There Are Tales From the Surfside Even Off Camera

R olling some extra credits from The Endless Summer and The Endless Summer II:

Surfers Pat O’Connell and Robert (Wingnut) Weaver confronted poisonous sea snakes, crocodiles and razor-sharp coral reefs lurking two feet underwater during filming of Bruce Brown’s “The Endless Summer II.”

They also ran into a pack of hungry lions in Africa--and Weaver has a shredded wetsuit as proof.

He and O’Connell toured an African wildlife preserve when their dune buggy conveniently “stalled” among a pack of lions. Seems Brown wanted some footage of the lions and his two young stars, who were safe inside the cabin of the buggy.

O’Connell, armed with a hand-held camera, taped the lions pulling travel bags full of equipment out of the back of the buggy.

So why did they find Weaver’s wetsuit so tasty?

“Hey, what does your wetsuit smell like?” Weaver asked.

Week-old wet gym socks, he was told.

“Well, mine smelled like a carcass baking in the sun all day,” he said. “It was like catnip, it was dinner. My dog goes after my suit all the time. Why not lions?”

Weaver, by the way, still surfed that day--in his newly ventilated wetsuit.

“I still have that suit,” he said. “It’s a keeper. Maybe I’ll have it framed.”

Other tales from the shorebreak:

--If you thought Weaver had it rough, imagine how Huntington Beach’s Robert August, who starred in the original 1964 “Endless Summer” with Mike Hynson, felt wearing only a pair ofshorts while surfing the chilly waters in South Africa.

“It was freezing, 52 or 53 degrees,” August said, “and we didn’t have wetsuits then. I didn’t want to get in.”

--August, who owns a surf shop in Huntington Beach, shaped 25 boards that Weaver used in the movie. August also accompanied the surfers on the first leg of their journey, to Costa Rica, where he’s building a home.

--”Wingnut” had a particularly tough time at Cloudbreak, off the island of Tavarua in the Fiji Islands.

Because his longboard was too slow and lacked maneuverability to handle the 10-foot conditions, he was pounded into the shallow coral reef a number of times. By the time he finished the session, he discovered his board leash had stretched a whopping nine feet.

--Weaver and O’Connell surfed Jeffreys Bay in South Africa with former world tour star Shaun Tomson and his friend, Walter, a Zulu tribesman.

After a few hours in overhead waves, Walter told O’Connell he didn’t know how to swim. When Walter fell off his board, he just pulled the board back to him with his leash or simply stood up in Jeffrey Bay’s shallow break.

--While surfing in Indonesia, O’Connell and Weaver befriended a local who explains how he had his teeth filed down. He did it himself--with a metal file.

--The film is dedicated to the memory of Beverly Johnson, a member of the movie’s crew, who died in the Easter Sunday helicopter accident in Nevada that also killed Disney president Frank Wells.