"A diversion most common is upon the Water, where there is a very great Sea, & surf breaking on the Shore. The Men sometimes 20 or 30 go without the Swell of the Surf, & lay themselves flat upon an oval piece of plank about their Size & breadth, they keep their legs close on top of it, & their Arms are us’d to guide the plank." -Lt. James King, 1778, Kealakekua Bay, Hawai`i

Total Involvement

In this Drifting segment, I’m inspired to take on the topic of riding paipo. I consider paipo to be the least understood form of wave riding, and very likely the most amazing way to ride waves.

Classic vintage paipo behind glass at the East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame and Museum in Cocoa Beach, FL

Why Paipo?

Because of the perspective. Pure and simple.

Recently, I was out at Picnic Tables with my new Neilson 4’10” paipo fish, and was lucky to have some glassy head high waves to work with.

4'10" Neilson paipo fish

Well, there I was - just hangin’ out - when along came this wall of water that was setting up to be a nice big right.

My friend Rod, who started on paipo around 1970 while living in Puerto Rico was right behind me. But he was too far back to make it. So I flipped around and took off with a STEEP DROP into a barrel with a perfect shoulder - TIGHT!!! (Rod's great paipo website: http://rodndtube.com/)

I made the drop and turned the paipo right up high onto the wall...as high as it would go.

Did you ever see George Greenough’s film, Crystal Voyager?

Or perhaps his film, The Innermost Limits Of Pure Fun?

... with the slow motion footage of barrel after barrel? Well, that’s what this wave was like. Perfect, and truly awesome. It was the steepest face I’ve ever hung onto and made it out of!

The paipo perspective is unique, though it’s a cousin to mat riding, as well as to the ever-popular activity known as body boarding.

What makes riding paipo unique is the down-the-line speed accrued due to being hard and finned.

After 41 years of surfing with all manner of vehicles and principally as a logger or of little swallow-tailed fish. That tube, with it's speed and perspective is, to date, the best tube ride of my life.

You have to consider the elements at work here. You’re riding face first and down as low as possible. Your belly is connected to the board, a sort of umbilical connection to the sea.

Every wave is overhead, which is the common lighthearted joke! But, when it gets big, the action is truly extreme.

In fact, the dynamics of wiping out on paipo in shallow water seems considerably more dangerous than stand-up riding. It’s possible to seriously torque your spine if you hit bottom the wrong way.

Paipo not only offers superb perspectives in the water, but also inside the psyche...

Could you pick up a paipo, wash away all preconceived notions, and enjoy the surf without the flamboyance and ego attachments of stand-up riding?

Could you relate to the wave in a way that transcends what is considered normal and cool?

Could you approach it as a wonderful gift, and with child-like or even dolphinesque innocence?

Could you experience surfing with a sense of Total Involvement?

As a young surfer in the mid-sixties, I saw paipos in all the magazines and always wanted one. But never got one. Instead, I followed all the media input. Which wasn’t really bad at all, just exclusive, similar to today. It was all about Cabell, Doyle, Hakman, Nuuhiwa, Lynch, Young, Noll... and, then Lopez, Loehr, and all of the 70’s stand-up riders.

Newport Paipo in advertisement in 1960's Surfer Magazine.

Knee boarding was always in the background, starting off with Greenough, Romanosky, Newcombe, and Steve Lis. But, paipo riders were very rarely seen in print. When they were it was most certainly at The Wedge, that insane wave in Newport, California. Paipo was thrown in the light of a miscast, or, as a novelty that wasn't promoted.

If you look at history, the first European report of surfing described Hawaiians riding boards roughly their own size in a prone position. It turns out that paipo boarding is the most basic and elemental form of wave riding.

Here’s what I think:

In this crazy world of sensory overload and disembodied numbness, overpopulation, and over-development along coastal zones, and with all the grungy tribal hoopla about surfing undersized boards that are pretty much just about capturing sponsors and magazine cover shot rides in order to impress your friends, and in which the quest for waves seems to so often reflect the need to unload seemingly endless frustrations associated with contemporary plasticized and overpriced living...doesn’t placing your heart upon the deck of a tiny little board and just flying through and around waves in a most personal attitude and awe-inspiring perspective sound really cool and refreshing?

I think it does.

That’s why, on many days, I leave the crowds groveling for hyped and overcrowded spots and head to a more silent sea.

…a sea in which there is solace in the personal experience of Total Involvement.

El Paipo! Advertisement in a 1960's Surfer Magazine.

Riding paipo is the essential art of riding waves.

Very little is there in the sense of flashy moves to impress your friends, but there is VERY much present in paipo boarding that answers the most fundamental quest in riding waves.

It is sweet, honest, and effective.

In closing, I would draw the reader’s attention to the famous Bruce Brown film from 1962, Surfing Hollow Days. Here we find Bruce Brown capturing on film the greatest paipo ride I have ever seen.

The rider is an unnamed Australian, and he is tackling none other than Waimea Bay on his tiny paipo, sometimes going airborne. Brown was stoked by his presence out in big Waimea. This man has to be one of the greatest unheralded surfers who ever lived! Check out the ride in slow-motion; you’ll see.

It’s outrageous, especially for 1962.

~logjammer

Author's Total Involvement vehicle.

Classic vintage displacement hull paipo spoon, owned by John Hughes,
Merritt Island, FL

Ad for Paipo boards in Surfer Mag.