This article was published in the Spring 2003 issue of Surfer's Journal. This version has been slightly edited.

There’s a photo hanging on my wall that always attracts people’s attention. It’s not a particularly wonderful shot. It’s black and white, and barely in focus, and it’s aged so much over the years that the edges have turned a yellowish-brown. In the photo, I am walking down the beach at Laniakea carrying two halves of a surfboard, one under each arm. One piece has most of the fiberglass ripped off, exposing a white foam deck and a wood stringer running down the center. The missing fiberglass is still attached to the other half of the board, like the peel of a half-eaten banana, and it is flapping in the wind. What’s most interesting about this photo is that if you look closely enough (and few people ever do) you will see that I am crying.

I don’t usually cry when I ride big waves and break a surfboard, but that day I was crying. More about that later.


In the early 1970s in Hawaii, only a handful of women were avid surfers. There were so few that most of us knew each other, or at least knew of each other. My best friend Sally Prange and I lived and surfed on the North Shore. We’d moved there from Honolulu in the fall of 1971, when the south swells began to die off and the large winter surf began arriving on the North Shore. Before that, we’d been surfing Ala Moana, Concessions, and Rockpile.

Sally surfed Rockpile so much that everybody called her “Rockpile Sally.” We had heard about a house for rent in Waialua and, to this day, I don’t know why the landlord rented to us—we weren’t exactly the pictures of credibility. Sally’s hair was sun-bleached and wild looking. She rarely wore anything other than a bathing suit, beach cover-up, and flip-flops. I was a much browner and only slightly tamer looking version of Sally.

I met her when she sold me her 6'3" board. My 9'6" was cumbersome and I was anxious to switch to a shortboard. Sally wanted $40 and I offered her $20, thinking we might settle around $30. “If you can’t afford more than $20,” she said, “then you can pay only $20.” That’s just the way Sally was. She even offered to paddle out with me at dawn the next morning to make sure I liked the board, and for the next decade we paddled out together just about every morning.

Sally was an incredibly strong, almost fearless, surfer. She had tiny feet and her stance was very close, so that whenever I watched her surf I used to think of the name “twinkle toes.” She’d stand up really straight and when she made that first bottom turn, she’d lean far into the wave, but without crouching or bending her knees much. It always made her look like she might fall off, but she rarely did. Instead, she just stood there, turning on those twinkle toes.

After moving to Waialua, we had little contact with the outside world for the next four years. We never drove to Honolulu, and cable and satellite hadn’t yet arrived on the North Shore, so television and radio reception were impossible. Not that we could have afforded anything electronic anyway. We were living hand-to-mouth, working at Jerry’s Sweet Shop, a greasy dive just across Kam Highway from Pua’ena Point. (Jerry’s was torn down in 1979 after being flooded and torn up by storm winds.) I worked the morning shift, serving breakfast to soaking wet surfers; Sally worked afternoons, serving burgers to high school kids. On good days we made eight dollars in tips and what we didn’t spend on food, we spent on surfboards. Or maybe it was the other way around. Actually, it was both, because we were so poor that we often mixed Carnation Instant Milk with resin to patch the dings in our surfboards.

Becky Benson grew up surfing the North Shore and lived with her family in Pupukea, the hilly neighborhood above Kam Highway. Colonel Albert Benson, Becky's father, was a retired army officer, a respected surf photographer, and a well-liked fixture on the North Shore. Their home was always open to visiting surfers and, as early as the 1960s, guys like Butch Van Artsdalen, Tiger Espere, and Clyde and Eddie Aikau were regulars at the Benson household. Blanche Benson, Becky’s older sister, had been surfing longer than any of us, and it wasn’t unusual for her to paddle out to Sunset on fairly big days. Butch and the guys always looked out for her. “I never had the guts that Blanche did," Becky told me. "My dad used to say she was all guts.” Colonel Benson used to pressure Becky to surf bigger waves, too, and Becky always responded with fear and worry. The funny thing was that Becky would sit on the beach and say, “Those waves are so big. I’m scared. I can’t do it.” And then she would paddle out and rip it to pieces.

Dale Kimura Dahlin also lived on the North Shore, and grew up within walking distance of Ali’i Beach Park, except it wasn’t a beach park at the time, just a lot of overgrown brush that led to Haleiwa. Dale seldom ventured beyond that one break. It was her spot and she surfed it better than any of us.

Most of the other women lived in other parts of the island. Lynne Boyer was still at her parents' house in Kailua, and I still remember in 1974 when people started telling us that they’d seen this phenomenal red-headed teenage girl at Kaisers Bowl. Lynne had a style that was different from the rest of us. Her radical, rounded cutbacks resembled those of Larry Bertlemann surfed at the time—very fluid and low on the board. She was the first woman I remember who surfed like that, and people said, “Oh, that’s fine if you’re surfing little town waves, but she’ll never do turns like that on the North Shore.” She did, of course. At Sunset and Haleiwa, Lynn surfed exactly like she did at Kaisers.

Jeannie Chesser surfed a few breaks down from Lynne at Ala Moana and lived on a boat in the harbor there. Jeannie is only about five feet tall, and her slim frame sometimes caused people on the beach to say, “Wow! Look at that little boy surf! He’s amazing.” We'd crack up whenever we heard that because, even though Jeannie looked distinctively like a woman, the thought never occurred to those folks that a female might be surfing that well.

Margo Oberg had recently moved to Hawaii from California, but we rarely saw her. She’d show up for contests on Oahu, win, and immediately fly back to her home on Kauai. Margo was the most seasoned surfer among us, and was best know for winning the 1968 world titles, in Puerto Rico. Steve Oberg, her husband, was a big help to Margo because he acted as her coach. During contests, he would sometimes wave a towel from the beach to let her know when a set was coming. I don’t think they realized that I knew about that, but whenever I was in Margo’s heat, I would always look for Steve’s towel. Once during a contest, Margo’s board washed up onto the rocks, and Steve retrieved it for her, but he didn’t have his swimsuit on so he just took off his pants and jumped in the water wearing his underwear.

In those early days, Rell Sunn liked to stay tucked away in Makaha where she was happiest. “Come surf with me in Makaha!” she used to say. “Come visit and I’ll introduce you to my friends.” Sometimes, when Makaha wasn’t good, Rell ventured to other parts of the island, but Makaha offered more than just good waves to her. It was filled with people who loved and supported her.

I remember once when Rell and her friends were having a beach barbecue, it was Rell’s job to bring the rice. She was out surfing and announced to everyone, “I have to get the next wave because I gotta’ go cook rice!” “Okay. Okay,” they said. “Geev’ Rell da’ wave! She gotta’ go cook rice!” She took the wave and it was such a good ride that she paddled back out. When the next set came, she said, “I gotta’ go cook rice,” and they all gave her another wave. For the longest time, she kept paddling back out, and everybody kept giving her waves. She really did have the intention of going to the beach, but the waves just kept getting better and better. After that, on the occasions that I surfed with Rell, we would snatch waves from each other and say, “I gotta’ go cook rice!”

I can’t speak for the rest of the women, but for the most part Sally and I surfed because we wanted to get away from tension and stress, and the fear of living a drone-like life. It was ironic, therefore, that it was surfing that launched us into the forefront of the hottest social issues of the times. In the mid-'70s, suddenly and without anyone asking permission, we were viewed as symbols for the women’s liberation movement. The media became keenly interested in women’s surfing, framing us as oceanic versions of tennis pro Billy Jean King, so while women across America were burning their bras, we were being touted as women who were paddling out into an environment that until now had been reserved only for men. This 1970s mentality clashed with the leftover 1960’s attitude that women were sex objects—in our case, beach bunnies. These two notions converged to form the genesis of women’s pro surfing, which was both an honest push to create a professional showcase for us, and a rush to exploit the sexuality of half-naked women streaking across churning turquoise waves.

This was made clear to me after I gave my first-ever newspaper interview. I should have gotten suspicious when the only subject the reporter wanted to talk about was Candypants. I’d been trying to explain how us women surfers were desperately seeking sponsors to fund travel for our first-ever international competitions. All he was interested in was a particular sponsor we had turned down—Candypants. 

 and I think they came in only one color—red (cinnamon flavor). Not only did this potential sponsor wanted to shoot photos of us wearing Candypants, he also wanted us to stand at a street corner display in Waikiki and talk to passersby. I pictured us approaching tourists in their matching aloha shirts. “Excuse me, Mr. and Mrs. Visitor from Iowa! Hungry?”

When the article came out, almost all of my quotes were about Candypants. It was a humiliating early lesson in what the next few years would hold for us with regard to women’s pro surfing. We garnered plenty of spectator curiosity, but not much respect. People didn’t know what to make of us. Our paddling muscles and always-damp hair somewhat trampled the beach-bunny image. Sure we were a bunch of Gidgets, but we could also punch your lights out. Not that we wanted to, but a lot of folks back then couldn’t quite decide whether we were dolls or a pack of female mud wrestlers.


1975 was the year we formed the Hawaii Women’s Surfing Hui, conceived by Linda McCreary. Linda was a novice surfer who had recently moved to Hawaii from Colorado. What she lacked in surfing skills, she made up for with expertise in writing press releases and garnering funds. Linda asked Sally, Jeannie Chesser, Laola Lake, and me to help her organize the group. What I remember most about Laola is that she was extremely gracious—never pushy or rude—yet a good enough surfer to always get all the waves she wanted. She was also extraordinarily pretty, so whenever you went anywhere with her, you could expect heads to turn. She was part Hawaiian and had this radiant face and very long, shiny sun-bleached hair. Laola surfed mostly Waikiki and in 1976 won the women’s division of the United States Surfing Championships.

We put together a brochure and membership application with a statement of purpose, which read in part: "The Hawaii Women’s Surfing Hui is a non-profit, educational, and scientific organization formed to advance women in the sport of surfing and to promote public awareness of women surfers as accomplished athletes."

Jeannie designed a Hui logo that showed a perfect two-way tube with a woman surfing on each side. Both of the surfers looked like Rell, who had started coming to the Hui meetings. Jeannie and Rell were close friends who became even closer during that time. Jeannie’s husband had recently passed away, and she was now raising her seven-year-old son Todd by herself. Rell, meanwhile, was raising her daughter Jan, so they often swapped childcare responsibilities. Jeannie would stay on the beach watching the kids so Rell could surf, and then Rell would do the same for Jeannie.

Word got out about the Hui. Lynne Boyer joined. So did Elaine Davis from Florida and Linda Davoli from New Jersey, both of whom had recently moved to the North Shore. Becky joined, but Blanche had already moved on to other things, namely college and marriage. Evie Black, a young protégé of Rabbit Kekai, also became a member. Evie had been Hawaii's state champion the year before and went on to win the U.S. title a few years later. Dale Kimura Dahlin joined, and so did Terry Melenson, a newcomer from California who was the first woman I ever saw ride big Pipeline. Unfortunately, she occasionally surfed it topless, and just about every guy on the North Shore had this poster of topless Terry making a backside turn at the bottom of a foamy Rocky Point wave, with the words “Hawaii...Naturally” printed underneath. Terry was really proud of that poster, but a lot of women were bothered by it because it contributed to the Candypants phenomenon.

We decided that our first step would be to generate enough publicity so that people would begin to view us as serious athletes. We sponsored workshops and classes for women and girls on surfing, boardmaking, ding repair, and oceanography. We put on contests for kids and acted as water patrol in the Annual Rough Water Swim in Waikiki. We also organized the first Women’s Expression Session.


The Hui sent out a press release announcing that 20 women would be surfing Rocky Point for the Expression Session. We chose that spot so the surf photographers could easily shoot us from the beach. We didn’t want to make it too difficult for fear they wouldn’t show up. What we learned was that we could have held it in their living rooms, and they probably wouldn’t have bothered to shoot it. For years, we’d been trying to convince 

magazines to regularly run photos of women surfers, but they’d declined to do so, and it wasn’t financially feasible for photographers to shoot pictures they couldn’t sell.

Gary Terrell was probably the most attentive photographer, but his shots didn't often get into the magazines. Warren Bolster sometimes made time for us when he visited Hawaii. Bob Barbour occasionally shot us, but only because he was a close friend of mine who politely responded to my requests. Russ Calisch shot some of our early contests, and Bernie Baker was always kind, but also very busy shooting the top male pros. Jeff Divine shot some of us in later years. For the most part, however, the photographers ignored us until the mid-1970s. Or worse yet, they insulted us relentlessly. Dan Merkel never missed an opportunity to let me know that he didn’t think any of us could surf. “Have you learned to stand up yet?” he would loudly ask whenever he saw me.

On the day of our Expression Session, the waves were a piddling three feet, and not a single photo made the magazines. The event generated just one article, in the 

, which may have done us more harm than good. The opening read: "Many women traditionally have considered sports boring, at best to be tolerated to please some man. Dedicated, achieving sportswomen often are regarded by both sexes as curiosities who probably are endowed with too many male hormones."

Embarrassed at being labeled “curiosities,” we deeply wanted to be respected as mainstream athletes. We had certainly paid our dues through a dedicated and sometimes overbearing relationship with the ocean. Rell spent two weeks in the hospital after a board hit her in the side and damaged her spleen so badly that she had to have it removed. The day after Sally gave surfing safety tips on a local television program, she received a mass of stitches when her board flew up in the air and landed on her head. She also got a punch in the nose from an angry male surfer at Ala Moana who thought she was getting too many waves. Lynne broke her collarbone after being pitched over the falls. Becky received a deep slice just under her eye that permanently damaged her tear duct. Jeannie broke an ankle and a nose, and I’ve ruptured an eardrum, broken a rib, and torn ligaments and cartilage in my knee. When it came to injuries, Mother Ocean certainly couldn’t be accused of sex discrimination.


The Hui sent out press releases saying that the women surfers would be sponsoring a litter cleanup along North Shore beaches. The reality of what we were doing hit us when we realized that we were picking up trash in the burning hot sun while watching the men surf great waves. A local radio disk jockey interviewed Jeannie but asked only two questions, none of which had anything to do with promoting women surfers: How much trash have you picked up? And what is the number one item you are finding? The answers were 35 bags and diapers. At our next meeting, we grumbled, “What are we, trash pickers or athletes? Gerry Lopez doesn’t have to pick up garbage to get sponsors!” We decided that we take a different tack.


Since Fred Hemmings had already organized the men’s pro contests into a world surfing tour, we opted to approach him and demand that he include women. Our sense of entitlement was youthful and brash. Even still, no one volunteered to confront Fred, and somehow I was chosen.

Fred’s initial reaction to my phone call was to speak loudly into the phone and tell me, “Just who do you think you are? These are my contests. I promote them and you can’t tell me how to run them.” He asked me to meet him for lunch at the Outrigger Canoe Club, a private beach club in Waikiki, where we discussed the idea of including a women’s division in the pro meets. Fred told me that success for women surfers had to come from performance in the water, not as a civil rights movement. He was bothered by the notion that we had organized, and was concerned that it might scare away contest sponsors. Still, he promised me that the coming winter would hold pro event opportunities for women.


With Fred’s promise, we anticipated that the first all-female contest would be on the North Shore. Much to our surprise, however, the California women had been busy working on an event of their own and had formed a hui-like organization called Women’s International Surfing Association. Furthermore, WISA had already organized a pro contest for September in Malibu.

Since the WISA contest was the first all-women pro event, those of us who entered really felt as if we were taking part in something significant. Nobody had ever seen so many accomplished women surfers in one place before. The contest was held in three- to four-foot waves at Malibu, and Margo won.

Famous as she was, Margo wasn’t the best-known woman surfer at the time, however. That title went to Laura Blears Ching, who had made a name for herself earlier that year by posing naked on her surfboard for 

, much to the chagrin of many of the women who felt it did nothing but add to our topless-Terry image. In addition to being attractive and well proportioned, though, Laura was a strong and competitive surfer. She was also well-connected. Jimmy Blears, her brother, was the 1972 world amateur champion, and her father, Lord Tallyho Blears, was a popular pro wrestler whose media savvy helped promote Laura. One way or the other, she became the first woman ever to surf in a pro contest. In 1973, Fred invited Laura to surf in the Smirnoff Pro-Am on the North Shore—a men's-only contest. Laura held her own during the competition but was nonetheless regarded by sponsors and the (mostly male) spectators as a novelty more than a serious competitor. Although she didn’t advance beyond her first heat, Laura managed to place over one of her male competitors, and to this day Randy Rarick insists the guy gave up competitive surfing after that.

Over the next two years, Fred expanded the number of women in the Smirnoff to six, placing one of us in each of the six prelim heats. The 1975 event began in the early morning with clean eight-foot waves, but by my afternoon heat, it had risen to a sloppy windblown 15'. To make matters worse, my mother had come to the contest, and when she saw how big the surf was getting, she began scolding me in front of the spectators, saying, “It's too big. You’re going to drown!” When I walked away, pretending not to know her, she followed and tried to grab hold of the back of my contest jersey, saying, “Come back here this minute!” I evaded her by ducking into the competitor's area, where I met up with the other surfers in my heat—Owl Chapman, Sam Hawk, Terry Fitzgerald, and Eddie Aikau.

Eddie was the only one who acknowledged me in the water. He quietly asked whether I had surfed waves that big before. “Almost, but not quite,” I told him. “If you have any problems,” he said, “call for me.” I caught two fine waves but came in last in my heat since the judges scored each surfer's top three waves. None of the women advanced, but Margo scored just two points behind Barry Kanaiaupuni; had she passed him, she would have advanced to the semifinals. She won the $1,000 prize for the highest-placing woman surfer.


It wasn’t long after the Smirnoff that Randy Rarick asked the women if we wanted to join the men’s pro tour that year as it traveled to South Africa and Brazil. He said that the contest sponsors had agreed to hold a women’s division, and if we could cover our own travel expenses, then the prize money awaiting us would be $1,000 for each of three contests—two in South Africa and one in Brazil.

Most of us paid our own way, except for a few hundred dollars contributed from friends, family, and local surfboard shops. Since there was no benchmark for women’s pro surfing, we had no expectations of what a sponsor should provide, and felt lucky just to get free boards.

Randy announced that O’Neill had offered to make us custom wetsuits. This was great news as women’s wetsuit sizes were all but impossible to find in those days. Most of us wore boy’s wetsuits that were too tight in the hips and often pressed down our breasts to the point of being painful. We filled out the forms O’Neill had sent asking for our most intimate dimensions, but when the wetsuits finally arrived, we all had the same reaction, “Ew, gross!” The suits had huge, pokey boobs that stuck straight out, far beyond our real chests. The zippers barely worked because the suits were cut to fit women with skinny upper bodies, not surfers with paddling muscles in their upper backs and arms. The waists were so tiny that we called them the “Barbie wetsuits.” Randy asked O’Neill to just send some standard boys' sizes, and we ended up taking those with us instead of the custom suits.

Our outbound flight made a quick stopover in Los Angeles and the California surfers joined us. For us women, that meant adding only one more person, Jericho Poppler. She was tough and confident, in addition to being a strong surfer. Moreover, she was the only one experienced with surfing in cold water.

One other woman, Claudia Bates, had also joined us in Hawaii but didn’t intend to compete. She was learning to surf at the time and thought it would be fun to travel. Her low-key attitude and friendly personality were a welcome addition, and she brought our number to six. Sally, Becky, Rell, Jericho, Claudia, and I departed in June 1976 on the first women’s pro surf tour.

About 30 male pros traveled with us. Some were seasoned vets like Rory Russell, Randy Rarick, and Jeff Crawford, while others like Buzzy Kerbox and Dane Kealoha were new on the circuit. Surfboard shaper Tom Parrish also came and made boards along the way. Photographer Dan Merkel was there too, shooting for 


Few of us understand what it meant to visit South Africa, or what we would encounter there. Had we known, we might have stayed home. Our relative isolation within surfing had kept us from the news of the day.

My most vivid memory is our arrival in Johannesburg. I invited one of the men to help me look for a drinking fountain. Instead, we found a pub. The minute I walked in, I knew something was wrong as the entire place grew quiet and the bartender appeared agitated. Finally, a customer told us the problem. “Women aren’t allowed in this pub. And neither is your kaffir friend.” My “friend” was Hawaiian and his complexion was very dark. As I was later to learn, "kaffir" is a derogatory term South Africans used to describe black men, similar to the n-word.

Throughout our trip, our group was sometimes turned away from restaurants and other public places because of the darker-skinned Hawaiians among us. Unlike some of their countrymen, however, the South African surfers never made any of us feel unwelcome.


The Gunston 500, our first contest, was scheduled at Nahoon Reef, just outside East London. When we arrived, however, the Gunston folks knew nothing about a women’s event. This came as a shock, as we'd just traveled 12,000 miles to compete. The event sponsors insisted that they had never told Randy that there would be prize money for the women. As Randy then explained to us, there had been a mix-up in communication. A few days later, Chapstick offered to step in and sponsor the event, and their representatives asked to meet with the women pros. They told us they didn’t have much money for the prize purse, but being the innovative advertising men they were, they had come up with an alternative plan. They would plaster our faces—and bodies—all over the South African media. People would become enthralled with us. Men would desire us—the savage women of the waves. Then, when the public was frothing at the mouth for us, they would announce a nationwide raffle. The winner would have his choice of a date with any one of us—or all of us, if he so desired. “Well, what do you think?” one of the men asked. We sat there unable to speak, until Becky asked, “What if the winner is a girl?” I muttered something about Candypants not being such a bad idea after all.

The raffle idea never happened, but Chapstick did manage to come up with $600 in prizemoney, a little more than half of what we'd originally been promised. The men’s purse was $6,000. We were told that this lesser amount was justified because there were so few women. The irony was that it was the women who drew enormous crowds and media attention that year and, thus, gave the sponsors maximum exposure.

A local newspaper headline extolled our propensity for attracting spectators: “Six Shapely Surfers Steal the Show!” Another article in a major South African magazine entitled “Hawaii’s Red-Hot Surfing Girls Tame the Wild Waves” addressed the question that evidently was most on the minds of readers: Have you ever surfed nude?

We were quite the oddity. South African men, as far as I could tell, wanted to get a little closer out of sheer curiosity, not attraction. We were loud, brash, American women, deeply tanned and sun-bleached. From what I could make out, their women were frail, pale beauties whose behavior and speech were refined and subdued. And they didn’t surf.

Probably the strangest article was written by a female reporter for a paper called the 

. “Women are still traditionally tied to hearth and home,” it read. “And women surfers must go back to their husbands again, to the lonely hot stove and the children.” We had no idea who this journalist was, or whom she had interviewed, since none of us even had husbands.

Jericho won the contest, and afterward, I assure you, she did not go back to a lonely hot stove.


Our next stop was Jeffreys Bay, and one thing we quickly learned was that when you travel with a big group of pros, every place you surf is crowded. Shaun and Michael Tomson from Durban, along with Peter Townend and Ian Cairns from Australia, had joined us, along with 50 or so other surfers from around the world. Wanting to ditch the crowd, Sally, Becky, and I rented a Volkswagen and drove 25 kilometers along a dusty dirt road lined with ostriches and sheep to Cape St. Francis. If we looked strange to the white South Africans, we must have looked even stranger to the black South Africans, who stood outside their huts and stared at three young white girls, traveling alone, surfboards in tow, singing the theme song from 

We had Cape St. Francis all to ourselves that morning, just the three of us and a pod of dolphins If we had done nothing else on that tour, it would have been worth it just for that day at Cape St. Francis with my friends. I’ve often wondered whether any women had surfed there before us.

We returned to our hotel at Jeffreys Bay as more surfers filtered in. The few times we surfed Jeffreys Bay over the next few days it was insanely crowded.


Everybody left Jeffreys early for our next stop, Durban, because the flu was going around and we could barely talk, yet kept paddling out into freezing cold water, getting sicker and sicker. Durban appeared warm and inviting.

Our early arrival, however, threw off our travel plans, so when we landed at the airport, no one was there to greet us. Shaun Tomson was on our flight and asked his mother and sister to drive us to our hotel, and from that moment on, the Tomsons’ hospitality didn’t cease. Every day after surfing, Shaun’s mother would bring a carload of surfers to their home where they fed and entertained us. We were eager to accept their offers because our hotel, which was paid for in advance as part of the tour, was dark, dank, rat-filled, and far from the contest site.

Eventually, Rell, Jericho, and Claudia moved to a newly-built beachfront hotel near the contest site, while Sally, Becky, and I moved in with the Tomsons, who were already housing a half-dozen of the men surfers.

In addition to Bay of Plenty and Cave Rock, we surfed Umhlanga Rocks where the Hang Ten International was held. The men’s purse was $4,000. The women's was $375. We tried our best to make the three-foot chop look exciting for the spectators who had shown up. Jericho won, with Becky and Sally picking up second and third.


By the time we got to Brazil, we were so sick and tired of being scrutinized by media, spectators, and other surfers that we didn’t care anymore what anybody thought. We just wanted to have a good time.

The Brazilians thoroughly enjoyed our presence in the water, turned out by the thousands to cheer us on, gave us free hotel rooms, and prominently featured us in their most popular mainstream magazines. They eagerly took us surfing at places like Saqurema, Prainha, and other beaches with great waves.

Every day was an intense surf session; every night was a round of parties. The meals, in particular, were memorable. One such meal took place at an awards banquet and was sparked by Rory Russell Hawaii and Rico Sousa, a Brazilian surf shop owner. One of them left for a moment and the other peed in his beer. The inevitable happened, and the farina started flying. A staple of the Brazilian diet, this Cream-of-Wheat-like substance emerged as the food of choice for tossing. The women tried to stay out of it, but then Rell flicked some farina at Jericho’s boyfriend, surfboard maker Bruce Jones, who had just flown in. After that, I have only one other memory of all of us women trying to hide behind big Alan Sarlo, his face dripping with wet, mushy farina.

The contest was held at Arpoador, a left-breaking wave on the north end of Ipanema Beach. Twenty-thousand Brazilians showed up to watch, and every time one of us took off on a wave, they cheered so loudly it was like the dull roar of a rock concert.

Our prize money was $500 and Becky’s aggressive maneuvers in the small waves garnered her the loudest cheers and first place. Sally took second, Jericho third.


A couple of months after we returned home, Fred Hemmings and Randy Rarick asked me to run the women’s division of International Professional Surfers (IPS), the official sanctioning body at the time for the pro tour. I accepted, but things got a little rocky before the year was out.

First off, Fred and Randy announced that none of the points from 1976 would count toward a year-end women's rating, as not all women had gone on the tour, and because the prize money had been so low. This came as a blow to all of us, but especially Jericho who otherwise would have won the first women's pro world title.

As for me, I was tired of getting fifth or sixth place in pretty much every contest, so I finished up college at the University of Hawaii and, in the fall of 1978, flew back to the Mainland to attend law school. Nervous at the thought of living too far from the beach or in a climate where I couldn’t open the windows for months on end, I chose Pepperdine, on the hill above Malibu. I only surfed in one more pro tour contest.


New York was the most bizarre women's surfing event of that opening phase of pro surfing. The Hampton Bays Chamber of Commerce, wanting to extend its summer tourist season, had come up with a few hundred dollars in prize money to sponsor a women’s event at Shinnecock Inlet. The Chamber organized a parade in which we were the main attraction, riding in convertible cars along the parade route. A few of us got up out of our seats and scrambled to the hood of the car, where we stood hanging five off the grille. For this, we received the mild applause of a few well-dressed spectators who gawked as if we were exotic zoo animals. The women surfers, however, were very impressed with this maneuver, and we cheered and hooted for ourselves as the cars rolled down the street.

Having left the tour for three years of law school, I was unfamiliar with some of the women who took part. They were younger, and their sense of entitlement to the pro circuit was huge. Australia’s Pam Burridge, who had just begun her ascent, competed, as did Liz Benavidez and Candy Woodward from the South Bay, and Shannon Aikman from Newport Beach. Brenda Scott of Santa Cruz was there, as well as longtime pros Nancy Emerson of Malibu and Debbie Beacham from La Jolla. Margo, Rell, Jericho, and Lynne Boyer came, and altogether there were about two dozen women. Sally had quit the tour two years earlier after calculating that if she won every contest for an entire year, she would bring in a total of $10,000. She said she was tired of being poor.

Most of the women in the New York contest chose to stay at a local motel that offered two features that attracted us: 1) super-cheap rates and 2) cooking facilities. Not that any of us could cook, but we did use the oven. South Bay surfer Debbie Hull, anxious to avoid having to paddle out the next morning in a cold, damp gear, stuck her wetsuit in the oven to dry. It might have worked, except that she put it on “broil” and forgot about it. Candy Woodward and Liz Benavidez smelled something burning and rushed in to find Debbie’s wetsuit red hot and glowing. They tried to pull it out but it was too hot to touch so all they could do was watch it melt while the room filled with black smoke. To this day, the wetsuit gets passed around among a small group of surfers, wrapped as a “surprise” birthday or Christmas gift, and given as a commemorative token of our elite and most unusual sisterhood. It has signatures and drawings all over it and was last seen at Candy Woodward’s house. I think it’s coming my way soon.

A September hurricane brought four-foot waves to the contest, but a heavy fog discouraged spectators from showing up. Still, the level of surfing was impressive, and Margo, now regarded as an “old-timer,” won.

Afterward, I borrowed a friend’s bike and rode to the beach with my board under my arm, and while I was deep in thought wondering what I was going to do with my life, a New York truck driver stuck his head out his window and screamed at me, “Get a job!”

I went home and took the bar exam. When I interviewed for jobs, lawyers who were trying to help me repeatedly said that I should never, under any circumstances, include surfing on my resume. At first, eager job applicant that I was, I obediently erased those decades from my life. Over the years, though, surfing found its way onto my resume. In fact, next year I think I’ll lead with it. Because of everything I’ve done—lawyer, journalist, CNN correspondent, whatever—nothing has ever come close to demanding the degree of sheer determination, commitment, and professional expertise that surfing did.

Nothing. Ever. And that’s something I think that every surfer knows to be true.

Which brings me to that day at Laniakea, and the broken board.

"SEVENTIES PRO GENESIS," BY PATTI PANICCIA - THE ORIGINS OF WOMEN'S PRO SURFING (2003)

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