The Endless Wave : For a band of senior enthusiasts, the undertow of surfing remains irresistible

It’s dead noon, time for most of the workaday world to grab lunch, run a rushed errand or begin pining for quitting time. On the back porch of his Faria Beach home, Jack Cantrell reaches into a storage bin and plucks out his surfboard. The sun is shining, the day is young and, a stone’s throw away, there’s surf to be had.

“Last week I surfed seven days straight, I was actually getting surfed out,” beamed Cantrell, obviously bothered not a whit by the prospect of doing it again. “Let’s go surfing.”

A robust 61, Cantrell, a lifelong Ventura County resident, has spent the last 37 years surfing local waters, one of a surprising number of surfers approaching Social Security without abandoning the sport they love.

“I think people would generally be amazed by the number of older people who surf,” said Paul Holmes, editor of Surfer magazine. “Surfing’s a very thrilling thing--it captures people’s imaginations, they want to do it more and more. That applies to 16-year-olds and 60-year-olds. The fact of the matter is, if people who are surfing keep it up, there’s no reason why they should have to quit because of age.”

“When I come out of the water, I feel like a newborn kid,” said Cantrell, recently retired owner of an oil delivery company. “I’ve felt that way all my life. Why should I stop?”

Many don’t. Surfing legend Lewis (Hoppy) Swarts surfed into his 70s--at 67, Swarts won a Grandmasters West Coast Surfing Assn. championship competing against surfers 20 years his junior. Dorian Paskowitz, a 69-year-old physician and professed “surf junkie,” lives out of a camper van, parked, more often than not, at water’s edge. Big-wave pioneer Wally Froiseth, also 69, still surfs regularly in his home waters off Hawaii. Surfer magazine’s Holmes watched his father surf well into his 70s.

“When I started surfing, he looked at it and said, ‘Why not? I can do this,’ ” said Holmes. “He was 56 at the time.”

Holmes calls the older surfers “patriarchal figures.” Others are less kind. A favorite seniors’ surf spot at San Onofre beach has been dubbed “Old Man’s” because the waves there are notoriously soft and forgiving. Age, however, has its perks--among them free time and a thick skin.

“Don’t care what they say,” grinned Kent Atwater. “I just hope they’re saying it when I’m 80.”

Atwater, a wiry 60-year-old Ventura resident whose license plate holder reads, “I’d rather be surfing,” does exactly that as often as he can. A local real estate agent, Atwater has reached that comfortable, nothing-pressing era when life’s immediate needs have been provided for and its other needs no longer seem so immediate. Which, from a surfer’s standpoint, is nothing short of nirvana.

“I can get out whenever the surf is up,” said Atwater. “If it’s good, I just hang it up and go.”

Age also has another advantage. Cantrell has become such a fixture in the waters off Faria Beach that each venture into the surf becomes something of an old-home week. Friends nod acknowledgments, and complete strangers paddle over to chew the fat. Over the years younger surfers have occasionally given him a hard time, stealing his waves and generally being a nuisance, but, says Cantrell, time has a neat way of taking care of that.

“Sometimes there’d be a bunch who wanted to get rid of me--they didn’t want the old man there,” said Cantrell, “but it always seemed like the guys who made it tough for you one year were your buddies the following year. They’d just mature a little bit. As a whole, people are really very nice to me.”

Surfer magazine’s Holmes believes that those over 50 have reached a “golden age” when they receive a modicum of respect, and more important their share of waves, from the younger surfers.

“The surfers in their 50s and 60s get better treatment than the guys in their 30s and 40s,” said Holmes. “I think that the kids really appreciate it that these guys are still getting out there and enjoying it.”

Atwater has a simpler theory.

“Either they respect my age,” laughed Atwater, “or they’re afraid I’m going to have a heart attack and die and they don’t want to be responsible.”

In fact, Atwater is not above broadcasting his age if it behooves him. Atwater celebrated his 60th birthday by boating out to Santa Cruz Island for a surf at one of his favorite spots. He arrived to find the spot jumping, eight-foot waves rolling out of the Pacific expanse and exploding onto a shallow rock bottom. Thrilled, he hopped overboard and paddled up to the small knot of surfers sitting in the water.

“I paddled up to these kids and said, ‘Hey you guys, this is my 60th birthday, so you have to let me have a wave,” recalled Atwater. “They said, ‘Fine, gee that’s great.’ I took one and screwed it up completely. . . . My reflexes aren’t what they used to be, particularly if I’m surfing in a place where the waves are big and fast and I haven’t been out in a while.”

A lifelong big-wave aficionado who stays in shape by swimming and playing tennis during flat spells, Atwater says there is really little difference between the Atwater of today and the Atwater of 40 years ago.

“I really don’t get any more tired than I used to and, in my mind, I’m as good as I ever was,” said Atwater. “And I tell you, I get just as excited about it now as I ever did.”

Atwater does, however, admit it may be time to impose some size limits--a decision reached, in part, after a particularly severe drubbing several years ago on a 15-foot day at Rincon, a world-renowned surfing break on the Ventura-Santa Barbara border known for its sometimes large and powerful waves.

“I caught this one wave and it just crushed me, ripped my leash and my boot right off my foot and spun me around underwater for what seemed like forever. I don’t think I’ll do that again,” said Atwater, who, two years later was out in surf big enough to break his board in two.

Like Atwater, Cantrell also recognizes self-imposed limits, then stretches those limits whenever it suits him. When there is something pressing on the day’s schedule, Cantrell’s wife, Joyce, signals the end of a surf session by hanging a towel over the porch railing. Familial obligations aside, Cantrell is on his own.

“I can tell when he’s tired,” said Joyce Cantrell, who often watches her husband from the deck of their home. “Sometimes I get concerned, but most of the time it doesn’t bother me. He’s over 21. He knows his limits.”

Well, yes and no.

“Sometimes it’s hard for me to get out,” admitted Cantrell. “You always want that last wave to be a good one.”

Though it would be tempting to carry on about the experience years bring, older surfers are frank.

“Sure, you make plenty concessions to age,” said Bill Lucking, who, at 72, has been an avid bodysurfer for almost 40 years. “I don’t have the stamina that I used to, I get cold faster. Basically I’m not as tough as I once was. But it’s still fun.”

So much fun that Lucking is in the water an average of six days a week, generally bobbing in the often roiling surf off Ventura’s South Jetty, a popular bodysurfing spot. Though Lucking recently retired from his Ventura law practice, during his working days he was still a South Jetty regular. In fact, work demanded it.

“I used to go out for an hour lunch and I’d come back to work and find myself reading the same paragraph three times trying to figure out what it meant,” said Lucking. “Bodysurfing changed that. Spending lunch in the water, I came back sharp and alert.”

Lucking scoffs at the idea of serving as an example to younger surfers, but, like it or not, there are plenty of young whippersnappers who emulate him.

“It’s neat to see that there’s somebody older than you that’s still doing it. It gives you the faith to hang in there,” said Warren Glaser, an avid surfer who, at 53, still isn’t old enough to escape an occasional lecture from his mother, who reckons he’s far too old for this.

“Yep, still nags me,” said Glaser. “ ‘Adults don’t do things like this,’ ‘It’s not proper for your age,’ things like that.”

Glaser, who started bodysurfing at age 12 and picked up board surfing as a 16-year-old Ventura lifeguard, reckons that older watermen may be up against a force even more relentless than Mom.

“Blood plasma and salt water have almost the same chemical composition and I think that’s the way it is for a lot of the older generation,” said Glaser. “It just gets in your blood and you just can’t get it out. There’s no sense trying.”

So they don’t. Glaser figures he’ll surf until he dies and says that, if he has a choice, “I hope I go that way.” Lucking, Cantrell and Atwater aren’t placing any limits on their surfing careers either.

“I’ll take it one year at a time,” said Cantrell. “Now my goal is to surf until I’m 62.