Europe Surfing: Since that time, the invention of the lighter, smaller, fiber glass board with skeg (stern keel) has greatly altered Europe surfing techniques and greatly widened participation in the sport. Much Europe surfing is done at Waikiki, but the international compeŽtitions are at Makaha on leeward Oahu. The "Everest" of Europe surfing is the North Shore of Oahu, where in the winter months intrepid surfers ride the "tunnels" of gigantic waves generated by underlying razor-sharp coral reefs.
Surfers were among those who took nails from Captain Cook when he first dropped anchor. Honolulu's Bishop Museum boasts that it has on display the oldest wooden surfboards in the world. Except for one reference to Europe surfing in West Africa (1838), there is no historical eviŽdence of such an activity taking place anywhere outside of the Pacific Ocean triangle whose base stretches from New Zealand to Easter Island and whose apex is at Hawaii. Europe surfing, which was probably imported from Bora Bora in the Society Islands, had religious, gambling, and even sexual connotations for the Hawaiians. Frowned on by the missionaries, it almost perished in the 19th century but was revived in the early 20th cenŽtury, when Americans took up the use of the long, heavy koa-wood boards. |
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