Hermosa to Tavarua: Lifeboat Setting Forth

Scott Funk traces the pioneering Tavarua Surf Resort he co-founded to growing up in Hermosa Beach and taking surf trips to Baja with his family and surf-crazed friends 

by Scott Funk

[Editor’s note: The following story is excerpted from Lifeboat Setting Forth: Tavarua Island Resort — The First 10 Years, a memoir about the surf resort’s founding by co-founder and Hermosa Beach native Scott Funk.]

When returning home to visit my mother, Carol Tanner, from my home on Kauai it’s not difficult to remember Hermosa as it was in the 1970s. There are still bikes in her garage to ride the length of The Strand looking for the best sandbars to surf with friends. I regularly eat at The Bottle Inn and La Playita more than 40 years later. The Green Store sign seems unchanged, and throughout Hermosa are the street signs with the familiar 70s’ colors and font my mother and fellow Improvement Commissioner Joanne Purpus came up with. They are as timeless as Hermosa.

The railroad tracks where we’d leave pennies overnight to be squashed flat are gone, but Vetter’s Windmill still turns with the winds on  PCH, the Lawn Bowling greens are still next to the Clark Stadium clubhouse where we’d go for Pier Avenue Junior High dances, and the Hermosa Museum is still in Mr. Turner’s old junior high wood shop classroom. I’m proud of Mom having had a hand in all those things.

Of course, Hermosa was different then. Almost all, if not every home on The Strand was lived in. Now many appear empty most of the year, except for exotic cars in their garages.  Hermosa rent was affordable for middle class families, including, it seemed, a large number of working mothers. We rode our banana-seat Stingrays on vacant lots from Palos Verdes to Venice. We knew every alley that had wave-shaped driveways to skateboard on. 

Change was in the air. In the few short years from being a freshman to being a senior at Mira Costa our hair grew down over our collars. The guys who could, grew sideburns and girls could wear shorts to school. There was a war draft, and then there wasn’t. Those of us who were potheads considered ourselves fortunate, as we saw some of our closest friends swept under by harder drugs.

A decent starter car could be bought for less than $1,000. Gasoline was 50-cents a gallon. We learned in Mr. Balbini’s auto shop that matchbooks were a perfect feeler gauge for spark plugs and distributor points, and how to use a timing light. 

The highways beckoned, first across the border into Mexico, followed by surf trips around the world to places, now crowded, but then almost unknown.

We’re all lucky in our own ways. As a boomer, it’s not fair for me to talk as if we had it any better than other generations. In all honesty I’m not sure we did. But age does come with some advantages, among them the stories we accumulate and hold dear. Two of mine are growing up in Hermosa Beach in the 1970s, and camping on Tavarua Island in Fiji in the early 80s,  where a friend and I founded Tavarua Island Resort. 

TAKING OFF 1981-1983

I just drifted into the South Sea

With no hull beyond my deck 

“Home Is In My Head,” Jackie Lomax

Hermosa to Baja

Hermosa Beach in the 1970s was a nexus for surf culture, with only one degree of separation — two at the most — of just about every significant figure in modern surf history. 

A short bike or skateboard ride away from my family’s Hermosa home was one of Southern California’s premier surfboard manufacturing hubs, at Sixth Street and Cypress. There, it was possible to watch master Hawaiian shaper Dick Brewer working at the Bing factory. John Lessing had a small shaping stall just across the street. Mike Collins’ Shoreline fiberglassing shop, where glosser and pinline master Wayne Miyata worked, was just down the alley. Tips on the sometimes bewildering craft of surfboard building were freely dispensed if one was curious enough. Not everyone in Hermosa surfed, or even embraced the beach lifestyle, but those of us who did followed in the footsteps of a great legacy.

The Cypress district remains a center for surfboard makers, including Spyder Surf’s  Dennis Jarvis, ET Surf’s Pat “Gumby” Ryan, and Jose Barahona.

My first new surfboard was a clear 7-foot-4 Barry Kaniaapuni pintail bought in 1967 from the Rick shop on Pacific Coast Highway for $160. I surfed that board at Lunada Bay a few years later, hanging far inside with my dad, and childhood friend Gary Prejeant on his 16-inch-wide Reno Abellira-inspired, red pintail during one of the fabled winter of 1969 swells. Though Gary and I were able to make our way back to shore, several surfers – too scared to paddle in – were shepherded outside by dad and a couple of other older surfers, and picked up by the Baywatch lifeguard rescue boat to be unceremoniously shuttled back to their parked cars in Palos Verdes in a lifeguard truck.

While attending Pier Avenue Junior High and then Mira Costa High, we followed well-known surfing lifeguards, including John Goodwin, Henry Ford, Mike Stevenson, and Alf Laws. International surfers like 1966 World Surfing Champion Nat Young and the “fastest surfer in the world,” Terry Fitzgerald, made the odd Hermosa appearance. Local luminaries Dru Harrison, Tiger Makin, Mark Kerwin, Mike Purpus, Michael DeNoune, and the Slickenmeyer brothers were only a few years older than me and my friends. 

Still, we were validated by the surfing of our small peer group of 16th to 21st Street surfers. The McMillen and Guild brothers, Brad Logan and his brothers Bruce and Brian, Greg Armer, Tom Witt, Mark Levy, Mike McDowell, and Leroy Grannis’s son John, were in our group. Just south of us, at 8th Street, were Bobby Warcola and Mark Johnson riding their distinctive Redman boards. At 2nd Street was Greg Page’s and his brother Ty’s home, where we’d park our bikes to surf Redondo Breakwall. Though contest surfing was popular, our little group never gravitated toward it. An exception was Chris McMillen, who won the 1969 WindanSea Surf Club Menehune Contest for surfers under 12, in La Jolla, beating 11-year-old Hawaiian and future triple crown winner Michael Ho, Hermosa’s Mark Levy, and Whitney (John) Guild. McMillen went on to amass a great contest record.

After making skimboards out of jig-sawed plywood circles brushed with resin in elementary school, we advanced to stripping fiberglass off longboards to reshape them into short boards with Gordon “Ching” Kinney, the hanai son of Hanalei’s Ching Young family on Kauai. We met Gordon on a 7th grade surf trip to K181 in Baja, marveling at this kid our age standing up on a red, 4-foot-10 kneeboard. 

In the backyard of his grandmother’s 25th Street Hermosa Beach Strand home, we’d cut the rails from cast-off longboards (plentiful at the time as shortboards came into vogue), strip the bottom and deck of their fiberglass, and reshape the foam with a handsaw, a surform, and sandpaper. After cutting fresh fiberglass cloth with dull scissors requisitioned from mom, we’d wrap the boards and saturate them with resin. Copious amounts always ended up on Gordon’s granny’s patio bricks.  

Within another year or so, I was shaping and glassing boards for myself and friends in mom’s garage on Monterey Boulevard. Surfboard design was changing fast, and the entrenched and well-known manufacturers were slow to adapt. Garage shapers filled  the vacuum. Professionally run glass shops sprung up to glass the boards. Experimentation and lack of quality control led to many misses, but there could be a few jewels. Even so, a garage shaper’s best boards were only derivatives of those made by the premier shapers of Hawaii, California, and Australia.

Baja by land

Our surf travels started with trips to Baja. In the Pier Avenue Junior High library, I found Earl Stanley Gardner’s accounts of early Baja trips, “Off the Beaten Path in Baja,” and “The Hidden Heart of Baja.” I devoured the text and pictures. My brother and I’d already been down to Baja with dad in the back of the family’s ‘56 Chevy Bel Air station wagon to spots north of Ensenada. Camping trips further south came later with my friends’ fathers, Karl McMillen and Bob Steele, both early off-road vehicle desert camping rats. Eventually, we began planning our own trips. An early trip as a 17-year-old was in a 1963, four wheel-drive GMC Power Wagon I purchased from a friend’s father in Big Sur. My 18-year-old “guardian” Brad Logan and I crossed the border with a notarized note from my mother.  

We became familiar with almost every surf break from the Sunset Cliffs in San Diego to Jalama, just north of Santa Barbara. We had a good run surfing Point Mugu’s Naval base until a bumper sticker granting access to the strictly forbidden area was unceremoniously removed from our family wagon’s bumper. My brother and I and a couple of friends, in a lapse of judgment, took some surf photos of the top-secret, testing facility. Bye bye film, bye bye sticker.

Long, sweeping lines of the largest south swell I’d ever seen showed up one afternoon in Manhattan Beach in September, 1975, forerunners of the “Monster from New Zealand” swell. Wave events like these only happen once a decade, more or less. I left for Baja the next morning, and surfed alone near Rosarita Beach, at Calafia (named after the queen in a 16th century novel about the mythical Island of California). I rode a 9-foot, yellow Dick Brewer surfboard made for Jeff Hakman. Hakman was born in Palos Verdes and won the first Pipeline Masters in 1971, at age 15. His surfboard was gifted to me by Hermosa Strand resident and American Airlines pilot Don Anderson after his son died in an aircraft accident while spotting swordfish for his father. I rode  the Brewer for a couple of decades on memorable swells. It’s now proudly displayed in Hakman’s son Ryan’s Hanalei shop, along with several of his father’s trophies.

In 1979 friend Greg Armer wrote a letter to the Los Angeles Times opposing an LNG terminal on the Bixby Ranch, home to several treasured, but tightly guarded surf breaks north of Santa Barbara. The wife of the Bixby Ranch president saw the letter and, in appreciation, sent Greg a semi-annual, three-day pass. Over the next 30 years, until the ranch was sold in 2017 to the Nature Conservancy, Greg invited friends for memorable weekends in a rustic mouse-infested beach shack fronting the great wave at Cojo. 

In 1976, Tom Witt and I drove to Puerto Escondido in Oaxaca, Mexico in a 1964 Ford Fairlane with the rear seat removed (for which we paid $125 before selling the air conditioner for $50).

While camping outside of town, behind the dunes, we met a great group of early Zicatela aficionados from Newport Beach. At the time there wasn’t a single bit of development on the ocean side of the highway fronting what has become the popular, highly developed spot known as the “Mexican Pipeline.” 

Our plan to head through Guatemala was halted by the earthquake that year, so we decided to drive to Chetumal, on the Caribbean side of Mexico, where we’d heard you could get a good price for a car like ours. On the way, we impulsively gave the Fairlane away to a hitherto car-less town on a lightly manic and memorable windowpane LSD-fueled run to Oaxaca City. Tom and I may have started with a plan, but were soon making it up as we went. 

Baja by air

Later, we began surfing Baja by plane with Peter “Captain Hammerlander” Stabler. We studied surface analysis charts collected from airport meteorological offices to time  hurricane swell arrivals with pinpoint precision, giving us a huge advantage over other surfers. Before the internet and surf-forecasting, most surfers took what they could get from their daily surf checks. 

Tiny dirt landingstrips identified from maps and by exploratory fly-overs allowed us access to the waves at Puntas Abreojos, Punta San Carlos, and Punta Pequena. Our favorite wave “discovery,” at Isla Natividad, resulted from studying an aerial photo in the coffee-table book “Baja Sea Guide.” Our understanding of the prevailing swell, winds, and coastline orientations helped us recognize that the sandy, point-like beach break on the east-facing side of the island would pick up south swells, and have offshore winds all day, rather than the onshore, northwesterlies common to west facing beaches. 

 We were greeted warmly by the pescadores in the many fishing camps spread along Baja’s coastline, buying langosta from them and sharing alcohol under the stars. It was a simpler time. I was always surprised and a bit amazed by the kind and gracious welcome they gave three or four longhaired surfers appearing from out of the sky in what were essentially costly toys when we set up camp on these remote, rough and typically short, surfside landing strips.

One memorable time we flew to meet a large northwest swell at Punta San Carlos. On the last day, we surfed until late afternoon, touched down at the Tijuana airport, and hopped over to Brown’s Field in the U.S. as the sun set — cutoff time for clearing customs and immigration. We then flew to Torrance airport, picked up our girlfriends and flew to Santa Barbara. Our surfing companion Mike Costello’s wife was waiting with a car to drive us to see Bob Marley and The Wailers at Santa Barbara’s County Bowl. Marley’s music still rang in our ears under the starlit night as we returned to Torrance airport with a significant tailwind. 

After high school, my “garage-shaping” surfboards led to building beautifully recreated 1830s Herreschoff sealing skiffs off Gaffey Street in San Pedro for family friend Will Beaumont. Later, I worked with my friend Tom Witt for his father’s roofing company and helped Bruce Hatcher, a Hare Krishna devotee who’d started the Sunshine Inn, a small juice bar on 2nd Street. I made 2 a.m. shopping runs to downtown LA’s fruit and vegetable market and kept the books. After a couple of years, we decided to close up shop. Typically of the times, we never considered selling the business. 

In 1978 Bruce moved back to his ashram, and I went on a sixth-month surf trip around the Pacific – from Hawaii, to Tahiti, to New Zealand, then Indonesia. By 1981, I’d received an airframe and powerplant mechanics certification and was studying for an aircraft engineering degree at Northrop University to help flesh out an admittedly light pilot resume. I was hoping for a career in aircraft design or as an airline pilot, but pilots were returning from Vietnam to civilian life en masse and piloting jobs were a challenge to find. Though plenty of work could be found designing missiles, I didn’t feel inclined to follow that path.  

Life was full of activity and options, albeit with a noticeable lack of commitment when I made a life-changing, 10-day trip to Scorpion Bay.

Secret spots

Tom Witt and Mike Fair were my Baja driving and travel partners when we posted up at Punta Pequena, aka “Scorpion Bay” for a week-long, smallish but fun New Zealand swell. There were only two other camping groups, both couples — intrepid surf traveler Kevin Naughton and his wife Jocelyn, at one campsite, and Dave Clark and his wife, Jean, at the other. Kevin, a writer, shared hilarious stories from his worldwide surf travels with photographer Craig Peterson. Dave and Jean were more reserved. Dave dialed into the fishing and exhibited a beautiful goofy-foot surfing style at the right-hand Mexican point-break.

Several years passed. It was the early ‘80s, and we’d discovered the great surf spot at Isla Natividad. During hurricane swells, we’d camp on the short airstrip fronting the break and set up tents next to the various aircraft we flew. Isla Natividad was our well-guarded secret. 

On the day following the trip, I drove to Clark Foam in Laguna Niguel for surfboard blanks. Afterwards, I decided to surf the Scorpion Bay swell, which had moved up the coast to the nearby Trestles surf spot. In the water, I immediately recognized the guy we’d met at Scorpion Bay several years previously. I sat just inside of him. He was the furthest surfer out to sea, and never glanced back at the small crowd behind. From my position, taking off in front of him on the next set was easy. As we rode the wave together, I reminded him of our Scorpion Bay camping trip. After another wave or two, we ended up on the beach, and shared a joint in the bushes.

I was cagey about where I’d gotten my sunburn. He was equally cagey about a spot he’d surfed in the South Pacific that spring. Then and there, we exchanged “a spot for a spot.” It wasn’t long before we visited each other’s homes for slideshows of our secret surf locations, and soon after, I invited him on one of our Isla Natividad trips. 

Dave disclosed he’d heard about Tavarua Island in Fiji a few years earlier from John Ritter, a yachtsman he’d met while teaching in American Samoa. Dave then asked his cousin Norm Clark and girlfriend Tracy Meyer to stop in Fiji to take a look while on their way to Australia. They reported it looked like a perfect setup. Dave subsequently made the trip he’d talked about on the beach at Trestles, and devised the idea for us to make a longer, Zodiac-assisted trip the following year.

“Magic Island”

The next year, I joined Dave and Jean, his brother Steve Clark and wife Audrey, and phenomenally great camping companion Jim. All of us chipped in to ship a Zodiac to Fiji. Once there, we bought an outboard engine and assorted marine supplies. We camped on the island that year for several months with a $2 per person per night charge levied by the Nabila villagers. We visited Seashell Cove Resort on the neighboring island every week or two on shopping runs. The Australian owners Virginia and Lewis Smith were especially accommodating, as was their Fijian staff. 

The Zodiac made us self-sufficient on the dreamlike island. We rode the wave at Restaurants, calling it “The Left” at the time, and surfed our first days at Cloudbreak, Wilkes, and Namotu reefs. The experience was sensory overload that permeated every aspect of our being. We were surrounded by aquamarines and blues, and about as disconnected from the modern world as possible. 

To either side, no matter where we stood, gently curving coconut trees capped in green overhung the sloping, white sand beach. In places, limestone outcroppings emerged, wet and glistening from lapping waves inside the lagoon. The horizon stretched in all directions. 

Rachel Carson wrote of tidal flats, in “Edge of the Sea,”  “It sends us back to the edge of the sea, where the drama of life played its first scene on earth and perhaps even its prelude: where the forces of evolution are at work today…where the spectacle of living creatures faced by the cosmic realities of the world is crystal clear.” That sentiment certainly applied to us.

During low tides, the island grew to three times or more in circumference. The sound of wind-whispering palms was gradually, then wholly replaced by light sucking and clicking sounds as the surrounding reef greeted air and sky. The slightly salty smell of kelp and marine decay hung in the air. Further out, the  reef melody gave way to the exploding of whitewater upon coral. 

During full and new moons, tide swings were at their greatest and the reef was completely exposed — dry and explorable by foot. We surfed the reef’s outermost edge, where open ocean waves broke. 

The magic extended from day into night. Full moons, in particular, carried an invitation to walk onto this low-tide wonderland following bright, illuminated paths of moonlight.