A Life Aquatic

Dibi Fletcher: When and where did you first start surfing?
Herbie Fletcher: I first started surfing—if you could call it surfing—at San Clemente T-Street when I was nine years old. I’d run and go grab surfboards that would float in and go play on ’em until the big guy came in and grabbed ’em. Then I went home, had my paper route, and bought me a $27 balsawood Velzy-Jacobs. So I started on balsawood down at Doheny where all the surfers go, in 1958.
DF: What was it about surfing that most intrigued you?
HF: I don’t know! I’d just see everyone out there standing on surfboards riding waves. It looked like so much fun. I just loved it. I’d also ride rafts and play in the water, low tide in the tide pools with my skimboard. I was a little beach rat.
DF: When did you first go to Hawaii?
HF: My first trip to Hawaii was in 1965. I was 16 years old and livin’ on the beach, or in the bushes, on floors, in vacant cars, or parked cars. Wherever I could find a place to lay my head and not too many mosquitoes would eat me, that’s where I was.

DF: Who were your idols?
HF: In those days we didn’t have surf magazines, so I’d watch surf movies—old Bud Browne movies and some John Severson movies. In those, Phil Edwards was a standout, Miki Dora, Dewey Weber, Johnny Fain—he was jerky, but he had something at Malibu. And big-wave riders like Ricky Gregg and Paul Strauch. Then it led on to a new breed, people like John Peck and that era.
DF: So if there wasn’t “professional surfing” at that time, how did you support yourself?
HF: I was living with my mom and dad in Huntington Beach, but then I got a job from Hobie and Bruce Brown. We made a little movie called The Wet Set. That was my first job, and Hobie paid me enough money to where I could go to Hawaii and hang out until the next one in summer. That was October ’65. I was in Hawaii in December.
DF: And that was the start of the drug culture there?
HF: Yeah, people were smoking pot, but you didn’t do it in public. Also, LSD was legal then, so people were dabbling with that, but mainly smoking pot.

DF: You’d been good friends with Michael Hynson way before the Rainbow Bridge experience, correct?
HF: Oh yeah. Mike and I were good buddies back in ’65. Around then he’d come up to Huntington. I’d see him down in San Diego at Blacks and we’d go surfing and hang out. Skip Frye was hanging out, and there were a few other guys.
We all went surfing together.
DF: Didn’t you live by him on the North Shore?
HF: The winter of ’67-’68, Gary Chapman and I lived together. Jock [Sutherland] just moved out, but that was at Banzai Beach. That’s the first year Off-The-Wall and Backdoor was really ridden.

We’d see rights coming down from Pipeline, so we’d just start paddling up to them and surfing ’em. We called it Pipeline Rights. The people that sat on the wall called it Off-The-Wall. So that’s how it got its name, I think. We’d surf there all the time.

Mike was next door. He had a shaping room, he had a lot of money, and he had blanks. I got a couple blanks and I made some boards. They were just epic.
DF: How important was surfboard design?
HF: Surfboard design was really important, especially in the ’60s, because it changed so radically. It changed from logs and longboards. The boards started to shorten up and it started getting more technical, with the tails and the noses and the rails. It really started moving.

The rails, when they’re round, suck water around the top and slow you down. When we started forming the rails down, we were getting on top of the water and flying. That was a big deal in those days, sideslipping and doing different things—hard turns, riding in the tube, and going around the hook. Nowadays, the boards are so small and thin and dinky it’s like you’re swimming, almost. They just stand up and get shot out with the lip. They’re flying. Their rails are in the water and they’re going so fast and riding so deep in the barrel that they’re riding on top of the foam that comes back up the face. It’s called the “foam ball.” They tell me, “Herb, it’s not how long you can ride in the tube anymore, it’s how long you can ride on top of the foam ball.”

DF: Would you consider yourself an artist, or a craftsman?
HF: I’m an artist, and a craftsman. I dream about surfing in different places and how to use the board. The only way to be able to get boards that way—the way you think—is to get out there, work on ’em, shape them, and learn the measurements and how to work with the tools so you can make what you need.
DF: You were the first to start towing surfers into waves with the jet ski. How do you feel about the sport now?
HF: When I first started jet skiing, I wanted to ride giant waves and explore the reefs, and I did so. I started getting out on those outer reefs in Hawaii in ’81. I’d been riding jet skis since ’72. I got my first one in ’75 in Hawaii. It takes money. So I did whatever I had to do to get my jet ski to Hawaii, and when I got it there, I wanted to hook up with guys that rode bigger waves. But in the ’80s there weren’t a whole lot of big-wave riders. There was [Ken] Bradshaw and Ace Cool. I was on my own thing, riding the outside reefs all by myself, you know, giant Logs. I’d try to get people to go jet ski with me, like Laird [Hamilton], tow ’em in. Nobody wanted to know about it. Maybe they were too young at the time.

Finally, I coached my kids into doing it at Banzai Beach They were young. Christian was very young. Nathan was 12 or something. It wasn’t till about ’85, with Pottz [Martin Potter]. It was a perfect day for towing out at Pipeline. Pottz was all stoked, I was throwing the rope around, and Tommy Carroll and Kong [Gary Elkerton] also wanted to go for a ride. By the end of that, everybody wanted to do it.

I think it’s gonna go into big-wave riding, the tow-in. People like John John [Florence] are gonna be flying in the air at Jaws doing flips and twists. It’s gonna end up like snowboarding.

DF: Was there someone or something that you would consider the most influential contribution to modern board building?
HF: There’s a lot of things that go into board building. You can watch the movies and study ’em, watch your best surfers doing things, work with the best surfers and shapers that you can. It’s evolution. It just keeps on happening. There are people that come to the top and they keep evolving. That’s why I did Astrodeck, ’cause I wanted to work with the best surfers, and I think I have. I’ve worked with almost every good surfer in the world. I was a shaper when I was young, and a designer. We came up with lots of designs like the no-nose in the old days. I worked with Hynson on the down rail and different concaves. Always experimenting.

DF: You’ve made quite a few surf films in your career. Which is your favorite?
HF: I’ve made a lot of surf films, Wave Warriors being a big deal. Adrenaline Surf Series captured the California aerial movement, which people haven’t even grasped yet, I think. I really enjoy it, because your surfing gets better watching it. You’re watching these young kids do new, inventive things.
DF: Are you working on a film now?
HF: I’m working on a few different films. I’m working on a major documentary of the Wave Warriors. That’s of Wave Warriors past, present, and possibly the future. It’ll talk about all the aerials and how all that happened. It’ll talk about the pioneers that went to Makaha in the early days of big-wave riding and challenged Waimea, and in the tube—the Wave Warriors of my day.

DF: Do you continue to do a lot of still photography?
HF: I love my still photography in different moments. When I go to the beach, yeah, I can go surfing for a couple hours, but then I like to hang out at the beach. I just don’t like to lay there. So I got my camera, and I really enjoy watching the surfers go. That way, you pay attention to what’s going on in the water, hanging out at Pipeline underneath the trees or in the sun. It’s just really fantastic to be able to hang there and watch all the new Wave Warriors come about.
DF: You’ve taken your photography and made a lot of pretty remarkable collages in the last few years. Do you see yourself being able to utilize all this film that you’ve done to pursue a career doing something like that?
HF: I love making surf collages because you go there, you shoot the film, you develop it, and then you start pasting it together. Every time you look at that, it takes you back to the moment that you were there. It’s a real pleasurable time. I plan on doing a lot. The older I get, the more time I’m gonna have to make art and do collages or paint, sculpt, make surfboards, make radical stuff. 
DF: I’ve noticed that you’ve been able to incorporate a lot of the surf materials in the new art that you’re making. Do you think that that’s almost like surfboard building with a new twist?
HF: I’ve always worked with foam, fiberglass, and resin, so yeah, that’s all in my art of today, too, with photographs and surfboards. I really love plastic and resin—to work with. Not the fumes so much, but to work with it. It’s abstract, subconscious stuff, so a lot of times you don’t know what you’re gonna get, and that’s the beauty of it.

Working with resin is like surfing, in a way, because when you take off on a wave, you don’t know what you’re gonna do on that wave. You have an idea, you’ve got a start, but you don’t know how it’s gonna end up, because you don’t know how the wave is gonna form, but you’re gonna ride that wave, and it’s all abstract. It changes in front of you. Sometimes you make the greatest mistakes. I’ve made great mistakes, and that’s how I’ve learned to do some crazy stuff with the resin.

DF: If you weren’t a surfer, what would your life look like?

HF: I have no idea. I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t surf. I started surfing when I was really young. I really enjoy it and I’ve turned my life into it.