Bodysurfers brace for city’s new contest rules

On a gray, wind-swept Saturday in early April, retired city lifeguard Mark Cunningham sat in the shade on a picnic table at Ehukai Beach Park, near the tower where he’d been posted for 19 years, and pondered whether to bodysurf Pipeline in the lackluster waves of a dying swell.

“Maybe I’ll go beachcombing instead,” said the world champion bodysurfer and environmentalist, who collects lost-­or-­tossed, man-made objects from sea and shore to use in his artwork.

“Although I have to say,” he added, “we had even worse conditions for the North Shore Lifeguard Association Pipeline Bodysurfing Contest earlier this week.”

He frowned, staring out to sea.

“On a winter like this, when good, sizable waves were few and far between, we were excited to see big, perfect Pipe near the end of the holding period for our contest.”

Unfortunately, he said, the bodysurfers didn’t get any of those waves because they were sharing the holding period with The World Surf League’s Wahine Pipe Pro and Pipe Pro Junior. The short-boarding events ran on the first two days of the swell.

“On the third day, the waves were about a third the size and Pipe wasn’t happening, so the bodysurfing contest was at Ehukai sandbar — and it got blown out and canceled after half a day,” Cunningham said, noting that many of the 60 bodysurfers on the roster didn’t even get in the water for the second round.

Not that anyone would begrudge local women and youth their chance to shine at Pipe: “I want to make one thing clear. I’m a big supporter of pro surfing,” Cunningham said.

What concerned him, however, was the attrition he’d witnessed, over time, of opportunities for bodysurfers and bodyboarders.

The North Shore lifeguards’ bodysurfing contest, he said, ran annually for about a decade and then failed to secure permits for several years until this season.

These days, short boards rule at Pipe. But the site’s first surf competition was the North Shore Paipo and Bodysurfing Championships, inaugurated in February 1971. The second was the Pipeline Masters competition for board surfers, launched that December.

A descendant of the original 1970s event, the Pipeline Bodysurfing Classic, has been organized by Alan Lennard in recent years.

Bodyboarding contests have also continued at Pipeline, if sporadically, said Mike Stewart, a bodysurfer and pro bodyboarder who has hosted several meets there since the 1980s.

“But we’ve been bumped a number of years, including 2018,” the Oahu native said in a phone interview from his home in Waimea on Hawaii island.

There’s simply not a lot of wiggle room for dates, both Lennard and Stewart said: Each year, on average, about 14 surf meets are permitted during the Sept. 1-May 31 surf season on the North Shore. And in the public interest, the city’s shore water events rules, codified in the city administrative rules Title 19, Chapter 4, require that contests be spaced at intervals of at least 10 days in order to allow recreational surfers access to waves in between holding periods.

The rules are currently in flux, however: Mayor Kirk Caldwell ordered that they be re-evaluated following the World Surfing League’s February decision to cancel its December 2019 Pipe Masters contest after the city Department of Parks and Recreation denied the organization’s request to swap dates with its January-scheduled Volcom Pipe Pro.

SINCE THEN proposed revisions of the city’s shore water event rules have been underway, helmed by an informal advisory committee of senior surfers formed at the mayor’s request, city spokesman Andrew Pereira said by phone. The city, Pereira said, hopes to have draft revised rules ready by the end of this month, to be submitted for public comment during June.

Bodysurfers and bodyboarders are anxiously — and hopefully — awaiting the draft revisions.

While he supports the idea of the mayor’s senior surfers committee, Stewart said he hopes they’ll consider more than board surfers.

“It’s human nature to have a lens on what your passion is.”

Surfers often say they appreciate being able to compete in contests at Pipe because they get a chance to catch waves without the crowds and pecking order. But for bodysurfers, having Pipe to themselves is otherwise an impossible dream, Stewart said.

“Bodysurfers, they’re just invisible — it’s like they don’t exist. They don’t get recognized,” he said. “And bodysurfing, come on, that’s the purest form of wave-riding.”

According to the current rules, applications are scored on criteria based on the plans they submit for following park rules and regulations, cleaning and stocking restrooms and removing trash, and mitigating impacts on the community, such as traffic, parking, crowd and noise control, and local resident and government services access. They are also evaluated with regard to diversity regarding the primary type of event, ages and genders of participants, and the event’s amateur, professional or pro-am status.

“The process (of awarding permits for events) is supposed to allow diversity,” Lennard said, but by his calculation “we had 375 hours of short-board surfing versus 6.5 hours of bodysurfing and zero hours of bodyboarding on the 2018 calendar.”

Mahina Chillingworth, spokeswoman for Hui O He‘e Nalu, a 400-member surf club dedicated to perpetuating traditional Hawaiian culture, community enjoyment of ocean sports and environmental protection, suggested that cultural diversity be considered.

“We have a 40-plus year history as the only Hawaiian organization, along with the Aikau family, holding surf events on the North Shore,” she said; the organization’s Da Hui Backdoor Shootout, which includes stand-up paddling, longboarding, shortboarding and bodysurfing, was held in January.

Stewart suggested that the city also weigh the ratio of participants in the various wave-riding disciplines so that events might be more representative and inclusive of the public’s interest.

As the city’s draft revised rules go through the public comment period, perhaps what will emerge will be a clear and re-energized way of sharing the incomparable, priceless resource of our wild Hawaiian waves. Most emblematic of he‘e nalu remains bodysurfing, the first and most natural form of wave-riding.

Now that man-made waves are becoming a reality on the competitive tour, perhaps more beach and reef breaks can be freed up for the largely unsponsored body- and recreational surfers who dive into the ocean in a pure spirit of play.

“In the Lineup” features Hawaii’s oceangoers and their regular hangouts, from the beach to the deep blue sea. Reach Mindy Pennybacker at mpennybacker@staradvertiser.com or call 529-4772.