If your idea of a having little fun would be taking a spin or two in your washing machine--with your ironing board for company--step right up. Here’s a sport made just for you. : You Don’t Have to Be Bonkers, But It Helps
A dark swell swept past Aliso Pier and three young men raced to the water, carrying their fiberglass boards ahead of them like spears.
Suddenly they threw the boards onto the wet sand, jumped aboard and sailed off the beach and into a two-foot wave. Two of them executed perfect U-turns or “wraparounds” in the small wave. The third smacked head-on into the wave and, arms flailing, was thrown sideways into shallow water.
Welcome to skimboarding, an increasingly popular sport, especially for young people with resilient limbs.
“It definitely is a sport for the insane,” said Bill Sullivan, spokesman for a surfing association. “These guys are fooling around in the shore break, going at tremendous speed, and they flip two or three flips in six inches of water.”
Tex Haines, a Laguna Beach skimboard manufacturer and, at 35, one of the few old-timers in the gritty, body-bashing sport, said: “Even if you’re good, it’s like being in a washing machine. You and the board get tumbled.”
Skimboarding got its name because the oval board skims across both wet sand and the wave. The sport is about 40 years old, according to its practitioners.
The first skimboards were homemade, heavy disks of sanded plywood. The skimboard of the ‘80s, however, is a lightweight, high-tech board of fiberglass with a core of polyurethane foam. Typically, it is about 4 feet long, 20 inches wide, and five-eighths of an inch thick. It weighs seven pounds.
Like the surfboard, the skimboard has a slightly rounded bottom, but lacks the skeg--bottom fin--of a surfboard. It is designed to glide across flat sand and water, turned by the balanced--or sometimes imbalanced--footwork of its rider.
Although skimboarding is still, as Haines called it, “the bastard sport of surfing”--something to do when the waves aren’t big enough for surfing--it is coming into its own on beaches from Aliso in South Laguna to Sandy Beach in Hawaii. It is being used on the shores of Lake Michigan, avid skimmers said.
Skimming has advantages over surfing. For one thing, skimmers are happy even on the calmest day, when the surf isn’t up. “Surfers ride the swells. Skimboarders ride the little bumps. And there are so many little bumps out there, it isn’t funny,” Haines said.
Skimboards Less Expensive
For another, skimboards are less expensive than surfboards, which typically cost $350 or more. Haines’ Victoria Skimboards sells its cheapest board for $55. A top-of-the-line board retails for $280.
As skimboards become lighter, their riders increasingly are trying acrobatic maneuvers that few surfers can attempt, including double and triple flips. Some riders stand on their heads. Or, like their surfing counterparts, they may “tube ride,” skimboarding inside the curl of a wave.
“As a kid, I remember riding on the wooden disks. You just jumped on them and went,” said Jane House, a co-owner of Surfglas Surf Products in San Juan Capistrano, which responded to the growing demand by adding skimboards to its line just two years ago. It now produces 300 a month.
“Now the boards are elongated. There’s a little shape to the back and the front, and there’s definitely more technique (to riding them). Riders cut back into waves, do somersaults or grab the rails and do a roll-over,” House said.
Discovered by Television
Sports television also has noticed the acrobatics. ESPN, the cable sports network, and entertainment shows like “Eye on L.A.” have featured skimmers, said Haines, who publishes a magazine on the sport--Skimboard, circulation 5,000.
A few skimboarders have turned professional, even though the money is not enough to live on, according to Nick Hernandez, 22, of Dana Point. Hernandez studies music at UC Santa Barbara but spends summers on the skimboard circuit.
Professionalism has its advantages. Because Hernandez won the 1985 East Coast Skimboarding Championship held in Dewey Beach, Del., he is sponsored by an Australian swimsuit company, which supplies his trunks. He gets his wet suits free from a company in Santa Cruz, and he travels to contests in Hawaii or the East Coast with expenses paid by a skimboard manufacturer.
Skimboard Contests
This year, there will be more than 15 skimboard contests on the East and West coasts and in Hawaii, including one at Aliso Beach on Aug. 22 and 23. And for the first time in its 11 years, the Aliso contest, sponsored by Victoria Skimboards, is offering a small purse: $1,000 in gift certificates and cash.
For all the claims that skimboarding is coming of age, the sport wasn’t included in a surf competition held July 24-26 in San Clemente. Sullivan, a spokesman for the Professional Surfing Assn. of America, said he didn’t believe there were enough skimmers to warrant including them.
At some of the current skimboard contests, some of the judging is questionable, said Harry Wilson, the manufacturer of Sandblaster skimboards, from Dewey Beach, Del. “At lots of contests . . . the participants themselves are judging. They finish the heat and run up and judge their buddies,” he said.
Wilson is trying to organize an “international skimboard federation that would be recognized by the Amateur Athletic Union and the Olympic Committee” as the standard-setter for skimboard competition.
Some Try Gymnastics
Increasingly, gymnastics are a popular part of skimboarding, especially on smooth beaches with few waves, like those along the western coast of Florida, skimboard experts said. “Last year one skimboarder got his mom out there, and some friends and jumped over seven people on a skimboard (in a competition),” Wilson said. “It was a real crowd-pleaser.”
For all the acrobatics and bruising falls, skimboarders and lifeguards alike said they don’t believe skimming is any more dangerous than surfing.
Because skimboarders play in such shallow water, they are not likely to drown. And so far, skimboarding does not seem to account for a large number of serious injuries, such as spinal cord injuries, lifeguards in south Orange County said.
“It does lead to some broken arms and definitely some nice sand burns and tail bone bruises, when you’re learning--and even when you’re not,” Lifeguard Lt. Mike Dwinnell said.
“You take some pretty good knocks. But all kids are made of rubber--didn’t you know that?”
Some of those kids were lounging on the sand recently after several hours of “rad” surfing by Aliso Pier.
“This is basically a young person’s sport,” said John Schroeder, 22, who admitted he feels an occasional tinge of fear when he and his board tangle with waves in six inches of water.
“A lot of times, you’re at the highest point of the wave and you’re saying, ‘Am I going to make it?’ But your friends clap when you come in,” said Schroeder, who sported one of the badges of skimboarding--a scar on his abdomen from a bad sand burn.
Farther down the beach, Hernandez and a friend, Ron Pringle, were practicing flips on the waves. They would stop a moment to scout waves, then dash for the water.
“A lot of people would rather surf,” Hernandez said between waves. “But I would rather do this. I love it.
“You could be sitting on the beach, see a good wave, hit the wave and then come back and talk to your girlfriend. And the sensation is really fast. It’s like you’re sliding across really smooth ice.”
Tanned and muscular, Hernandez rested his chin on the skimboard as he talked and studied the shore break.
Hernandez had more to say, but a good swell appeared and he was off, running down the beach to hit the wave.
SKIMBOARD SLANG
Some of the terms used by skimboarders, according to Tex Haines, manufacturer of Victoria Skimboards in Laguna Beach:
Talleyho--A flip.
Sander--Skinning your body on the sand, also known as “getting grits.”
Shred-- (v.) To carve a nice turn.
Conrad Dobler--Named after the former NFL offensive lineman, this noun describes a pair of fast-breaking waves close together, also known as “a double.”
Big Green Bowl--The hollow space inside the wave as it breaks.