Earlier this summer I visited the master shaper and living surf legend at his shaping bay in San Diego. His quiver really is amazing. This is about half of his personal handcrafted fishes and longboards — he has another room this size filled up as well. Skip cherishes his boards, keeping them all very clean and organized. When I was with Skip in the Outer Hebrides a few years ago, I watched him clean all the wax off of his board after a surf, then polish it with at towel. He said he does this to all his boards, after every session.

Skip is such an inspiring guy, I don’t know anyone more humble. The following quote from a recent interview with Skip from the website Liquid Salt caught my eye. It’s such a contrast to the us Open which is underway this week in Huntington Beach. It reminded me why I was originally drawn to surfing other than to, let’s say, the nfl or nascar

“It’s get­ting more and more crowded out there every­day as the sport grows by leaps and bounds. We have to learn about the aloha spirit. One thing that goes against that is com­pet­i­tive surf­ing. It’s in the media fore­front so to a lot of peo­ple that are in the water — they act like it’s a heat.

I used to com­pete and in fact I have ben­e­fited from com­pet­ing in two dif­fer­ent eras. But I am not so much into that any­more. I don’t really attend any of the com­pet­i­tive for­mat things just because I just don’t like that aspect of surf­ing. I just like it when you go out with your friends and have fun and every­body is num­ber one. In the com­pet­i­tive for­mat, there’s only one per­son that really feels good about it.”

This is the link to the rest of the interview, which was posted a few days ago: Liquid Salt