Gary Linden

 
I was born in El Centro (a big desert) on December 11, 1949. Our family moved to San Diego, 120 miles from where I was born, about three years later. My dad grew up in Hermosa Beach and loved the ocean. We used to go to the beach together on the weekends and bodysurf. Later we got canvas mats, and finally, in 1962, when the Beach Boys were singing “Everybody’s Surfing Now”, I had to give it a try. From that first day, it has been pretty much non-stop. I bought an old balsa board for $20 with my newspaper route money. It needed fixing up, so my dad and I learned to work with resin and fiberglass. I guess that was the start of my surfboard career, as well as the beginning of my fixation with wooden surfboards. When I was 14, my dad had to teach a seminar in Hawaii, and we got to go to the four major islands. The next year, we went to mainland Mexico by bus, our longboards riding in the aisle. I haven’t stopped traveling since. Right around the same time, I became competition director for my surf club, Las Olas, judging, organizing club contests, and doing the ratings. Later, when I joined the world-famous WindanSea Surf Club in La Jolla (at the age of 17), I took it to the next level, organizing the San Diego High School surfing championship. The other advantage of being in the club was when Skip Fry returned from Australia with an 8-foot Bob McTavish V-bottom surfboard, the first shortboard we’d seen in San Diego, we were the first to try it out. After trying it, I had to have one. Since no one was making these boards, I managed to acquire a blank; in those days, only the manufacturers could buy them. With my girlfriend’s little brother steadying the opposite side, I shaped my first Sureform. After glassing it in my parent’s garage, it looked pretty good, and all of a sudden, people started ordering boards. At the age of 17, Linden Surfboards was rolling.

After spending most of the ‘70’s traveling through most of Central America and Europe, I sailed to Brazil, finding Saquarema and feeling like I had found home. I returned to the US for two years, met my wife Wendy (we’ve been married 33 years now), and then we came back to Brazil to live. Two years later, with my first daughter Natalie on the way (a product of Carnaval). We returned to San Diego via Ecuador, where I shaped about 100 balsa boards while my daughter was born. Step by step, my reputation as a shaper continued to grow. Professional surfing was also taking form around that time, and with all my earlier experience, I fit right in. First I was a judge, and then a contest director for the California events that soon formed part of the newly created ASP world tour. Each contest had the right to place a representative on the ASP board of directors, and that’s how I earned my spot. I spent 16 years on the board of the ASP, culminating with my role as president.

By this time, surfing Todos Santos had become my favorite pastime, and it seemed natural to have a contest there. After a few attempts at gathering sponsorship, all was set for a WCT big wave event. After a year of planning everything, including the trophy engraving, the event was cancelled two weeks prior to its scheduled start. Fortunately, the ISA went forward with an international team event, the Reef @ Todos, the following year in 1998, which produced some of the biggest waves ever ridden in competitive surfing history. I remember having a dream about what would be a 10-point ride, and then during the event, I got to watch Tony Ray take off on a beautiful 40-foot face, bottom turn, and then get totally barreled on the inside section, exactly as I had seen it in my dream.

Shaping as a business was a lot different when I started than it is now. It was rough physical labor and required years of experience just to get comfortable with the tools, mainly the Skil 100 planer. The quality of the boards you made was almost in direct proportion to your ability to use this tool. So it was that after 10 years of shaping (1978), I was ready for the second stage, that of designing. I took the job of manager for Dick Brewer Surfboards, and had the great fortune to shape alongside the most influential surfboard designer of the modern era, trading shortboard designs for big wave gun expertise. Carlsbad, where I lived in north San Diego county, had a couple of kids—Joey Buran and David Barr—who were pushing each other into becoming pro surfers with hopes of joining the world tour. I started making David’s boards, a new style of twin-fin that I designed, and his career really took off. Then Joey wanted boards too, and in the early ‘80’s, most of the big contests in California were won on boards that I made. Brad Gerlach, Mike Lambresi, Chuy Reyna, Colin Smith, Taylor Knox and later, Todd Holland (who took it farthest, finishing 8th on the world tour), all rode my boards.

For as long as I can remember, I always tried to catch the biggest wave of the day. But I didn’t ride anything really big until one day in El Savador in 1971. I made one drop on my 6’5 and then got pitched on the next one, which was even bigger. Swimming in and racing down the beach before the rip took my board out to sea—such a rush. I had gotten a great ride and survived a wipeout. Both experiences were fun, and to ride big waves, you’ve got to enjoy feeling the power of the ocean at its maximum. After that came big waves in France at Guethary and La Barre and some big lefts at Itauna while living in Brazil, before marriage, children and work made me take some time off from traveling and riding any waves over ten feet.

In the late ‘60’s and all through the ‘70’s, most Californian surfers traveled to Hawaii, Sam Hawk and Owl Chapman among the most famous. I had taken the unbeaten path, and it wasn’t until 1983, as a 33-year-old, that I rode my first wave at Waimea Bay, Owl calling my name to let everybody know that set was mine. I had gone with my team, David Barr, Mike Lambresi and Mark Price. The Bay broke and Dick Brewer loaned us his personal board. We each got a session. I caught the biggest wave that day of all of us, and realized that I had something special inside me that even my pro team surfers didn’t have. I was a big wave rider, and that was where my surfing excelled. I rode perfect Makaha Point surf, (where Greg Noll caught the wave he become most famous for) and established a firm place in the lineup at Sunset Beach before settling on Todos Santos as the place where I could ride big waves more frequently. My experience there finally paid off in 2004, when at 54 years old, I caught 50-foot on the face wave and was runner-up finalist for the Billabong XXL biggest paddle-in wave of the year.

Red Bull Big Wave Africa was a project I had the opportunity to be involved with starting in 2000. Cold water, big sharks, and a deep-water wave that shifts like Sunset Beach; it’s no wonder the name Dungeons was given to this spot in Cape Town, South Africa. Now I had a chance to surf big waves two seasons a year—Todos in the northern hemisphere winter and Dungeons in the southern hemisphere winter. Although I first tried tow-in surfing in 1995, was part of the Billabong Odyssey tow-in search and have ridden some pretty big waves behind the rope, it has never really grabbed me like it has most of my big wave peers. I like the chance to use my experience to paddle into a big one all on my own. One day at Dungeons the waves were big—40-45-foot faces. Jamie Sterling, Carlos Burle, Greg Long and Maverick’s winner Twiggy Baker among others, towed in all day. After a short session towing in the morning, I went back and rested, wanting to paddle into at least one in the afternoon. I called my friend who had a boat. Finally, after work, he picked me up at the dock and we arrived at the peak 15 minutes later. It was 5 pm and I had to be out of the water at the latest by 5:45. Time enough for two sets if I was lucky. I sat further inside than usual, and an enormous wave broke on my head full-force. The jet ski picked me up and took me back outside for one more try. This time I found the spot and paddled into what would be the only wave paddle-surfed that day, and the biggest wave ridden during the contest waiting period. I was 55 years old and the contest director, not a competitor, but in my mind, I had won.

I think age is like any other limitation one may encounter in life. You’ve got to go for it with all you’ve got, and believe you’re going to make it. The ocean will let you know when you’ve had your share and it’s time to stop. Dick Brewer once told me his psychiatrist told him he had a death wish, and he better quit riding big waves or he was going to kill himself. For me I feel it’s a will to live, and I’m going to catch as many as I can. I never put quantity over quality and size anyway, so one wave per session is just fine by me. Success has much to do with adjusting your goals to suit your abilities. I now project five years at a time, and three years from now, at 60, I’ll plan another five.

The size of waves being tow-surfed today by Laird Hamilton, Carlos Burle and a host of others, is beyond the imagination of most of the generation of surfers who preceded them. Right now it seems that 70 feet is the mark to be exceeded. But even more impressive to me is the slab type of big waves they are riding: open-ended tubes that before were not accessible due to the speed at which they broke as well as their proximity to the reefs or rocks that caused them to break. These waves are being ridden with an apparent abandon of the possible consequences. For me, it’s not the ability to ride these waves, but whether one can take Nature’s punch at this level and survive. Like all the world’s major conquests, people are going to die before the limits are set.

The future of surfing is hard to imagine, let alone describe. A lot will depend on what happens to the planet in general. They say global warming will cause more storms and thus bigger waves in bigger quantities. We need to make sure that we’re around to ride them. Don’t burn the Amazon.