He was born Harry Richard Frye on Sept. 7, 1941. Only a few years later, while he was still a child, his father said, “You’re the Skipper now.” At that, Frye Sr. walked out the door and shipped off to war. The nickname “Skipper” stuck and was soon shortened to Skip, a name that has stood for years as a synonym for style and perfection among surfers worldwide.
Frye began surfing with his best friend Mike Hynson in 1958. While Hynson would become a standout in big Hawaiian surf, gaining fame through his Mike Hynson Model surfboards and a co-starring role in Bruce Brown’s masterpiece, “The Endless Summer,” Frye generally stayed closer to home, riding the gentle point waves of Pacific Beach, shaping and designing innovative surfboards under the Gordon & Smith label.
A mid-’60s surf trip to Australia with the Windansea Surf Club changed the world for Frye, and eventually the rest of us, when he encountered one of the architects of the “shortboard revolution,” Bob McTavish, who was then attempting to perfect the ill-fated vee bottom.
Once Skip returned home, he set to work on his own version of the shortboard by helping develop one of California’s most functional small-wave boards, the egg. Adhering to the basic food group, Frye next proved instrumental with his contribution to the fish after teaming up with fish innovator Steve Lis. While that was in the early 1970s, few surfboards are more collectible today than a Lis or a Frye fish.
By the late 1970s, the Skipper was among the pioneers of the longboard revival, piloting boards over 10 feet long and surfing as many breaks as possible in a single session. He termed this sub-sport “cross-country surfing,” and the boards he rode on these ventures were appropriately named “gliders.”
A Skip Frye glider is among surfing’s crown jewels. It’s no stretch to claim it as the musical equivalent of a Stradivarius violin. But these boards are not meant to be hung on walls. They are built to be ridden, not with the herky-jerky style of a roach sprayed by Terminix, but with a smoothness that, according to Frye, is like “a pelican gliding on a wave of air.”
Since 1958, Skip Frye has missed very few days of surfing, wandering up the coast occasionally to surf Swami’s and to spread the gospel (yes, the biblical gospel) and the waverider’s gospel, where truth is found through a long, drawn-out bottom turn, a sweeping roundhouse cutback and trimming a board for speed to squeeze through endless sections.
Doing the math, it’s doubtful any surfer in our time has ridden more linear wave feet than Frye. He takes off and rides a wave until there is nothing left and the swell dissolves into the sand. His is an aquatic approach, bringing to mind Bruce Lee’s words: “Be water, my friend.”
Over the years, Skip Frye has attended three of my birthday parties, each time gifting me a surfboard built by his own loving hands. At one party, his birthday card read, “Good for one trip to Rincon.” I regret that I never cashed in that prize, and so never did surf the Queen of the Coast (Rincon) with its king.
Few would argue that if surfing had a patron saint, it would be Skip Frye. He is forever gentle, generous and spiritual, reflecting light in a way that, no doubt, stokes the original walker on water.
Happy birthday, Skipper, and thanks for lighting the way through sometimes rough waters.
Chris Ahrens is the author of several books, including his latest, “Good Things Love Water” available here: Perelandrapublishingcompany.com
