As summer fades into fall here in the beautiful O.C., the water temps are dropping along with the air temps.
The fact is, the water is very rarely all that warm here anyway. It will, on occasion, get into the low 70s. That’s pretty nice, yet not exactly “tropical.” During those periods, many surfers with go out without a wetsuit. But, for the most part, wetsuits are part of the daily gear needed to surf in our local waters.
And, as the temps drop, the lighter suits with short legs and arms give way to full suits with long legs and arms. The cool thing is the technology has gotten so good that even the heaviest of wetsuits have become way lighter and more flexible. It’s amazing.
It wasn’t always that way.
When I first started surfing back in the mid 1950s, we didn’t have surfing wetsuits available. But there were wetsuits made predominately for diving. I had been surfing for maybe a year or so when I got my first one.
A few of us in Surfside heard that there was a dive shop up on Signal Hill in Long Beach that made custom wetsuits for diving. The idea was that these would also work for surfing.
So, we went up there and ordered custom suits. They were very thick, a quarter-inch, if I remember correctly. They had long arms, but no legs. Instead they had what was called a “beaver tail.” A flap that wrapped under you from the back and snapped in the front. Super uncomfortable, so nobody ever fastened them, just let the beaver tail hang down in the back.
This was before the pieces were sewn together, instead they were glued up with a rubber glue. The problem with that, was they came unglued all the time so you had to have a bottle of the glue around. And another issue was to get one on you had to use tons of talcum powder in the arms. They had a zipper in the front but getting your arms in was impossible without the powder.
Getting them off? That was a whole other movie in itself. I can remember being so cold after getting out of the water and not being able to get my suit off without help.
One time I came home from school and the surf was really good, but it was also really cold. My wetsuit had a tear in the back and I had to fix it before going out. But I didn’t want to wait for the glue to dry, so I took a stapler and just stapled it back together. Seemed like a logical thing to do.
But when I paddled out, I realized that I had put the staples in from the outside and I was getting cut from them. Duh!!! I was probably about 10 at the time, so my engineering skills had yet to develop.
It was great when companies such as O’Neill and Dive N’ Surf came out with actual surfing wetsuits. And through the years, they have continued to get better and better.
Over the past 20 years, I have been spending all my surfing time in the tropics and have been lucky to not have to wear a wetsuit. But not too long ago, I was in Huntington Surf & Sport and saw some of the new super-stretchy, lightweight full suits. I thought it would be interesting to try one on, just to see what it felt like.
I guess I got confused on how to get into it. Somehow I got it almost on and got myself stuck in it. My arms wouldn’t go in or out. Think Chinese finger puzzle, the more I tried the more stuck I got.
Somehow I fell over and was on the ground, sweating like a surf hog and starting to panic. I had to call for help. They sent a little kid under the dressing room door to open it so I could get help. People had gathered and it was about as embarrassing as it could it.
“It’s Corky Carroll, it looks like he has had a heart attack, call 911.” I still get razed about that.
Just be thankful that you live now with the modern tech and have all this great equipment. It was the infamous Mickey “the Mongoose” Munoz who uttered the famous quote, “It’s better to be warm than cold.” The dude was absolutely correct.
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