Goodbye, fun captain — Ski and Surf’s Dick Mobley

Mobley began making boards under his own name, but was searching for a more reliable source of income and leisure time as the surfboard industry collapsed during the shortboard revolution,.

Noll went fishing in Northern California. Hap and Dewey started swordfishing. Bing moved to Sun Valley. Mobley began selling used ski equipment out of his surf shop at1765 Artesia Blvdin 1964.

A few years earlier Mobley moved to Aspen, where he learned about a new French ski called Rossignols.

In later years, as Rossignols became the first choice of racers and experienced skiers, Ski Surf Shop sold more Rossignols than any other store in the United States.

“When Rossignols were really hot, we’d alternate with Aspen Highlands as selling the most each year. Not too bad for a little mom and pop ski shop,” Mobley said.

“In the early years, we’d hand-select our skis, searching for skis with a softer flex. We’d match the stiffness and camber to a person’s body weight and strength, measuring deflection. Many women came to appreciate that. Nothing’s worse than trying to turn a too-stiff ski,” Mobley said.

Ski manufacturers began to notice the sales numbers coming from the little Ski Surf Shop and started paying attention.

“People who grew up on the beach have a uniquely shaped foot that doesn’t fit the European model,” Mobley said.

“A ‘beach foot’ is wider across the toes and narrower in the heel than the foot of someone who matured wearing shoes and boots.”

“We really dug into it and found boots that could be adapted to fit beach feet,” Mobley said. “After awhile, some manufacturers began making boots to fit beach feet.”  People who spend a lot of time on their toes, like sand runners and triathletes, also had problems fitting into European ski boots.

“The factory fitters would come to our shop and give clinics. Sometimes they’d go away with tricks our fitters had come up with,” Mobley said.

If Ski Surf boot fitters could not make a customer comfortable in a pair of boots, Mobley would give that customer a different pair and keep working until the new boots fit right.

“It was the cheapest and best advertising in the world,” Mobley. “A happy customer would tell their friends.”

“Skiing is a lot more fun if your feet don’t hurt. Try explaining a sore toe online or to a department store clerk,” Mobley said.

As he evolved into one of the village elders, Mobley became a classic storyteller. Most of them were mostly true.

Here’s one about the essential kindness that underlied Mobley’s sometimes-gruff sense of humor.

We were in Puerto Vallartain 1977, after competing in a sailboat race from Marina del Rey.

Stu Linder had put together a mostly Hermosan crew, including Mobley, Kenny Gardiner, Wylie Nisbet and myself. We were on a fast, aluminum, 50-foot ocean racer owned by an absentee, eccentric movie executive who didn’t actually like to sail.

It blew hard, we sailed smart and lucky, and ended up winning our class and the race overall, or “Uno y uno,” as Linder reported back on the radio to Warner Brothers.

The race was co-sponsored by a tequila distillery, which supplied their products by the case to the winners. After a few days of a mescal-induced trance around the harbor, we took off for a car tour of Banderas Bay with Bob Bergstrom, at whose King Harbor boat yard we had prepared the boat.

After having stopped for lunch at the Boca de Tomlatan, Mobley and I were walking along the riverside rocks when we saw two young Mexican men wading. The current was bouncing them out towards the ocean.

We sprinted down the rocks and by the time we hit the water, both men were climbing the ladder in full-blown panic as they struggled against the current.

To an observer on shore, it might have appeared that we were being rough with the victims as we got them under control. A panicked swimmer in deep water can be as dangerous as a frightened cat, scratching and clawing. Mobley and I swam them laterally out of the current, and then the skipper of an anchored cruising boat brought us a surfboard in his dinghy. We put the two young men on the board and towed them back into shallow water.

On the beach, two older men, fathers, uncles or lovers, it wasn’t clear, elbowed past us to comfort the two young men. They wrapped them in towels and led them tenderly to a beachside palapa to recover from their ordeal.

Mobley watched the departing group with a raised eyebrow. One of the older men, looking indignant in his tourist tighties, shot us a final accusatory glance.

“Beer?” Mobley proposed.

“Splendid,” I said, and we rejoined the Bergstroms for lunch.

Fox under the sea

In retirement, Mobley sought out places of solitude. There were hundreds of miles of trout streams near his Mammoth home that needed re-exploring. He and his wife Vicki skied when the weather and snow were right.

“Now I’ll be able to go to the Channel Islands for weeks at a time, instead of Catalina for the weekend,” Mobley said.

The strongest memory I have of The Fox is underwater on the backside of Catalina in the early ‘80s.

We’d sailed over on Gemini, his former boat, an aluminum K-43 made by Kenny Watts, Bud Gardiner and Frank Sasine. We anchored behind the reef at Little Harbor, where Mobley’s friend Bob Burns joined us.

Mobley and Burns had been free-diving together for abalone since Fox sailed his little catamaran down to La Jolla in the 1950s. Abs had become a lot harder to find, even in the most remote part of the island. We less-accomplished divers were caddies, handling the game bags. Burns and Mobley would disappear into holes and ledges 50 feet down, then pop to the surface with pink abalones the size of dinner plates.

That night, around the fire on the beach that night, we ate Denise Burns’ specialty of ab steak stuffed with jack cheese around an Anaheim chili.

Dewey Weber was there with his son, perhaps feeling a little jangled because Mobley and Burns had scored all the abs.

I wiped some abalone from my lips and looked at Gemini and Dewey’s yellow swordfish boat Avispa riding gently behind the reef. I had the sense of something important passing. Sure enough, those were the last wild abalones I ever ate.

“Another cocktail?” Mobley asked.

“Perfect,” I said.

Dick Mobley is survived by his wife Vicki, former wife Carlene, sons Joseph Mobley,  Kelly Mobley and his wife Adrienne, daughter Kari (Mobley) Kennedy and her husband Reddy, and grand children Jack, Kate, Katherine and Madeline.

No immediate memorial services are planned. “Fox did not want a memorial and felt his Hermosa Beach Walk of Fame induction (last April) was it, and he got to attend it,”  Vicki Mobley said. She added that his ashes will be scattered off of 22nd Street, at Mammoth and at Hot Creek. A paddle-out will be held  in Hermosa Beach when the water gets warmer.  ER

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