Road to Santosha

The Kevin and Craig Show

Hippie Trail Gold

At Play in the Fields of Allah

Career Move

Grand Prix Dream

Follow the Money

Big in Japan

Rabbit's Big Adventure

Shaun Tomson's Tunnel Vision

South Africa in Black and White

Mark Richards, Gentleman Killer

Two Fins, More Wins

The Divine Miss M

The Fortune Seekers

Surf magazine travel articles were a mixed bag. The photos were usually great. The writing was usually awful. Curious about what it might be like to hang out in Santosha—wherever the hell it was? According to the 

 cover story: “Santosha is a state of mind, a state of being, a forgotten state of happiness and peace . . . [where] the land belonged to all of us [and] there seems to be no measure for time.” Few surfers were high enough in the '70s for that to sound either truthful or poetic.

The travel writing void was suddenly, cheerfully filled by Kevin Naughton and Craig Peterson, two unknown teenage surfers from Orange County. On their first trip, in early 1973, they drove south in Peterson’s friend's off-white VW bug for a long low-budget tour through Central America. A few weeks in, they mailed a parcel of slides and handwritten notebook pages to 

, where it was crafted into a feature article called “Centroamerica.” No breaks were named. No 

The end result wasn’t Kerouac. But it was funny and genuine and devoid of Santosha-like New Age drivel. Peterson was the lanky blonde kneeboarder and photographer. Naughton was the friendly two-hundred-pound regularfooter with the Burt Reynolds moustache. Over the next half-dozen years, they produced another eight installments, documenting their travels through Latin America, Africa, and Europe. Good waves came into the picture at fairly regular intervals, but the heart of the Naughton-Peterson experience was found in the cantinas and beachfront tents, around the campfire, in a hammock, and under the hood of yet another broken-down car. They became the patron saints of American surf-adventurers simply by changing the emphasis—by recognizing that there really isn’t much to say about great waves (the photos took care of that), while there’s no end of good fun to be had documenting the trials and tribulations of vagabond surf travel.

Peterson and Naughton split the writing duties. It was PG-rated, with the occasional mention of a “foxy chick” back home, some mild swear words, lots of drinking and hangovers, and an arrest here and there for things like public urination. The two made friends easily with other traveling surfers they met along the way, and both were ready to partake fully in the local culture. They also spent a lot of time camped out alone on remote shores, waiting for waves, in that idly bored condition familiar to hardcore surf travelers of every generation. Midway through 1975’s “Eleven Chapters of an African Surfari,” they pose the question: “What do you do when there isn’t a swell and you’re sitting around trying to avoid the heat?”

Go for a swim in the 80-degree ocean, which is nice, but when you come out, the sun dries you off so fast you’re caked with salt, and the little village kids all run cause they think you’ve got leprosy. Count your malaria pills, maybe, or read another book. Write letters, sure, and freak a few people out back home by telling them you’ve met the native girl of your dreams and are moving in with her tribe. Read your snake-bite kit instructions again, and go for a walk in the jungle. But you may still get bit by a Gabon viper, or spitting cobra, or some other poisonous snake in these parts, and then forget what the instructions said to do. The heat cuts down on a lot of your activities. When you sweat while doing a simple thing like eating, you know it’s hot and there’s little way around it

, the Naughton-Peterson articles convey the same mood and message: that surfing is the perfect excuse to leave the safety and familiarity of home and experience the world. The main difference—apart from the fact that Bruce Brown became “the surfing millionaire,” while Naughton and Peterson’s paltry 

 checks didn’t even cover expenses—was that 

 arrived at a time when California was regarded as the sport’s benevolent leader. By the time Naughton and Peterson were on the road, things had changed dramatically. California was now the serpent in the garden—polluted, crowded, violent, and commercialized—and to some degree they had to drag that unwanted luggage around with them. Parched and grubby while camped on a desert point in Morocco, Naughton and Peterson met a bearded Latin American wave-hunter named Tito Rosemberg. “All right!" they greet him. "You’re the first Brazilian surfer we’ve ever met! We’re from California.” Rosemberg: “That’s okay, I won’t hold it against you.”

Rosemberg tossed them a few tangerines, and within the hour had invited them aboard his tricked-out Land Rover for the next leg of their journey. He liked Kevin and Craig. 

 liked Kevin and Craig, and the benefits extended well beyond what they themselves experienced while traveling from break to break, country to country. On the way to becoming surf travel folk heroes, Naughton and Peterson pumped some life back into California’s deflated surf-world reputation. Of course, they had to leave America to do so. They also pointed out that it was all the “bad vibes” from “Clockwork Orange County,” their home, that drove them to hit the road in the first place. But they were Californians through and through, spoke in their natural California voices, and even admitted to getting homesick. They looked forward to getting away from home, but also looked forward to returning. Covering a women's pro surfing event at Malibu in the summer of 1975, Naughton and Peterson were as cheerful and upbeat as they’d been earlier that year doing oyster shooters in El Salvador.

“We had to laugh,” Naughton wrote at the end of one of their trips, having arrived safely back in Huntington Beach, “because we’d been to so many countries that now even home seemed like a foreign place.” Not exactly a ringing endorsement for California, but the native surfers were laughing again—some were, anyway—and that was an improvement.

Naughton and Peterson became the patron saints of American surf-adventurers by recognizing there really isn't much to say about great waves. The stuff worth writing about took place in cantinas, around the campfire, in a hammock, and under the hood of yet another broken-down car.

Chapter: 6

The Fortune Seekers

The Kevin and Craig Show

Subscribe or Login

Encyclopedia of Surfing

History of Surfing

Interviews

Features

The Sunday Joint

Videos