Brian Gillogly's profile on Lynne Boyer ran in the March 1978 issue of SURFER. This version has been slightly edited.

Near the bottom of a thick Sunset Beach ledge, she engages the rail and sets a defiantly tight course. Long legs slightly bent and lean torso pitched well forward, she jets along a very straight, clean line until that point where the energy momentarily recedes; where the majority of surfers tend to catch their breath before the inside lineup. Instead, she carves a smooth arc along the top, then slices back toward the exploding whitewater, pulls another long bottom turn, and streaks once more just ahead of a cracking lip . . . .

This scene played out more than once in the women’s division of the 1976 World Cup contest, and the player, obvious to anyone who had been there or had caught the event on CBS-TV, could only be one person: a local girl from Kailua named Lynne Boyer.

Just 19 at the time, but quickly evolving into a seasoned professional, Lynne took home top dollars in the World Cup ($4,000) as easily as she had in the Malibu Hang Ten Pro ($1,500) a few months earlier. Moving on to Australia last spring, she followed close behind Margo Oberg in contests at Bells and Narrabeen, then returned to Malibu last October to defend her title.

Just a week before that event, Lynne expressed a firm belief that she would once again rise to the occasion. Revealing a strong instinct for success to match her instinct for wave riding, she said “no way” would Margo or anyone else even come close. She was right. Surfing like a female version of Larry Bertlemann, though probably more calculated and polished, she amazed all present with numerous off-the-lips and cutbacks, emerging $2,500 richer and, more significantly, the undisputed next heir apparent to the #1 spot in women’s pro surfing.

And yet, despite all the traditional questions one might be inclined to wonder of such a surf personage (the how and why of her achievements, whether her boyfriend(s) could cope, etc.), the first one that came to mind as we sat on the wall at La Jolla Shores just prior to the Hang Ten, was why CBS had chosen not to include her interview in their World Cup coverage. After all, she was the winner. And after her display of aggressive, progressive surfing, she was definitely not just one of the girls. I remember watching the CBS presentation and feeling personally slighted by the oversight. But Lynne just shrugged at my question, said she'd missed the airing altogether, and commented straightforwardly: “Yeah, I heard about that. I guess it came out crappy or something.” 

The ice was just broken, and we forged on.

A lot of people think Lynne Boyer was born and raised in Hawaii. As it turns out, she's just another transplanted Mainlander made good. A Maryland native, and the oldest of five children, her early years were marked by a curious aversion to dolls (“Except GI Joe!”) and the corollary interest in most activities usually reserved for boys. One of her fondest memories from her growing-up years, aside from playing guns with the gang, involved her preoccupation with miniature cars and trucks. She laughingly recalls: “I watched Gumby on TV, and loved it when he’d shrink and get inside toys. I always wanted to do the same thing, ’cause I had so many little cars I used to play with. I was such a tomboy.”

Lynne first came into contact with surfing In the early '60s, on family trips to grandmother’s in nearby Virginia Beach, at which point her fantasies were given fresh direction. “All the big people used to surf,” she vaguely remembers. “And I guess I always wanted to take out a board and try it myself.” And so, in 1968, when Lynne’s father, a radiation therapist, took a job on Oahu and moved the family to the East Side of the island, the opportunity presented itself full-blown.

Mostly ignoring her parents' entreaties to guard her fair complexion from the harsh tropical sun (“I used to come home with a red nose and blisters all over my face”), by age 16 Boyer was totally committed to her newfound diversion. Shortly thereafter, she even went through an adventurous stage of building her own personal backyard boards: “I made about ten of ’em; did everything, start to finish.” The most successful among them, or at least the most fun, was a 5' 6" fish. She was immediately attracted to the design’s responsiveness, which in turn likely helped a few years later when she switched over to the sting design and her high-performance approach to surfing in general. 

Boyer's riding eludes characterization as either male- or female-oriented. Controlled yet active (though not “busy”), it is most accurately described as unique. Lynne explains it thusly: “I’ve always been interested in turning, but flowing. I try to avoid jagged turns. In other words, I want to do as many things as I can, but at the same time look good and feel good. You can feel it when your board and body are moving as one; I want to feel like my board is part of me, rather than like I’m working against it.”

This philosophy has been well accommodated by the various sting-wing shapes constructed for Lynne by longtime craftsman Harold Iggy. The board she rode in powerful eight-foot waves at Sunset during the World Cup, for instance, was a double-wing swallow. Lynne continues to favor the multiple-wing concept, although just before joining last summer’s pro circuit in South Africa and Brazil, she switched from swallows to rounded-pins. The result was a more “positive” feel. “It’s the same basic shape as last year's boards,” she explains, “but with a rounded pin. I couldn’t put enough power in my turns ’cause the board would start to slide at the bottom.” 

Lynne’s winter quiver at the moment is made up of five boards ranging from 6'2" to 7'10". All except the 7'10" pintail—“for big Sunset”— are double-wing pins, and the wings have gradual concaves in between, producing almost a tri-fin effect. Her early assessment: “Yeah, it really helps. Harold is an unreal shaper!”

Her favorite is the 6'2", which proved versatile enough for fun 3-4 foot surf at the Malibu Hang Ten, and worked just as well at sizeable Jeffrey's Bay. Asked about the latter experience, Lynne's face lit up.

"Jeffrey’s was so good. I swear, that’s the most perfect wave I’ve ever surfed. You just go for so long, your legs feel like they’re going to fall off. After a while you have to just stand there and cruise, then maybe near the end of the wave you start working it again. It’s unbelievable!" 

But as Lynne sees it, for wave consistency, climate and lifestyle, there’s still no place like home—as long as you reside in the Islands. In the summer months she usually hits the surf mornings and evenings, avoiding peak midday hours when the sun and crowds are most intense. She counts among her preferred Town breaks the usual spots—Kaisers, Rockpile, and Ala Moana—but also favors Big Rights, a little further west (“a hollow right with a nice wall”).

Winter, on the other hand, presents a different situation. Whereas a good summer swell will bring out half the local and transient surf population of the Island, says Lynne, “In winter you can still find many uncrowded days, especially early in the morning at the less-known spots.” Living on the North Shore this winter with her boyfriend, she can keep on top of such favorite spots as Laniakea, Haleiwa, Sunset, Jock's, and Chun's. Of the last break, she enthusiastically relates: “Chun's is such a good wave, you can do everything on it: reentries, cutbacks, get tubed. It’s not an unreal tuberiding spot like Off the Wall, but you can find them. But then, it doesn’t draw the ‘name’ crowd either, all the pros. That’s what’s good about it too. You don’t have to fight for waves.”

Still, by aspiring to “make it” in professional surfing, sometimes you have to get out there and mix it up, whether it's fighting for position during a competition heat or just trying to manage a wave or two at a popular break when the photogs are out en masse. "It’s all part of the game,” as Lynne puts it—however frustrating or disillusioning that game can sometimes be. It’s the classic case of ends justifying the means.

And yet, in competition surfing, as Lynne points out, females have at least one advantage over their male counterparts. “It’s way less competitive for us,” she asserts. “That’s why I don’t understand why there aren’t more women that surf. I know a lot of girls are afraid of getting hurt or building up muscles. But I don’t have big muscles." 

Females choosing not to surf for reasons like that is hard for Lynne to understand because for whatever reason she has always done just what she wanted to do. Early in life she seems to have developed a very positive view of her own capabilities. Presently manifest in her surfing, that attitude may eventually push her toward a career in art, her next favorite pastime. (Lynne in fact did a year of applied arts in college before joining the pro circuit.)

Says Lynne simply: "If you can picture yourself doing it, you can do it. Like, even if you dream about something, let's say a certain kind of turn—with the right wave, a carving 360—you can do it. This attitude helps in surfing contests, definitely, 100%. But I think it helps with just about everything.”

And finally the inevitable question; one which she had already partially answered, but one which nonetheless could prove enlightening—or a total drag. I ventured forth, “What about women’s lib’?” 

Lynne’s reply: “I just like to be able to do whatever I want to do, and not be looked down upon because I’m a woman. I should be treated equally with a man. But I’m not really into, like, burning the bra (she laughs) or anything like that. It’s just a matter of deciding what you really want to do, and then going out and doing it.” 

And that’s the only real liberation there is.

[Photos: Mike Moir, Gary Terrell, Bernie Baker]

“LYNNE BOYER: RAISING THE LEVEL,” BY BRIAN GILLOGLY (1977)

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