Surf Crazy

With little money but much ardor, young surfers Dick Thomas, Mike Diffenderfer and Harry Neilson take a 7,000-mile journey in their converted station wagon to the Mexican coastal towns of Mazatlán, Manzanillo and Acapulco to test the waves. Starting at the Velzy Surf shop in San Clemente, California, the group head for the Mexican border, stopping to surf the steep sand dunes at the Arizona border. Reaching Nogales, Mexico, the men exchange their meager twenty dollars for thousands of pesos because of the favorable exchange rate. As they drive into Mexico, they spot surfer Little John "LJ" Richards, who joins them. Reaching Mazatlán, the surfers enjoy the seventy-eight-degree water, but get discouraged by the afternoon's rough surf. After a night at Hotel Papantla, where they stay for eighty cents, one member suffers from dysentery, necessitating repeated stops along the way to their next remote surfing spot. Back in the water again the next day, the men perform advanced surfing antics including front flips, head dips and tricky pullouts as the waves break in shallow water. Back in Southern California, several surfers, including Renny Yater and Phil Edwards, head for Cotton's Point, a private beach guarded by a shotgun-toting guard whom the surfers must avoid in order to access the excellent waves. Back in Mexico, the surfers reach Manzanillo, but the sight of carcasses from man-eating sharks spread along the beach forces them on the road again. Heading inland, through Mexico City, they reach Acapulco Bay, 2,000 miles further down the coast, where they enjoy surfing through rough waters, bouncing in and out of the "soup" or whitewater. They also stop to see the Mexican divers take the 100-foot leap from La Quebrada, a steep and dangerous cliff nearby. That evening the group take the main "highway," a rocky dirt road, north to a surfing spot, but when LJ spots sharks in the water, the men wait to surf until dark, when the sharks cannot see them. Back in California, Joey Cabell and others make a trip to Rincon, near Santa Barbara, where they often ride each wave for over a quarter of a mile along the coastline. Meanwhile on the island of Oahu in Hawaii, several American surfers buy a used car, rip out the interior to accomodate their boards and head to Sunset Beach, where dangerous, unpredictable and enormous waves break over a half a mile off shore. Peter Cole, Pat Curren, Fred Van Dyke and John Severson, among others, enjoy the challenge and have some bad "wipeouts." The next day in Hawaii, surfers, including fifteen-year-old Hawaiian Donald Takiyama, test the waves at Velzyland Beach. Then on 17 Jan 1960, the biggest waves of the season are spotted at Waimei Bay, where gutsy surfers including Curren brave the over-twenty-foot waves. Even after several free fall wipeouts, the men keep returning to the water to test their skill.