Breakwater Redemption: ML Invitational to honor surf legend Michael Luhrsen
By Kevin Cody
Michael Luhrsen expresses his appreciation for 50 years of surfing at the Breakwater by lending his name to a Breakwater invitational big wave surf contest
by Kevin Cody
For almost two years, Michael Luhrsen resisted the idea of a big wave invitational surf contest named in his honor at the Redondo Beach Breakwater.
Breakwater waves break like they do at the Wedge next to Newport Harbor, a staple of television weather reports. The first wave of a big set bounces off the King Harbor Breakwater into the path of the next wave. When the two waves collide, the second wave jacks up to nearly twice its original height and its lip pitches forward, forming a barrel that compares to Pipeline on Hawaii’s North Shore.
Michael Luhrsen lining up a Breakwater bomb in December 2002. Photo by Mike Balzer
Luhrsen, 65, a former pro surfer and retired longshoreman crane operator, surfed just about every big swell at the Breakwater in the past 50 years.
“I loved surfing the Breakwater so much, I thought I’d do it until they took me away in a box,” he said recently.
But three years ago, after suffering a double stroke (in both brain hemispheres), doctors told him to stop surfing, despite his remarkable recovery. They had brought him back from being “clinically dead.”
Hermosa Beach surf photographer Mike Balzer began photographing Luhrsen at the Breakwater in the late ‘80s, selling the photos to both Surfing and Surfer magazines.
Michael Luhrsen at the Breakwater in 1988. Photo by Mike Balzer
Luhrsen was the dominant surfer at the Breakwater, rode brightly painted boards, and wore a wetsuit painted with a skeleton in dayglo green.
Though never close friends, when Balzer learned Luhrsen could no longer surf, he thought of the Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational in Hawaii, whose invitees must have proven themselves in big waves at Waimea Bay.
Like the Eddie, Balzer envisioned the ML Invitational having a waiting period, from November to March. The contest would be held on a date forecast to have big waves and clean conditions. The invitees would be chosen by Luhrsen.
Balzer enlisted Charlie Carver, a long time Breakwater surfer and close friend of Luhrsen’s, to encourage him to agree to the contest.
“He must have told us no 15 times,” Carver said.
Luhrsen rejected the idea for two reasons.
The first was that some years the Breakwater doesn’t get big waves.
Michael Luhrsen (left) with fellow Breakwater locals in 1988, during a photo shoot by Mike Balzer for Surfer magazine. Photo by Mike Balzer
The second was concern that attention from the contest would destroy the Breakwater culture that two generations of Luhrsens have helped protect, dating back to the ‘80s when Balzer first photographed them.
The culture includes a reputation for localism, described by Surfrider Foundation co-founder Glenn Hening, in a 2000 essay as “The stain on the soul surfing.”
Over the years, local surfers, even if they oppose localism in principle, and even if they are occasionally its victim, have tolerated it at the Breakwater because it has prevented the Breakwater from becoming overcrowded, like the Wedge and Malibu.
Hening’s essay identifies Palos Verdes, Santa Monica and Oxnard as localized, but overlooks the rarely publicized Breakwater, whose location, on the border of Redondo and Hermosa, is hidden by buildings and has little public parking. The only viewing is from its narrow beach and the breakwater wall.
“What convinced Michael to okay the contest was the Godzilla El Niño,” Balzer said.
“We’re on,” Luhrsen told Balzer and Carver after they told him this winter’s El Niño is predicted to be more powerful than the 2016 Godzilla El Niño. That year, Luhrsen’s oldest son, Angelo, caught a 30-foot wave at the Breakwater that earned him the South Bay Boardriders Big Wave Challenge award.
Luhrsen’s concern about overexposure was outweighed by the opportunity he saw to spotlight the largely underground Breakwater surfers he admired.
“The contest is a way for me to give back to my friends,” Luhrsen said. “And for me to enjoy the Breakwater through them.”
Go back to Carson
Luhrsen was born to a German dad and Filipina mother on Siargao Island, “The Surfing Capital of the Philippines.” But he didn’t start surfing until his family of nine boys and three girls moved to Carson when he was 9. He started surfing when he was 12 at Sapphire Street in Redondo, and inside the Redondo Horseshoe Pier.
One day at the pier, he saw waves breaking over the King Harbor breakwater.
“I biked to the beach in front of the Chart House and saw these big, majestic waves. I’m going to surf here,” he said he told himself.
Michael Luhrsen at the Breakwater in 2016. Photo by Mike Balzer
But first he had to get past the locals.
“I can’t tell you how many times I was told, ‘Go back to Carson.’ I couldn’t even stand in the parking lot. I had to watch the waves from between the pilings, under the Chart House,” he said.
He started surfing at Second Street in Hermosa, just north of the Breakwater. After making friends with some of the locals, he moved over to the Breakwater, where his undeniable skills earned him a spot in the lineup, where the wave jacks up.
When he was 14, Luhrsen went undefeated on the amateur WSA (Western Surfing Association) tour and won the National Championships at Blacks in San Diego. Future three-time ASP World champion Tom Curren finished second that year.
His sponsor, Kanoa Surf in Palos Verdes, sent him to Hawaii for the summer.
“I surfed the Ala Moana bowl every day. One day Ben Aipa paddled up to me. He asked if I’d like to surf for his team. He said he’d make me five boards if I followed him to his shop. The best surfers in the world surfed for Aipa. I’ll never forget going to his shop in Pearl City.”
At 16, Luhrsen became that year’s youngest competitor to qualify for the pro tour.
Not long afterwards, Aipa called to say he wanted to talk to Luhrsen’s dad.
“I told my high school surf friends Ben Aipa was coming to my house. They didn’t believe me. That afternoon, every surfer in Carson was lined up on 223rd Street, in front of my house, when Aipa pulled up in a van.
“He asked my dad’s permission to take me on a contest tour around the world. My dad said no. That pretty much ended my pro career. I didn’t understand it then. But now, as a dad, I do,” Luhrsen said.
Mike Purpus, the South Bay’s most successful pro surfer, wrote in a 2012 Easy Reader story that the Breakwater was already localized when he tried to surf there when he was 12, in 1962.
“Greg Noll, Sonny Vardeman, Henry Ford, John Joseph and John Teague wouldn’t let me near the lineup. I would take off behind the peak and straighten out if they took off in front of me,” he wrote.
“Hap Jacobs was the only Breakwater surfer who would talk to me. He taught me to paddle out next to the rocks. ‘If you can’t paddle out, you shouldn’t be out here,’ he told me.”
“Brothers James, Jude, Joey, George and Mike Luhrsen have patrolled the lineup at the Redondo Beach Breakwater for over 20 years. I call them the Breakwater Hui,” Purpus wrote, referring to the Hawaiian enforcers at Pipeline.
Even standout locals thought to disrespect the family could be banished from the Breakwater.
During the 1991-92 winter season Luhrsen kicked the fins out of Jeff Jones’ surfboard when he paddled to the beach after a Breakwater session. Two years earlier, Jones had been a team rider for the Luhrsen family’s Blue Pacific Surf Shop. But after a falling out, the Luhrsens told Jones he couldn’t surf at the Breakwater.
Michael Luhrsen, in a 1992 Easy Reader article, acknowledged kicking out the fins of Jones’ board, but said it was because the board had been stolen from Breakwater surfer and Body Glove team manager Scott Daley. Jones denied stealing the board. Daley got the board back. “But it wasn’t much good to me after the fins had been kicked out,” he said.
James Luhrsen told Easy Reader for the 1992 article, “There would be more fights in the water if we didn’t help control it.”
The brothers also argued they provided safety at the Breakwater, which does not have a lifeguard tower.
In 2016, Michael and fellow Breakwater regular Jeremy Griffin received commendations from the City of Hermosa Beach for risking their lives to save a surfer being hammered by waves on the Breakwater. It was the same day Angelo Luhrsen caught the wave that earned him that year’s Big Wave Challenge Award.
Conflict photographer
Mike Balzer met Luhrsen at the Breakwater in 1988.
“I wanted to do a lifestyle piece for Surfing Magazine, and asked Michael if I could shoot him. He had long hair and a Day-Glo skeleton painted on his wetsuit,” Balzer recalled.
“He wasn’t competing, but he was still surfing at a high level. My goal then was to get South Bay surfers recognition in the magazines. I got Michael in both Surfing, and Surfer.”
Balzer was experienced in documenting conflicts in surfing, most notably the conflict between contest surfers and free surfers.
The conflict traced back to 1967 when rebel stylist Mickey “Da Cat” Dora advanced to the semifinals of the Malibu Invitational and then mooned the judges. Most people in surfing saw the divide as unbridgeable. Balzer recognized it as the crucible for surfing’s future. He proved it with free surfing photos of World Championship Tour professionals like Rob Machado and contest photos of feral surfers like Christian Fletcher.
Balzer didn’t merely document the revolutionary transition in surfing in the ‘80s and ‘90s — from getting barreled to getting air. He helped instigate the revolution by encouraging top contest surfers to perform free of contest constraints.
The freestyle sessions he organized were primarily in the South Bay because that’s where he lived. The piers, sand berms and steep, ocean view streets provided the camera angles he needed. The Santa Ana winds and the early morning sun, unobstructed by tall buildings or boats, gave him “golden hour” lighting. And the South Bay’s steep, fast waves provided the launch pads surfers need to break free of the wave’s two-dimensional surface.
The spring 2001 Surfer’s Journal carried 24 pages of Balzer photographs, the most the coffee table-format magazine had ever devoted to a single photographer’s work. They included three different surfers performing fin-free (out of the water) snapbacks at the Manhattan Beach Pier, a maneuver so revolutionary at the time that one made a magazine cover and the other two inside double spreads. Today snapbacks are a near compulsory contest maneuver.
But arguably more significant to surfing than Balzer’s photography was his co-founding of the South Bay Boardriders Club in 2009 with fellow Mira Costa alumni Dan Bradford, Derek Levy and Tom Horton. The club has grown to over 400 members. Its programs include a contest series that attracts hundreds of entrants, from groms to “legends.”
SBBC’s signature event is the annual South Bay Big Wave Challenge, which recognizes surfers who catch the largest waves of winter.
ML Inaugural Invitational, 2026 -27 heat sheet.
Launch party
A launch party for the ML Invitational was held at the California Surf Club on October 29, days before the contest waiting period began. Guests included the contest’s 42 invitees, who ranged in age from 26-year-old Alex Fry to the 69-year-old Daley. Fry won the SBBC Grom Hardest Charger Award in 2019, when he was on the Mira Costa High surf team. Daley is a former pro surfer and Hermosa Beach Surfers Walk of Fame inductee. “I ordered a new board that’s a little bit thicker than my usual,” Daley said at the launch party.
“I want the contest to be on the best day, not the biggest day. If it’s big and blown out, you guys won’t be able to showcase your surfing,” Luhrsen said at the party.
A video of the invitees talking about the Breakwater was screened by local filmmaker John DeTemple, whose credits include “A Marble in the Jar,” a documentary about pro surfer Tatiana Weston-Webb, screening on Amazon Prime and Apple TV.
DeTemple asked the invitees to speculate on who would win the contest.
“Everyone’s a threat. It’s really about the best wave,” said Chris Wells, a former pro surfer who, at 58, remains one of the top surfers at the Breakwater in big surf.
“No one can beat me,” declared Scott “Scooter” Johnsen, 60. His yellow boards have been a warning flag at the Breakwater for surfers to get out of the way for four decades. “I can’t reveal my secrets, but let’s say I sell a lot of guys out there on what waves to take.”
Fry asked Johnsen, “What would you do if I’m sitting deeper than you when a good wave comes in?”
“I’m going,” Johnsen answered, with an unhesitating disregard for surfing etiquette.
Angelo Luhrsen, winner of the South Bay Boardriders Big Wave Challenge in 2016, toys with a 2024-25 Big Wave Challenge contender on Sunday, December 29 at the Redondo Breakwall. Photo by Mike Balzer
When DeTemple asked the invitees to pick a favorite to win the contest, the consensus was Michael Luhrsen’s oldest son, Angelo, a maritime engineer who, like most of the invitees, grew up surfing Breakwater.
In 2016, he won the SBBC Big Wave Challenge. Photos from that day show him at the bottom of a Breakwater wave jacked up 30 feet.
“It was a big wall,” Luhrsen said. “It began to shift after I dropped and entered my bottom turn. I kept thinking, ‘Wow, I can’t believe I caught a wave this big at my home break.’”Angelo Luhrsen now lives in Northern California, and is a regular at Mavericks in Half Moon Bay.
The bounce
Johnsen called the Breakwater, on a good day, one of the best waves in California. “There’s everything you want in a wave, from the bouncing peak at takeoff to open barrels running down the beach past the Chart House,” he said.
Carver recalled a barrel he came out of three years ago, screaming with excitement. “A guy yelled at me to shut up. He said I was too enthusiastic,” Carver said.
“The first wave of a set can be fun. But it’s the wave that follows that gets the bounce. That’s when you know you’re going to get barrel,” Derek Brewer said.
Wells recalled the wave that changed his surfing.
“It had to be in the early ‘90s. There was a white-haired longshoreman named Frosty who rode a really big board. He’d sit out back and wait for the sets. I’d sit underneath him and pick off the waves he missed.
“That day a set wave came through he didn’t want any part of. I didn’t want it either. But there was no one else around, so I had to go. I made a huge, wide turn coming off the bottom. Bruce Herman got a photo that made it look even bigger than I thought it was. That was a pivotal moment. It gave me the confidence to take my big wave riding to the next level,” Wells said.
Former pro Chris Frohoff, 61, finished third in the Pipeline Masters in 1986 and fifth at Sunset and Haleiwa that year.
He recalled the day Balzer shot a photo of him at the Breakwater hitting a hard turn that Body Glove ran as an ad in Surfer.
“It’s one of the only surfing photos I have in my house,” he said.
Michael Luhrsen with Wolf Surf team riders Bruce Irons, Michael Sakr, and Koa Rothman, and Angel Luhrsen at the ML Invitational launch party at California Surf Club. Photo by Mike Balzer
Board design
ET Surf shaper Pat “Gumby” Ryan is to Breakwater shapers what Dick Brewer is to Sunset shapers. Through the decades, he shaped over 40 boards for Michael Luhrsen. Angelo Luhrsen caught the 30-foot wave that earned him the 2016 Big Wave Challenge award on a 7-foot-2 Pat Ryan. Ryan’s shaping new boards for contest invitees Carver and Chris Rodriquez.
At the launch party, Balzer held up a black, 7-foot-6 board Ryan shaped in the style of the boards he shaped for Michael Luhrsen. Luhrsen painted the board’s deck with his signature design, a dragon.
The board will be presented to the contestant who best represents the spirit of Greg Browning, who passed away in April 2025, at 50, of ALS. Browning was Balzer’s favorite Breakwater surfer because of the squeaky voiced “photo slut’s” freestyle attack in big waves and his unmatched exuberance.
Ryan said he expects some of the contestants to ride 9-foot boards in hopes of catching outside sets. Others will choose shorter boards, which are quicker to spin around in the shifting peaks, and quicker to pull up into the barrel.
Michael Luhrsen’s second son, Luca, said he will go with a short board because he surfs regular foot. “Going backside at the Breakwater with a lot of board is too hard,” he said.
The Brewer twins, Keith and Derek, 53, said they’ll ride their usual 5-foot-11 boards.
“Shorter boards are harder to paddle. But once you get under the lip, they are easier to shoot up into the barrel. On a longer board, you have to go to the bottom and hope the barrel is still there when you turn up,” Keith Brewer said.
The secretive “Scooter” said he’ll ride “a special board I’m going to pull out of the rafters.”
The rocks
Rather than jump off the jetty, the Brewers follow Hap Jacobs’ advice to Mike Purpus. They paddle out the channel that hugs the rocks, which requires a board small enough to duck dive. Paddling means they don’t need booties, which they don’t like wearing, for protection against the rocks.
“I’ve seen too many people get injured jumping off the rocks. Broken ankles, smashed faces. I’d rather get injured surfing than on my way to go surfing,” Keith Brewer said.
The Brewers have been surfing the Breakwater since their teens. Derek Brewer said the only time he’s not been able to paddle out at the Breakwater was a morning in December 2023. No one else got out either because the waves were breaking over the wall walkway.
Carver, who saw Brewer get washed back to the beach that morning, suggested he paddle out from inside the harbor, which was common on big days in the longboard era because longboards are too big to duck dive.
“I already have my wetsuit on,” Brewer remembers thinking. Fry, who had also suited up that morning, joined Brewer on the mile long walk to the hand launch inside King Harbor, behind Seaside Lagoon.
From there they paddled south to the harbor mouth, and then north to where the breakwater bends into the beach in front of the Chart House. Waves were breaking over the Breakwater. It was more like swimming than paddling because their 6-foot-9 boards had barely enough volume to float them. The mile and a half paddle took 45 minutes.
They surfed alone another 45 minutes. Both caught four waves in the 15- to 25-foot range. Brewer got out because he rode a wave in too far, and wasn’t able to paddle back out. Fry got out because he took a wave on the head and his board snapped.
“It was worth it, but I don’t think I’ll do it again,” Fry said.
Wells acknowledged having gotten banged up, preparing to jump off the rocks.
“I was on the wall looking at a set coming in and didn’t notice a little wave in front of the set. It hit me in the face and sent me cartwheeling down the rocks. A fisherman rescued me,” he said.
Invitee Tom Seth, a retired lifeguard, said, “My biggest concern at the Breakwater is getting off the rocks. When we get a call for a rescue on the rocks, we send everyone — lifeguards, paramedics, and fire.”
Don’t look back
Daley reflected the sentiment of the invitees when he said, “Breakwater is one of those places where community is everything. Everyone is looking out for one another, and Michael is looking out for everyone.”
Carver reflected on his expectations for the contest. “The contest will be a very inspirational time with the brothers.” But he also suggested the contest marks the end of an era. “It was a great time in our lives,” he said.
Michael Luhrsen at his home in Palos Verdes with one of his Renaissance influenced religious drawings, and one of his contemporary art surfboards. Photo by Mike Balzer
Luhrsen, in an interview after the launch party, acknowledged his stroke changed his outlook.
“During my stroke, I passed away, and I got my life back. I see the world differently now,” he said.
“For 50 years, the only place I surfed was the Breakwater, except in the summer when I’d surf Trestles. The contest is my way of giving back to the place I love,” he said.
Since his stroke, he said, he has disavowed violence.
“Breakwater is not like the old days when people would get beat up when they paddled in,” he said.
When asked about smashing Jeff Jones’ fins, he said, “Back in the day, I got caught up in those ways. We’re friends now. Jeff’s in the contest.”
But Luhrsen wasn’t ready to concede that the contest signals the end of an era.
He laughed when he talked about young surfers at the Breakwater who threaten to call the cops if they feel threatened.
“They have no character,” he said.
“The Breakwater will remain a hard core place. The lineup is still there.”
“People may think they can claim the peak. They can’t. They have to earn their spot, and show respect while they do it. ER
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