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A Brief History of Surf
This is the first installation of a twelve part series exploring the extensive history of surfing around the world. Look for future installations in each new edition of The Tamarindo News.
What we now call surfing already existed around the Fourteenth Century, among the indigenous tribes in the Southwestern Pacific Ocean. It began as a demonstration of valor, a proof of manhood, a challenge with the ocean to slide along the mighty waves. In that time, the surfboards were called Alaia, olo Paipos. The tradition flourished for centuries and, in the last hundred years, started to become popular throughout the world, and received the term “surf” somewhere along the way.
In 1890, Duke Kahanamoku was born in the Hawaiian Islands. He was a big lover of water sports, winner of Olympic Medals in swimming, and is considered the Father of Surfing. In the beginning of the Twentieth Century, Kahanamoku became the pioneer, together with the other great surfers of the time, to bring surfing to the entire world.
In his honor, since 1963, there is a celebration every year of a surf championship in his name in the City of Huntington Beach, California, in honor of a man who has made a big contribution with his dedication and became a true legend, one that will never die. In Honolulu, Hawaii, there exists a monument to Kahanamoku, who, by his perseverance, strength, and valor has made surfing known for all time.
It was also in California where the fever of surfing exploded, in the glorious Sixties, when Hollywood took surfing as a serious part of film making, the beach lifestyle of Malibu, the music created by The Beach Boys, The Surfaris and Dick Dale providing a soundtrack, and the art and style of dress became a model of this new lifestyle.
Throughout time, surfboards became smaller, with a variety of sizes and shapes, to compliment more categories of surfing styles, such as longboard, shortboard, kneeboards, skateboards, skiboards, snowboard, windsurfing, kitesurfing, wakeboard, sandboard, bodyboard, and the list continues to grow. And, it was in the Sixties, after the first World Cup, done by the International Surfing Federation, close to Sydney, Australia, that surfing received the popularity it deserved. At that moment, this organization made the connections and joined all the countries that had been practicing individually, giving strength to the surfing world by joining them in international competition. Surfing literally became a language, a form of expression.
In the present, we can see a very talented generation of surfers living from and for the sport, with the inspiration to evolve, with the exposure of video, publication, television, radio, and a variety of elements that lend to the growth of a new lifestyle.
Thanks to the contributions of generations of surfing predecessors and ancestors, places like our home, Tamarindo, have the soul of surfing that created it. After all, consider what Tamarindo would be like right now if there was no surfing…
Have a good wave!!
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Comments (1 posted):
The surf, which breaks on the coast round the bay, extends to the distance of about one hundred fifty yards from the shore, within which space, the surges of the sea, accumulating from the shallowness of the water, are dashed against the beach with prodigious violence. Whenever, from stormy weather, or any extraordinary swell at sea, the impetuosity of the surf is increased to its utmost heights, they choose that time for this amusement: twenty or thirty of the natives, taking each a long narrow board, rounded at the ends, set out together from the shore. The first wave they meet, they plunge under, and suffering it to roll over them, rise again beyond it, and make the best of their way, by swimming, out into the sea. The second wave is encountered in the same manner with the first; the great difficulty consisting in seizing the proper moment of diving under it, which, if missed, the person is caught by the surf, and driven back again with great violence; and all his dexterity is then required to prevent himself from being dashed against the rocks. As soon as they have gained, by these repeated efforts, the smooth water beyond the surf, they lay themselves at length on their board, and prepare for their return. As the surf consists of a number of waves, of which every third is remarked to be always much larger than the others, and to flow higher on the shore, the rest breaking in the intermediate space, their first object is to place themselves on the summit of the largest surge, by which they are driven along with amazing rapidity toward the shore. If by mistake they should place themselves on one of the smaller waves, which breaks before they reach the land, or should not be able to keep their plank in a proper direction on the top of the swell, they are left exposed to the fury of the next, and, to avoid it, are obliged again to dive, and regain the place from which they set out. Those who succeed in their object of reaching the shore, have still the greatest danger to encounter. The coast being guarded by a chain of rocks, with, here and there, a small opening between them, they are obliged to steer their board through one of these, or, in case of failure, to quit it, before they reach the rocks, and, plunging under the wave, make the best of their way back again. This is reckoned very disgraceful, and is also attended with the loss of the board, which I have often seen, with great terror, dashed to pieces, at the very moment the islander quitted it. The boldness and address, with which we saw them perform these difficult and dangerous manoeuvres, was altogether astonishing, and is scarcely to be credited.
Captain King's journal entry is the first description of he'e nalu, the Hawaiian word for surfing, ever recorded by Western man. Since there was no written language at this time in Hawaii, King's journal entry serves as man's earliest written account of this Hawaiian sport.
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