Famous surfers used to write letters to the surf magazines. The hand-addressed envelopes arrived at the offices, sometimes weeks after being stamped and sealed, from around the world. Surf magazines were a big deal in the 1960s, '70s and '80s—before the internet, before cheap international phone rates, mostly before VCRs. You read the mags, studied them, handed them off to friends. And if you were so moved, you sent a letter to the editor. It wasn't just the hoi polloi. Famous surfers wrote in too.

Not only was Jock Sutherland among the most prolific surf mag letter-writers, he was articulate—maybe a bit too articulate, as you'll see—earnest, generous, and funny. Very much the same on the page as he is in person.

The letters here, all written to SURFER, are presented chronologically. Most have been shortened and lightly edited. [Photo: Art Brewer]


The popularizing of “soul” as related to surfing would be more aesthetically effective in its dispersion if its connotation were remembered: soul is the essence of human animation, or the inner joyous spirit that many say is invested by a Divine or Supreme Power. "Soul surfing” loses its meaning when used as a board-selling gimmick or a simple embroidery for conversation. Although surfing can be its own justification (witness George Greenough), it is potentially an excellent tool for furthering world peace. If you stuck Israel's Moshe Dayan and Egypt’s Nasser in a 10-foot Waimea shorebreak wave, together, they would come up (if they survived) really seeing eye-to-eye. Nature is a great equalizer.

As far as giving the Establishment its due, surfing magazines, manufacturers and associations all benefit surfing inasmuch as they all gather, use and spread new ideas, not only between surfers themselves, but also between us and landlubbers. When organizations try to impress more than a few basic guidelines on a mainly subjective form of expression, however, freedom and progress become stifled. In other words, anything more than a little order is unnecessary for creativity.

Surfing to me is an art, not only because it is so much more subjective than any sport I can think of, but also because of the dynamic nature of its motifs, and because it is organic and rhythmic, like music.

Finally, the entire March SURFER I consider one of best, if not the best, surfing magazines I have read to date. I really enjoyed the interviews, color pictures, ads, the informative articles, and the contest coverage. Keep up the good work!

 program and the nifty SURFER Photo Annual. They’re both image-stimulating, erotically effervescent, and journalistically jazzing—very marvelous indeed. Yes, ’tis true, I’m “short,” as they say here in the anointed interiors of the great “Green Machine,” and will be out of this o’er constricted life by the end of January. As far as immediate lunar-cyclic passing plans are concerned, there is a safari in the offing for myself and friends to Rincon around the latter part of October, twill be a gas. I’ve never had the pleasure of carving at the 'Con, and am eagerly looking forward to it. I’ll ride my present steed—a 7'4" x 18" V-bottomed semi-gum there—which should ensure the penetration of many clean tubes. Oh yeah! Heavy expansion of the hyperthyroid physio-electric undulations and soundly exciting, ecologically juxtapositional solar plexus/Kundalini tweaks and rushes. Home looks to me like a cold San Miguel after being out hunting Rommel in the Sahara. Hasta la vista.


I’d like to compliment your recent effort of literary liveliness [May 1973 SURFER], truly it is a near-perfect issue! The contest analyses were stimulating, Tom Morey’s articles projected into happily heavy horizons of penetrative pioneering, and Rod Sumpter’s interview with Gavin Rudolph was righteous. The shots were well compiled and exciting. I especially enjoyed the sequence of Gerry Lopez on page 48, a positive stoker, and centerspread photo of Rory Russell was definitely a piece of graphic graciousness. Ads in the issue were intersectively indicative and culturally coruscating, though they were out-shined by the lucidity of the actual surfing pictures, to wit and for example, the undulatively unique shot on pages 66-67 [see below]. In closing, anastomotic and excellently evocative.

Jock Sutherland
Oahu, Hawaii 158° W x 22° N


I thought ol' Corky Carroll had a timely choice of topics ["Judging Wave Height," May 1978] inasmuch as the same dumb jive was rampant on the North Shore this past year about wave size and the judging thereof. Maybe reading Corky's article will evoke some long-buried horse sense into the minds of those determined turkeys who insist (on pain of ego death) on making wave size a big deal when in fact they're only painting another gaudy stripe on the mask of their own all-important surf image.

PS: We just had a righteous 6-7' late-spring west swell. Good curls and walls had by all.


Having recently checked out a back issue [July 1989 SURFER], I'd like to make the following comments: To call Marvin Foster’s going left at Waimea Bay a new thing, or to say Brock Little's jumping off the rocks at the Point to paddle out is a new thing . . . tsk, tsk, tsk. Might I ask who was responsible for that shoddy bit of reporting? Boy oh boy, give the folks a couple years and they forget everything!

Going left at Waimea is fun to do on a peak that’s shifted too far toward the channel. Sometimes you realize too late that the thing is already dumping in front of you—but you’ve already committed. What to do? Simple: Swing it around left, turn off the bottom, carefully pick a line over the top, and hope you ain’t lookin' into the maw of a sneaker set. If there's not a trailer, and the left is perfectly open, why not?

Same goes for the jump-off trick from the Point. It’s easy on those medium-size, slightly inconsistent days, and it saves 200 yards of tiresome paddling. If you know the proper rock to jump from, access is smooth going—you’ve just gotta watch for the slippery seaweed on your approach.

SURFER Editor: Jock Sutherland—Poll winner in 1969, ultra-creative big-wave legend, ace switchfooter and well-rounded man of science and soul—has indeed made us feel shoddy. He rode left at Waimea 20 years before Marvin Foster, and he jumped off the Point before Brock Little was born. Our apologies.

SPECIAL DELIVERY: JOCK SUTHERLAND'S LETTERS TO SURFER MAGAZINE, 1969 to 1990

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