Today is International Surfing Day in 2023. 10 things you might not know about surfing.
There’s evidence that people in ancient Peru used to surf about five thousand years ago. They used a reed craft called a caballito de totora (little horse of totora). Fishermen in Peru still use them today.
It was big in Polynesia, too, and the first westerners to see it and write about it were the crew of the HMS Endeavour in 1769. James Cook himself wrote, “I could not help concluding this man had the most supreme pleasure while he was driven so fast and so smoothly by the sea.”
In Hawaii, the chief of a tribe would generally be the person who was best at surfing. They would have access to the best beaches and the best wood to make their boards. Commoners with a talent for the sport, however, could use it to gain status. This fact also influenced the spread of surfing to the USA, when four Hawaiian princes at boarding school in California, took some time out to practice in Santa Cruz in 1885. The introduction of surfing in the UK was a similar story. In 1890, John Wrightson reputedly became the first British surfer at Bridlington in Yorkshire, instructed by two Hawaiian students who were studying at his college. The sport arrived in Australia in 1910, not with Hawaiian princes but with a man named Tommy Walker from Manly, who went on holiday to Hawaii and returned with a surfboard.
The first film of surfing in the UK was made in 1929 by Louis Rosenberg after being impressed by some Australian surfers. It’s possible that the first female UK surfer was none other than Agatha Christie, who, in 1924, went on a world tour with her husband which took in Hawaii, where she gave surfing a go. “It can do some damage when you fall head first against the sand (…) but on the whole it is a simple sport and quite fun..” she wrote.
In the 1950s and 60s there was an explosion in surfing culture in the US, especially in California. The rise in popularity was helped by a couple of movies: Gidget (1959) and The Endless Summer (1966). Gidget was the story of a girl called Kathy “Gidget” Kohner-Zuckerman, who used to surf in Malibu in the 1950s. She was quite small and so the other surfers used to call her “Gidget,” which was short for “girl midget.” Her father wrote a book about her, which was subsequently turned into the film.
You can’t do facts about surfing without mentioning the Beach Boys. They recorded a lot of songs about surfing and surfing culture, but none of the band could actually surf.
Surfing isn’t just for humans. Dogs can surf, too. In Huntington Beach, California, there is an annual Surf City Surf Dog contest, a charity event in aid of animal charities. The dogs are judged on their confidence riding the waves and how long they stay on the board.
You can get a degree in surfing. There has been a degree course in Surf Science and Technology at Plymouth University in the UK since 1999.
Some terminology. The word “surf” is of uncertain origin, with scholars divided as to whether it meant the Indian coast or a rushing sound. Surfing has a lot of slang terms associated with it, including: hodad, a person who hangs around on surfing beaches pretending to be a surfer but actually isn’t; Neptune Cocktail, a mouthful of seawater when a person wipes out; beach leech, a person who never has their own equipment and just borrows off everyone else; hang five, surfing with one foot on the front edge of the board; hang ten, surfing with two feet on the front of the board; hang eleven, surfing naked; men in grey suits, Sharks (which, according to one survey, 66% of surfers think about while riding a wave).
Some world records. The longest wave ride: 3 hours 55 minutes by surfer Gary Saavedra in 2011 when he rode the wake of a speed boat. The Largest Wave Surfed: Garrett McNamara rode a 100-foot wave in Portugal in 2013. Kurtis Loftus (50) holds the record for the “Longest Surfing Marathon.” He surfed for 29 hours and 1 minute at Jacksonville Beach, Florida, in 2011. The record for the amount of surfboards stacked on top of a car and driven for 30 metres is 282. The most people to ever stand on one surfboard is 47, at Snappers Rocks, Queensland in 2005. The surfboard was scaled up to 12 m. The largest surf board collection belongs to Donald Dettloff who owns 647 boards which he has used to make a fence around his property in Hawaii. Kelly Slater holds the record for the most money made by a surfer in one year when he made $3 million in 2009.
Character Birthday
Jacob Garrett, half brother of Sebastian Garrett. Obnoxious spoiled brat. He is being groomed at boarding school to be a Viper Agent like his father, Rupert.
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