Hitting the Point before The Wedge

ROBERT GARDNER

There were big waves a few days ago. There was once a time when any

kind of surf would have found me at the beach -- even if I was

working. I would be hearing a case, and my clerk would come up to me

with a puzzled expression on his face.

“There’s someone named Skunky calling,” my clerk would say. “He

said something about a red flag?”

I would nod, trying to maintain my best judicial demeanor, then I

would rush through the case just as fast as I could get the attorneys

to talk, whip out of my robes and head for the beach. Skunky was one

of the kids I knew at Little Corona, and he was telling me that the

guard had put up the red flag, meaning the waves were big.

The days of me rushing anywhere are past, and I have even had to

give up the beach. The 92 stairs leading down to and, more

importantly, up from Little Corona are more than I can navigate

today. However, I did drive along Ocean Boulevard looking at the

waves, and when we got to Lookout Point, I could see what appeared to

be hundreds of people watching the great bodysurfers over at The

Wedge.

The Wedge was originally called the Point. The name Wedge came

into existence after World War II. It was not always a surfing spot.

Far from it. For years there was a rock groin stretching east or

toward Balboa from the jetty. This was right at the water’s edge, and

the surf broke directly onto the rocks. No one was crazy enough to

surf the Point, not even Tagg Atwood.

In those days, the Balboa pier was one of the premier bodysurfing

spots on the coast. Board surfing hadn’t come into popularity yet.

Then, in 1935-36, the city dredged all the mud flats and sand islands

out of the bay and dumped a few million yards of sand along the

beaches on the Balboa peninsula. This extended the beaches a couple

of hundred yards out into the ocean. In so doing it destroyed the

surf at the Balboa pier, turning it into a nasty shorebreak. At the

same time, it covered the rock groin at the Point and extended the

shoreline to its present position. As you walk out to the Wedge

today, look to your right and you will see the tops of some of the

rocks from that old groin sticking out of the sand in front of the

oceanfront houses.

And so it happened that one day in 1936, Tagg Atwood, who was

always a little crazy, looked out at what had been the Balboa Pier

surf and decided he was going to find another spot. A little while

later he returned and said, “Let’s surf the Point,” and so it was

that Tagg, Spenny Richardson and I became just about the first people

to surf the area.

As I say, Tagg was always a little crazy, and Spenny and I were

just dumb enough to go along with his crazy idea. It must be

remembered that this was before Owen Churchill had returned from

Tahiti and developed the swim fin. Without swim fins the art of body

surfing consisted of going over the falls, a free fall straight down,

then wallowing in the trough, getting pummeled by each ensuing wave

until that set of waves was over.

All I can remember about those days was the sheer terror I

experienced in taking off on a big wave and knowing that if I

survived the fall I would probably drown in the trough. It was

probably because of that terror that I became disenchanted with

bodysurfing and went into board surfing and skin diving. I didn’t

really get back into bodysurfing until I got my first pair of

Duckfeet fins, and it was a long while after that before I got up the

nerve to go back to The Wedge.

Looking back over the 30 years I surfed the place and 30 more

years of watching others surf there, I’m more convinced than ever

that Tagg Atwood was crazy to surf the spot, and Spenny and I not too

bright to join him.

* ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and a former judge.

His column runs Tuesdays.