"Pipeline Comes To Newport"
Rabbi Nachum Shifren
It was 1966 and there were neither hourly nor daily surf reports from the National Weather Bureau, let alone private surf report lines. You got out of bed and went to the beach to check out the surf. Either the surf was there or it wasn't. If you didn't go directly tothe beach you had to rely on the telephone or the "coconut radio"..(one surfer contacting another by rousting him out from school for from work).
And so it was on a September day in 1966 when I was working at home and not planning any surf time. My phone rang and a very excited voice said, "get down here not, it's ten feet and rising!!" With adrenaline pumping, I gathered my fins and rushed to 18th st. to go body surfing. When I got there I immediately realized that it was too big. It was breaking at the "Point", an awesome 12-15 feet with big peaks and then lining up for long rides toward the Newport Pier. It looked like the waves were perfect for board surfing although prior to that date very few had board surfed the "Point". In thelate fifties and early sixties the only people who surfed there were body surfers. As board surfing was getting more and more popular, surfers began "eyeing" the break trying to decide if it was surfable. And so, on the Septemeber day, for the first time board surfers started arriving and paddling out in G-d's great ocean.
The waves were arriving at a great Southerly angle and were full of a lot of water . If you started paddling a litle early, the sudden change in bottom depth pushed up very quickly and you found yourself heading down the face of a huge peak. After a sharp bottom tuen, the waves lines up and you were in for a left that often never seemed to end. Many surfers were hooting and hollering, so great was their exhuberance at a ride that began at 18th St. and ended at the Newport Pier.
A feew surfers tried to go body surfing but the waves were so big that they would skip sideways down the peak and then get wiped out. They would then find themself\ves in an incredible rip tide that started at 18th St. and swept them through the Newport Pier gto deposit them near 24th st. That was a reide of a different kind!
I remember well my first ride that day. I began paddling and was suddenly lifted up from behind and found myself heading straight down a huge peak. I managed a quick bottom turn and lined myself up for a flawless left with a perfect tube.
As word spread, surfers began arriving and their excitement knew no bounds, staring at their fellows that were already surfing waves that looked like "Pipeline." Wave after perfect wave arrived, affording plenty for everyone. There were many cameras around to record the action, and the next issue of "Surfer Magazine" had a special with photos entitled, "When Pipeline Came to Newport."
Times are different today. Last Summer the weather bureau was plotting
Hurricane Linda in the Pacific and predicting large surf in two to three days. Surfers began arriving at the "Point" at daybreak each day with all sizes of surfboards and their portable radios so that they could plot the storm and be the first to ride the surf. On the day that the surf was scheduled to arrive, surfers were out in force at daybreak. I found myself on the Newport Pier with a gallery of other surfers watching the huge peaks arriving right on schedule. As I looked around, I recognized many of the surfers who had been at 18th Street on that day in 1966. We got very nostalgic as we remembered the day that
"Pipeline Came to Newport!"
