Women surf strong and free with support

As I crossed through the park after surfing Suis on a Friday spring evening, I was surprised to be addressed by a surfer whom I knew only vaguely, by sight.

“Your husband doesn’t surf?” he said.

Sigh. Over the years many strangers have asked me this question in a reproachful, even accusative tone, as if they think I keep Don locked in the attic or chained to the stove.

I wonder how they even know I’m married; I guess they look for my ring.

“He bodysurfs,” I said without breaking my stride, but I caught the guy’s frown. I knew what he was thinking: Real surfers don’t wear fins. They surf standing erect on short, pointy boards — the shorter the better. They compare board size in the lineup, and the smallest stick wins. (Hemingway would not have understood.)

Despite all the advances female surfers have made, the sport remains dominated by male surfers, and they make a habit of bullying us in various ways, which include acting as if we don’t exist.

That evening, for instance, just as I was taking off in the peak of a wave, a ferret-faced stranger had paddled right in front of me. This constituted paddling interference, a violation of the laws of surfing.

Rather than spear the perp, I pulled back and he stole the wave.

Such male behavior was the reason my friend Maile never surfed. She and her six sisters grew up on Kailua Beach in the ’70s and “we dominated every other sport, but Dad wouldn’t let us surf because the boys were so vicious,” she said.

One of her sisters surfed anyway. “She was the only girl out at Kailua shorebreak and she was better than the boys, which they hated,” Maile said.

“One of them deliberately shot the point of his board deep into her leg muscle and it got badly infected.”

Her sister quit surfing.

After years of fuming in silence, being outnumbered and not wanting to seem uncool, I began asserting my rights last autumn when Liam, a neighborhood grom, blocked me in the takeoff zone.

When he came back out, I spoke up. “Don’t paddle in front of me, please.”

His blue eyes opened wide. “Oh! Sorry!”

“I do exist.”

He hasn’t blocked me since.

I figured I’d say the same to the perp on that spring evening, but as I looked around for him I realized that the crowd had grown. It was filled with strangers who looked identical to my fleeting glimpse of the perp: 30-something, shifty eyes, dark hair slicked back.

They were a swarm of Agent Smith replicants in a surfer edition of “The Matrix.”

On the North Shore last month, I spoke with Mahina Maeda, 19, who had won the 2016 Wahine Pipe Pro. She said the swell was dropping, but early that morning out at Rocky Point some of the sets had been a solid 6 feet.

“It was perfect Rockys until the boys came out,” she said with a smile and a shrug, but her dark eyes flashed with a frustration I recognized.

A few days later, the World Surf League held the 2017 Wahine Pro on a beautiful clear day in glassy, peeling, 4- to 6-foot Pipeline waves that the women charged, performing barrels, aerials — the works — with stunning grace.

“It’s a little easier when there’s not a bunch of boys in the lineup,” this year’s winner, Frankie Harrer, commented on WSL’s website.

If these powerful youngsters feel inhibited by the boys, what chance is there for old girls like me?

Plenty, actually: The more we speak up and support one another, the more room we get. My support system includes not just my Suis girls — Cristal, Debbie, Andree and Syd — but Captain Cal, Boogie Pete and, of course, Don.

I feel it’s unfair to Don that we live a quick walk from Suis but have to drive to bodysurf breaks.

“I wish you surfed,” I told him that Friday as we sat down to the dinner he’d made.

He laughed. “If I surfed we wouldn’t have this house.”

True. We’d be lost to the siren call of waves.

And not that I keep him chained to the stove, but if he surfed we wouldn’t eat, either.

“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.