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Organizations

Hillary Hauser

Heal the Ocean

What was your best surfing experience ever?

Winter of 1963, taking surf lessons from Rabbit Kekai from the Outrigger

Club, Oahu. I was a green-eared sophomore at the University of Washington,

Seattle - a city of gray and rain, and my grandfather took fourteen of us to

Hawaii for a grand family reunion. During the week we were on Oahu, my

brother and I went to the Outrigger Club every day and rented boards - huge

old things - and we rented beachboys to teach us how to surf. I met Rabbit

every day, I was enthralled by him (as was every other green-eared, white-

skinned haole girl).

I’ll never forget the thrill of catching my first wave, the sound of the

board slicing through the water, the complete mind-blower of actually standing

up. Every day Rabbit and I surfed for hours, and I paddled for so many hours

my two-piece bathing suit rubbed my sides raw and bleeding. I remember

sneaking out of the family hotel to Rabbit’s shack in the Jungle (yes, I remained

innocent, although I don’t know why!) - and these visits turned out to be a

rare view of the beachboys’ last holdout against the huge hotels going up all

around, each one topped by those big cranes.

Going back to Seattle, that was it for me and surfing. Although my family

owned a beach house in Santa Barbara, my brother and I found out real fast

that the beachbreaks of California were nothing like the slow rollers of south

shore Oahu, and after getting konked in the head a number of times, I gave it

up.

In 1966, when I graduated from the university, I moved back to Santa

Barbara and took up scuba diving - which has been a wonderful way to

experience the ocean all these years. Writing about the sea, I have explored

oceans from Australia, New Zealand, Bahamas, Costa Rica, Mexico, Hawaii,

Europe, Indonesia, and lots of other places.

It wasn’t until age 42 that I took up bodyboarding as a serious sport, and

since then have surfed waves in Mexico, Baja, Hawaii, Costa Rica, Indonesia,

and elsewhere. I count these surfing experiences every bit as exciting and

adventurous as the diving expeditions - and that includes the search for a

Spanish galleon (sunk in 1642 on the Little Bahama Bank), which we found,

along with doubloons, emeralds, pieces of eight, gold chains, etc.!

Memorable Surfing Experiences