Hermosa Beach Surfer Walk of Fame 2020: Charlie Quesnel the Pioneer Maui mover
Charlie Quesnel at Honolua Bay, Kauai during the legendary Dec. 1969, on an 8-foot-3 Dick Brewer Red Rocket pintail. He was living on Honolua Beach in a pup tent. Photos courtesy of Quesnel family After moving from Hermosa Beach to Maui in his teens, Charlie Quesnel lived, and led surfing by Kevin Cody Charlie Quesnel surfed his first big waves at Waimea Bay over Christmas break during his junior year at Mira Costa High School. Upon his return to school, schoolmate Mike Purpus asked how he did it. “We called Charlie ‘Flea’ because he was so small, and was afraid of big waves. He wouldn’t even surf the Redondo Breakwater on big days,” Purpus recalled. Purpus credits the answer Quesnel gave him with his own, subsequent success as a big wave rider on Hawaii’s North Shore. “Whenever I paddled out at Pipeline, Sunset or Waimea, I did what Charlie told me that day,” Purpus recalled recently, in discussing Quesnel’s induction into the the Hermosa Surfer Walk of Fame. Purpus, an inaugural Walk of Fame inductee, is now one of the Walk of Fame judges, along with Mike Balzer, John Joseph, Randy Meistrell, John Baker and Dennis Jarvis. “I was sitting at Waimea with (Mira Costa classmates) Dru…
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