A-frame

Aaberg, Denny

Aaberg, Kemp

Abberton, Koby

Abbruzzi, Sid

Abellira, Reno

Abubo, Megan

academia and surfing

Adler, Tom

advertising and surfing

Aeder, Erik

aerial

Aguerre, Fernando

Aichner, Scott

Aikau, Clyde

Aikau, Eddie

Aipa, Ben

air-drop

airbrush

Airshow

Ala Moana

Alabama

alaia board

Alaska

alcohol and surfing

Alexander, Kala

Alexandre, João (Dapin)

Allen, Chuck

Alms, Paige

aloha shirt

Alter, Hobie

Alvarez, Pepe

Ancell, Kevin

Andaman Islands

Andersen, Lisa

Anderson, Craig

Anderson, Simon

Andino, Kolohe

Angel, Jose

angle

Angola

Angourie

Antarctica

Apocalypse Now

Arabian Sea

Aragon, Janice

Arakawa, Eric

Archbold, Matt

Arena, Eduardo

Ashton, Juan

Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP)

Atlantic Ocean

August, Robert

Aurness, Rolf

Auster, Ken

Australia

Avalon, Frankie

Azores

backdoor

backside

backside attack, Pipeline

backwash

bail out

Bain, Rob

Baja California

Baker, Bernie

Baker, Grant “Twiggy”

Baker, Tim

Bali

Ball, John “Doc”

Ballard, Bill

Ballard, Rochelle

balsa

Baltic Sea

Banks, Jim

Barbados

Barilotti, Steve

Barland, Michel

Barreda, Sergio “Gordo”

Barry, Michael

Bartholomew, Wayne

Baxter, Jackie

Bay of Bengal

Beach Boys, The

Beacham, Debbie

beachboys

beachbreak

Beachcomber Bills Grand Prix

Beachley, Layne

beavertail

Becker, Phil

Bedford-Brown, Stuart

Belgium

Bells Beach

Bendall, Ma and Pa

Bennett, Barry

Benson, Becky

Benson, Blanche

Benson, Linda

Bermuda

Prone method of wave-riding using a small, thin, rigid board. Bellyboarding was almost certainly the original form of board-surfing, and is thought to date back as far as 2,000 B.C. The oldest extant bellyboards—owned by Honolulu's Bishop Museum, and probably built in the early 18th century— are flat and blunt-nosed, between four and four and a half feet long, made of either breadfruit or koa wood, and are believed to have been used by children as an intermediary step to stand-up surfing. Hawaiian-styled wooden bellyboards are known as paipo boards; bellyboarding itself is sometimes referred to as paipo boarding. While bellyboard design and construction evolved along with stand-up boards during the first half of the 1900s, slapdash models remained popular. "One guy might be using a board made of beautiful balsa wood with redwood stringers, covered in fiberglass and rubbed out to a dazzling finish," 

 magazine wrote in 1965, "while riding the same wave, and having just as much fun, might be a guy on a board carved from an old signboard." Most midcentury bellyboards—some with stabilizing fins, others without—were simply made of water-sealed plywood. Bellyboarding was often done at breaks regarded as unsuitable for stand-up surfing: the Wedge in Southern California, for example, or Makapu and Sandy Beach on Oahu. Bellyboarders were by then using swim fins to power themselves into waves. On Oahu in the mid 1960s, Val Ching Jr., who rode his paipo while standing, was trimming, making sections, and cutting back on the 45-inch boards his father shaped. Many young Oahu surfers watched Ching Jr. from the shallows and took notes of what shorter surfboards could accomplish.

American and Australian boardmaking companies like Dextra and Newport Paipo made lines of foam-and-fiberglass bellyboards in the early and mid-'60s, with the idea that this form of surfing—much easier to learn than stand-up riding—was set to become the next big thing in beachside recreation. The market was all but cornered instead by the inflatable rubber-and-canvas surf mat, and later by the soft-skinned bodyboard, both of which were for the most part ridden prone. Bellyboarding was nearly forgotten by the mid-'70s. Modern surfing techniques as well as the modern stand-up board, nonetheless, were influenced by the bellyboard. Compared to the unwieldy stand-up boards used until the late '60s, the bellyboard—as well as the kneeboard, and even the surf mat—allowed the rider to get close to the curl, and to dig out from hard-to-make positions. "If there's one thing the bellyboard has over the surfboard, it is intimacy," California bellyboarder Gary Crandall wrote in 1970. "[It's] a more visceral, close-to-the-gut type of surfing." The late-'60s shortboard revolution came about in large part as stand-up surfers looked to get closer to the breaking wave. Bellyboarding is featured in a small number of surf movies from the late '50s and '60s, including

 (1969). See also bodyboarding, kneeboarding.

bellyboarding

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

History of Surfing

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

History of Surfing

Features

Videos