With the big Vans U.S. Open of Surfing set to pounce on Orange County’s most famous surfing spot, the Huntington Beach Pier, from July 27 to Aug. 4, the eyes of the surfing world are upon us.
One of the more prestigious of the events that go along with the big competition is the annual induction ceremony for the Surfers’ Hall of Fame. This year’s inductions will take place at 9 a.m. Friday, Aug. 2 at the Surfers’ Hall of Fame Plaza on the corner of Main Street and Pacific Coast Highway, under the statue of the great Duke Kahanamoku.
The three honorees for 2019 are National Scholastic Surfing Association director Janice Aragon, incredible all-around waterman Kai Lenny and local legend Sam Hawk.
Last week I told you about Janice. Today, I want to talk about Kai, and next week I will finish up with Sam.
It’s hard to describe Kai Lenny without saying that he is probably the greatest all-around surf waterman of all time. The only three surfers I can think of that truly enter the discussion would be the late, great Mike Doyle and big wave king Laird Hamilton.
There are people that have excelled in more than one facet of surfing, but I can’t think of anybody who has excelled in all of them. Other than Kai. This dude can do it all — a world-class big wave and small wave surfer, longboard, shortboard, or any board; world-class stand-up paddleboard surfer and racer.
Same for windsurfing, kiteboarding, skim boarding, boogie boarding, prone paddleboard racing, foil surfing and any other kind of surf-related activity known to man, plus probably a few that are not even known yet, the guy is that advanced.
He wins stuff. Kai is a seven-time stand-up paddleboard world champion; winner of the Molokai to Oahu paddleboard race; runner-up in the professional kite board world championship. It goes on and on.
And here’s the kicker, he’s only 26.
Kai’s parents put him in the water near their home on the island of Maui when he was less than a week old. Both of them were water people and had moved to Maui to be a part of the windsurfing and surfing culture over there. Kai was doing it all before he ever had his first nap time in kindergarten, blowing minds in all sizes of surf in his early teens and now standing almost peerless in his mid-20s.
It’s just crazy how good this kid is.
Surfers’ Hall of Fame founder Aaron Pai calls Kai “one of the most progressive and amazing big and small wave surfers on the planet.”
Kai follows Mike Doyle and Laird Hamilton into the Surfers’ Hall of Fame, along with other amazing all-around watermen such as George Downing, Mickey Munoz and Rabbit Kekai.
I have been a fan of Kai for a number of years although I really don’t know him, other than briefly meeting at one of the Battle of the Paddle events in Dana Point where I was an announcer and he was racing.
I started seeing videos of him surfing big waves at Jaws, on Maui, and my first thought was, “Wow, this kid can really surf. He is not just an SUP-er.” And I do not mean that as a knock on stand-up paddleboarding at all, just that I was surprised at what a great prone board surfer he was as well as being the great SUP racer that I had seen at the Battle of the Paddle.
As time went on I kept seeing more and more footage of him doing pretty much everything — shredding small surf on a shortboard and equally shredding monster surf doing tow-ins. One of my favorite videos of him shows him jamming off the bottom and up into the lip on a monster wave at Jaws — like zillions of feet. He explodes through the lip and free falls a few stories down the face of the wave, lands it and races it out the end. One of those “wow” kinda deals.
The dude is just a really great surfer, period.
Stay tuned next week for my take on Huntington Beach’s own Sammy Hawk. And plan on showing up for the induction ceremony — it’s free to the public and a totally cool event.
Ask the expert
Q. What was your first really high-performance surfboard back in the day when boards went from heavy logs to actually being able to turn them?
James V. Accardi III, La Jolla
A. I am going to have to answer this question in three phases, as there were three pretty distinct periods of change taking the design of surfboards from, as you say, heavy logs to actually being able to turn them. There was a fourth — when the first balsawood boards came to be — but as you are asking me what was “my” first board I will stick to what I know.
The change from wood boards to foam was my first experience in a dramatic shift in performance. The first board I had that I would have to say was a big improvement in performance was my first Harbour, 8-foot-6. It was made for me in 1962 and was the board I won my first contest on. The next big improvement was at the end of 1966 when we were first starting to shorten board lengths. My first Mini-Model. It was a lime green 8-foot-6 and it turned like no other board I had ever had before that.
But the real change came a couple of years later when the actual design of the shorter boards went from looking like longboards that were just shorter, to sleeker, faster and more real performance vehicles.
My first Deadly Flying Glove was magical for me. It was 7-foot-10, another lime green one, that was shaped by Terry Martin. Then there were the first “twin fins” in 1970 too — hard to ignore my first 5-foot-10 twin, also shaped by Terry Martin. That would pretty much be it.
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