If it were not for their craft, there would be no way to ride the waves.
Seven surfboard builders will be honored at 10 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 19, at the International Surfboard Builders Hall of Fame in a ceremony being held on the north side of Huntington Beach Pier Plaza.
This is the 20th year for the awards, created by Huntington Beach surfers Bob “the Greek” Bolen and Mike “Mickey Rat” Ester, who wanted a way to recognize craftsmen who have dedicated their lives to advancing the sport of surfing.
Since 2000, more than 130 names have been added to the International Surfboard Builders Hall of Fame. Each year, the previous year’s inductees decide who will next make the list.
Here’s a bit about the 2019 honorees, from event organizers:
Carl Hayward
Back in the ’80s, Hayward had a surf shop on Main Street in Huntington Beach. Known for his “slash back cutback,” he soon made a name for himself as one of the best surfers in town, wrote friend and surf shop owner Rick “Rockin’ Fig” Fignetti.
Hayward earned a spot in the Surfing Walk of Fame in Huntington Beach in 2005.
“His surfing was radical for the time, but he was also known as being one of the best paddlers around with his long arms. He could catch anything, especially if you had him in a heat at a surf contest,” Fignetti wrote.
When twin fins caught on, Hayward created a “Rocket Fish” that featured a pointier nose and a deep swallow with longer wide base fins.
“The way Carl surfed on those boards, most wanted to try them out,” Fignetti wrote. “I know, I’ve had a few of those magic shapes by him and so have a lot of the town’s surfers over the years.”
Herbie Fletcher
Owner of Astrodeck, Fletcher afforded surfers a firm foothold to perform extreme maneuvers and to progress the sport.
As a teen, Fletcher gave chase to some of the most respected names in surfing, particularly David Nuuhiwa. He also fulfilled his fantasy of moving to Hawaii when he was 15.
Fletcher rode big waves so well that Hobie Alter and Bruce Brown paid him to surf and then appear at local malls to talk about it. In 1966, at just 17, he placed seventh in the World Championships.
With the introduction of shortboards Fletcher’s shaping talents had a lot to do with design elements, such as down rails, still in use today.
Fletcher earned a spot in the Surfers’ Hall of Fame in 2018.
Lance Carson
Carson was born in 1943 in Santa Monica and raised in Pacific Palisades. He was diagnosed with spina bifida as a baby and his parents were advised by doctors that water exercise would help promote bone growth. So, Carson was introduced to surfing in Malibu at age four, on a four-foot-long balsa belly board made by his father.
It wasn’t long before he became one of the top surfers in Malibu, known for his nose riding.
Carson worked as a salesman for Jacobs Surfboards in Hermosa Beach before eventually becoming a surfboard shaper for the same company. Jacobs introduced the popular Lance Carson signature model surfboard in 1965.
In 1976, he created the Lance Carson Surfboards label and began selling longboards to surf shops in the Santa Monica area.
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Mark Martinson
Martinson, who was born in Long Beach and started surfing at age 10, won the U.S. Championships in Huntington Beach in 1965.
He traveled the world surfing, and in the late ’60s was among the first California surfers to convert to the new shorter boards.
In the 1990s, he joined Robert August Surfboards in Huntington Beach to make a line of longboards.
Nev Hyman
Nev Hyman started shaping boards in his garage in Perth, Australia’s southern suburbs in 1972, before starting his own label the following year.
From 1973 to 1977, he shaped Odyssey Surfboads with Phil Usher and Bruce Smith. Then in 1978 he opened Nev Hyman Surfboards.
In 1994, he built the largest surfboard at the time, earning a spot in the Guinness World Records when 47 people rode on it at the same time. In the early ’90s, Hyman was among the pioneers of computer shaping and by the mid-2000s, he helped create the popular Firewire brand.
Dick Brewer
Brewer attended Cal State Long Beach to work toward an engineering degree and ultimately became a tool and die maker for his dad’s tool company, Keith Black Racing Engines, and North American Aviation.
He transplanted to Hawaii in 1959 and founded Surfboards Hawaii in 1961.
In 1964, a Matson shipping lines strike stopped the flow of blanks and resin to Hawaii. With no raw materials available in Hawaii for building boards, Brewer returned to California and started shaping from his operation in North County San Diego.
He took Jeff Hakman, a team rider at the time, along with him and they spent the summer surfing and building surfboards, his bio reads.
Brewer took a job with Hobie Alter in 1965, where he created the Hobie “Dick Brewer Gun” and focused on boards that could handle big waves in Hawaii. He later surfed for Bing Surfboards and Gerry Lopez in Hawaii, and is still shaping boards today.
Brewer turned 83 on Monday, Oct. 14.
Bill Frierson
Frierson, who was born into a Navy family and spent his childhood in Coronado, borrowed a 10-foot Hobie for his first ride, in 1961.
By 1967, he was in Virginia Beach and started shaping for Bob White Wave Riding Vehicles, before moving to North Carolina and spending summers shaping in Florida.
When Wave Riding Vehicles went up for sale in 1974, he bought it with partners Les Shaw and wife Grace Frierson.
“After selling our half of the business in ’97 to Shaw, Grace and I set up the facility that we work out of to this day. I am ‘old school’ and shape all of my boards by hand, one custom and a small compliment of stocks at a time,” he wrote in an autobiography.
“I have been building boards nonstop from ’67 to the present, some 52 years,” he wrote.
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