Extra-thin surfers aren't common, but they aren't super-rare either. Jim Cartland of Florida, Kolohe Bloomfield, Whitey Harrison, Nicky Wood, 1980s world tour backbencher Michael Burness. But there's a level beyond thin—"frail" I guess is the only word for it. You don't come across many frail-looking surfers.

I thought about this a couple of days ago while posting on 

. One of the first articles about Jennings said he weighed "around seven stone," which is 98 pounds. In his prime, the 5' 5" goofyfooter bulked up to 115. He looked almost like a toy surfer. Maybe you've seen the bit from Kong's Island where Gary Elkerton picks Chappy up by his belt loops and throws him into a car, effortlessly.

The amazing thing about Jennings isn't so much that he was a talented surfer, but that he absolutely charged big scary waves. "The usual mugs were riding deep," Surfer magazine wrote, describing the best Pipe day of 1983. "But Chappy went deepest, and those who witnessed it talked for weeks in tones of respect and valor."

Who else in surfing was that small and that gnarly? The only name I can think of is Henry Lum. In 2008, Surfer's Journal published "The Human Body Naturally Floats: The Story of Henry Lum." Poke around mid-century surf history long enough and eventually you'll come across Henry's name. But not until I read this piece did I begin to get a sense of how unique a wave-rider Lum was. I wish I knew more about him; everything you read below I pulled from that one article.

Lum was a 28-year-old Honolulu pharmacist in 1946 when he decided to learn how to surf. But first he had to learn how to swim. He bought a how-to book, read it, stripped down to his trunks and tip-toed into the Ala Wai Canal, and in fairly short order taught himself a rudimentary crawl. From there it was on to Kuhio Beach where, again on his own, he learned to surf. The local boys ignored him for a few months, then decided he was okay, and Lum became a founding member of the Waikiki Surf Club, along with guys like Wally Froiseth and Woody Brown.

One afternoon Lum drove out to Makaha with Brown and Froiseth. "It was twenty-foot!" Brown later recalled. "And he convinced us he wanted to go out. Wally and I said to each other, 'Well, I guess we're not going to see Henry again.' I mean, he was just this skinny Chinaman, and so frail. Boy, he was was so weak and skinny. But Henry could surf all right. I give him credit. A lot of guts, that guy."

Lum got so stoked on Makaha, and big waves, that he quit his pharmacy job in Town and bought a house on an acre of land right across the street from Makaha, where he raised chickens and pigs. Rabbit Kekai, George Downing, Froiseth, Brown—all the hot guys were soon hanging out at Lum's house. For a while, Woody moved into a little shack out near the chickens.

The surf rolled in, and Lum was there to ride it. As ever, he did things in his own fashion. He never really learned to swim well—he'd dog-paddle for the beach after losing his board, or simply float in like a piece of driftwood—and apart from some occasional breath-holding practice, he never trained. Lum moved slowly from the beach to the lineup, to conserve energy, and due to a chronic hernia he liked to paddle from a sitting position. To catch waves, he knee-paddled—except his joints were so knobby that he had to wear kneepads. Diving under whitewater, Lum believed, burned more energy than simply letting it hammer you toward shore, so that's what he did. In fact, he often wore a thin life jacket while surfing. Lum told anybody who asked that the key to riding big Makaha was to never panic, and while he was pulled from the surf a few times, winded and nearly unable to move, he lived by that simple adage.

George Downing later recalled that Lum "paddled out into the biggest goddamn surf," and that he was easy to spot because he rode with his pencil-thin arms "spread way out." Lum favored the Bowl section, and didn't mess around with smaller waves. The object was to catch the biggest one, from the furthest out, and not blow it. To that end, he took the drop on his knees, at an angle, and stood up only when he was planing along the base of the wave.

After 18 years, Lum moved back to Town. He rode his beloved Makaha for the last time in the early '70s, at age 55. He took his son, Leighton. "We walked past Buffalo Keaulana," Leighton recalled, "and my Dad asked Buff to keep an eye on him. Then he went out and caught the wave of the day, air-dropping sideways on his knees, with the pack—myself included—caught inside and screaming as he stood up at the bottom and glided out to the shoulder."

BALLAD OF A THIN MAN: THE UNSINKABLE HENRY LUM

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