Surfing
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Piha has very good waves for surfing. Most of the good swells come from the south-west and the best wind is easterly. the best waves are usually found at the southern end of the beach nest to camel Rock. The waves peel along a sandbar and good surfers can often get long rides all the way into the centre of the beach. When the swell is small, good surf can often be found up the "Big Beach" at North Piha. The surf is not for novices as the waves are often over 3 metres. Sometimes surfers and body-boarders can catch overhead hollow waves. They then disappear from view as they shoot the tube, and reappear in a cloud of spray to hoots and shouts of other surfers in the line-up. See you in the tube and don't drop in! |
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Piha - birthplace of modern surfing Two US lifeguards are credited with the birth of the modern surfing movement in New Zealand and there is a strong Piha connection. When Rick Stoner and Bing Copeland turned up at Piha in 1958 they created a sensation. The local girls were wowed by the Yankee accents and blond good looks while Piha Surf Club members were bowled over by the possibilities of malibu board riding. Club members remember watching the two take their boards out for the first time. Without a paddle, clubbies watched waiting for a disaster. Bing and Rick recall that the club sent out a couple of members of surf skis to keep an eye on them. Scepticism turned to excitement as they watched the two Yanks ride across the face of waves on their feet. Club members clamoured to have a go at the boards. Rick and Bing made themselves at home at the Piha Surf Club and all summer club members practised with the boards. Rick and Bing started making boards for club members and built two for the 1959 national surf life saving championships which were held in New Plymouth. Neither had made boards before, but they had visited board factories in the States. Piha club member Peter Byers helped the two, driving them all over Auckland to find the right ingredients to build the boards. The boards created a sensation at New Plymouth. Built with shaped insulated polystyrene covered with resin and chopped strand fibreglass, they were far lighter than the few earlier paddleboards being used in New Zealand. The early growth of surfing through the surf life saving movement is different from other countries which surfing spread as a kind of drop-out counter-culture. As boards got lighter, and more young people had cars, board riding was taken up by non-clubbies and a certain amount of acrimony developed between the two with their differing cultures. At Piha, Peter Byers continued to make boards after Rick and Bing went home, setting up a small surf-board factory in Beach Valley Road and he also supplied blanks to other would-be board builders. Byers is credited with the initiation of the board-building industry in New Zealand. Piha spawned another surfing legend. Peter Way is the son of Barbara and Hadyn Way. Hadyn was a huge man, a former wrestler and a legend at the Piha Surf Club for his tough-man ways. Peter was just as tall but lanky, and the epitome of the wild-man surfer. Peter was a member of the North Piha Surf Club and a successful competitor at body-shooting and surf skis. His prowess and confidence at riding big surf on boards is legendary. He won the senior men's section in the inaugural national surfing champs in 1963. He represented New Zealand at the world champs in Puerto Rico in 1968. Way also took up board building, first in his parents' backyard at Sandringham, using blanks supplied by Peter Byers. In 1967 he took over a surf shop at Albany, then the North Shore, and later New Plymouth. Many other pioneer surfers came from Piha and North Piha. Wildcoast Boardriders newsletter - Feb 08 To read more about them and look at some great photos, take a look at Luke Williamson's book Gone Surfing: The Golden Years of Surfing in New Zealand, 1950-70, Penguin Books, 2000. The book has provided source material for this page. For more about surfing at Piha, look at Sandra Coney's Piha: A History in Images, Keyhole Press, 1997. It's out-of-print but should be in libraries. |