Conversations For Transformation: Essays Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

And More

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Waterman

Cowboy Cottage, East Napa, California, USA

July 2, 2025

"When we call someone a waterman, maybe what we're really saying is that that person is entirely and uncommonly devoted - to their core, in a subculture already rife with uncommon devotion - to the raw, edge‑of‑nature wilderness experience that the ocean can offer." ... Brad Melekian, The Surfer's Journal

"If you give back what you get out of surfing, you'll get enjoyment ten times over." ... Duke Kahanamoku, father of modern surfing, speaking with Randy Rarick*

"He who has ears, let him hear." ... Jesus Christ, quoted by both apostles Matthew and Mark

This essay, Waterman, is the eighth in an octology on Surfing:

It is also the thirty fourth in an open group on People:

I am indebted to Randy Rarick who inspired this conversation.

Here's my not-so-secret recipe for living the surfing lifestyle: take one classic surfboard (a Weber Performer noserider with hatchet skeg will do nicely), rent or even buy a house on a beach with great views (Sunset Beach on the Hawai'ian island of O'ahu's north shore will do nicely), move in and live there, then blend in some challenging waves (anywhere from four to six feet will do nicely, bigger if you're so inclined). In effect this will make your back yard surfable.

Let the mixture simmer for a while, then commit to making all your life choices such that they prioritize and align with the local weather conditions which produce great, surfable waves that excite, tantalize, and even intimidate you so that whenever they're pumping, you can move your day job onto the back burner (which will naturally be a job that promotes the business of surfing) as well as everything else you've got going on, and go surfing instead. Finally, stir well, folding in the magic ingredient: the sheer thrill ie the "stoke" of riding waves of any height ... and voila! there you have it: the surfing lifestyle. Said another way, perhaps more succinctly: when you distill the thrill of what riding waves produces, then set your life up so that it's attuned to the essence of everything surfing calls for, you have the surfing lifestyle. It dictates your dress code, travel itinerary, finances, all of it. You live in service to the waves.

How he came to the realization that he wanted to be a surfer, is surf lore in itself. He was a Boy Scout in his younger years, having a perfect, attendance record. He learned to surf at ten years old when legendary beach boy Albert "Rabbit" Kekai pushed him into his first wave. He was enthralled by how the surfboard moved through the water with nothing mechanical propelling it. Then when he was twelve years old, he saw a poster for a movie about surfing which was going to be shown once on one day only, but at the same time as his Boy Scouts meeting. He had to choose: attend the Boy Scouts meeting and preserve his perfect attendance record ... or watch the surf movie. He wrestled with it for a week. When he did finally choose to watch the surf movie and forgo his perfect Boy Scouts attendance record, it was a turning point for him from which he's never looked back. Surfing has been his life ever since.

Wanting to live as close as possible to great waves, he went door-to-door knock-knock-knocking on all the houses on the Sunset Beach point, asking about rooms to rent. Fortuitously, he ended up renting a room in the last house on the point. Ten years later he bought the place, and has lived there now in that very same house with his wife and their adopted son for over fifty years. In addition to mastering his formidable home break of Sunset Beach, he's traveled to over one hundred countries and has arguably surfed in more of them (seventy) by invitation and as a pioneer by himself, than any other surfer in history.

He's now regarded as the pre-eminent evaluations expert in the world of historic and collectible surfboards. You may not know it, but acquiring surfboards ridden by famous surfers is a serious investment (a David Nuuhiwa noserider circa 1966 can fetch $US20,000.00; a Gerry Lopez pipeliner circa 2013 can fetch $US35,000.00). Moreover, he's a master craftsman who restores damaged surfboards of any vintage to mint condition in his studio at Sunset Beach. He's worked on over ten thousand surfboards. When not working, he's a formidable talent in waves of any size. Clearly this is someone who walks the talk.

For nearly sixty five years, his life has epitomized the surfing lifestyle (that's right: he's lived the surfing lifestyle more than twice as long as many of you have been alive, yes?). And in all that time, he's not merely been a surfer who in addition to realizing his dream of living as close to the waves as possible, literally co-invented the concepts and rules which govern the "Triple Crown"* of surfing (grouping results of the top three world surfing competitions), the IPS* (International Professional Surfers) world circuit and other governing bodies of the sport, not to mention the HIVSA* (Hawai'an Islands Vintage Surf Auction) too. What he set in motion became a sweeping, worldwide power which altered everything we know about modern, competitive surfing. And even if you're just a weekend surfer or a gremmie who doesn't surf competitively, he is nonetheless a huge influence in your surfing life - realized or not.

But in the end, this conversation is actually only secondarily about one waterman and surfing per se. Primarily it's about a human being inventing and living a life he loves. And when you live a life you love so intently and so fully that you could say it lives you rather than you live it, then it has morphed into more, much more than merely a life. It's become a life style, a lifestyle impacting and influencing hundreds of thousands if not tens of millions of people worldwide, a lifestyle in which he has transcended merely doing what he likes to do, and has entered the realm of doing what life has called him to do.

When life called, he listened. He heard it calling. The Boy Scout with the once perfect attendance record heard it before just about anyone else on the planet heard it. And what he heard, called him to become one of the world's most formidable and influential watermen living a life he loves, and in so doing, inspired countless others to live a life they love too. Whatever your relation with the ocean is (and we all have one), you can be really glad he did.

Citations:

1) randyrarick.com
2) Randy Rarick on the Surfing Walk of Fame
3) Triple Crown of Surfing
4) International Professional Surfers
5) Hawai'ian Islands Vintage Surf Auction

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