Windansea is located at the edge of a resort town in Southern California called La Jolla. Some say La Jolla is Spanish for “The Jewel” even though joya, not jolla, is the correct spelling for jewel in Spanish. The first known settlers in the area, the Kumeyaay, called the place Mat Kulaaxuuy, “Land of Holes.”
That may seem appropriate to surfers run out of Windansea by the locals. In all fairness, Land of Holes probably refers to the area’s many caves, not its most obnoxious residents. La Jolla, as it is now known internationally, is a jewel with many caves and an occasional a-hole.
Like all natural wonders, Windansea packs an emotional wallop. Thousands of years of Kumeyaay joy and sadness along with the great rides and wipeouts of Woody, Butch, Hynson, Simmons and O’Rourke can still be felt there.
Long before the tourists arrived and the coastal mansions were built, the entire region was inhabited by the Kumeyaay tribe. Beginning with the Spanish invasion of Alta California in 1769, continuing through the Mexican period from 1826 to 1848, and on through to the early 1900s, the Kumeyaay were forced from their ancestral lands.
Prior to that, their vast territory extended north to south, 120 miles from Oceanside, California, to below Ensenada, Baja, and west to east from the beaches of La Jolla, 60 miles inland to the Cuyamaca Mountains. They were a migratory people who paddled their reed canoes out to harvest shellfish. On their return to shore, they, no doubt, rode waves (were they not surfing?). The Kumeyaay resembled Polynesians in this, with their tulle skirts, shell necklaces and feathered head coverings. As La Jolla’s first surfers, they predated better known wave riders of that region by a few thousand years.
Windansea is a relatively small area to have such a profound influence on youth culture and surfing. While the land mass represents a tiny fraction of the world’s surfable coastline, without the Windansea guys, we would not have made such great progress in surfboards.
Consider the group of designers who came from there: Woody Brown (inventor of the catamaran), Carl Ekstrom (inventor of the asymmetrical), Tim Bessell, Rusty Preisendorfer, Al Nelson, Mike Hynson, Mike Diffenderfer, Richard Kenvin, Nick and Bear Mirandon, Don Okey, Mike Croteau, Pat Curren, Peter Parkin, Billy Caster, Hank Warner. Now, imagine the state of the surfboard without them.
Local Windansea surfers see heroes in the seaweed and know that a wave will rise in the deep offshore canyons, roll through the kelp beds, squeeze through a narrow crevice, stand tall, and spill its guts in a display rarely observed this side of Hawaii. To them, this is more than a good wave. It is a sacred space with a tradition of goodness, badness, generosity, giving, taking, theft, music, hoots of joy and pain, Mac Meda Destruction Company, Not When the Surf’s Up Construction Company, over-indulgence, blood and vomit in the sand, the remaining dust of lifelong friends scattered at Right Hooker. Ghosts of Hot Curl, Black Butch standing triumphant over the world, Pat Curren, Wayne Land, Pal Al, Brewster, O’Rourke and the Patterson brothers all paying silent tribute, fallen comrades who permeate the salt air like first kisses, first beer, first bong load. Hand-carved sandstone and spray-painted memorials.
The above is a brief excerpt of “Windansea: Life. Death. Resurrection.” To order a complete copy, email: [email protected]
