Dick Graham interview Pete Peterson for "Tandem," which ran in the April 1966 issue of Surfing magazine. A few months later, Peterson and partner Barrie Algaw won the tandem division of the 1966 World Championships in San Diego.


I’ve been surfing for over 30 years now. There were very few tandem surfers on the coast when I first started. Maybe five or so. Of course, Lorrin Harrison was first on it, then Willy Grigsby at Corona del Mar, and George Harris down here at Santa Monica. I really don’t remember who I first saw doing tandem. I guess we just picked it up from some of the Hawaiian boys who came over here. I started riding tandem at Corona del Mar. There is a place to ride over by the side of the jetty there, an easy shoulder. It got kind of dull riding alone sometimes, so we would take a girl out there.


In the old days, we were going tandem on paddleboards. Fourteen-feet long, 23 inches wide. It wasn’t too bad. The noticeable change in the last few years is that the boards have gotten longer and wider. Nearly all of them are 28 inches wide now, and some even wider. My board is 12' 7", and I believe that I am riding the longest in competition. Hobie Alter built the board for me about five years ago, and I have been so happy with it that I have been riding it ever since. It has washed through the Huntington Pier about four times and has been on every rock on the North Shore, and I’m still riding it.


There is so much acrobatics in tandem these days, that you have to be both a surfer and an acrobat to do well. Thinking back, I know that we hardly did any acrobatics until about 15 years ago. In the old days, we didn't do anything. For one thing, the boards were a little shaky, as they weren’t really wide enough or steady enough to do a lift. We would lift the girl to our shoulders and that would be about it. Then as time went on, we started a few acrobatics. Just simple ones like knee stands, things like that. I really think that most of the tandem lifts were invented here in California even though the Hawaiian boys were the first ones to start doing the shoulder stand.


You have to pick a girl who is acrobatically inclined, or at least done a bit of ballet dancing. I don’t think the girls get enough credit for this. Whenever a contest is won they just say that Pete won it or Doyle won it, and they won’t give the girls credit. And really, in my mind, the girl either makes or breaks you. I think the girl is about 60% of the team. No matter how you ride the wave and do the lift, if the girl looks like a sack of flour up there you wouldn’t get too many points.


If you are paddling out in very large surf and a big wave breaks in front of you, you have to let your partner off. She will dive under the wave and swim, and you will take care of your board. That is about the only way we can get out. A solo surfer can roll under his board and let the wave pass over, but we don’t seem to be able to do that in tandem. The girls have to be pretty good ocean swimmers to get out through the surf.


The girl has to weigh over 100 pounds, according to the USSA rules, unless her partner weighs under 160. Then she can weigh 95 pounds. It makes it so that you are more or less lifting about half of your own weight. So that is where a large man has the advantage, because if a fellow weighed 300 pounds instead of 200 pounds, he would be lifting only a third of his weight. A smaller man, like Mickey Munoz, is at a disadvantage. On the other hand, Mickey doesn't have to lift as high as Mike Doyle and I do. You do find that the small fellows are stronger per pound than the larger, taller fellows. Also, the girl has to help a lot on the way up. Even though it doesn’t look like it, she usually has a hand in there some way or a foot giving us a little push on the way. In a contest, of course, nearly all of the high point lifts are one-handed lifts over your head. Boy, that right arm—you nearly wear it off sometimes!


We have a degree of difficulty for each lift. We are judged by how we ride the wave and do the lifts. Then each lift has its own degree of difficulty. It goes up to, I believe, 3.5 points. The score is multiplied by that number to reach a final wave score. That’s so somebody who does just a knee-stand and rides the wave perfectly couldn’t possibly beat somebody who would do an arabesque, and rides the wave fairly well.


All of us work out on the beach quite a bit. You know, working out with the lifts, getting so we can work together. There is really quite a bit to it. If we can do a trick real well on the beach, that doesn’t mean that it will work well on the board. Sometimes we have to change the way we lift the girl around to have it work on the board. Maybe we can to do it real easy on the ground, but boy, there is something about being on that board. The board will give under you when you start to lift, and you won’t get the strength into it. Any lift that a girl has to kind of jump up into, she has to slow down so the board won’t give away under her. She has to bend lower and come up slower when she goes into it. Also, from a shoulder-stand the girl usually does a flip to the front of the board. When she hits the board everybody wonders how she does it, but really the board gives under her. It will spring down about six inches. Another thing. The girl will be standing two or three feet in front of us. We do notice when we lift the girl that we have to step forward to trim the board. You always have to be prepared for that. Whereas on the beach, you will just lift the girl and stay right there. We also paddle quite a bit to keep in shape.


A pointbreak is definitely best for tandem, because it has a shoulder, and also you don’t have to paddle back out through too much surf. On a wave like Malibu, you can just forget the board is on a wave, and do your lift. Whereas if you are going straight off, like at San Onofre, even though it looks easier, it is much harder to ride than a wave where your board is on a nice angle.



My partner is Marge Geiger. She came over here from Germany about two-and-a-half years ago. Two years ago she didn’t even know what a surfboard was. She did quite a bit of gymnastics and track in Germany, though. She had quite an acrobatic background. I first saw her up in a gym teaching gymnastics. I was going to the same gym and started lifting her. Then I took her surfing a couple of times, and we developed into a team after that.


More of the top surfers are finding out that tandem is a lot of fun. Tandem gives you something to work on when you get kind of tired of riding waves alone. It's just a new twist to surfing. There's always more to do, new lifts, new things to try out. We are finding that each year we have doubled the number of entries in the tandem contests.


In the contest, there are three compulsory lifts that we have to do, and three optionals where we can do whatever we like. The compulsory lifts don't change from contest to contest. The first is a shoulder bird, the second is a one-legged knee stand with a stag, and the third is a one-legged shoulder stand with an arabesque.


They've been together around six years, and they're awfully hard to beat. I know Linda is a little heavier than the average tandem surfer, but they more than make up for it with their experience, surfing ability, and her grace.


Bob Moore has had more tandem partners than the rest of the field put together, but he has really hit it with Patti. She is conscientious, and always looks good. And Bob, I think, is the most improved tandem surfer of the last year.


They have improved too. Hansen falls into that group of surfers who are just starting into the tandem contests. This was his first year, and he has really come up. Practically as much as Bob and his partner.


Hobie has been so busy with his business that he hasn't had as much chance to work out as he should, and consequently he has slipped in the contests a little over the last couple of years. It is just one of those things where it is either play or pay the rent.


Steve and Tina have only been together since last summer. It's amazing, because they have invented several different lifts that we are all using now.


Jack and Kathy, brother and sister, have been together longer than any other team. They can work out at home, and the only catch is that Jack is lifting within 25 pounds of his own weight. Even though they are really together, well, he is lifting too near his own weight.


All of us tandem surfers are a close group, we work out together, share secrets, everything like that. The USSA rules on tandem surfing are more or less drawn up by the tandem surfers themselves. We have two or three meetings a year and they let us change the rules around until we are happy with them, so of course we are really happy with the way the contests are run.

[Photos: Ron Stoner, Ron Church, LeRoy Grannis]

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