In August 2020, EOS posted "Jock's Night Trip," by Allan Weisbecker, an article that originally ran in a 1992 issue of Surfing. "Night Trip" is possibly the most 1969 story on the whole site, flitting about from the Apollo moonwalk to the Mets to Woodstock and beyond, then zeroing in on the North Shore for a well-told story about 1969 SURFER Poll winner Jock Sutherland surfing Waimea after dark while tripping on acid. Read the whole piece 

 Weisbecker tells the tale incredibly well.

As with a lot of what took place in 1969, however, the truth may have inhaled a double lungful of myth. Longtime EOS supporter and former Windansea Surf Club member John Wade got in touch recently. He and Jock are neighbors, and when John brought Weisbecker's story up, Jock gave a different version of events. Here is John's report.

The short version: Jock rushed down to Waimea around 5:00 that afternoon. No time for a thorough check so he grabbed his 8'4" Plastic Fantastic and jammed out to snag a couple before dark. Peter Cole and Fred Van Dyke were on the beach and later asked Jock if he knew there were closeout sets. He didn't. He caught a couple of waves before the horizon went black with just such a set. He paddled over five waves, then took the next four on the head. By the time he got to the beach, it was dark and he went home. The bay, he says, was empty. No psychedelic influence that day, Jock says. Although he admitted the deck of his board had a Zig-Zag man painted on the deck.

Jock and I got into it with a bit more detail, and he wanted to stress three things.

1. There was no "surfing after dark." The sun had just gone down when that huge set came. He barely scraped over the first two or three, then had to push his board through the lip of the next two, then finally got caught inside and lost his board, which broke in half. After that, it was just a matter of staying in the impact zone, diving shallow under the next few waves, and letting himself get pushed to the beach. So it was dark by the time he made it in, but was not dark when he was actually riding waves, as Allan said. As far as there being nobody around when he got to shore, that makes sense. It's not like everyone takes a headcount at the end of the day, and Jock's swim in probably just went unnoticed.

2. No acid that day. My own thought here is that maybe Allan's brother, by saying Jock was dosed, was maybe just joking around. "Yeah, and he was on 

, man!" Who knows. Jock told me the first time he heard a version of the night-surfing-on-acid story was a year or so later, in 1970. For what it's worth, Jock is scrupulously detail-orientated and has an amazing memory.

3. Finally, contrary to what Allan wrote, Jock said it would be nearly impossible to swim up the coast, against both the swell and tradewinds, to Pipeline.

Jock's retelling of getting caught inside with the sun going down was really heavy in its own right. Life or death, in fact. He described how, after about seven waves, he knew the situation was serious and had to make an extra effort to not panic. Coming from Jock, that's really something. That seems like proof enough that what we're talking about here is a gutsy waterman keeping his head to survive rather than someone tripping on acid.

[Allan Weisbecker and Jock Sutherland, above; Sutherland photo by Art Brewer]

U-TURN ON THE "NIGHT TRIP"? JOCK SUTHERLAND ANSWERS ALLAN WEISBECKER

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