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Tag: Surfing

  • Duke Kahanamoku Google Doodle Shines Light On Legendary ‘Big Kahuna’

    Duke Kahanamoku Google Doodle Shines Light On Legendary ‘Big Kahuna’

    Duke Kahanamoku (or Duke Paoa Kahinu Mokoe Hulikohola Kahanamoku) is the subject of a new Google doodle honoring his legacy as the man who is largely responsible for spreading the sport of surfing. Kahanamoku, who won five Olympic medals for swimming, and was also known as “The Duke” and “The Big Kahuna,” was born one hundred and twenty-five years ago today.

    While water-sports were his main claim to fame, Kahanamoku had quite a collection of professions.

    As Google explains, “The story of Duke Kahanamoku–the Hawaiian who, in 1912, first drew the world’s collective gaze upon the art of surfing–reads like mythology. Born in Honolulu in 1890, he is credited in over a dozen feature films, surfed the world’s most imposing swells before Californians knew what surfing was, won five Olympic medals in swimming and was elected sheriff of his beloved home county thirteen times.”

    duke-kahanamoku

    “The Big Kahuna was a tremendous athlete, to be sure, and by all accounts staggeringly cool, but he also had a proclivity for heroics–one morning in 1925, just as dawn crept into the summer sky over Newport Beach, a 40-foot fishing vessel called the Thelma found herself in the grip of a sudden and violent squall,” the company adds. “Waves hammered the Thelma’s deck, and the vessel succumbed to the thrashing breakers, stranding its crew in the surf. The Duke, who watched from the shore as he prepared for that morning’s ride, rushed headlong into the maelstrom with his surfboard and, along with three friends, managed to wrest twelve men from the clutches of the Pacific.”

    In other words, the man was a true hero, but as if that weren’t enough, as Google notes he also played a role in helping the Hawaiian Islands achieve statehood in 1959 about nine years before his death.

    Here’s some rare footage of what is said to be Kahanamoku at Waikiki Beach in 1939:

    Google is showing the doodle throughout North and much of South America as well as in much of Europe, India, Indonesia, Thailand, and Japan. August 24 also happens to be Ukraine Independence Day, and in that country, Google is honoring that with its own doodle.

    Other subjects Google has run doodles for on August 24 over the years include the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, and the 112th birthday of writer Jorge Luis Borges.

    Images via Google, Wikimedia Commons

  • Surfing Innovator Hobie Alter Passes Away At 80

    Surfing Innovator Hobie Alter Passes Away At 80

    The world of watersports lost a great man on Saturday.

    Hobart “Hobie” Alter, the man responsible for turning surfing and sailing into popular water activities passed away in his home in Palm Desert, California. He was 80 years old.

    Alter is best known for making a lightweight and high-performance sailboat, which he named “Hobie Cat”, as well as the mass production of foam core surfboards. California surfer and creator of Surfer’s Journal Steve Pezman dubbed Alter’s work as “the Henry Ford of the surfboard industry” for the superb quality of his polyurethane foam surfboards.

    It was in the early 1950s that the self-taught innovator began making surfboards in the garage of his family’s home in Laguna Beach. In 1954, Alter opened up his own surfboard shop in Dana Point, the second surfboard store in existence at the time, next to Dale Velzy’s store in South Bay. Together with Alter’s friend, Gordon “Grubby’ Clark, he developed the concept of using polyurethane foam in creating surfboards because they offered better flexibility and price compared to wooden surfboards.

    Four years later, Alter’s operation focused on the full-time production of foam core surfboards. The shift from balsa to foam core construction was painstakingly difficult, and took more than a year for Alter and Clark to perfect. By the end of the 1960s, Alter’s surfboard business had grown so successful that he was able to open another shop in Honolulu. Shortly after launching the shop in Hawaii, Alter also began selling his goods in shops on the East Coast. In 1964, he was able to establish his own line of skateboards called “Hobie Skateboards”.

    Another significant contribution that Alter made started in the late 1960s when he launched the development of the “Hobie Cat” – a fiberglass catamaran that was lightweight and easy to transport. The following years marked a newfound love for sailing among people who would not typically think of purchasing big and pricey sailboats. The 16-foot catamaran was affordable, capable of being launched at the beach, and can be sailed by one person.

    In an interview with Alter that took place in 1977, he said that making surfboards allowed him to earn a living by making things that gave him “pleasure” and it also enabled him to do exactly what he has always wanted to do.

    The Hobie Story

    Image via YouTube

  • Gaviota Pier: Damaging Waves Rip into Popular Fishing Dock

    A historic pier at Gaviota State Beach in Santa Barbara, Calif., collapsed Saturday morning due to damaging waves.

    Gaviota Beach is popular for camping, hiking, and surfing. However, one feature that attracts visiting tourists and local residents is the windy Gaviota Pier.

    Spanish soldiers who decided to call it “La Gaviota,” which means seagull, found the pier in 1769.

    The 529-foot pier is typically opened 24 hours a day and is well-liked by fishermen, but now a chunk of it is gone.

    Eyewitness Jack Crouch said the waves weren’t as big when he and his daughter first arrived, but 10 minutes later they found themselves running to save themselves as the pier started to collapse.

    “We started noticing the pier was shaking and swaying back and forth, so we left the pier,” he said. “I stayed for one more big set of waves and then we ran. It was kind of scary.”

    According to the California Best Beaches website, “a key feature on the pier is the boat hoist.” People can use it to launch recreational boats, but must obtain training, an identification card, and pass inspection before using the hoist.

    Crouch verified to local reporters how the area where fishing usually takes place collapsed “about 200 feet… from the hoist to the end.”

    State Parks Sector Superintendent Eric Hjelstrom said that there were no boats docked at the time of the collapse, but he’s afraid that the pier will soon yield to further damages.

    The Santa Maria Times gave an update Monday on the storm’s status. Rainfall was reportedly less than 3 inches in most surrounding areas including Santa Ynez and San Luis Obispo. Meteorologists predict clear skies for the rest of the week.

    Although the pier at Gaviota Beach was injured pretty severely, the newspaper reported that additional piers were also hit hard by vicious waves:

    “Railings and a pipe on Avila Pier also were broken loose, forcing the closure of that pier. The Pismo Pier was also closed Saturday due to high winds…[and] three boats also broke loose along the south coast, with one smashed into the Goleta Pier.”

    The Gaviota Pier and beach will be closed until further notice.

    Image via YouTube

  • Bing Just Released This Video Of A Dog Surfing

    Bing has been hanging out with the champion of the Loews Surf Dog competition in Imperial Beach, California. It’s part of this whole “Bing Summer of Doing” campaign the company has been promoting.

    Today, Microsoft’s search division uploaded the following video about it:

    In the video, host Damien Fahey says he wanted to find an amazing story about surfing, so he checked Bing, and using the search engine’s social results, he got a recommendation from his friend, who recommended the dog surfing championship.

    So, he ended up spending the day with last year’s champion, Abbie.

    I guess the lesson we’re supposed to take away from this is that if you use Bing’s social search features, you can find yourself in some amazing situations. Unfortunately, my experiences with the features haven’t been so epic.

    The video closes with the “Bing is for doing” slogan. I’m glad to see it applied to such an every day scenario.

  • McNamara Breaks Surfing World Record

    Extreme surfer Garret McNamara has just grabbed the Guinness World Record for the largest wave ever surfed, after riding a 78-foot swell near Nazare, Portugal last November. Here’s a clip of the surfing feat:

    Experts representing the annual Billabong XXL Global Big Wave Awards confirmed McNamara’s wave equated a world record on Friday, beating out previous world-record holder Mike Parson, who rode a 77-foot wave off the coast of Southern California in 2008. No word on how one, expert or not, can accurately discern a difference of 12″ between two walls of water.

    McNamara states, “It’s amazing we get to do what we do, I am so grateful. The world record doesn’t mean as much to me, this is for the town of Nazaré and Portugal and for all my family and friends there.” The new world-record holder was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts in 1967, and for the past decade has made it a life-mission to ride the largest waves on the planet.

    McNamara adds, “To be able to give them something to be proud of and inspire them… I didn’t want to get caught up in it all, but I have to tell you the truth, when they announced my name I got a bigger rush than probably on all the waves I rode this year.”

  • Garrett McNamara: I Have Underwater Superpowers

    Garrett McNamara is a world record holder for surfing the biggest wave in the world. The wave, which stood a gigantic 90 feet, is a monster in itself, but Garrett feels he can break his old record.

    http://youtu.be/nd2jtwviyC8

    Garrett has a special suit that allows him to breath underwater. On the suit lies a special pouch that can be filled with oxygen, once underwater he can then breathe that oxygen through a built in straw. McNamara tells a source that he is currently looking to break his current behemoth of a record with an even better suit; he says he’s hunting for a 120-footer in Portugal.

    The same source asked McNamara how he survived to which he simply replied “I don’t”.