Eddie Aikau had the lineage of a king, and he became a modern member of Hawaii’s royal pantheon. A descendant of Hewahewa, the kahuna nui (high priest) King Kamehameha I and his…
Colorful, charismatic, headstrong, and larger-than-life, Greg Noll was born in 1937 and decided early on that being around the ocean was to be his life. When he was a youngster, the family…
The Plastic Fantastic Surfboard Company was established in 1968, and built surfboards in small factories in Hawaii and California. After 1972 they were made only in Huntington Beach, California. This mid-1970s "Sting"…
Although the competitive field was full of excellent surfers from seven nations, the matchup between California’s David Nuuhiwa and Australia’s Nat Young was considered as the ultimate test of both skill and…
Bob Hurley started out as a surfboard shaper in Huntington Beach in the 1970s. Throughout the years, Bob has shaped thousands of board for surfers like Wayne “Rabbit” Bartholomew, Jay Adams, Carissa…
Three factors inspired the concept of this exhibit: the legendary reputation of the wave at Pipeline, the epic history of the Pipeline Masters contest, and the virtuoso skills and equipment of the…
There are very few surfers nowadays that know anything about what kind of man Mike Doyle was....or rather, what was his connection, actually, to the ocean? When we think of Mike, we…
The evolution of the fin from Tom Blake’s first prototype was a slow process, sometimes taking two steps forward and one step back. The keel fin that Blake first created was modified…
Kelly Slater, a supernaturally talented pro surfer from Cocoa Beach, Florida, has reinvented virtually every aspect of high-performance surfing. “his competitive statistics numb the brain” world champion Shaun Tomson said of Slater,…
Beginning with wooden plank surfboards reminiscent of surfing’s roots in Polynesia, the exhibit follows surfboard evolution through the foam and fiberglass advances, the shortboard revolution, to surfboards being ridden by today’s champions.…