The strength was amazing, and by 1976, he founded Pipe Lines and introduced urethane leashes to the market. John Malloy, an American living in Western Australia, had seen a washing machine repairman use urethane to replace fan belts, so Malloy hooked one end to a post, the other end to a tractor, and started driving. Then in 1976, leash technology took a great leap forward.
That’s exactly how Jack O’Neill lost his eye. He soon figured out (the hard way, no doubt) that tail-to-ankle was a better configuration, and by late 1971 that design, known as a board saver, was sold in California stores.Īll those early models, some of which used marine surplus bungee cord, shared one big design fault: the stretch and recoil of the cord. In 1970, Pat fastened a length of surgical tubing to the nose of his board with a suction cup and looped the other end to his wrist.
The invention of the modern surf leash, though, is often attributed to Pat O’Neill, son of wetsuit guru Jack O’Neill. Then in the early 1960s, French surfer George Hennebutte used an elastic line and a double-velcro ankle strap. In the 1930s, Tom Blake attached a 10-foot length of rope to his board from a belt on his waist - before the balsa wood log almost tore his pelvis off. MR and McCabe were early adopters, but even by then leashes had been around a while. Today, almost every surfer in the world wears one every session. It was a total game-changer.”įor most surfers, it’s impossible to imagine a world without the leash (with or without MR attached to it). “I got one for my trip to Bali not long after, and the first time I ever used one was at Kuta Reef in 1975. “It was the first time I’d ever seen a leash,” McCabe added. I couldn’t understand how he was still attached to the other end of it.” I jumped on and started paddling until I heard MR yelling at me to get off his board. I came up and couldn’t believe my board was right next to me. I tried to duck-dive it, but lost my board immediately. “It was huge and just MR and I were out, and we were caught by a big clean-up set. We both relished the thought of ocean temperatures in the 80s five months of the year.“I remember surfing at home at Dixon Park, Newcastle,” legendary surfer/shaper Peter McCabe told Surfline. My wife loved the thought of having my dad and stepmother nearby up the coast in Pawleys Island, and in earlier visits to Wilmington, Charleston, and Savannah had found herself fascinated by the moss-draped stretch of broad rivers, dense forest, and endlessly shifting coastline known as the Lowcountry. I spent a good portion of my early life 70 miles up the coast in a little town called Surfside Beach, and had surfed some bone-crushing beachbreak waves at Charleston’s Sullivans Island and Folly Beach, so the idea held at least some allure. Despite 10 years out West, it would be a homecoming for me. The Charleston offer came in, and I took it. I can’t say that I relished the thought of raising a daughter in a town where the ultimate goal for teenage girls is landing a role as an utterly vapid reality television star. In fact, becoming parents had also given us a different take on the culture of Laguna Beach. The openings at The Surf Gallery, the downtown surf movies and strolls to Ocean Avenue Brewery, La Sirena, or 242 Sushi, the sunsets over Heisler Park, the glass-off sessions at Rockpiles, and the regular escapes to Huntington Pier, Trestles, and San Onofre-all these things paled in comparison to our desire to live in a place where we could afford to raise our daughter with a stay-at-home mother. With Lucy’s appearance, the trappings and expenses of a Laguna Beach lifestyle suddenly became a lot less important. A full-time job offer had come in as a local newspaper reporter, and the reality was that, despite my wife’s happy job as a schoolteacher and the demands of my own unpredictable but fascinating work, our priorities had been permanently altered. In the six weeks leading up to that moment, not much thought had gone into the fact that my wife and I would soon be loading our three-year-old dog and five-month-old baby onto an airplane and starting new lives in the ancient South Carolina port city of Charleston. It was a rainy day in mid-October 2005-a horrible day for a garage sale-and a truck had just rolled down Aster Street in north Laguna Beach, carrying all of my family’s worldly goods as I looked over what remained in the front yard of our 1930s cottage: a few unscavenged books and tchotchkes, a horribly dinged longboard, the rust-encrusted beach cruiser that SURFER mag employees received as a Christmas bonus back in 1996.Īll that and a small crew of teary-eyed friends and my wife’s heartbroken mother meant that we were leaving. East Coast surfing is small, inconsistent, and maddening, right? Not so, says one recently returned native sonĪ massive garage sale closed the 10-year West Coast chapter of my life.
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