Spot on Dude.
Skip Frye (September 7, 1941-)
The famous Ron Stoner photo of a guy knee-paddling into perfect empty surf at The Ranch is captivating. It evokes two of our sport's most treasured emotions: passion and flow. The lone surfer could have been anyone, but as it turns out, he became the embodiment of both. More than five decades into his surfing experience, Skip Frye's passion and flow have never been stronger.
Hailing from an adoptive home in San Diego, Harry Richard Frye came into surfing relatively late, almost missing what he considers to be "The Golden Age of the Sport." When his father went off to fight in World War II, the infant was the only male left in the house. "I was like the skipper of the ship," he says, "which is how I got my name." At Mission Bay High School, Frye was too small for most sports, but reveled in distance running. The endurance aspect would serve him well when surfing entered his life in 1958. A club known as The Kanakas ruled over Pacific Beach, welcoming Frye into the tribe. "Everyone says the '60s was the time, but I wish I'd been around a few years earlier," he laments, "so I could have experienced the balsa era. The purity of the sport was still unencumbered, and that was when they first got on the nose and started to turn."
Competition was gathering momentum as surfing's popularity exploded during the early '60s, and it didn't take long for Frye, by then a member of the legendary Windansea Surf Club and team rider for Dewey Weber Surfboards, to navigate the ranks. His first big win came in the 1963 Aquaram event in Pacific Beach, where he defeated fellow Windansea teammate Butch Van Artsdalen in a surf-off. Frye retained his title the following year and reached a pinnacle in 1968, winning the U.S. Invitational at Oceanside. He also represented the United States in the World Contest in 1966 and 1968, narrowly missing the final on each occasion. The venue for 1968 was Puerto Rico, which instantly became his favorite surf destination, thanks to its warm, idyllic surf and Latino flavor. A photo of him from the trip appeared on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, standing with his board behind a swimsuit model.
Frye began shaping in 1963, at which time, he became enamored with the subtleties of fins. "I'm freaky on fins," he comments today. "They can make a regular board a good board." He was among the first to reduce fin size from the deadly early rudders as well as experiment with flex. He and other Californians felt their equipment -- as well as their surfing -- was progressing wonderfully, that is until they went to Australia. "We went to Oz in 1968 and watched 8mm films of George Greenough and were like, 'Whoa!' We had to hold onto our seats. We were so hung up on the nose, and our boards sucked! We got all fired up and came back."
As longboards vanished overnight, Frye went with the flow, working on egg shapes and later experimenting with the Fish. (His keel-fin, heavy-glassed split-tails remain in high-demand throughout So Cal.) Aside from a stage he refers to as his "ghetto period" after his first wife left (he lived in his shaping room for a stint), he has maintained his zest for the sport. However, he was never more energized than during the longboard revival. "The biggest buzz I ever had in surfing was the early '90s when I went back to the big ones," he recalls. "I mean the 11-footers. The same thing happened to >Duke [Kahanamoku] when Tom Blake reintroduced him to the 16-foot olos back in the '30s. I was riding through one break, through the channel and into the next break."
Surfing from one spot to another is nothing new to Frye. He routinely surfs at least seven breaks in a session at the reefs along Sunset Cliffs. During the surf-drenched winter of 2000, he broke a personal record by riding 12 spots in a single go-out, a healthy feat for anyone, much less a great-grandfather. A rabid Laker fan and devout Christian, Frye spends every spare moment helping his wife Donna in her role as a San Diego Council Woman, where she's represented surfers' pro-environmental views for more than eight years.
Meanwhile, Skip continues his own tireless work for surfing's constituency by collecting and building boards, his keel-fin fish being particularly popular. "I feel it's my duty to pass along the heritage of our sport," he says with a passion. "But there's still a long way to go, a lot of work to be done, especially with fins."
http://www.surfline.com/surfing-a-to-z/skip-frye-biography-and-photos_813/
DUDE
> 9 months ago, 9 Jul 2012
