"Flashpoing: the 1968 World Contest," by Ben Marcus, ran in the February 2012 issue of The Surfer's Journal. This version has been slightly edited. 


It was the first World Contest held during the shortboard era— or more accurately, during the transition era. There were a lot of controversies involved with this event, mainly due, at least in my opinion, to the slower-changing minds and attitudes of the international surfing hierarchy, officials and such, than those of the top surfers of the time.


Those were amazing times. After Nat won the World Title in 1966 he was at the top of his game. Everyone expected him to win again in 1968 in Puerto Rico. In fact, all of the Aussies were expected to give the surfing world a lesson or two. That didn’t happen.


This was one of those contests about which much talk spread down through the years, mainly because it was supposed to be the last gasp of the longboards. It was said that the men’s winner, Fred Hemmings, was lucky to win, and it was the dead-hand triumph of a passing school of surfing, while the progressive guys like Wayne Lynch, Nat, and Reno Abellira were the ones doing the real shit, but none of the judges could see it—yet. Yep, weirdly reminiscent of what some guys say about world tour events today. Round and round we go.


Big picture: I think Purto Rico was important because there was no home team advantage. Everyone came from outside the island and met on a level playing field (with due respect to any PR surfers I may have forgotten). And it was a great place for a contest. It was fun. Good environment, weather, location, surf. Personally, I don’t remember any bad vibes.


I went down there with the thought that I had a better-than-even shot at winning it. For one, I knew the place backward and forwards. I'd spent three months the previous winter living right there [at Rincon] and surfing the break every single day. I even diagramed the bottom contours.


Bruce Valluzi and I spent a month in Rincon before the contest, surfing and watching Nat and Wayne Lynch getting ready for the show. Nat seemed a bit cocky, [but] he and Lynch were ripping Domes every day before the contest.


I went a month early, not only to train at the spot, but because I thought it would be a good place to hang out: tropical, warm, and brown-skinned. I was not disappointed. I surfed all the spots but mostly at Domes—right up from the contest site. The official contest site [Rincon] didn't break the whole time I was there except on the final day of the event.

GREG MACGILLIVRAY (California, filmmaker)


We were kids on an adventure of a lifetime. After two months of traveling while shooting 

, we arrived in Puerto Rico. Jim Freeman, Mark Martinson, Bill Hamilton, and I stayed in a concrete bungalow above Rincon for a month.


Nat Young, Wayne Lynch, Ted Spencer, and I went from France to Puerto Rico as part of the world journey filming 

. The four of us were in Puerto Rico for a month before the contest began. Not too much good surf during that period. Two or three swells, each lasting three or four days, and never over six feet.

 crew moved into the bungalow next to ours; Nat, Wayne, Ted Spencer, and Paul Witzig. We’d all surf and film together at the various breaks, drink wine at 6 p.m. Nat would cook spaghetti, and we’d tell stories until late.

NAT YOUNG (Australia, 1966 world champion)


Wayne, Ted, and I were all shapers, serving our time in different factories back in Australia, [and we'd been] shaping all our own boards for years. This was a heavy period of experimentation, trying so many different things to ride the wave closer to the curl. The boards came down in length quickly and we had a lot less flotation than most of the other competitors in Puerto Rico. All of the boards we were riding in PR were made in France at Michel Barland’s Bayonne factory.


We were all surfing at a place called Jobos one day and Midget Farrelly paddled out. He and Nat had a running feud, which heated up to yelling in the water. On one wave, Nat purposely took off behind Midget and taunted him, clicking rails and yelling insults. Because I knew both guys, I tried to calm things down, but it didn’t work. Nat and Midget were oil and water. At that point in my life, I’d never before seen such animosity.


Yeah, there were all kinds of interesting subplots going on during that event.


Jim [Freeman] and I had a contract to film the event for ABC’s Wide World of Sports and New York impresario, Larry Lindberg, who still is a friend.


The women’s contest was held in what seemed like anti-climactic haste, considering after all that it was the contest for the best women surfers in the world. A few quick heats and a semifinal in good quality, three- to four-foot Domes surf, an hour-long lunch, which allowed the wind to turn onshore, and all of a sudden Margo Godfrey was the new women’s champion.


Margo Godfrey, from Santa Barbara, later would become perhaps the greatest woman surfer ever, and win multiple pro titles, with her devastating performances at Haleiwa and Sunset Beach. Here, at 15, she wins with a performance so perfectly tuned it might as well have been Tom Curren at the same age. Right there with Wayne in many ways. Just amazing.

PAUL CAREY (reporting on November 10, 1968)


Well, Domes was the spot again today, this time for the men's elimination heats. It must be the first time that a surfing contest, let alone the world contest, has been held on U.S. Government property, for the place known as Domes is a nuclear power plant. When the waves are small, Domes offers the best surf in the area. But such slow waves! The Hawaiians especially had troubles (though one wouldn’t have thought so from the judging).


By the time they got the men’s heats going, the swell was already dropping and, with tired judges and all, there was not enough time to finish the event. So, with the quarterfinals, semis, and finals still to go, four days of tension and frustration began while we waited for a new swell. At this stage, let me say that had [contest director] Eduardo Arenas wrapped up the event during that opening swell, either Wayne or Nat would almost certainly have won it. In the smaller surf, the Australians’ form and equipment completely overshadowed everyone else. Most of the Americans were riding crude equipment and their surfing lacked the freedom and involvement of the Australians.


This was in the days when you took one board, not a quiver. How times change. I made all my own boards then—for better or worse—and I was determined to ride the board I made, which really had a too-narrow tail. In the film footage, you see me doing a lot of short wiggles to make the judges think that I was doing something, but no matter how much I tried, the board was stiff.


No swell for the third day. If nothing happens tomorrow, the stage is set for a gigantic farce. The surfers could forgive the bad and inadequate food and the poor accommodations, and the high prices and the thefts, only if there was swell.


So we waited for a new swell. Everyone had their own opinion as to when it would come and how big it would be. It came on the fifth day. Through the night, we heard the surf rising and at dawn we looked out to find the biggest waves we had seen in five weeks. A reprieve, for this was the final day allotted for the contest.


The last day. Somebody up there likes us. Domes was six- to eight-feet and for once the officials sprang into action. The quarterfinals were each one a half-hour long, and were run with staccato precision. Keith Paull was eliminated. He didn’t get the waves and that was that. It was a disappointment for one of the most popular among the Australians. Nat, Wayne, and Midget all won their heats; Russell [Hughes] made it to the semis as well.


By the time the semis began, the wind had swung onshore and the swell had come up even more: big, lumpy waves. Wayne was knocked out by a Nuuhiwa drop-in. Joey Cabell broke his fin and was eliminated. Into the final at Rincon went Hemmings, Farrelly, Hughes, Young, Doyle, and Reno Abellira.


You have to remember no one had leashes back then, and there were many sea urchins in Puerto Rico those days, so if you lost your board—especially during a heat—you had not only a long swim but other obstacles as well.


The decision to move the event to Domes on that last day of competition was made by the team managers from each country. Not the surfers. Our manager was Hevs McClelland. Hevs was a fantastic person, one of the funniest dudes I've ever met, and a very well-intentioned guy. Unfortunately, he wasn't much in contact with us [the surfers] and didn't ask how we felt about where the event should take place. The vote among all the managers was three to three, and Hevs’ vote was the one that would determine where we going to surf. His vote was, “I don't care, hold it where ever George Downing says.” George was the manager of the Hawaiian team, and those guys were pretty much all regularfooters. So, George liked Domes because it was all rights, and Hevs voted for Domes too. Just another example of the lack of real communication during those years between the officials and the surfers.

FRED HEMMINGS (Hawaii, 1968 world champion)


Corky was probably the winningest surfer of the time. He excelled in the waves of California and similar surf in other locations.


In the semis, I drew guys who I knew would excel under the old style of judging: Midget Farrelly, Joey Cabell, and Mike Doyle. It was six-man heats. I can’t remember the other two guys. The surf was pretty good with solid overhead sets and long right-hand walls. It was a 30-minute heat with your best five scores counting. I started out with three good scores and was confident I was winning the heat. My fourth wave came at about the 16-minute mark. It was a long wall and I had a solid score going. Toward the end of the wave, it started to close out and I had a decision to make. Either pull out and take the good score or go for some big flying off the lip and ride it into the shorebreak. That was going through my mind when I noticed that I had ridden all the way to a big outcropping of rocks in the shorebreak. Good idea to pull out. But as the wave had this great section coming at me, I decided to add a bit of flair to the pullout and go for a big flyaway kick-out. So I launched my board high into the air and far behind the wave. Unfortunately, it sent the board pretty far from me and there was another wave right behind the one I was on. That one grabbed my board before I could get to it. By the time I reached the beach, the heat was over and I only had four waves. I had the highest four scores, but since I didn't have a fifth wave, and everybody else did, I wound up a point shy of advancing to the finals. Midget and Doyle advanced and I took third. So close, but out of the running.


By the time the last semifinal was completed, the surf at Domes was too wind-affected to be worthy of a world contest finals. On this occasion, it took the contest committee two hours to decide to move to Rincon (also known as Dona Maria’s), where the slightly more westerly direction off the coast afforded the surf protection from the wind.


But now a new element had entered the scene. Big waves. And for the first time the Australians realized that they could be beaten. This was what the Hawaiians wanted and this day they would be strong.


The final heat of the contest was held in eight-foot surf. Jim filmed from the helicopter, I shot from the water, while Spyder Wills, our Laguna Beach neighbor and long-lens expert, shot from shore. I’d surfed Rincon several times, and knew the currents were wicked. Sure enough, swimming out with my water camera before the heat took me 45 minutes. At one point I was swept down the beach about a quarter-mile from the break. I was concerned that I’d miss shooting the finals altogether. Then I caught the outside current going in the opposite direction and in 20 minutes I was in the impact zone. There, I was able to get shots of Nat and the eventual winner, Fred Hemmings, and their sweeping turns.


They were surfing pretty nice waves, a bit like tropical Bells, around five feet and fun. Seemed like about 500 spectators on the beach, all geared up in late ’60s hipster garb.


The surf was very thick, hollow, and still glassy. A lot of waves were closing out so you had to pick and choose. Fred Hemmings had to straighten out on the waves. He also got five or six perfectly respectable but highly uninteresting long rides. Nat tried some very difficult things, pulled off some and blew the rest. Midget was impeccable, got long rides, close to the curl, came off the top once or twice, and did one beautiful cutback down the steep face of a wave, which everyone thought would get him nailed, yet he got enough power out of the bottom turn to make the section. That was memorable. Surfers on the beach picked Midget as the winner, but they were wrong.


Wayne, at 17, doing off-the-lip foam bounces on his backhand. Whatever else anyone said in the years afterward, one thing looked pretty clear: Wayne was a long way out in front of the pack, just too young to challenge the older, bigger guys for set waves. Russell Hughes could have dusted the lot of 'em but couldn’t find the waves in the final. At one point he lost his board and ended up bodysurfing all the way to the beach in a brilliant impression of a clubbie, even finishing with a classic one-hand-out, one-hand-stroking technique. Russell was supposed to be a hippie, but I reckon he might have been a clubbie at heart.


Midget had the right board for maneuvering, and he rode it brilliantly. Fred had the best board for the rules: A big, floaty thing that caught waves easily and allowed him long rides. The rules were the biggest wave, closest to the curl, and the length of ride.


For the record, my board was shorter than Midget’s. Reno was the finalist with the real short board; the rest of us were riding short longboards.


Reno had the worst board: about 18 inches wide, good for Hawaii barrels but too narrow and stiff for the Trestles-type waves we got for the contest.


Reno on a tiny board with a logo reading “Le Serpent,” the thing would’ve been maybe 6'0" and 17'' wide but with absolutely no rocker—they were ripping down length back then, but they hadn’t realized about rocker. As a result, Reno would take off and go flying down the line like a tow surfer but could only really sorta pivot-wiggle off the tail curve of his mini-board. Awesome to watch, keeping in mind what would happen over the next few years with board design.


The 1968 world contest was indeed a flashpoint of change. Reno was a Renaissance man. Wayne Lynch possessed the abilities of Nat but was not a fierce competitor. Nat was a fierce competitor and caught many waves but not the biggest and longest in the finals.


I believe Midget surfed the best in the finals. Nat did some excellent maneuvers but didn’t get the best waves. And me, I was in there and got good waves but didn’t get the cutbacks and turns.


Each surfer brought assets to the 1968 contest—it so happens the surf that afternoon did favor my abilities. I did not compete in many events, especially in waves that did not favor my style and abilities. I was not a shorebreak, small-wave rider. I grew up in the shadow of legends and learned that it is better to catch one or two great waves than many waves. I will concede that is a choice, not a mandate, but it did prove effective in competition.


When the surf jumped on that final day, Fred won fair and square. At least that’s what I thought from out in the water. However, as many others have pointed out, I was swimming for a good part of the final and missed seeing a lot of waves. My diary notes say that I thought Russell could have won and that Midget got some good rides.


When the final heat ended, I was exhausted. Nat offered to carry my camera on his board to shore. I swam and bodysurfed in. The warm water was soothing.


It came down to two old-school trimmers: Ultra-consistent and smooth Midget Farrelly, and Hawaiian big-wave surfer Freddy Hemmings. It was close, very close.


They interviewed Midget after the final, and he said he’d felt “lost out there—from when I took off on a wave to when I finished the wave I couldn’t remember anything. It was that exciting!” Fred and Midget tied, and Fred won in a countback.


Freddy won it fair and square and deserved the title. I thought they were going to give it to Midget but was not at all surprised with the result.


A surprise result for many perhaps. Some say Farrelly should have won it, some say Young. But on that day, in that surf, with those judges judging the way they did, Fred Hemmings won that contest. And a happier Hawaiian you have never seen.


The scenes on the beach were great! Ben Aipa is the first to realize that Fred has won, and he grabs Fred in a huge bear hug; it’s like watching the NZ rugby league front row except with no shirts on. Meanwhile, Midget bows his head against his board—and next to him, Nat, in a safari helmet, reaches out in a quite sincere, unaffected gesture and pats him on the shoulder, like “tough luck, mate.”


After the contest was over, the organizers had these old busses hired to take surfers back to the airport in San Juan. Competitors on our bus included Margo Godfrey, George Downing, Peter Drouyn, and others. I was 19 at the time and didn’t drink but that didn’t stop the veterans. George and Peter—being no strangers to the brew—were joking around and cutting up for everyone. Margo wasn’t drinking either and was sort of slumped in her seat, her first-place trophy with the big bowl on top next to her, trying to ignore the ruckus and just plain chill. Drouyn walked up and emptied his beer into her beloved cup and tried to drink out of it. Margo wasn’t pleased.


What a joy-filled time. We were all in our teens or early twenties, miles from home, in a paradise of color and warmth. Afterward, Larry edited the film we shot into a masterful TV special.

 They took surfing seriously before anyone else, even before most surfers did, and their visual record of this and other events (the Duke contest, the Pipe Masters, etc.) shits on anything the surf moviemakers did.


I retired soon after that contest and inaugurated pro surfing events, including the Pipeline Masters. In 1976, along with Randy Rarick, I started the world pro surfing circuit. A few waves in Puerto Rico in 1968 contributed significantly to my life.


Last time I ever did a flyaway in a contest. Silly mistake, but my mistake to live with.

THE 1968 WORLD SURFING CHAMPIONSHIPS: AN ORAL HISTORY COMPILED BY BEN MARCUS

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