WESTSIDE COVER STORY : The Surf Turf Wars : Competition for Prime Spots Has Forced Surfers to Resort to Trespassing, Fisticuffs, Even Night Riding, in Their Endless Pursuit of the Perfect Wave

AT SUNSET, AS DOZENS OF SURFERS are leaving the water at Malibu’s Surfrider Beach, Tim Dion straps on a battery belt, a toggle switch and a helmet fitted with a 100-watt light.

He picks up his surfboard and wades into the darkening sea.

Within moments of paddling out, Dion, his head lamp shining, is riding the curls alone, a surreal beam streaking through the water.

“This is the only way I can avoid the crowds,” he said after coming ashore. “It’s peaceful; no cars on the highway; totally quiet. I put on my waterproof Sony Walkman, my (light) and I’m in my own world.”

With interest in surfing seemingly at an all-time high, so too is competition for prime Westside wave-riding spots.

Surfers are making room by trespassing on private beach property or confronting rivals--sometimes with their fists. But they have also resorted to more creative means.

Some take to the water at night. Others tap high-tech wave forecasting services to meet the surf the very minute it arrives. And still others travel to Southern California’s offshore islands--even distant countries--to catch the perfect wave, perfectly alone.

It is a struggle for space in a sport that, for many who practice it, thrives on solitude. Sharing a wave, many surfers believe, violates the aesthetics of surfing, and can even be dangerous.

“You really need one person per wave to get a clean ride,” said David Clark, a longtime surfer from Santa Barbara. “It’s not like skiing where you have a whole mountain. If more than one is on a wave, you’re riding their wake, adjusting your ride. It’s like a traffic jam.”

After growing steadily for decades, the popularity of surfing has exploded in the last two years, according to an expert. Mike Kingsbury, managing director of the Surf Industry Manufacturers’ Assn., a trade organization representing the surf apparel, equipment and accessories industries, says a recent industry survey estimates that 1.5 million Americans will surf actively (at least four times) in 1994. That figure is a significant increase from the 1.1 million who said they actively surfed in 1992.

California accounts for about 45% of the national total, with a majority of that share in the Southland. Said Kingsbury: “Increased television coverage is driving interest in the sport and many baby boomers who once gave up surfing in the ‘70s are now going back in the water and bringing their kids.”

On the Westside, the result has been further crowding at such popular surf spots as Topanga Beach, Malibu Surfrider Beach, Zuma Beach, Leo Carillo State Beach and County Line. Up to 200 surfers pack the lineup at each place on summer weekends, jostling for position, trading words and, occasionally, exchanging blows.

“Sometimes I’ll see two to three fights a day on a good swell. There are just so many more surfers than waves,” said John Baker, a longtime Malibu lifeguard. “The caliber and competition of surfing has also gone way up.”

Complicating matters is a more aggressive attitude displayed by a younger generation of surfers. “In the ‘80s the image was almost clean-cut and yuppie,” said Martin. “Now the look has gotten more grungy, with surfers wearing tattoos, nose rings and earrings and having a more hostile attitude.”

Surfers say Point Dume and Trancas Point in Malibu are known local areas where non-resident surfers can be verbally and sometimes physically harassed.

“I’ve witnessed fights, cars ruined, fins punched off (surfboards) and people told to leave,” said Ted Silverberg, a Point Dume resident who operates a surfing school in the area. “Localism is a backward mentality, but sometimes I can understand it after watching two guys (from outside the area) leaving 16 cigarette butts and two Coke cans on the beach and screwing up in the water all day.”

Trespassing is another symptom of increasing congestion among surfers. Though open beaches and public trails to the water abound from Santa Monica to Ventura County, some areas north of Zuma Beach have several miles of limited access.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, one surfer near Trancas ducked under barbed wire and tiptoed down the side of a cliff on private property to get to the peeling waves.

“There’s such an inland influx of surfers on weekends that you have to resort to the private areas to get a good quota of opulent waves,” he said, declining to be named.

But fisticuffs and fence-climbing are not for everyone.

Surfers are exploring new methods of crowd avoidance. Perhaps the most striking is surfing at night.

On full-moon nights when the surf is up, as many as 25 surfers ride the waves at Malibu’s Surfrider Beach, a small fraction of the daytime crowd. Some tape flashlights to their arms. Others mark their wet suits and surfboards with fluorescent paint, tape or sticks to improve vision and avoid collisions with other surfers.

Dion says he has developed a special camaraderie with his fellow night surfers. One, a comedian, often takes to the water after his midnight routine at local clubs; another howls at the moon (usually after arguments with his girlfriend), and a third relies on nighttime surfing to sober up after parties.

Waiters at nearby Alice’s Restaurant say that the flickering lights startle diners, some of whom asked if Martians were invading.

Those participating in the midnight recreation say the experience can be surreal and at times unnerving. The ocean is aglow, with the breaking waves and paddling of surfers creating splashes of light. At night, an errant piece of seaweed brushing against the legs can cause even the most hardy waterman to genuflect wildly. And then there are encounters with real-live denizens of the deep.

“One time I was riding a wave and got hit in the stomach by a bunch of flying fish which knocked the wind out of me,” said Dion. “Thank God they weren’t swordfish.”

Many surfers who are determined to ride waves during the day have turned to wave forecasting services for high-tech help. One of the most heavily used is Surfline/Wavetrak in Huntington Beach. Owner Sean Collins often can predict wave heights to within a foot, up to two weeks in advance, for almost any beach in the world. His swell forecasts for Westside beaches are rarely off by more than three hours.

Most good surfing waves are spawned by storms far out in the Pacific Ocean. Collins tracks wind speeds and wave heights via private satellites, the National Weather Service, the U.S. Navy, forecasts from other countries such as New Zealand, and signals from an assortment of buoys and boats far out at sea.

The raw data is run through a custom-made computer program that crunches out specific information for particular beaches. Wave size and direction are calculated and then adjusted to account for the “shadowing” effects of Southern California’s nine offshore islands and underwater shelving, which can sometimes eliminate the potency of some swells.

Surfline/Wavetrak boasts better than 90% accuracy and receives 3,000 to 4,000 calls daily on its 900 number, which costs $1.50 per call.

Paradoxically, the use of wave forecasting has made the rush for the water even more intense.

“In the old days when swells would hit, you’d have it uncrowded until word filtered through the pipeline,” said Mikke Pierson, owner of Z.J. Boarding House, a surf shop in Santa Monica. “Now, when people know a big swell is coming, there’s a rush on equipment, and they’re out at the beach before the waves have even arrived.”

Said Dion: “Guys are getting off work and changing their whole schedule. There is no element of surprise left.”

Some surfers have sought sanctuary from the growing throngs on such offshore islands as San Clemente, San Miguel, Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz.

“There’s clean water, no hassles, no pollution or development. It’s just the way it was 500 years ago,” said Jefferson Wagner, owner of Zuma Jay’s surf shop in Malibu and an avid Channel Islands surfer. “The beaches are so clean the sand squeaks beneath your feet when you’re walking.”

But Wagner says a forbidding local scene is developing even on the Channel Islands. Some spots there are staked out by surfers who feel entitled to the turf because they also fish commercially in nearby waters.

Other surfers look farther afield. In fact, most serious wave riders say that, given the crush for surfing space in Southern California, travel has now become a mandatory part of their lifestyle.

“A trip to another country is a throwback to the early days of surfing,” said Chris Martin, owner of Toucan Surf Tours in Newport Beach, which runs trips to Costa Rica and other countries in Central America. “It’s uncrowded and has the pioneer feeling California and Hawaii had in the late ‘50s before Gidget.”

Martin sends roughly 1,000 surfers a year--many of them Westside residents--to a variety of surf locales far down the coast. Prices range from $600 to $800 for a one-week trip including air fare, a vehicle and hotel.

Another popular destination is Tavarua Island in Fiji, which boasts excellent year-round surf and is prominently featured in in the new surfing film “Endless Summer II.”

David Clark, part owner of Tavarua Island Tours in Santa Barbara, has a lease on the 20-acre island, which has only 12 cottages, each accommodating two people. The surfer population is never allowed to exceed 20. The cost is about $135 per night including accommodation, meals and the use of five boats to ferry guests to the surf reefs. Round-trip air fare is about $900.

Ron Le Blanc, a salesman at Becker’s Surf and Sport in Malibu, surfed Tavarua in 1992 and said it was worth the money.

“I wanted to capture that feeling of just being with my friends, no vibes, just serenity,” he said. “To get that, you really have to travel quite far now.”

Other Westside surfers prefer to exploit the 1,000-mile Baja coastline, which has some beaches never walked upon by man.

Air charter companies using propeller planes ferry groups of four to five surfers to desolate beaches and islands.

Popular destinations are Scorpion Bay, about 600 miles south of the border, and Isla Natividad, about one-third of the way down the Baja coast. Jeff Kurtz, an avid surfer who grew up in Brentwood, works as a part-time pilot for Baja Air Ventures in San Diego. The company flies surfers to isolated spots all over Mexico.

Such “Baja bush pilots” must exhibit great daring and initiative to cope with surfers’ demands and the bumpy state of small-town runways. For instance, Kurtz says the Mexican government began blowing up small village runways in Baja a few years ago to deter drug runners from hop-scotching on their journeys north.

After many trips, Kurtz says, he has persuaded many of the locals to repair their landing strips by giving them gifts and bringing in extra business.

The generosity has paid off.

On one night trip last year, with four white-knuckled surfers in the back of his plane, Kurtz began to run out of gas over Punta Abreojos, a small town 400 miles south of the U.S. border. Unable to find the runway, he buzzed the village center. Within minutes, dozens of local residents drove their cars out to the landing area and illuminated the dirt strip with their car headlights.

“Some of us thought we were in the last moments of our lives. We had been looking for a lighthouse but there was no moon and it was pitch black,” he said. “Surfers will do anything to get out of crowds and into virgin areas.”

To escape the multitudes, others have abandoned wave riding in favor of alternative modes of surfing.

Rob Harris, a Hollywood resident, says he stopped vying for waves at Malibu’s beaches and now sky surfs--sky diving with his feet strapped to a board about the size of a snowboard from a height of 12,000 feet.

“I don’t have to wait for swells, it’s always consistent, and I don’t have to deal with any crowds,” he said. “I can carve, track, flip, roll, twist, spin and bank, just the way I used to surf Malibu.”

The sport, which has about 500 participants worldwide, was invented in the late 1980s in Europe.

When Santa Monica surfer Todd Roberts tires of the crowds and lack of surf, he heads to Lake Havasu, where he spends time wake-boarding--being towed behind a power boat on a small surfboard.

“In the middle of winter, there’s no crowds, no other boats and the water is like complete glass,” he said. “You can flip, carve, jump the wake and bash the lip off the wake.”

But for some die-hard surfers, wave riding remains the ultimate sport--even if it has to be done at unusual times and places.

Dion says some of his most treasured experiences have been on his board on a dark night at Malibu, across the bay from the din of Los Angeles, quietly bobbing up and down on the swells.

“I’ve talked to many guys who never surf in the daytime,” he said. “It all comes down to one man, one wave.”