Today, I thought it would be fun to revisit the topic of surf wax. I did this some years ago, probably before most of you were reading me, and perhaps even before some of you were born. I get asked about it a lot, so I figure it’s time to take another look at the sticky stuff.
A seemingly lost and little-known surf trivia bit is that wax was first applied to a surfboard back in 1935 by a Californian named Alfred Gallant Jr. From what I have read, he got the idea from floor wax in his home in Los Angeles. Not sure I really understand how that worked; floor wax tends to be slippery, right? But, that’s what surf history tells me.
My own journey with surf wax began back in the mid-1950s with my first board, a big balsawood job. The wax we used back then was the paraffin wax that moms would buy at the supermarket to seal jams and jellies in jars. It came in a box of four bars. You would break them in half and have eight square bars of wax, pretty much the same size, or a tad bigger, as today’s much more sophisticated surf wax bars.
This wax was harder to rub on and didn’t last as long as what we have today. But, for then, that was the stuff. Some people would melt it and spread it on that way. I tried that one time and almost burned my parents’ house down. I put it in a pan on the stove and waited for it to melt. Unfortunately, it caught on fire and caught the wall behind the stove on fire in the process. I don’t remember how I got the fire out, but it left huge burn marks up the wall and on the ceiling. My parents were not thrilled about this.
In the mid-1960s, Mike Doyle, along with Garth Murphy and Rusty Miller, opened a company down in Encinitas called “Surf Research.” They produced and put out the first formulated “surf wax.” It was purple and had a nice scent to it. It worked better and stayed on longer. They also produced a line of cool-looking purple surf trunks to go along with the wax. They were very lightweight but totally see-through. But it was the mid-60s; a lot of people liked that kind of thing.
Then there came “sex wax.” This is actually surf wax that was put out by a dude named Fredrick Herzog III and a chemist named Nate Skinner starting in 1972. Herzog went by the name “Zog.” Hence Mr. Zog’s Sex Wax. He was looking for a “sexy” name for his wax, and somehow figured just using the term “sex” would be clever and get his product attention. It worked.
Today, surf wax comes in all kinds of formulas, temperature being the foremost factor. There is a wax for just about every water temperature from “cold” to “tropical.” They also come in different scents. Coconut, mango, coffee, orange, lemon, etc., etc. There is even a “patchouli” scented one for old hippies that still surf.
There was a dude who used to come surf at the spot where I hung out in Mexico who went by the name “Huntington Bob.” Yep, he was from Huntington Beach. Huntington Bob was a cool guy and good surfer, and he loved patchouli oil. We all figured he bathed in the stuff. Everybody always knew when he was about to paddle out to surf, you could smell him coming down the beach from all the way outside of the surf. Word had it that he was sponsored by the patchouli oil wax maker.
Surf wax has come a long way since the early days of mom’s paraffin bars. One last little tidbit for ya: Never leave your wax laying on the dashboard of your car when you go surfing.
Ask the expert
Q: In many sports, the size of the person has a lot to do with how successful they might be. Mostly bigger is better, especially with basketball and football. In your opinion, does the size of a person have any effect on how they might do in surfing competitions?
– Bruce Ziegler, Carlsbad
A: Wow, finally, a question that I haven’t answered before. And a good one at that. I have always felt that smaller people had an advantage in surfing contests. Especially small, thin and light people. My reasoning is that the waves are bigger looking on them, and they are able to extract more power and speed because, for them, the waves actually are bigger in proportion to their bodies. Probably the only time this would be a disadvantage would be in very giant surf, where the wipe out and hold down would probably be more severe the smaller you are. But that’s not part of the competition part, which is what you asked about.
My opinion on this is not based on any real factual information, it is just the way I have always felt about that particular aspect of it. Being smaller makes the waves bigger, and we seem to be always looking for bigger. Bigger waves tend to offer higher scores. An eight-foot wave looks bigger with a five-foot person on it than with a six-foot person on it.
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