The Closest Thing To Being Born

...From a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers—they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror—'twas a pleasing fear.
—George Gordon, Lord Byron

Body surfers are not all drunken, longhaired, pothead jerks.
—Kevin Egan

Bitchinoutasightunrealrighteouswave.
—Definition overheard at the Wedge

As any Wedge man can verify, the sport of body surfing is full of people who at one time or another have demonstrated a potential for becoming either poets or jerks or both. Body surfing—or the art of riding a wave without benefit of a board or raft—is also full of people who don't know what they are doing. Indeed, there may be no other physical activity, including golf, in which so many are so bad, be they latent poets or jerks—or both.

Most body surfers live in California, which is the cradle of the sport—as well as of Big Boys and Orange Juliuses—in the U.S. In the late '20s and early '30s when body surfing caught on at the Long Beach and Balboa piers, husky watermen went "straight off" or "over the falls" in a direct line to the beach. The widespread use of fins by the Navy's underwater demolition teams during World War II brought about a dramatic change, however. After the war the best body surfers began using fins, which enabled them to swim faster and to catch more waves. As a result, they began to ride on the shoulders of waves just in front of the breaking portion, where board surfers rode, and they learned to cut right and left. More radical innovations followed. Where formerly the only way to plane was on the stomach, with arms down to the side, body surfers now experimented with their sides or backs tucked into the wave and their arms out in front or behind or at 90� angles. Arms and hands became stabilizing rudders, body surfers rode parallel to the beach instead of head on into it, and tricks such as spinners, barrel rolls, cutbacks, roller coasters and Iron Crosses proliferated.

Today the sport is most expertly practiced at places like Makapuu on Oahu and on those marvelously named beaches that fill the dreams of all little Southern Californians: Zuma, near Malibu; the Redondo breakwater; the Huntington Beach Pier; Brooks Street in Laguna Beach; Trafalgar Street in San Clemente; and Windansea and Boomer Beach in La Jolla. This is not to mention the undisputed, full-out, righteous, unrealoutasightleadstud and, of course, bitchin' king of body-surfing spots, the Wedge at Newport Beach.

Even if body surfing were not the purest form of riding waves, the most fundamental test of man against ocean, the hairiest water activity going and, as someone once said, "the closest thing to the great trauma of being born"—all of which it probably is—the Wedge would be one of nature's finest showcases.

Originally formed where the west jetty of Newport Harbor meets the beach at the tip of Balboa peninsula, the Wedge is located just a few breakers away from what was once the finest surfing spot (both board and body) in California. This was at Corona del Mar, where Duke Kahanamoku played hooky from the movie sets in Hollywood because it reminded him of Waikiki. In the mid-'30s, however, to protect its harbor, the city of Newport Beach added 100 yards of rock to the end of the concrete east jetty so that it extended over 400 yards into the ocean. This finished Corona del Mar, on the east side of Newport Bay, as a surfing mecca. But on the west side of the west jetty the water was doing wondrous things, which still occur today. South swells formed by tropical storms, budding hurricanes and the dreaded chubascos of Mexico press toward shore with tremendous force. As each wave strikes the end of the jetty, the force of water pushing against the rocky outcrop-pings along its length builds up a side wave that breaks at a 45� angle to the jetty. The following south swell catches the side wave created by the preceding wave, and they join, forming a great peak, or wedge. This giant double wave gives the Wedge its name.

To an eye innocent in matters of wave size, any Wedge day looks dangerous, even those when Wedge men don't bother to put on their fins because the surf is too small. Five-foot waves, for instance, sometimes look like 15-footers to novices. One experienced body surfer claims to have caught a memorable 22-foot wave. Though the size of breakers varies drastically from year to year, depending on the storms to the south, on a good day the Wedge generally has waves averaging 10 feet. Veteran Wedge men judge the size of the breakers by how they correspond to the power poles on top of the jetty. "They're breaking eight poles out" means a big day. "Four poles" is average, and "two poles" is a bummer.

Just as it offers the most interesting and challenging rides in body surfing, the Wedge also provides the most dangerous. Only Hawaii's Banzai Pipeline approaches it as a water hazard, but the Pipeline's reputation is largely based on the fact that the surf breaks on jagged coral.