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 Pat Curren
Pat Curren was born in 1932 in Carlsbad, California and grew up in San Diego’s Mission Beach. In 1950 he moved to La Jolla and began surfing at the age of 18. He started shaping surfboards in 1953 for Dale Velzy.
Pat first visited Hawaii in 1955. Two years later, he and a group of California surfers were the first to surf big Waimea Bay on Oahu’s North Shore. During that period, he rented a shop in Haleiwa and started shaping boards professionally.
 Pat shaped special surfboards for riding large waves on the North Shore of Oahu. These boards were longer, thicker, had sharper noses and tails, and weighed about 40 pounds. Rocker flows and rail configurations blended nicely and led into a relatively flat tail section. This allowed greater control in the high speed big wave drops.
Buzzy Trent was responsible for naming the big wave boards “elephant guns.” Buzzy decided that if an elephant gun was needed to hunt elephants then it would also be needed to hunt big waves. Later the name was shortened to guns. Everyone besides Pat says Pat was the first and the best shaper of these big wave guns. Pat was also one of the better big wave riders at that time.
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