Duke Kahanamoku

It came back because of one incredible man.

His name was Duke Kahanamoku.

He was born in Honolulu in 1890, right when surfing was at its lowest point.

But Duke was practically part fish.

The first answer is, the Hawaiian word for surfing is he'e nalu.

For question two, the massive royal surfboards were called olo boards.

Number three, the answer is, the father of modern surfing is Duke Kahanamoku.

Question four.

No, I think in the generation, your generation, the momentum generation, and you guys, all of your sort of evolution in your professional careers, surfing was...

I mean, I wasn't around for Duke Kahanamoku's days, but in my lifetime, I'd never seen surfing kind of have such a wide reach.

Right.

And I think too, with that discipline and being so focused that companies could trust that.

He has a shop called Water Bros in Rhode Island.

And he goes, Yeah, when I was a kid, I walked in the frickin Sears and Roebuck and there's a Duke Kahanamoku pop out board.

And I'm like, what? Yeah.

Like surfing was that big.

He's had a strong influence and is revered within the, within the islands.

Uh, Duke Kahanamoku, uh, really was accredited with bringing, uh, surfing to the world, and obviously came from, from Hawaii as well.

But talking about Polynesian navigation, someone who I have the utmost respect for and, um, and definitely is someone who inspires me is a gentleman called Nainoa Thompson.

And Nainoa Thompson is famed for having actually sailed across the Pacific in a canoe called the Hokule'a, and this took place back in, uh, 1980.

And, So I told her I'm going to do it and she supported me.

And then I think the most, the moral dilemma I faced was, you know, I got this scholarship to go to school and the Outrigger Duke Kahanamoku Foundation was supporting me to,

you

know, further my education.

And then she suddenly was propelled into local celebrity in the summer of 1914-15.

So she's, you know, she's about 15 years old at this time, just a sort of local teenage girl enjoying the beaches, when her life intersects with that of Duke Kahanamoku, who was a champion swimmer and surfer from Hawaii who'd become quite famous a few years earlier when he won medals, um, and broke world records at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics And so in the wake of that he was brought out to Australia for a bit of a kind of demonstration swimming tour but he was also keen to promote surfing in Australia So she kind of intersected with him on the beach in Freshwater, which is where she lived, uh, just near Manly and then in February 1915 the Duke was going to give a surfing demonstration on Dee Why Beach and this was a really well-publicized event.

There was lots of press there, um, huge crowds and to kind of, you know, make the event a bit more sensational he got Isabelle to come along and join him on the surfboard.

So they did some tandem surfing together and then she developed a passion for surfing from this encounter and so this photo would've been taken shortly after that encounter with the Duke.