Image Source: https://www.sarahlee.photo/
I’m early and they haven’t arrived yet, so I pull the surf mat out of the boot of my rental and begin to blow it up. It’s been stuffed at the back of a shelf in my garage since my second pregnancy. I’m hoping that today — as I no longer have a mound for a stomach — it will prove easier to balance atop this bag of air.
I spot Cher and her husband Steve pull into the car park. They’ve travelled from their California home to spend a month here in Byron. They try to make the trip every couple of years to catch up with old and ageing friends, like George.
Cher’s smile is as much of a beacon as her long red hair. We greet and chat as more of the mat crew rock up. George ambles over sporting the semi-mullet and hacked fringe he’s rocked for a lifetime. His steamer is slightly too big for his lean frame. Cher introduces me. He nods and walks off down the beach path. She tells me that George is a man of few words.
We follow, heading to the water’s edge near the boat ramp south of Lennox and park our bums in the sand to put on our fins. As we wade in and begin to kick out over the gully, Steve and I chat as my legs burn. I flashback to all the gnarly kick sets I did at swim training. It’s a good distance through the surf zone.
Steve laughs as he tells me George likes to have a dig at him for always sitting out the back waiting for the biggest, most attention-grabbing wave.
“Being a hero,” George says. “Waiting for the hero’s wave.”
George reckons the better waves are on the inside.
Out the back, I turn to survey the inside. It doesn’t look like there’s much going on in there. Then I spot Cher’s turquoise hat bobbing atop her vibrant, freckled face as she kicks back out grinning. She’s already caught a wave.
I turn and take off on a lump of swell. Halfway down the face, my mat slides out sideways from under my gut. How do you set a rail on these things? I let some air out of my mat and look for George. He’s hard to spot from behind the waves. Likely one of those surfers always on a wave, I figure. Always in the right spot. Same as Cher.
Cher Pendarvis was big into bodysurfing as a kid. Then she started surfing in 1960s San Diego on a hollow Tom Blake-style toothpick. Keen to buy her own board, she got a job doing ding repairs at a local surf shop. Immersed in the alchemy of resins and catalysts and shapes, a burgeoning love of design grew.
One day, on a trip to Santa Barbara, Cher saw George Greenough surfing. She saw everyone trimming from point A to point B to make sections—except George. Here was this guy pulling himself up onto his knees and just carving. Going so fast and using the whole face to do these massive roundhouse cutbacks. The two met in the water and Cher left inspired to make her first board. It wasn’t anything George said—just the way he was in the surf.
Cher started shaping all types of boards at a time when no other women were. She competed in the first Hang Ten Women’s Pro at Malibu in 1975 and was a founding member of the Women’s International Surfing Association (WISA). She made regular jaunts down to surf Baja, where Mexicans told her they’d never seen a woman surf. She made a career as an artist and got a job in the art department at Surfing magazine—the first woman on staff.
She’s been surfing for 55 years and is still at it despite three hip replacements—riding fish, paipos, mats, and bodysurfing. She likes the way riding a different craft changes your perspective of the surf zone, often enabling you to fly under the radar as you’re looking for different types of waves.
I paddle towards Cher on the inside bank and try to find what she and George can see. She tells me when you pick the right ones, they just keep running and reform. She’s gotten better at picking these. I catch a nice wall and manage a cutback to the foam. It’s ridiculously fun, and Cher is thrilled for me.
On the beach, Cher tells me how this year George has been teaching her how to dolphin kick into a wave, and she’s finally got the hang of it. She’s a chuffed little grom, aglow with the delight of learning something new.
“I’m always learning new things about the ocean and riding waves,” she says.
