This article ran in the Fall 1994 issue of Surfer's Journal. The version below has been slightly edited and shortened.

Gerry Lopez often says they should clear the water on a vintage day at Pipeline at least once a winter, just to give Mark Cunningham his due. “Let him have the place to himself,” said Gerry. “And everybody could watch.”

With Cunningham, it’s never too late. As a lifeguard and bodysurfer, he is a timeless presence at the world’s most famous break. He’s been saving lives and preventing catastrophes there since 1976 and has shared the lineup with everyone from Butch Van Artsdalen to Shawn Briley. Rail-thin at 6' 4" and 170 pounds—then, now and forever—he is Cunningham, the one constant over the years. To the North Shore’s general populace, he 

How do you bodysurf Pipeline? “Sure as hell beats me,” Greg Noll told me recently. "Just the idea of that is incredible to me. I have so much respect for Cunningham, the way he travels, the way he sees the waves and comes through those barrels. The guy’s fuckin’ magic. It’s like he’s from some other dimension.”

North Shore pioneers recall the likes of Bill Coleman, Fran Heath, Bob Shepherd, and John Kelly bodysurfing Pipeline during the golden age of the longboard. Others followed, and many have done it well, right up to the contemporary crop including Don King, Fred Asmus, Larry Russo, Alec Cooke, and a number of local lifeguards. But nobody has ridden the place the way Cunningham has. He’ll go down in history like Lopez on a Lightning Bolt, Mike Stewart on a sponge. A singular, dominating presence whose style will never quite be matched.

On takeoff, Cunningham’s initial kick-drive is almost frightening in its power. As the savage drop unfolds, he finds the perfect line with his patented “iron cross,” lifting his trail arm to the sky and gliding beautifully at an angle through the pit. In a prone position (both arms back), his speed and grace are unmatched. And while most bodysurfers perform frantic-looking spinners, Cunningham has the uncanny ability to make functional climbs, drops, and turns—a true surfer’s approach—as the wave dictates. His goal is to make the wave, and he pulls it off with amazing regularity.

“A few winters back, Mike got one of the best rides I ever saw by anyone,” says longtime North Shore photographer Pete Hodgson. “He got a complete ride from the second reef all the way through, start to finish. Imagine trying to get into the wave out there, then coming through the steep inside section and flying out of the tube. He just rode that thing to the sand and stepped right onto the beach. This guy is a hero to me.”

Bottom line: Nobody—Lopez, Rory Russell, Derek Ho, even the relentless Stewart, an incredible bodysurfer in his own right—has spent more time in the Pipeline tube than Cunningham. He’ll try to downplay that, saying he’s merely been around longer than anyone else. But it’s an indisputable fact, forever establishing Cunningham’s place in surfing lore.

When a magazine approached Randy Rarick a couple of winters ago, asking him to list the ten best surfers at Pipeline, Rarick included Cunningham without the slightest hesitation. “It goes a lot deeper than his riding ability,” Rarick says now. “This is a guy who truly becomes one with the wave, setting him so far apart from the average weekend body-slammer. And the way he carries himself—it reminds me of Lopez. It’s just not in Mark’s nature to boast or seek the limelight. For example, I don’t think most of the young lions would be out at Pipeline if nobody was there to watch them. Cunningham would be delighted if nobody was there. That shows you someone dedicated to his personal pursuit.”

Some of the old hands on Ke Nui Road, established watermen like Jeff Johnson and Warren Harlow, saw the essential Cunningham on countless mornings in the late ’70s and early ’80s, with nobody else in the water. “It was just like a casual swim for Mark, even at real size,” says Johnson. “He lived in the neighborhood for years, right next to us, and he’d just charge out there alone, like there was nothing to it.”

Even today, there’s a mystique to Pipeline at dawn. “Morning sickness,” they call it. The sunshine and trade winds don’t really kick in until 10 or 11 a.m., and when the place is really firing, few have the courage or determination to break the ice. As an example, on the day Bill Delaney shot the priceless closing footage for his film 

, Shaun Tomson and Rabbit Bartholomew studied the place for nearly two hours before hitting the water. One of the local hellmen, Tony Roy, had a brief solo session before the big names took over. For all anyone knows, Cunningham had toweled off much earlier.

“I had countless sessions out there that nobody ever saw,” Cunningham says. “Early morning, late evening, in the middle of a thunderstorm, when everyone else was huddled around their cocoa and color TV, I’d have big, wild-ass Pipeline with lightning goin’ off, just loving it to death.”

Today, from his familiar spot at Tower 26, Cunningham settles for the memories, the rescues, the beach camaraderie, and the occasional miracle session, free of hostile ASP superstars, clueless foreigners and the absurd proliferation of bodyboarders. He lives near Honolulu now, sharing a spectacular piece of Nuuanu Valley property with his wife, Linny, and her family. The crack-of-dawn days are over, but for Mark, it’s not even an issue. “I’ve found that I almost enjoy being away from it,” he says. “I had a pretty bad injury last September that took me out of the picture [boarding up the house for Hurricane Iniki, he took a fall and broke his left ankle]. Sometimes it’s nice to leave the whole scene behind for a while.”

Just when you think the man might be getting a tad creaky—Cunningham just turned 38—everything seems to snap back into place. He's pulling a drowning tourist to safety in the churning trenches of Pupukea. Or heading out on Water Patrol to monitor a contest in heaving 15-foot Pipeline. Or just getting a few waves to himself along the 200-yard stretch of Ehukai Beach Park, looking fast as ever.

At those moments, the North Shore seems fine and comfortable, an eternal paradise once more.

“Mark Cunningham is the missing link between homo sapiens and cetaceans. If Darwin were alive today, Mark would have blown his mind and sent him back to the drawing board"

With those few words, Rory Russell had captured the magic of Cunningham. “It’s something God gave him,” says Russell. “You ask me to recall a certain wave he got, or one memorable tube, and it’s difficult. Mark was—and still is—like a creature of the ocean out there, just in his own world, not hassling or trying to impress anybody. He just blends into the environment like nobody else."

I repeat this to Cunningham later, and he just shrugs. He is a complex person, not easily deciphered. He certainly doesn’t look or sound the part of the legendary surfer. For one thing, his precise and deliberate speech reflects his proper New England heritage (his parents moved the family to Oahu from Massachusetts when Mark was two months old). His father was Irish, his mother Lithuanian. From this unusual blend came a true original, a singular figure on the surfing scene.

He grew up in Niu Valley neighbors with Lopez, Rarick, and Dennis Pang in Niu Valley, and as a kid started bodysurfing East Side spots like Makapuu and Sandy Beach at every opportunity. That was the easy part; just hitting the water and cutting loose. The rest of the deal got a bit cloudy at times.

“His life at home wasn’t so good, there was a lot of unhealthiness,” says Linny. “Both of his parents (now deceased) were alcoholics, and there just wasn’t much support for Mark or his two sisters. For him, being in the ocean every day was a way to stay healthy and sane, to offset the festering situation at home.” Cunningham is guarded on the topic, saying, “It wasn’t like I was getting any physical or even mental abuse. I’ve never complained about those days. But no, there wasn’t a lot of support. It was never, ‘let’s pack the picnic basket and go watch Mark compete.’”

Cunningham met another type of resistance at Punahou, the most prestigious school in Hawaii. “He was a good student there, and in that setting, you’re supposed to move on into business or some high-paying profession,” says Fred Van Dyke, who taught at Punahou for many years. “Mark could have done a number of things. He was a great swimmer, for that matter. Probably had Olympic potential. But the surf was beckoning, and he heard it—just like Lopez, Hakman, Jimmy Blears, Brock Little, and a lot of other Punahou guys.

“It’s so damn frustrating because North Shore lifeguards don’t get anything close to the salary they deserve,” Van Dyke continues. “It’s not even two-thirds of what they make in California. But with Mark, it was a matter of choosing a value. He is the textbook case of a person who bypasses great rewards to do what he really loves.”

Cunningham was in ninth grade at Punahou when he first bodysurfed Pipeline, and by the time he graduated in 1974, he had built a formidable reputation on the Hawaiian contest circuit. “I couldn’t tell you what I’ve won, or where,” he says. “But if the waves were any good, I’d be there, just to get that uncrowded water time. I hate to sound egotistical, but I pretty much dominated. Sandy Beach, Makapuu, Point Panic, and finally over at Pipeline.” For a period spanning some 15 years, Cunningham never lost a contest in big, pumping waves. Not that he or anyone else can recall, anyway. “If you picked up the paper and saw he didn’t win,” says Fred Asmus, “you figure he either didn’t show up or the waves were so shitty it didn’t matter.”

Cunningham takes endless ribbing about his build. Roger Erickson, for instance, calls him Eel. “My partners always give me shit about wearing Speedos,” he says. “I just say it’s too bad you guys are too fat to wear ’em. I’ve been wearing the things since high school, and they’re functional as hell, and that’s pretty much the end of the argument.”

In fact, no less an authority than Lopez feels that Cunningham’s body is the essence of his art. “Mark’s built like a Pipeline gun,” says Lopez, laughing warmly at the notion. “Long and narrow with real thin, hard rails, capable of generating tremendous speed. And he uses his body like a surfboard, actually changing his shape to conform to whatever part of the wave he’s riding. I always thought if he could take off with me on his back, I could stand up and do something really good.”

Cunningham rides boards occasionally, “but you wouldn’t really call it stand-up surfing,” he says. “I call it my stand-up comedy act. I’ve just never been quick or agile enough to get into these Hawaiian waves early. Last spring I was out at Backdoor on a rising swell. Fool that I am, I picked up a smaller one and kicked out, feeling pretty stoked, and here comes this huge northwest set. I was right in that zone: Do I turn tail or try to bully it out, like most people do? I went for it, just in time to put myself in the impact zone. Got the bejesus beat out of me. The next wave snaps my board, so here I am just getting thrashed, thinking, ‘How do these guys do it? Give me my fins and Speedos now!’”

Cunningham has always found it difficult to put into words what it is he loves about riding waves without a board. But it is something all first-rate bodysurfers understand. There is no sensation quite like tackling big waves with just a pair of fins and your wits (Cunningham scoffs at the notion of gloves, handboards, or other gimmicks). “It’s just so wonderful to be totally immersed in it,” Cunningham says. “That’s what’s so invigorating, satisfying, soothing to me. God, just that sensation of water flying by, rushing like a fire hose against my chest. The sense of speed, which is phenomenal. I mean, just through the shorebreak, diving under closeouts, being there face-to-face with a big wave and submerging at the last possible second as the lip goes over your head. The whole dance. Maybe it sounds corny, but it really is like a dance.”

Every time Cunningham enters a contest, he finds a few kindred spirits, like Don King and Asmus, who use the same kinds of smooth technique. He also finds competitors putting out a wild, maneuver-crazed effort to attract attention. “To me, tricks are for kids,” says Mark. “It’s just common sense. When you start doing spinners and bellyrolls, you usually don't make it till the end of the wave. I want the whole thing, you know? I want to ride and enjoy as long as I can.”

Pipeline, for Cunningham, is for the most part a familiar and comfortable place. Backdoor is another matter. Back in high school, he says, he got stuck in a Backdoor crevice, and the memory is never far away. "It was terrible, I got a little panicky down there, I was seeing stars and everything, then I came up just in time to get nailed by the next wave. Backdoor is the most insane wave I know of. To see Dane Kealoha and those guys riding the place with such abandon, it just blows my mind."

Has he been hurt at Pipeline? “They’ve never carried me off the beach, knock on wood,” he says. “No board up the ass, no heavy lacerations. I’ve had my share of torques, abrasions, a few cuts, but never a trip to the hospital. Not that I don’t think about it."

On the other hand, Cunningham has ever represented the insane, go-for-it-at-all-costs surfing mentality. In fact, he is given credit for triggering theories of prevention among North Shore lifeguards, dating back to his first shifts in the Winter of 1975-76.

In the mid-'70s, Mark took a stab at college, enrolling at UC Santa Barbara and joining the water polo team. But when he returned to Hawaii for the Christmas holidays in his sophomore year, his father was gravely ill with cancer. Mark decided to stay home and help out the family, and when his father died two months later, Cunningham saw no point in returning to California. “I wasn’t cutting it scholastically, to be honest. I don’t see how people can be full-fledged, semi-pro athletes at a major college and get an education at the same time. It just baffles me. Let’s face it, I was an Island boy. I’d had my California experience, and damned if I didn’t want to get back home to this.”

Cunningham moved to the North Shore, where he would live at various locations for 15 memorable years. When he joined the Hawaiian lifeguard department, Butch Van Artsdalen was still manning the tower at Ehukai Beach Park. Terry Ahue, who would become Cunningham’s longtime partner, was Butch’s right-hand man. “I was almost unaware of what was happening with Butch,” Cunningham says when the subject goes to Van Artsdalen's severe alcoholism. “I do remember he’d be sucking ’em up on duty. Then he'd come to work carrying a carton of milk with his pastries in the morning, and I’m thinking, 'Gosh, Butch is getting healthy again'—until Terry told me there was vodka in the carton. I can only imagine the depths of depression he experienced. Then when he was gone [Van Artsdalen died of liver failure in 1978], I remember feeling a lot of pressure, that I had some mighty fuckin’ big trunks to fill (laughs). It’s like, my God, I’m a North Shore lifeguard. There’s Butch and Eddie Aikau, and I’m some 20-year-old snot-nosed gremmie, trying to be one of them?”

Cunningham’s most critical connection was with lifeguard Sean Ross, who rode huge Pipeline on a paipo board long before Daniel Kaimi and Jack Lindholm pioneered the bodyboarding era. “Sean liked to bodysurf, too,” Mark says, “and he wanted a partner who was young, strong and fit. When the shit hits the fan at Pipeline, you want some backup, someone you can count on. Sean tagged me to work with him in the Fall of ’76, and I’ve been here ever since.” The North Shore has always been a deadly place for tourists. It’s so horribly simple: After a couple of sun-baked hours, you figure, what the heck, time for a swim. Suddenly you’re knocked off your feet. Then you’re pulled into the shorebreak. Big set coming outside. Can’t get in, can’t get out. You strain, panic, get rolled, over and over. If enough waves move through you'll go unconscious, and not long after that, you'll die. It's happened countless times, particularly along those stretches without lifeguard protection.

“I worked with the old-timers,” says Ahue, “and we had a macho, stud image back then. That’s the image we wanted to give the public. With Butch and Eddie it was like, ‘Hey, we’ll go get ’em if they get in trouble.’ But otherwise, you know, leave 'em be for a while, maybe teach ’em a lesson before we get on the case. Cunningham came in and said, hey, prevention is the best way. He has a way of talking to people, making them understand. He’d spot some guy trying to impress his girl or something, and he’d just know the guy is gonna be in big trouble if he hits the water. So Mark will sit down with the guy and try to explain everything that goes on out there. Some guys felt Mark was overdoing it, but no way, he was right. Thanks to Mark, we’re not the stud guards we used to be. Prevention is what we stress now.”

At the mention of Ahue, Cunningham shakes his head in admiration. “Terry is one of the real unsung heroes of the North Shore, and has been for nearly 20 years. He's a great surfer and a big-time hero for all the lives he has saved, but he’s such a quiet, humble guy, you don’t really hear about him. For years and years, we had a wonderful working relationship. I dealt with the haoles, Terry took care of the locals—that’s always how it was. If things got heavy, one look from Terry was more effective than anything I could have said. Just a furrow of his brow, a turned-down comer of his mouth, and you knew you didn’t want to mess with Terry.

“I’m so gratified at how safe we kept Pipeline, the two of us, over the years. All the bad wipeouts that went down, all the people we prevented from going out—you can count on two hands the people that died here, and that’s counting the off-duty hours. I mean, way less than a dozen fatalities for the 12-15 years me and Terry worked together.”

“Yeah, I got a lot of respect for Mark,” Ahue says. “Except for his diet. I mean, this guy’s gotta put on some weight (laughs).”

"A great deal of publicity has been given to Hawaiian swimmers riding waves with surfboards," Ron Drummond wrote in his 1931 booklet, 

. "Without a doubt it is a great sport, but in my estimation it cannot compare with the thrills, pleasure, and exercise of bodysurfing."

There is a wonderful innocence to Drummond’s classic, out-of-print work. It is dedicated entirely to the art of bodysurfing a wave straight to the beach. Fins hadn't yet been invented. Drummond apparently had no idea about how to angle off to the shoulder. “The object is to fall with the wave as it curls over,” he wrote, and indeed there the book has vintage photos of Roaring Twenties bodysurfers taking the plunge, striking noble poses on the way down, arms pinned to their sides.

The history of American bodysurfing is a bit sketchy. Some credit Wally O’Connor, a two-time U.S. Olympic swimmer, for popularizing the sport in Southern California just after World War I. To the amazement of beach onlookers, O’Connor would dive underwater on his way out, do a push-turn off the sand, then appear fully immersed in a wall of onrushing white water.

, Robert Gardner acknowledged USC football stars Morley Drary and Jeff Cravath as avid bodysurfers in the mid-20s, along with a lesser-known tackle named Marion Michael Morrison. “On a sunny August afternoon in 1926,” wrote Gardner, “the lanky 19-year-old came from his home in Long Beach to surf at the Balboa Pier. He took off on a big one, made a mistake, landed on his shoulder, tore the ligaments, and ruined a promising football career.” Rebounding nicely, Morrison headed straight for Hollywood, where he became John Wayne.

As legend has it, California surfer Owen Churchill went to Hawaii in 1932 and saw locals dipping palm fronds in tar, then attaching them to their feet to get more kick-speed while in the water. Churchill came back to California, refined the theory, and began selling rubber fins in 1940. He remains a vital name in the sport of bodysurfing, where it remains a simple choice for world-class fins: Churchill or Duck Feet.

“Fins were great for transportation—to get out of the trough—but the surfer still went straight off,” wrote Gardner. “Then some genius discovered that by using the speed generated by fins, he could cut to the left or the right and thus increase his speed, as board surfers had been doing for years."

As it turns out, that “genius” might have arrived much earlier, and he wasn’t wearing fins. California old-timers identify him as Cal Porter, who in 1959 became the first lifeguard at Malibu Pier.

“I used to bodysurf the old Sunset Pier, just south of Venice, in the late 1930s,” says Porter, who is now pushing 70, but still a successful age-group bodysurfer on the California circuit. “I’d go through the last couple of pilings on an angle, a really nice left, and take it all the way to the beach. To this day, I prefer going left.”

In a way, Porter was the Mark Cunningham of the 1930s: innovative, low-key, decidedly skinny, and a capable swimmer in any surf. “The biggest I can remember was October of ’42, and I had fins,” he recalled recently. “A huge swell came in, a solid 20 feet, and destroyed the ends of nearly all the piers—Sunset, Venice, Ocean Park, Santa Monica. They all came down. I ran into Perry Black that day; he was a swimmer from Venice High who became a pilot and died during the war. We saw that the waves were feathering, like big San Onofre. So we ran out to the end of Venice Pier, jumped off during a lull, swam out there and bodysurfed a couple.”

Getting this information out of Porter was not easy. “I’ve known this guy 40 years,” marveled one of Cal’s friends. “Only now do I find out he was the first bodysurfer to ride the shoulder.”

Every beach has its local hero, some guy who crawls out of the woodwork during a huge swell and bodysurfs the set waves alone. These are just a few names who merit mention when the sport’s history is written:


For all we know, the first Hawaiian bodysurfers were performing centuries ago. With such beautiful waves, and no equipment required, it seems entirely likely. But Kalama was the first to catch the eye of visiting Californians in the late 1940s and early ’50s. “We just called him the Old Man,” says Noll. “He had a rusted-out ’32 Coupe, and he’d sit in there for three or four hours at a time, waiting for the right winds, swell and tide. Then he’d hit it, and the way he’d come through waves was just amazing. He’d be right there, alongside your board, like he was locked in a draft or something. Spectacular guy.”


Clips from Noll’s old films show the great Buffalo in vintage form at Makaha, cruising majestically with his right arm tucked in and his trail arm extended parallel to the water. He was the best in Hawaii, no questions asked, with a smooth and easy style befitting the island’s tradition. “When the haoles first came down to surf Makaha with their balsa boards, they were outnumbered by bodysurfers,” Buffalo recalls. “We kind of had a rule out there: If you ride a surfboard, you have to surf outside of us. Everybody had respect for each other.”

According to Noll, “Buffalo was the first to do a barrel roll, like the hot bodyboarders do today. You know that backwash at Makaha? Somewhere along the line, Buffalo got thrown up into the air, did a little flip, and came back down. That’s how the whole thing got started. He turned it into a functional deal, where he’d pull it off and keep on riding.” (Buffalo shook his head when I repeated this to him. “Naw, I didn’t start that,” he said. “Guy named Joe Kaeo, from Nanakuli, did it way before me.”


To this day, Cole surfs big Sunset on a thick oversized gun without a leash. His swimming ability is legendary on the North Shore, and in all his years of recreational bodysurfing—get this—he’s never used fins. “Just my purist approach, I guess,” he says. “Same with my brothers, Lucky and Corny. We just figured we didn’t need fins, and in six-foot surf at places like Pipeline, Makapuu or Rocky Point, we really didn’t. Yeah, I know I’m stubborn. And when people say ‘Do this, do that,’ I get even more stubborn.” During the past winter, someone ran this story past Cunningham. “He doesn’t bodysurf with fins,” said Mark. "That is so Peter Cole.”


According to Gerry Lopez, Lumbeck was the bodysurfing king of Pipeline before Cunningham arrived. Best described as a classic ’60s character, Lumbeck was also a fine guitarist, fairly well known in rock circles. As the story goes, Stephen Stills was in Hawaii one winter and looked up Lumbeck for a jam session. Somebody found Larry in the water at Sunset and told him the news. “Sorry,” said Larry. “Surfs perfect.”


Of the many fine California bodysurfers of the ’50s, Munoz stood out with his mind-blowing series of maneuvers. A great stand-up surfer in any size conditions, Munoz carried that passion into his bodysurfing and dominated the Laguna Beach contest scene with his innovative style. A typical wave would find him launching an underwater takeoff, pulling off spinners and layouts, riding all the way to the beach, running up onto the sand, then heading out for his next wave. There would be more to come, but the contest was over, and the only question was who would finish second.


Widely recognized as the standout bodysurfer in California today, and no relation to Mark. “We played water polo against each other when I was at UCLA,” Mike says. “When the coaches yelled out, ‘Cunningham!’ it was like, which one?” Now 37, Cunningham grew up in Manhattan Beach under the tutelage of Bruce Macklin, Bob Holmes and other standouts of the Gillis Beach Bodysurfing Association. But he surpassed everyone on the West Coast with a heavy arsenal of moves, notably the underwater takeoff. “I’ve been watching this guy for years,” says Porter, who is not easily impressed, “and I’ve never seen anybody like him. Nobody even comes close. He’ll start off way outside, when the wave isn’t even cresting, then you’ll see him just shoot out onto the face, like a dolphin. Then he’ll go back under, and as the wave starts to pitch, he’ll come back out again. He’ll do that several times, plus all the other moves you can think of. It’s incredible to watch.”

Mike is the man to beat on the current California circuit: Manhattan, Carlsbad, Oceanside, Santa Cruz, Ventura. And how did he perfect that underwater takeoff? “It just came from sitting in the tower every day, all these years, watching dolphins ride waves,” he says. “I’ve worked on it constantly, trying to perfect it. This is a totally different sensation from surfing because you’re truly harnessing the wave’s energy. It’s a real distinct power you feel under the wave, and it’s pretty exciting.”

The two Cunninghams have competed against each other once in Hawaii, finishing one-two (Mark winning) during a nationally-televised contest in 1980. “It was real serious Pipeline—big, with shifty winds, and I was lucky enough to get second,” says Mike. “I have a great relationship with Mark. There’s no jealousy trip or anything like that. He’s a tremendous individual and a great waterman.”


The Wedge is a story in itself—probably a full-fledged book. So many great ones have passed through the epic Newport spot, from pioneers Jim Scanlon, John Forbes, and Don Reddington to the crazed warriors of the present, including the renowned Terry Wade, Mel Thoman, Mark McDonald, and the man simply known as Cashbox. It was Fred Simpson, however, who showed the Wedge could be ridden, not merely survived. Performing on terrifying faces up to 20 feet, Simpson pioneered the so-called “outrigger” stance: leaning back into the wave, using his arm, shoulder and back for ultimate speed and planing position. Thanks mostly to Simpson, Wedge riding was transformed from kamikaze-style freefalls to tight-angle power drives through the tube. “He’s done more for the sport than anyone I’ve ever known,” says Thoman.

With his years of Hawaiian experience, Cunningham doesn’t have much use for the Wedge. “Like Sandy Beach or the Waimea shorebreak, it fits the old bodysurfing stereotype,” he says. “Just crash and burn, and let's see who can take the worst wipeout. It’s like those old surf movies: ‘And now, here’s our bodysurfing sequence.’ You’d see a few one-second rides, guys flying over the falls, then cut to the guy with his head buried in the sand and his fins sticking in the air (laughs). ‘Hey, that’s bodysurfing.’ The sport is still trying to overcome that stereotype, and for a lot of people, that’s the experience they’ll have. Here in Hawaii, if you’re patient and pursue the right lineups, you can get nice, long rides. I'm pretty sure that if I pulled up on a 20-foot day at the Wedge, I’d say "Thanks, but no fucking way." I mean, you can see why the local city government doesn’t allow contests there.”


A 6'5" 225-pound Wedge rider they call “Big Daddy,” McDonald is a regular visitor to Hawaii. Although he fiercely defends his home break and calls Terry Wade the "best big-wave bodysurfer I’ve ever seen,” he admits that his home scene is not on the same level as Hawaii. “We’re so spoiled at the Wedge. Jump right into the pit, and you’re there—it’s cake compared to the Islands. Pipeline guys have to deal with currents, a huge playing field, competition with red-hot surfers, and if you hit the reef—that’s a whole new deal. If you don’t know what you’re doing out there, you’ll end up like me.”

Two winters ago, during a break in the local Pipeline contest, McDonald swam out to join some North Shore locals in a bodysurfing exhibition. “It was a solid, 8-foot day, and I was just off the plane," he says. “I saw a set outside and hesitated just enough, not sure if I wanted to hang tight or try to swim under it. This wave hit me right in the middle of the back. Blew off my fins, just like that. Knocked the wind out of me and shoved me straight to the bottom. I was unconscious underwater, I was gone, couldn’t hang on anymore. If it hadn’t been for Terry Ahue and Brian Keaulana, who were out with their jet skis on water patrol, I’d be a dead man.”

After watching Cunningham shred Pipeline, time and time again, McDonald concludes, “He’s the best all-around bodysurfer and that's that. I’ve never seen anybody take off on a big wave as gracefully and fluidly as Cunningham. He’s like Wayne Gretzky or Nolan Ryan out there. Just in his own league.”


Very quietly, with his trusty bodyboards tucked away, Stewart has joined the Hawaiian bodysurfing circuit. At last check, he hadn’t lost a single heat in four years—including two victories over Cunningham (1991 and 1993) in the annual Pipeline Bodysurfing Classic. It seems impossible that Stewart could outdo himself, having bodyboarded Second Reef Pipeline and 20-foot Waimea, and winning every contest in sight. But his bodysurfing ability is nothing short of astonishing.

Cunningham may still have the edge in style and tuberiding, but Stewart has perfected a maneuver that has everyone else baffled: The full barrel-roll at Pipeline. “I’ve done it so many times on a bodyboard, it’s just an extension of that,” he says. “It’s fun, another challenge, another way to enjoy the ride.”

The clincher is that Stewart doesn’t merely fling himself into the lip, bound for a rude demise. He disappears into the white water and invariably claws his way back out, still in the wave. “I mean, at that point, you’re just dogmeat, eaten up, history, start over,” says Cunningham. “But this guy, five seconds later, he pops out of the water and he’s heading to the beach. And it’s like—where the hell has he been? What’s he doing in there? I have no idea. I can’t do that, and I’ve never seen anybody else do it. It’s something Mike's done 10 million times on his bodyboard, and somehow he’s transferred it to bodysurfing.”

The circumstances of Stewart’s ’93 Pipeline victory were less than dignified, however. He missed the first round of competition altogether, having flown from Los Angeles to Honolulu that morning and arrived on the beach at Pipeline during the quarterfinal heats. But contest organizers were waiting for Stewart, the man who would truly round out a world-class field. They sent him straight into the water, where he was immediately sent back to the beach by a very angry local, who finished the heat and then stormed off the premises in disgust.

That appeared to be the end of Stewart, but wait a minute—now the officials were offering him a chance to create his own heat. In the already-completed First Round, no less. “Just find four other guys, come up with the $30 entry fee per man, and you’re in,” they told him. Within minutes, Stewart produced the $120 himself and headed out with four of his bodyboarding partners. Many felt the contest had become a farce, but Stewart continued on in the glorious, 6-foot conditions, all the way to the finals, where he scored a very narrow victory over Cunningham.

“I want to be the nice guy and say we got empty Pipeline on one of the best days of the year,” Cunningham said later. “But the mechanics of the meet left a bad taste in my mouth. It was wrong what they did, letting Mike pull that off. In hindsight, I’m really sorry I didn’t kick his ass in that final. I wish I’d been a little more pissed-off.”

“All I know is, I busted my ass to get there,” said Stewart, “and my intention wasn’t to bum out anyone. I was the only guy that was smiling the whole day. A lot of other guys were crying about this, bummed out about that, and you know, I really didn’t give a shit. But tell you what, I’d have been equally stoked if Cunningham won. He’s still the top guy. He’s acquired an intangible sense about the ocean that you can’t easily describe—something that goes way past rollos and spinners and other maneuvers. He’s one of the few people really tuned-in at that level, and I’m honored just to be out there with him.”

If there was a bright spot, it set up considerable anticipation for the next Stewart-Cunningham meeting (the two are close friends). After all these years, Mark’s longstanding dominance has finally been challenged.

It is a sparkling February afternoon on the North Shore. A couple of expert bodysurfers have arrived from California, anxious to spend a little water time with Cunningham. One of them sports a gaudy yellow handboard on each hand. The other is a bit animated, shall we say, launching into takeoffs with the blind ferocity of a man fleeing a swarm of hornets.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Cunningham announces, “meet my friends: Omega Man and Captain Seizure.”

Here we find a key ingredient of Cunningham’s persona: a biting sense of humor from which no one escapes. As Linny describes it, “He has this power of observation where he can go right to the essence of someone, find the obvious quirk, maybe something they’re trying to hide, and call ’em on it. For people he thinks are getting too inflated, he is the pin that punctures them. Like Mike Stewart. Mark’s completely mean to the guy. Nobody else can talk to Mike like that, and I think he actually respects it.”

Cunningham was once approached by a dinosaur bodyboarder, a mid-40s type preaching the benefits of old school riding. “Tell you three reasons why I don’t like sponges,” he began. “First, that spinner stuff is just ridiculous.”

“Okay, you get dizzy,” said Cunningham. “Go on.”

“Well, I don’t understand this air stuff. That’s not true surfing.”

“Yes, you’re afraid of heights,” said Cunningham. “What else?”

His argument shot down in flames, the poor guy never got around to the third reason.

These are the essential moments for Cunningham, ones that bring his personality to life. While the lifeguard’s existence might seem like a happy-go-lucky path to nirvana, it really isn’t. Whether it’s outright acts of heroism or some tourist asking, 'Y'all got a Band-Aid?’ The job is hardly a barrel of laughs. Cunningham’s standard look is one of deep concern, reflecting years of stress, strain, and squinting into the late-afternoon sun. Quite often, he seems thoroughly unapproachable.

"KAKU: MARK CUNNINGHAM PROFILE," by BRUCE JENKINS (1994)

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