SUNDAY JOINT, 3-9-2025: THE DOMINATOR - LUNADA BAY'S HEAVIEST LOCAL

Hey All,

There are many remarkable books on these sagging faux-wood Ikea shelves behind me, but the one nearest and dearest to my heart is Surfing Guide to Southern California, by David Stern and Bill Cleary—a 1963 self-published gem of a guidebook, researched to a fare-thee-well but cut with humor and flair, that I still turn to for inspiration. Dave Sweet himself gave it to me when he was clearing out his retail store in Santa Monica in 1969. Surfing Guide is just what it says it is: an inclusive survey of breaks from Point Conception to northern Baja. Detailed but tight descriptions of each spot, along with photos, maps, aerial views, sections on swell, wind, sea-life, and a five-page surf history that I just realized probably sparked the career that gets us to this moment, this Joint. It might have been this very sentence, in fact, at the top of page 20: "Surfers go to war and leave the waves to the kids. And who shall lead them? A skinny misanthrope with a crooked left arm, a nasal voice and an incisive mind, who refuses to believe that 120-pound planks are the ultimate achievement in surfboard technology. His name? Bob Simmons."

I stand on the shoulders of Bill Cleary and David Stern. Cleary especially, the man had style to burn. 

The surf break index on my copy of Surfing Guide has dozens of little red-ink checkmarks noting the spots I'd surfed. Venice Breakwater was included and checked, but Venice Jetty was missing (it was built after '63, I think) which I remember as being unfair. But I see here that I checked Old Joe's at Malibu, which I never actually surfed, so no harm no foul. 

Anyway, the surest thing of 1969, that wooziest and least-stable of all years, is that I was never, ever going to put a checkmark next to Lunada Bay, the big-wave break in Palos Verdes. Everything about Lunada (and this was before I knew about the Bay Boys and their BMW-driving brand of localism) was hairball—wave size, rocks, and out there just north of the lineup, as seen in Surfing Guide, a hulking starboard-listing shipwrecked freighter named Dominator. Put me on the Lunada bluff at that tender moment in my surfing life, 1969, with a big long-period northwest swell rolling down the coast and Dominator in the background still grinding millimeter by millimeter over the reef toward shore, and I might have bagged the whole thing—this Sunday Joint would be about book clubs or model-car building. 

SS Dominator was a US-built, Greek-owned freighter, 440-feet long and low-riding with 10,000 tons of wheat and beef, sailing down from Portland, en route to Algiers but aiming to refuel in Long Beach. At dusk on March 13, 1961, in a heavy fog, she ran aground about 200 yards off what PV natives call Rocky Point—the westernmost corner Palos Verdes Peninsula. Captain and crew remained onboard for two days, hoping the ship could be floated and towed to nearby Long Beach Harbor. But as the LA Times reported, Dominator was battered the entire time by heavy surf and wind, and at midnight, March 15, as crew members heard and felt the boat's hull begin to split, a distress call went out. All 31 aboard were rescued a few hours later. (The ship did indeed break in two, and a few months later a salvage crew lit the stern section on fire, hoping to reduce the smell of spoiled meat wafting over the bluffs.)

Back on shore, meanwhile, Dominator had become a hot attraction, with thousands of day-trippers motoring out to this wealthy and very pointedly isolated section of coast to gather and gawk, and I'm not saying this is where Lunada Bay localism—which has always been quietly sanctioned by local officials—began, but I'm not saying it isn't. A six-foot fence topped with barbed wire was proposed by residents to keep "pests away from the area," and the city council unanimously approved the installation of No Parking signs along both sides of Rocky Point Road. 

Rusted pieces of the Dominator can still be found on the beach at Rocky Point. 

Thanks for reading and see you next week,

Matt

PS: I never did surf Lunada Bay, but I checked it now and then (never with a board, though), and the last time was Christmas, 2023, with my brother Chris and our families. Sunny late-morning, eight-foot swell, glassy, the thickest mud I've ever walked on covering the field between the road and the bluff, as it had been raining the previous two days. Chris and I were walking back to the car when he spotted a golfing pal, also having a look at the surf. I don't recall his name, but he was born and raised in PV. Introductions were made. Another guy drove up, a friend of my brother's friend. More introductions. Then Chris turns to the first guy and says "Alright, my brother and I going to suit up and hit it. Where did you say we should paddle out, right down there?" Basically a dad joke, just Chris being Chris, but it did not land. The two PV guys—every bit as middle-aged as us; could not have been nicer up to this point—both went blank-faced. Chris said some version of "Haha, just kidding," and they went "Haha, okay," and off we went back, back down the hill where we belong. They never outgrow it up there. Kooks, Herms and flatlanders still not welcome.

PPS: We surfers do love our shipwrecked or otherwise distressed boats.

[Photo grid, clockwise from top left: 1961 headline; Lunada Bay, 1993, photo by Mike Dempsey; Palos Verdes police at Lunada; SS Dominator aground at Rocky Point; Bill Cleary, center, in 1963 Con Surfboards ad; surfer at Lunada in the early 1970s, with Dominator bow visible in background. Bill Cleary surfing in Santa Barbara County in1962. Cleary and girlfriend on the beach at Topanga, photo by Bob Herron. Aerial view of Lunada Bay from Surfing Guide to Southern California. Greg Noll at Lunada, photo by Jim Cardillo. Remains of the Dominator, 1962. Newspaper headline from 1962. Onlookers at Lunada Bay, both photos from 1961. Steve Soderberg bailing out, Tahiti, 1987, photo by Paul Prewitt. The Wedge, 1971, photo by Nick Hudson. Empty wave on the Western Sahara coast, 1975, photo by Craig Peterson. Ala Moana, 1974. Mauritania, 2010, photo by John Seaton, Callahan. WQS contest at Teahupoo, 1997. Homage to San Francisco local surfer Bob Carrillo, aka Bad Vibe Bob, 2009.]