"Bobby, you like talk story now?"
Bobby Achoy's hand feels like a rusty steel mitt as I grip it in the classic Hawaiian handshake. The famous Waikiki beachboy has put more miles on his hands than any waterman I have ever met, whether wrapped around a canoe paddle or from greeting the countless tourists he has squired around the gentle rollers of Waikiki Beach. I have asked him if we could talk about the origins of 'beachboy style' or 'stand-up' surfing and, nodding in agreement, we sit down on the lava rock wall in front of the Duke Kahanamoku statue for my history lesson.
As one of the growing number of surfers addicted to this hybrid sport of standing on an oversize surfboard and paddling, catching waves and surfing with the aid of a lengthened canoe paddle, I want to hear something about its past from one of its originators. Many surfers mistakenly think stand-up surfing is a new sport yet, like so many water activities in Hawaii, there is concealed behind the new-fangled super-light boards, featherweight paddles and snappy maneuvers a tradition that goes back a hundred or more years.
Growing up on the beaches of Waikiki I remember Bobby, along with his brother, Leroy and father, John, stand-up paddling around Canoes with a pack of cigarettes wrapped in his sleeve and a Nikonos dangling from his neck, barking lessons at the tourists and taking photos of them as they stink-bugged past him. Sometimes, if he was tired or it had had a festive night, he would set a stool atop his board and use his long canoe paddle to scoot around the line-up. Scrounging one of the rental boards lying on the sand, I would imitate Bobby by paddling up and down the shoreline "beachboy style."
Thirty years later I was reintroduced to beachboy surfing by Makaha waterman Brian Keaulana at the 2003 Buffalo's Big Board Surfing Classic, a contest that over the years has become the unofficial waterman's' Olympics. With the advent of new boards and strong, lightweight paddles, I have become captivated by this hybrid sport, not only for the rigorous exercise but also the tradition, grace, and camaraderie that has arisen from the small but growing group of fellow surfers and paddlers who share this astonishingly enjoyable method of surfing.
Chatting with Bobby on the beach where it all began is a 'chicken skin' experience. As he tells me about the old days we watch thirty or so stand-up surfers competing at Queen's in one of the first contests staged strictly for 'beachboy-style' surfing. He explains with a chuckle that he and the other beachboys began stand-up paddling on their boards out of laziness; it enabled them to remain high and dry while taking snapshots of tourists – and also kept their cigarettes dry, too. Now 65-years-old, Achoy still takes tourists out canoe surfing, still teaches surfing, and continues to shoot pictures of anyone who wants their exploits recorded while 'biting the bull-mouthed breakers.'
Talking about the joy he feels while beachboy surfing, he looks at me and says, "Ho, once I started doing 'em I never prone paddled again." His deeply tanned face is split by a wide grin. "Todd, I know you know what I mean - I seen you out there, bruddah!" Achoy is stoked to see how much enjoyment we are getting from a sport he thought would surely fade away; he embraces the newfound enthusiasm for stand-up surfing and is amazed at how far and fast it and the equipment has progressed.
Then he stops and says, "Bruddha, I think it's time for our 'repo' heat. How 'bout we paddle out together and talk story some more?" Paddling out beside him, Bobby with his heavy 12-foot rental board and old wooden oar, me with my new lightweight 9'6" EPS/epoxy Parmenter surfboard and carbon-fiber 'Pohaku' paddle, vividly contrasts the differences in the old and the new equipment, but the fun quotient is the same: as the heat starts and the rest of the contestants jockey around the line-up, Bobby holds position over his line-up marker and gets the first set. Snapping out of a smooth bottom-turn, he walks the nose, spinning his paddle like soldier in a parade, eyes glinting with youthful glee. By heat's end Bobby had smoked all us young bucks and won a spot in the finals.
Stand-up 'beachboy-style surfing is hurtling beyond its laid-back Waikiki roots and is on the way to becoming an established sport. At the recent Annual Buffalo's Big Board Surfing Classic held at Makaha this past March, the first round of the beachboy division overflowed with an international field of nearly 75 stand-up contestants. Furthermore, an increasing number of paddle sports enthusiasts, not content to merely ride waves beachboy style, are diligently establishing the hybrid-of-a-hybrid sport of stand-up paddleboard racing. Others are attracted to beachboy surfing because of its superior training benefits; of all the surfing/water sports disciplines, stand-up surfing offers the best work-out, using and building all the necessary "core strength" muscles. Many of the new breed of beachboy surfers rely on their stand-up boards to improve balance, strength and endurance for other ocean sports like tow-in surfing, canoe paddling and surfing itself. Some have found that stand-up surfing is the ideal way to explore and tap surf breaks previously thought too hard to reach or too expansive to tackle via prone paddling.
But you don't have to be a waterman or big-wave lunatic to enjoy the advantages of beachboy surfing: many novice or average surfers have taken up the sport because it is just a fun, safe way to keep in good physical condition. It is a thoroughly pleasurable flat-water sport, one in which pairs or groups can enjoy a leisurely paddle, chatting away as if on an easy hike.
Many surfers mistakenly lump beachboy surfing into the 'retro' trend, perhaps because of its Waikiki roots and because it employs modified longboards. But for me and guys like Brian Keaulana, Dave Parmenter, Bruce Desoto, Laird Hamilton, Dave Kalama, Archie Kalepa and other watermen, stand-up surfing has progressed so far with new board designs and paddles that it now offers the same futuristic frontiers as tow-in surfing when it first started to take off. While the resurgence in stand-up surfing began as a fun method to achieve core strength training or kill a lazy afternoon of small surf, as a collection of all-around watermen focused their energies upon it soon became apparent that the sky was the limit. Even the most die-hard advocates of stand-up surfing are amazed at the boundless potential for high-performance surfing. The Hawaiian surfers, always comfortable with big boards, outrigger canoes or sailboards, found that with the new lightweight elongated paddles allowed them to lean and brace into deep carving turns, and the added leverage transformed an 11 or 12-foot board into a nitro-burning jet-sled. Makaha's Brian Keaulana led the push toward shorter boards and bigger waves. Built in 2003, his first `short' stand-up board (a 10' X 28' X 4" multi-fin) was the first quantum leap in the high-performance school of the stand-up resurgence. The new short and lightweight – but stable – surfboard allowed Brian to attack 10-to12-foot Makaha Bowl surf from behind the peak, and skeptical onlookers were stunned to witness his under-the-lip layback snaps and high-speed whitewater rebounds on a board with three times the volume of their pro model semi guns.
At present most of the principal stand-up surfers come from the older crew of all 'round ocean athletes and watermen, but more and more young high-performance shortboarders are praising the advantages of the strength and balance training gained from stand-up surfing. The other surfers that have adopted this sport read like a who's-who in surfing, from big-wave titan Laird Hamilton to Pipe Master Rob Machado to retro-groovers Dan & Keith Malloy, and on to the legendary Mickey Munoz, whose infatuation with the sport has led him to promise new stand-up board designs. And though most young shortboard surfers don't consider beachboy surfing 'cool' yet, the more they see hot young surfers like Rob Machado, Bonga Perkins and the Irons brothers ripping on their beachboy boards, the more even the most fervent detractors among them will find their curiosity aroused.
Keeping apace with the beachboy surfing revival is the wholly new sport of stand-up paddleboard racing, which consists of specially adapted boards that are paddled standing up in either short or long distance races. Maui waterman Archie Kalepa confirmed the possibilities when, as an unofficial entrant in the 2004 Quiksilver Molokai to Oahu paddleboard race, he made a strong solo crossing on his custom-made 12-foot EPS/epoxy stand-up board. His endeavor lead me to lobby organizers of the local Hawaiian paddleboard races to include stand-up paddleboard divisions, thereby officially introducing the new sport into the traditional ocean regatta races already such a part of life in the Islands. The sponsorship of the first-ever official stand-up divisions in the 2005 Hennessey International Championships and the 2005 Quiksilver Molokai to Oahu Paddleboard Race, the revolution caught fire: in both these events stand-up racers showed that they could compete head-to-head with the world's top paddleboarders in most prestigious races in the world. The start of this summer's paddleboard race season no doubt forecasts the future: At the many summer paddleboard races one-quarter of all entrants were stand-up paddlers. And at the time of this writing, a large field of international stand-up racers are converging on the western shores of Molokai for the Quiksilver Molokai to Oahu race, so it seems all but certain that this sport has earned its credibility as a legitimate paddle sport and can no longer be regarded as a mere stunt or fad.
I foresee a great future for stand-up surfing and racing. Stand-up surfboards will get shorter and lighter, and there is plenty of room for innovation in paddle design. The more experienced stand-up surfers are pulling off snappy figure-eight roundhouses and floaters, and the wave-size ceiling is far from fixed.
And while a rising number of beachboy surfers could well bring more trouble into already overcrowded surf breaks, there is with the sport a tremendous potential to help spread out more surfers into little-used venues, in much the same way as jet skis and tow-in surfing shifted a whole category of surfers away from a handful of big-wave spots into new territories.
Who knows – just as today's big-wave surfers can't imagine paddling into a 25-foot wave, perhaps someday many surfers, standing tall with paddle in hand, will like Booby Achoy look back at their old boards and wonder how the hell they ever caught waves lying down.
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