Skim-Boarding: Brutal but Fun

As a dark swell swept past Aliso Pier in South Laguna, three young men raced toward it, carrying their fiberglass boards ahead of them like spears.

Suddenly they threw the boards onto the wet sand, jumped on them and sailed off the beach and into a two-foot wave. Two of them executed perfect U-turns or “wrap-arounds” in the small wave, but the third wasn’t so lucky. He smacked head-on into the wave and, arms flailing, was hurled sideways into shallow water.

Welcome to skim boarding, an increasingly popular sport, especially for young people with resilient limbs.

Tex Haines, a Laguna Beach skim board manufacturer and, at 35, one of the few old-timers in this gritty, body-bashing sport, said, “Even if you’re good, it’s like being in a washing machine. You and the board get tumbled.”

Skim boarding--so-called because the oval board planes across both wet sand and waves--is about 40 years old, according to practitioners.

The first skim boards were homemade, heavy disks of sanded plywood. The skim board of the ‘80s, however, has evolved into a lightweight, high-tech board of fiberglass with a core of polyurethane foam. Typically, it is about four feet long, 20 inches wide and five-eighths of an inch thick and weighs seven pounds.

Like the surfboard, the skim board has a slightly rounded bottom, but it lacks the skeg or bottom fin of a surfboard. It was designed to glide across flat sand and water, turned by the balanced--or sometimes imbalanced--footwork of its rider.

Although skim boarding 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 Southern California to Hawaii and even on the shores of Lake Michigan.

For one thing, skimmers are happy on the calmest day, when the surf isn’t up. “Surfers ride the swells. Skim boarders ride the little bumps,” Haines said.

For another, skim boards are less expensive than surfboards, which typically cost $350 or more. A top-of-the-line skim board retails for $280.

Also, as skim boards have become lighter, their riders increasingly are trying acrobatic, showy maneuvers that few surfers can attempt. On the lightweight boards, skimmers attempt double and triple flips. Some riders stand on their heads.

Sports television has noticed. ESPN, the cable sports network, and entertainment shows like “Eye on L.A.” have featured skimmers, said Haines, who also publishes a magazine on the sport--Skimboard, circulation 5,000.

This year there will be more than 15 skim board contests on the East and West coasts and in Hawaii. A recent contest at Aliso Beach, sponsored by Victoria Skimboards, featured one of the sport’s rare purses: $1,000 in gift certificates and cash.

For all the acrobatics and bruising falls, skim boarders and lifeguards alike said they do not believe skimming is any more dangerous than surfing.

Because skim boarders play in such shallow water, they are not likely to drown. And skim boards do not seem to account for a large number of serious injuries.