The first Mr. Pipeline was a La Jolla surfer named Butch Van Artsdalen. He earned the title by consistently stuffing 10 feet of surfboard into the barrels of the Banzai Pipeline. You have no doubt witnessed his magic in films like Bruce Brown’s epic, “The Endless Summer.”
In the mid-’60s something called the shortboard revolution occurred. During that time, surfboards lost about a third of their weight (they were once double-glassed with 10-ounce cloth) and about 3 feet of length. The result was a quicker-turning “pocket rocket” that could hold tighter in the barrel.
Jock Sutherland, or Jock-o, as some friends call him, grew up on the North Shore of Oahu, in a house facing a surf spot called “Chun’s Reef.” Chun’s is basically a friendly, California-type wave. The outside reef, however, is less friendly and therefore was rarely if ever surfed.
He may not have been the first to do so, but teenage Jock Sutherland quickly paddled out and began finding shelter in the shade of the curtain. This soon led to his moving down the beach to Ehukai Beach Park and the aforementioned Pipeline.
In 1967, I made my first pilgrimage to a surfer’s mecca, Oahu. On my first day there, my brother-in-law, Lee, drove me around the island, saying that he knew of a fun little wave we could ride together. He parked in the sand, and I ran to the water’s edge to see a gapping barrel and a single surfer riding deep inside of it before being spit out.
As you have, no doubt, already guessed, the surf spot was the Pipeline, and the surfer was Jock Sutherland.
Lee and I sat on the empty beach, watching Jock freefall after a no-paddle takeoff, and get tubed on wave after glorious wave. He only lost his board once during that entire session. Swimming into the first wave he saw brought him to the beach where I came face to face with my surf hero.
I was holding his 9-foot-something Harbor “Trestle’s Special” in my trembling hand when he approached. After pushing his board out to him, he retrieved it, walked up and thanked me.
He was not like many of the surf stars I had encountered in the past, but friendly and humble, seemingly sensing little difference between us, even though what he and I did on a surfboard were as different as pickleball is from free soloing. He was among the best in the world, and I was average.
Within less than a year, Sutherland was one of the generals of the shortboard revolution. Just as his mentor Van Artsdalen had done, he switched stance (rode with either foot forward) and was at home on waves of nearly any size. He was on the cover of Surfer Magazine and the central character of many surf films.
Though it all, he remained the same friendly, approachable surfer I had met years earlier.
I followed Sutherland’s rise over the years and encountered him annually at the UCSD Cancer Center’s Luau & Legends Surfing Invitational. When I see him, he treats me as a lifelong friend.
While I regularly compliment him on his tremendous talent, this year I went beyond that, adding, “How have you remained humble after all you’ve accomplished?” While I don’t recall his exact words, he said something like, “When you start thinking of yourself as better than anyone else, you lose your way.”
The words may be wrong, but the message will never leave me. My childhood surf hero put an arm around me, and photographer Christina Lawrence froze Mister Average and Mister Pipeline forever in this joyful moment.
