Manhattan Beach’s Bob Hogan was waterman’s waterman
Bob Hogan founded the Catalina Classic Paddleboard Race in 1955.
In 1955, Los Angeles County Lifeguard Bob Hogan founded the Catalina Classic Paddleboard Race. The paddlers, all on 13-foot stock boards, started at Two Harbors on Catalina Island and finished 32 miles later at the Manhattan Beach pier. Big wave rider Rick Grigg won the race in 8 hours, 27 minutes. Other, top finishers that year included the now legendary Greg Noll, George Downing and Tom Zahn.
Founder Hogan failed to finish.
As his wife Carol recalled, “It was foggy and our escort boat skipper didn’t know how to use his fancy navigation system. After a long time, Bob said he thought we’d gone too far. So he paddled ashore and asked a surf fisherman the name of the beach. He said Playa del Rey and asked Bob where he had come from. Bob told him Catalina. The fisherman didn’t believe him.”
Bob Hogan at the Manhattan Beach pier in early 1950s.
“I was eight months pregnant with our first child and wanted to go ashore when we reached the Manhattan Beach pier. There was a rope ladder I could have climbed up, but Dwight Crum, the lifeguard captain, said he wasn’t going to let a pregnant woman climb up a rope to his pier. So I had to take the boat back to San Pedro while Bob paddled ashore to join the race celebration,” Carol said.
In recognition of founding the race, the Manhattan Chamber presented Hogan with the Rose and Scroll Award, the city’s highest honor.
Barney Briggs and Bob Hogan at Haggerty’s. Photo by Bev Morgan
Hogan is one of the South Bay’s lesser known pioneer watermen. But he is revered by those who know the impact he had, not just by founding the Catalina Classic, which kept paddleboard racing alive, but in establishing the South Bay waterman tradition.
Hogan passed away over the Thanksgiving weekend, at age 83, while he and Carol were visiting their son and daughter in San Juan Capistrano.
“Bob had dementia and was legally blind from glaucoma. He had just finished brushing his teeth and went out on the landing to turn off the hall light. While he was fumbling to find the switch he fell down the stairs and hit his head, breaking the C1 vertebra, at the base of the neck,” Carol said.
“It’s amazing he wasn’t paralyzed. He said he just had a headache and wanted to go to bed.” The family called 911 and two days later doctors at Mission Hospital performed a seven hour operation to fuse the upper part of the spine. In the days following the surgery, Hogan grew stronger. He was able to sit up and tell Carol he loved her. But then his respiratory system failed.
Bob Hogan and Body Glove founder Bob Meistrell at Hogan’s induction into the Hermosa Surfer Walk of Fame in 2009. Photo
Hogan was born in Georgia. His family moved to California when he was six and settled in Hermosa Beach.
“Bob didn’t like school, but he loved to surf. That was his life. He was a member of the Manhattan Beach Surf Club with Dale Velzy, Bing Copeland, Greg Noll, Tom Rice, Barney Briggs and Jack Wise,” Carol said.
After graduating from Redondo High School in 1949, Hogan joined the Navy and was stationed at Port Hueneme.
“He was a very good marksman and trained sailors on the rifle range before they were sent to Korea. Because the base was close, he returned to Hermosa on weekends to work as a recurrent (part time) lifeguard.
Carol was engaged to another man when she met Bob at a party in 1954.
“That night he taught me to drink Red Mountain wine from the bottle and I got sick in his car when he drove me home. I thought I’d never hear from him again, but he called me the next week and we eloped to Las Vegas six months later,” Carol said.
“My grandfather had Oscars Bait and Tackle at the end of the Manhattan pier and had taught Bob to fish before I met him. But he didn’t approve of me marrying him because he didn’t approve of surfers,” Carol said.
Shortly after marrying, the couple bought a house in Manhattan Beach and Bob began building a 33-foot, double-ended, wooden ketch in their backyard. His only previous boat building experience was a dinghy he and surfboard shaper Hap Jacobs built when they were kids.
“He bought Chappelle’s book on wooden boat building and went through it chapter by chapter. Bob had a natural affinity for woodworking. He could build anything,” Carol said.
Carol learned to sail by crewing on friends’ boats, including Gunsmoke, owned by TV star James Arness, whose son Rolf would become a world champion surfer.
After becoming a full time lifeguard, Hogan worked a tower in El Porto and then became co-captain of Baywatch Redondo.
“There was a big guy in El Porto who delighted in swimming out in the winter when the waves were big. Then he wouldn’t be able to get back in. The third time Bob rescued him, the guy said, ‘Oh, Hogan, it’s you.’”
Though only 5-foot-8, Hogan was a barrel chested 165 pounds.
“He lifted weights all his life, even in his 80s when he had dementia. Every night, until the day we left to visit our children over Thanksgiving, he’d say, ‘I’m going out to the studio to lift weights. It used to scare the caregivers,” Carol said
Hogan’s name is engraved on the Judge Taplin Bell, seven times, a record number while he was still a competitor. The Taplin Bell race is a lifeguard relay competition that includes paddling, swimming, running and dory rowing.
Dan Hogan with grandpa Bob sailing in Kailua-Kona.
The couple finally launched their 33-foot ketch Discovery in 1965. After living on it for a year, they set sail for Mexico with son Rob who was 10 and daughter Sharri, who was 8.
“Bing Copeland and Hobie Alter gave Bob surfboards, which we tied to the lifelines on either side of the boat. I think Bob was the first person to surf Easter Island. The local kids were let out of school to watch him.”
Hogan was also the first person to surf big, winter waves at Lunada Bay in Palos Verdes, Greg Noll said at Hogan’s 2009 induction onto the Hermosa Beach Surfer’s Walk of Fame.
“Our plan was to sail around the world. We sailed down Mainland Mexico to Central America and then to the Pitcairn Island and Tahiti. But the boat was a bit small and we were running out of money, so we sailed to Hawaii,” Carol said.
Hogan was an accomplished painter and sculptor. Photo by Chris Backus
The couple arrived in Hawaii in 1968 and remained there for 35 years. Hogan opened Hogan’s Boatworks and began building a 55-foot fiberglass boat, also called Discovery. When the boat was finished, he chartered it throughout the Hawaiian Islands. He also resumed painting and sculpting and exhibited in galleries throughout Hawaii and California. Carol became a reporter for the Honolulu Advertiser and established a public relations firm that focused on ocean sports.
In 2000, the couple set sail for Washington State and landed at Blaine, where they joined the Semiahmoo Yacht Club.
“Blaine is the last town before Canada and was the only place we could find a slip,” Carol said.
The couple spent the next 10 years exploring the San Juan and the Canadian Gulf islands, until Bob’s dementia and blindness put an end to the couple’s sailing.
Bob Hogan at the 1995 Catalina Classic awards dinner with winner Kyle Daniels (center) and race directors Buddy Bohn and Weldon “Gibby” Gibson. Photo
Hogan competed in the Catalina Classic for a final time in 1995, 40 years after founding the race. Though 63 years old he finished 7th out of 15 in the stock board division and 29th out of 41 overall. His time of 7:44 was just 45 minutes slower than his second place time in the 1957 Catalina Classic.
At the 1995 awards ceremony at Seaside Lagoon, race directors and Hogan’s former fellow lifeguards Gibby Gibson and Buddy Bohn presented him with a plaque that read, “You’re the Watermen’s Waterman.”
A paddleout out in Hogan’s honor is scheduled for Saturday, January 2 at the Manhattan Beach pier. (The paddleout was previously scheduled for December 27). ER