HUNTINGTON BEACH : Surfing Legend’s Designs on Exhibit

They called him the Phantom Surfer, the Mad Scientist or simply the Legend.

Bob Simmons was a surfboard shaper extraordinaire. He used balsa wood, foam and fiberglass to make lighter boards, helping bring the demise of the heavy planks of the 1930s and ‘40s, said Ann Beasley, director of the International Surfing Museum.

Nine boards designed by Simmons, who died surfing in 1954, are on exhibit at the Huntington Beach museum.

“It’s the biggest Simmons exhibit ever put together under one roof,” Beasley said. “The boards tell the story of how he progressed.

“He was the first shaper who had a college degree and it was in the aerodynamics field. He used the same theory for the air and applied it to water.”

Simmons was known as a pioneer in the 1940s and early ‘50s. He shaped fins, called “skegs,” from the same piece of board, creating what is known as the concave twin fin surfboard.

Beasley said he always went to the beach with different surfboards. “When Simmons came, everybody swarmed around him to see what he’d done,” she said.

The Simmons-styled boards have either been donated to the museum or are on loan, Beasley said. His work will be exhibited through December.

The museum’s next exhibit, “Women in Surfing,” is scheduled to open in mid-October, and will feature women from the early 1960s who were in the forefront of the sport.

The exhibit will pay tribute to such notables as Linda Benson, who won 21 first place awards and numerous tandem contests; Marge and Candy Calhoun, a mother and daughter surfing team, and Joyce Hoffman, the first woman to be inducted into the Surfing Walk of Fame, at Main Street and Pacific Coast Highway. In 1966, at age 19, Hoffman was voted best female surfer in the world.

Others will include Rell Sunn, a surfer from Hawaii, and Jericho Poppler, an avid surfer involved in surfing organizations, including the local Surfrider Foundation.

The museum is at 411 Olive St. Hours are noon to 5 p.m. daily. Beginning Oct. 1, the museum is closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Admission is $2 for adults, and $1 for students. For more information, call (714) 960-3483.