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midget  : hawaiian surfers, 1970 

Midget Farrelly :  Hawaiian Surfers, 1970.

Midget Farrelly: Hawaiian Surfers.
Surfing World
Volume 13 Number 5, circa May-June 1970?
Copy courtesy of Graham Sorensen.


Introduction.
Prepared in the months leading up to the 1970 World Contest at Bells Beach, this edition features a significant seven page article by Midget Farrelly detailing the Hawaiian surfers who performed with distinction during the previous north shore winter.
It is accompanied by numerous photographs by Peter French and Peter Rae.
It was possibly the first time Gerry Lopez was profiled for Australian readers and he along with several of the other Hawaiians, would visit Australia for the first time to compete in the World Contest.
Midget also notes:
Dick Brewer is one of the strangest individuals in the Islands.
 
Farrelly Surfboards have a four page colour advertisement, unprecedented for an Australian magazine of the period, further promoting the Side-slipper design, first announced in the previous edition, and a revolutionary fin box design; reproduced below.
This was followed by a Side-slipper design article in the following edition, see:
1970 Midget Farrelly : Side Slipper.
 
Other articles included an extensive interview with current Australian champion, Keith Paull, largely focusing on his Hawaiian visit, including two waves at maximum Makaha.
Also two by Bob Evans, Shades of Sunset, a mix of recollections and surf guide, and Memories of Maui.


Advertisements:
Gordon Woods Surfboards, (Invoice): J. West, 4 South Street, Cronulla One surfboard $98.00, 10/4/70, page 2.
Peter Ryan Surfboards: From $85.00, page 24.
Greg Noll Surfboards: No. 1 in Hawaii, page 43.
G&S Surfboards, Caringbah, Kingsway Cronulla and Bulli, page 48.
Sam Egan Surfboards: Peter Cornish is ON, Factory: 7 Bennett Street, Hamilton; Shop: 1 Patrick Street Merewether, page 64.
Shane Surfboards: our tools, Brookvale, Crescent Head, Noosa Heads, page 73.
Peter Clarke Surfboards: Tomorrows Shapes Today, page 77.
Keyo Surfboards: A Keyo is a  Keyo is a Keyo is Col Smith is Nat Young is 'Dappa' is Mark Warren is Geoff McCoy is Surfing at its best, back cover.

Page 32
MIDGET
There are hundreds of thousands and maybe millions of surfers allover the world now.
Every country seems to have its own special brand of surfer.
In Australia it is the fast moving, curl tearing kids, in California smooth aggressiveness marks the best and in South Africa it may be the long waves of Jeffrey's that propels some sleek brown body through a tube.
In all these countries the surfers seem to have evolved from a common mould.
Only in Hawaii, in the biggest waves are the world's most individual surfers found.
It is the waves that have made these surfers so different and their styles are really unique.
Big waves bring out the best, or the true style in a surfer because he contends with an unpredictable force that requires faultless timing, functional approach and better than ordinary nerve to get him into the vertical take off and through the barrelling hollows.

The men who ride Hawaii's waves can be compared to the best mountain climbers, jet pilots or any group of individuals who seek to spend part of their lives in out-of-the-ordinary circumstances.


Small wave riders like to pass off big waves as Iimiting to their performance, but the reverse is truer.

Big waves give more speed and slope for performance, it's just that big waves make greater demands on the surfer.
Big wave surfing is on a greater plateau and slowly surfers are climbing into big waves with the same approach to performance as in small waves.
Desire to ride big waves is the real motivating force for a successful performance in big surf.

Buzzy Trent

The surfers who ride the north shore of Oahu genuinely love big waves.
They love the feel of that great expanse of heaving, speeding water beneath their feet that they hope will soon cascade over their heads and turn into the ultimate tunnel ride.
These surfers are at home at Waimea at twenty feet, they know the Bay and they are anxious to climb into that green monster to taste time and again weight-less sensation in vertical descent that might be compared to a prolonged descent from a hot doggers re-entry.
Their desire for the tube to spillover them is no different really than the cover-up experienced in small waves.
It is the enormity of the waves that separates these surfers and causes many people to ask, "What kind of nuts are those guys?" Well, very few of them are nutty.
The truth is they are devoted surfers conscious of the greatest
Page 33

thrills that can be had from surfing and are gearing their lives to allow them to ride as many big waves as possible.
They are individuals with strong character qualities and a knowledge of the sea.
The good surfers don't take the risks that the new-comers do.
They are painfully aware of the power of the waves and sharpness of the coral bottom.
The big wave riders can ride a twenty foot day with more safety than those hot-doggers who crack each others heads at some popular break.

Eddie and Clyde Aikau seem to symbolize the real Hawaiians in big waves.

They are from a family of pure blooded Hawaiians of which there are few left.
Eddie has been a Iifeguard at Waimea in the last few years and he seems most at ease in the biggest surf.
His behind the curl take offs at Waimea and Sunset are unmatched for sheer daring and natural ability to survive the worst situation.
Eddie enjoys the kind of wave most people are terrified of.
I have often seen Eddie take off and become enveloped by the cascading lip with only his board and legs visible for most the ride.

In Hawaii the surfer rides high to pass a section instead of driving around the bottom, so quite often he is obscured from view.
He may not even get wet because the waves are really that hollow.
Eddie tends to ride the top of the wave employing last second vertical descent speed to beat the curl.

Clyde is more the performer when it comes to driving his board where

Jock Sutherland, Sunset Beach.

Richard Kimble, inside Backdoor Pipeline.
Page 34
it shouldn't go.
Both Eddie and Clyde are tail riders so they can make snap turns before the curl axes down.
Ben Aipa is another Hawaiian who has taken power turning into big waves.
Ben is a very sensitive guy for his great size and really conscious of what small boards can do back in the curl.
Ben shapes his own designs for Greg Noll in the islands and most of the Hawaiians go to Ben for improved designs every winter. Ben relies heavily on his cutback which he initiates by dropping his weight low over his trail leg.
He is extremely graceful for his size and he lifts out of a bottom turn like a cannonball.
His favourite break is Haleiwa where he can dominate any size crowd with his racing curves and white water turns.

Gerry Lopez is an unknown quantity for Australians.
I had never even heard of him 'till last winter.
Everyone was raving over this guy at Ala Moana and Pipeline.
He has the cat-like agility of Nuuhiwa and the daring of Jock Sutherland.
If you can mix that up with a little Wayne Lynch you may be able to imagine Lopez re-entering at ten foot Pipeline.
Lopez is casual to say the

Jerry
(sic) Lopez, Pipeline.

Also:
Barry Kanaiapuni, portrait.

Page 35
least when he rides the tube at the Pipe with his fin out for the whole ride.
Lopez is a slight, wispy goofey-foot with a casual exterior that surfaces an uncanny wave deciphering and board designing mind.
He builds his boards from go to whoa at Surfline in Honolulu and it's safe to say his finished product is really weird, but functional weird, to look at.

He carefully engineers each board to perform all the basics and then some with provisions in design for side-slips and 360's on most any wave.
Flat bottoms and low rails are his speciality.

Gerry is hungry for lefts and one day he would be at Pipeline the next he's on a jet to Maui, Paupakalo, or the great lefts at Kahului breakwater.

Philipe Pomar lives only for waves.
He has improved incredibly from his Peru World contest days.
He is an able hot dogger in small waves at Pupukea and a great pocket man at Sunset.
Philipe lives on the North Shore all year and returns to Peru every February for the International Championships.
He is super conscious of new designs and always has a new board amongst the dozen he regularly carries.
On a big day Philipe's the first guy in the water and the last to leave.
He sells real estate with his surfing friend Bobby Cloutier, and has an ambition to come to Australia and surf Queensland's warm
water waves.

Dick Brewer is one of the strangest individuals in the Islands.

Dick has lived on all the surfing Islands and builds boards


Randy Rarick (sic), Haleiwa.
Ben Aipa, Haleiwa.
Page 36
in shops he has had at Haleiwa, Hanapepi and in Lahaina.
He is a wandering surfer and shaper indifferent to worldly goods and aware of his need to live a simple life in the most beautiful place on this earth.
Dick has an unlimited supply of designs he applies to surfboards and his influence on boards for all waves is strongly felt in both California and believe it or not here in Australia.
Dick lists the mini-gun as his greatest working design and he was truly instrumental in taking up where Pat Curren left off in creating the necessary equipment for big waves.
Dick is an accomplished surfer himself and has built boards for the best, like Cabell, Hemmings, Nuuhiwa and more recently Reno Abellira.
Photograph:
Sunset Beach.

Buzzy Trent is not a hot dogger but if he could have been, he would have.
Buzzy was one of the rebel judges who including Dewey Weber and Brewer who put me ahead of the Hawaiians in the 1963 Makaha Championships.
Buzzy was leader in big wave riding in the early 'North Shore days'.
His surfing at Waimea on the biggest days is recorded in murals in homes all over the world.
Buzzy lives with his Hawaiian wife Violet and their kids, at Waimea on the Makaha side of the island of Oahu.,
Buzzy is still mad-keen for a big day at Makaha Point Surf and rides a specially designed board by catamaran-surfer-designer Joe Quigg, which features an eliptical rail and bottom line.
Buzzy had his leg broken at Makaha on a

Page 37
big day at the point when a wave threw over and caught him proned-out.
 
Jose Angel has been surfing the North Shore for many years.
Jose is of American-Philipino origin and is most at home in the water.
He is Vice Principal at Haleiwa school and checks Sunset every lunch hour when the swell is up.
Jose is a keen diver and sailor.
His home at the Banzai Pipeline is full of momentos of his most remembered ride at Waimea, a huge sea-turtle shell hung on the wall or shots of him sailing his cat off Ala Moana.
During the December storm surf reached heights of forty feet and greater, Jose's was one of the few homes that escaped damage along the beach front.

Photographs:
Buddy Boy up-tight Sunset.


Clyde Aikau,
portrait.
Every summer he bull-dozes sand up in front that will slowly disappear when winter's big waves arrive.
Jose is a goofey-foot and has surfed the biggest waves of Sunset, Waimea, Laniakea and outside Pipeline.
Jose of all the surfers there on the North Shore seems to have the greatest appreciation of the Pacific's moods.
Barry Kanaiapuni and Jackie Baxter are two surfers who may unknowingly share a similar attitude to hollow waves.
They both prefer the depths of a North Shore pocket or a Honolua tube to any other part of a wave.
Not that every surfer doesn't, but these guys have the most unique ways of getting there.
They are last-second turners and power men in the white water.
 
Page 38
Jackie is a wanderer riding Mike Diffenderfers boards wherever he goes.
Barry is a permanent 'North Shore' man with a family to keep him company in the country.
Barry's brilliance is matched equally by his elusiveness on the surfing scene and his private attitude boards surfing for himself.
Joey Cabell and Jock Sutherland have to be two of the most exciting to watch.
Cabell for his relentless driving through unforgiving tubes and Jock for his radical off- the-cuff stunts in the worst situations.
Joey is a stylist and Jock is brash.
Photographs:
Jock Sutherland, Haleiwa.


Jackie Baxter, Backdoor Pipeline.
Jock at Waimea is totally aggressive, no part of the wave is taboo.
He can ride either way and his years of living at Laniakea, a punishing break have made him fearless.
If there is something new to be done at Pipeline, say a 360, there Jock will try it.
Jock travels between the Islands and California most every year but he must be most at home trying to make his way out of the shadow of a Pipeline cylinder.
There are many surfers I haven't words for who are doing fabulous things in Hawaiian waves.
Some of these guys will never be photographed.
I envy them all, the unsung - the unphotographed, for they are jamming their bodies into the best waves in the world at this very moment.

Photographs: Peter French  Peter Rae.

Keith Paull Interview
Page 13





Pipeline
                                                  




Waimea Bay

Page 14-15

Page 17
Sunset?                                          







Sunset?

Page 39
(Advertisement, reformatted)
Farrelly
230 Harbord Road, Brookvale 2100, NSW, Phone 939-1724. 

The Side Slipper comes from Hawaii. 
It was designed to put the surfer back where the actIon IS, In the curl! 
Either by side-slipping or employing the 360 you can find your way back into the pocket. 
The Hawaiian (Aussi patriots and Downunder experts wince now!) Side Slipper would be slightly thinner and up to six inches longer than a conventional shortboard. 
Farrelly or his dealers can tell you how to achieve best results from a range of three fins that individually alter the Slippers performance.
Should you prefer another design try one of Farrelly's Roundtails, Double Enders, Diamond or Square Tails, Big wave Boards, and even belly boards.

Pages 41-42



Page 43
(Advertisement, continued, reformatted)
This is the first removable, sliding fibreglass fin unit in Australia.
It can be found on Farrelly surfboards, Midget has always preferred glass fins refusing to install substitutes
and he has this patented system that will revolutionize fin systems all over the world.
This fin system is installed in new boards at no extra cost.


Surfing World 
Volume 13 Number 5, 
circa June 1970?
 
Cover:
Honolula Bay, Maui.

Photo by Dick Graham.

Back Cover:
Keyo Surfboards

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Geoff Cater (2013-2020) : Midget Farrelly : Hawaiian Surfers, 1970.
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