I first became aware of Skip Frye through a Gordon & Smith ad in Surfer Magazine. He was the prototypical surfer — tanned, blond, smiling. Just the coolest guy that I figured I would never get to know.
Then, around a decade later, I met the man while surfing Pacific Beach Point, the spot Frye basically owned since he began riding there in 1958.
I had just moved to San Diego when I found my way to the Point and saw Frye turning like a hummingbird and gliding like a pelican. He saw me floundering in the break, trying to figure out the lineup.
He compassionately called me over to where he was sitting and pointed out the narrow take zone. When the next set wave arrived, Frye told me to go. Though not one person in the lineup knew me, Frye’s gentle words were the law at that time, and I rode a clean little wave from the takeoff, down into the cove.
Later, on the beach that day, Skip walked over to me, introduced himself and offered me half of the orange he had just peeled. That introduction occurred in the summer of 1970, and we have been friends ever since.
By the mid-’70s-early ’80s, Frye’s boards had become the gold standard in California waves. These were generally not big-wave guns made for charging six-story mountains, but wide, round eggs and fishes made for our coast’s smaller, softer waves.
By the early ’90s, Skip Frye had left his longtime employment at Gordon & Smith Surfboards, and gone on his own, making boards in Pacific Beach, under the Skip Frye Surfboards label.
While other boardmakers were selling their names to overseas companies that built cheap pop-outs or were cranking up their labor force to pump out as many boards as possible, Frye was shaping one board a day.
Even now, nobody but Skip Frye himself has ever shaped a Skip Frye Surfboard. I doubt any other shaper can make that claim, and I know for sure that nobody can build a cleaner, smoother wave-riding vehicle.
Somehow, I had never ridden a Frye board until 2004 when Skip gave me an 8-foot fish from out of his extensive quiver. I have ridden that board since then, patched and repatched it and refinished those plywood fins.
I love that board, and I will never get rid of it. Still, I recently placed it at the bottom of my five-board quiver in favor of my new Frye 8’8” “Gypsy” that Frye handed me just last week.
My first waves on that board were small, mushy dribblers at Terra Mar. While those waves were not much more powerful than the streams that pour down the gutter on a rainy day, that board made it seem like a clean, little day in Hawaii.
My new board is too nice to live in the garage, so I found a cool, soft carpeted corner to store it until I ride it again tomorrow. This surfboard is more than just a fine wave-riding vehicle. It is a key to open places in the ocean I forgot existed.
Thanks Skipper. I wish I had something of equal value to put in your generous hands.
Check out the GodnGangsters YouTube channel, Chris Ahrens’ latest passion project, at youtube.com/GodNGangsters
