Never Too Old to Go Surfing

Once you’ve driven down the long, bumpy dirt road and reached the Point, which is marked by a telephone pole with a surfboard propped on top, you’ve found Evie Fletcher’s true home. Though the 75-year-old Fletcher hasn’t yet arrived for her ritualistic Tuesday morning surf ride at San Onofre State Beach, her fans have.

“Oh yeah, she’ll be here in a few minutes. She’s here every Tuesday and Thursday about this time,” 57-year-old Tom Robb says as he zips up his wetsuit and catches a glimpse of the tiny waves in the foreground and Santa Catalina Island in the distance.

Since his high school days, Robb has been coming to this stretch of rocky coastline, which is only a few hundred yards from the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. Located off Interstate 5 at Basilone Road, the beach is almost barren except for a few restrooms, showers and a changing room. There is no boardwalk. The unpaved road is lined with SUVs, RVs and surf vans parked about 20 yards from the water.

“It’s a beach that progress has bypassed,” Robb says. “It’s hard to find that in California. It’s rare to be able to pull up and park right on the beach.”

But Robb says it’s mostly because of people such as Fletcher that San Onofre is such a magical place.

“You still get a touch of that old-time respect here,” he says. “And that’s handed down from people like Evie.”

Rachel Dunn and Rita Banduruk weren’t even born when Fletcher started riding San Onofre’s gentle, shapely waves in the late 1950s.

And maybe that’s why they respect her so much.

“Everybody loves that lady,” says Dunn, 38. “She surfs for the love of it. Being a woman surfer myself, I look at her as an icon.”

As the gray-haired, slender icon wanders down to the rocky beach to look over the conditions, Banduruk gives her a wave.

“She’s our role model,” says the blond, muscular Banduruk. “When she’s out there, she’s loving every minute of it. We see that. We want to be around it and know what her secret is. You know how hard it is to paddle out there?”

Fletcher knows. She’s done it thousands of times. In the early days, before wetsuits, she surfed in long johns and a bathing suit. Sometimes, she tied a sweater around her waist to keep warm.

At first, she surfed a few hundred yards south at a place known as the Old Man’s, where the waves break further out and are more forgiving. But about five years ago, Fletcher joined the “Wisemen Group” at the Point, where the waves are steeper, faster and pack a little more punch.

The all-male Wisemen, who include Fletcher as an honorary member, formed at the Point some 20 years ago to avoid the crowds and take advantage of its better break. But on this crisp, clear and breezy day, there is barely any break at all. When the waves are only 2 to 3 feet, the group calls it a “Fred-high day” after 73-year-old Fred Caserio, whose two artificial knees have limited him to surfing on the seat of his wetsuit.

“Today, it’s a Fred knee-high day,” says Caserio, a retired oil industry chemist who lives in Del Mar. “The waves were so small, it was hard to stay on the board.”

Fletcher also has problems. The 61-degree water temperature forces her to wear black booties, but that complicates footwork once she climbs up on her board. After struggling for about 30 minutes, Fletcher paddles back in, tosses her booties on the rocks and paddles back out.

She isn’t much better bootless.

“It’s awful out there,” says a cold and disgusted Fletcher. “God, nobody will ever believe I’ve surfed. Oh well, at least I got some exercise.”

Don Benson, a Wisemen member from Dana Point, has much better luck. He catches one of the day’s bigger waves and surfs in tandem with Dunn, who holds onto Benson’s lower back for support.

Mark Chaves, a 25-year-old who makes the 60-minute drive from Rialto a few times a week, is struck by the sight of one surfer helping another. He says he wouldn’t see such acts of kindness at more popular surf spots, such as Huntington Pier or even a mile up in San Clemente at Trestles.

“There’s a lot of older people here, but everybody kind of gets along,” Chaves says. “It’s a lot more mellow down here. But it’s kind of cool. It’s got great vibes.”

The vibes and look of San Onofre haven’t changed much in 40 years. The beach retains an undiscovered quality, perhaps because of its slightly forbidding location, nestled between the nuclear power plant and the Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton.

Yet, over the years, there have been attempts to pave the dirt road and open food concession stands along the half-mile stretch of beach.

But each time, the locals managed to stave off the commercialization of San Onofre.

“I doubt if this place will ever change much physically,” Caserio says. “What’s changed the most is the people.”

A lot of people have discovered San Onofre in the last few years.

“It’s getting so crowded, we’re just about to stop,” says Fletcher, who worries about running into someone on the crowded waves. “As we get older, we don’t have as much control as we did when we were young. I don’t want to kill somebody out there.”

It’s been three years since the weekend crowds became too much for Fletcher to endure. That’s why she only comes on weekdays. “I don’t know why nobody works anymore,” she says.

Fletcher worked as a Disney cartoonist but has been retired for more than 10 years. Now, she spends her days in the garden of her Laguna Beach house or in the water.

On her surfing days, Fletcher makes the 30-mile trek down the coast about 9 a.m and often doesn’t pack up her board until early afternoon. “We’ll even come down here in the rain and just go for walks,” she says.

After getting their exercise for the day, Fletcher and her gang sip herb tea and munch on cookies while they reminisce about the old days, before the short boards, the tattoos and the attitudes showed up.

“We love to have fun,” she says. “That’s what surfing is for. It’s not about hogging a wave or beating somebody else out for one.”

And as Fletcher has shown, surfing is also about staying young.