The spray is still clearing from Oceanside’s Super Girl Surf Pro, where San Clemente’s 15-year-old Eden Walla smashed her way into the big leagues by beating some of the top women surfers in the world.
It was nice to see how far things had come since my youth when a surfer girl could be, as The Beach Boys sang, someone “on the shore standing by the ocean’s roar.” No longer.
While it appears that women in ancient Hawaii surfed in equal numbers to men, most of the 20th century found few women in the lineup. By the early ’70s things began changing. It was then, in 1970, that I met Margo Godfrey (she would soon become Margo Oberg after marrying my friend Steve Oberg).
Margo was living in a pup tent in a mutual friend’s Cardiff front yard. Margo was 17 at the time, and one evening she took me to La Jolla to help celebrate the 18th birthday of her friend Debbie Melville (now Debbie Melville Beacham after her marriage to Lewis Beacham).
Debbie and I quickly became friends and whenever I surfed Windansea from then on, she was in the lineup. Windansea, which was then known as a rough, testosterone-laced spot, welcomed her and the few other women who surfed Windansea.
The following is an excerpt from my upcoming book, “Windansea: Life. Death. Resurrection.”
According to Melville-Beacham, “La Jolla High School is located near Windansea, but a group of surfers from that school never surfed there. Even though you went to the same school and belonged to the same club, if you surfed Windansea, you felt separate. The Shores was more for hot-dogging, and Windansea was reef surfing and a little more dangerous. Growing up at reef breaks helped me compete at places like Sunset Beach in Hawaii and Dee Why Point in Australia.
“When I began surfing Windansea in 1968, the guys were really nice to me. In the late ‘70s, it got a little rougher, not necessarily for me, but for outsiders. The ’80s were a really tumultuous time for surfing. Competition was tough then, but I was grateful for where I lived, especially when I came home from the tour. The people surfing here were friendly and supportive of what I was doing, and I felt them behind me. It was like being part of a big family. Over time, many people who grew up here were forced to move away because it became so expensive.
“Some of my best memories of Windansea were surfing with Chris O’Rourke when he was sick. He’d hang onto my leash while I paddled him into the lineup. I remember another kid, Dave Anderson, who also died young. There’s something spiritual about Windansea. Sometimes, I’ll see a wave that reminds me of Chris or Dave. It’s not all good memories, either, like Chris was always yelling his head off at guys, which wasn’t cool. … You didn’t surf there unless you got permission from the big guys. Being a girl made it easy. Nobody ever questioned my being out there.”
Debbie Melville Beacham went on to become the 1982 Women’s World Surfing Champion. She currently splits her time between surfing her home break, Windansea, and a special point break in Baja.
