing in front of the school with a bunch of other kids waiting for the school bus to pick us up to go home.  There was this other really hot babe that went to school there named Dawn Majors.  She was blonde and everything your imagination might tell you she was.  All of a sudden Dick Dale himself drives up in his big black Cadillac convertible.  Wow.  Dawn jumps in the car and slides over under his arm.  That was in the day when the front seats were one large seat and not buckets like today.  I wish we still had those kinds of seats.  It was always cool to have your chick cuddled up next to you while cruising down the road.  I liked that.  As we would say, “it was totally bitchin’.” 

So here is none other than Dick Dale with his arm around Dawn Majors pulling out of the Huntington Beach High School parking lot in a big black Cadillac convertible looking cooler than cool could be.  All of us were standing there in total “knowing… but not really, yet wish we did” admiration.  It was at that very moment that my mind told me, “Corky, you gotta learn how to play the guitar.”  I was at that age where my mind only dreamed of two things.  Surfing and babes.  (Hmmmmmm, geeze…… I might still be at that age only in an older version.)   

Another great surfer who was a senior at that time was Richard Chew.  Rich was super smooth and would eventually become a top surfer and a very well respected water guy.  He was the number one rated surfer in the country one year in the mid sixties. 

We had a pack of hot surf rats in my freshman class that year too.  John Boozer, Tom Leonardo (top mouth on the coast), and Scott Hoxeng.  Boozer would go on to win a number of surf contests including the Laguna Masters.  Tom did very well in Hawaii for a few years but eventually was known more for his sharp verbiage than his surfing.  He was the forerunner to Chuck Dent.

Stay tuned next week for part 4.