‘Government Surf Team’: the day Roger Raffee turned down an invitation to the Pipe Masters
As far as I know, Mike Armstrong was the only person who ever received a walk-on beach invitation to the big annual Pipe contest.
He told me about it in the early 1980s.
We worked together in Long Beach or Anaheim in the union that sets up and takes down trade shows in Southern California.
It was a unique surfer’s job because you couldn’t count on it to make a living, but you could make good money in a short amount of time without having to commit yourself to anything longer-term, and you could collect unemployment – the “government surf team,” as we called it back then – anytime we were laid off, which was what happened to us after many or most of the shows we worked.
We’d spend a few days setting up a show, go surfing for a few days, and then come back for a day or two to tear it down and make more money in that week or so than most trades made in a month.
And we’d get to decide if we wanted to sign up for another show after that or just keep surfing on the government surf team.
Not everyone in the business was a surfer, but most of us were, and most of our bosses were surfers.
I spent nine months, in the winter of 1987/1988, surfing the North Shore of Oahu on the government surf team.
Before I left for the islands, while at work, Mike told me the story of how he got a walk-on beach invite to the first-ever Pipe Masters when Gerry Lopez didn’t show up for the event.
He finished second place that year and then was in it again the next year and finished second place again, and then he did it again the following year for a third time, second place three years in a row!
Saying I collected unemployment to go surf the North Shore for nine months rubbed some people the wrong way, and I’m sure it still does, but, hey, I reckoned I could, so I did, and I don’t regret it at all.
In my opinion, it was the best use of any unemployment money ever spent by me.
So, if you read one of my previous stories, you know I was living at Jocko’s, and one of the main surfboards I was riding was one that Gary Chapman gave me and his brother, Owl, nicknamed me “Surf Star,” but he was the only one who called me that.
I kept to myself all winter, just leaving the estate to search for surf each day and go to the store.
I had a routine where I’d cook myself up a pot of rice each morning with veggies and then get in my Mercury and drive up to Velzyland and make the slow roll back to my pad, checking all the surf spots on the way.
If Sunset was good, I’d just surf there, and it was good a lot that winter.
The only guys I knew, besides the guys who lived where I lived, were two friends I knew from California, a surfer named Greg Russ, a good friend of Owl’s too, who surfed with me when we were growing up and a Santa Barbara surfer named “Skippy,” a fisherman and a great surfer who snagged one of the best barrels I saw all year off a west peak at Sunset.
Free Pizza
Each Sunday, I’d drive into Haleiwa to eat at that outdoor pizza place.
I forgot its name, but the strangest thing was that the girls who worked the cash registers there would never let me pay for my meals.
Each time I tried to pay, they wouldn’t accept my money.
When I asked why, they told me someone liked my surfing and paid for my food, and when I asked them who that was so I could thank them, they wouldn’t tell me.
They said he wanted to remain anonymous, whoever he was, and to this day, I have no idea who it was that paid for my meals every Sunday.
The big Pipe contest for that year was coming up.
It was constantly advertised on TV and the radio, and there were banners hanging over Kamehameha Highway.
I didn’t think much about it because I couldn’t have cared less.
I didn’t even know the contest was happening until I reached Pipeline on one of my daily surf checks and saw all the cars and people and realized that they were well into the main event.
So, I parked my car and decided I’d check it out.
It was a grey, overcast day with a slightly breezy onshore wind – light Kona winds with no rain.
Kind of unusual for the North Shore. It reminded me of a gloomy onshore day in California, except that the surf was 8-10 feet.
Squeezing my way past all the people to the beach, I saw the scaffolding, the banners and flags, and 500 or more people milling about on the sand, watching the event.
The surf was good size, but it was terrible.
It had a cruddy look to it with the onshore wind, and I saw surfer after surfer eating crap and getting axed by the lips.
Masochism at big Pipe – surf contest misery.
I had this blasé feeling from the weather and my food digesting in the late morning, and I was probably surfed out from the day before.
“Congratulations, You’re in the Pipe Masters!”
I decided to take a walk along the beach towards Ehukai.
I was walking slowly, watching the surfers eating shit, and was a couple of hundred yards away from the contest when I heard what, at first, sounded like a buzzing in my ears.
Then it got louder.
I stopped to listen, and I heard, “Surf star, surf star, SURF STAR!”.
I turned around and looked back toward the contest. Underneath the scaffolding was Owl, pointing directly at me.
“You! Yeah, you!” he yelled.
“Come here!” and he motioned upwards with his arm for me to come there.
So, I walked back towards him, and as I did, the entire crowd seemed to gather around him, and the person on the microphone at the top of the scaffolding seemed to be talking about me.
I had no idea what was going on. As I reached Owl, the crowd enveloped us. Owl was standing right in front of me.
A tall blond guy who was a contest organizer stood next to Owl, and a big Hawaiian security guy stood next to me; the rest of the crowd was all around us.
“Congratulations. You’re in the contest,” said Owl.
“One of the contestants didn’t show, and his alternate didn’t show up either.”
He pointed at some boards under the scaffolding.
“Go get your suit on, and you can grab one of those boards. Your heat starts in 20 minutes.”
Light That Up
I shook my head, negative. I wasn’t in the mood for any of this.
“I don’t want to be in the contest,” I said.
“What?” said Owl.
“Let’s just get your name on the board,” said the contest organizer.
“All you have to do is paddle out. You don’t have to catch a wave if you don’t want to.”
“I don’t want to,” I said.
“I don’t even surf Pipe. There’s got to be a lot of guys who would give anything to surf in this contest. Let one of them have it.”
“Well,” Owl said to me, “You know there’s only one way out of this now for you.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Hold out your hand,” he said.
I did as I was told, palm up.
In the blink of an eye, Owl reached into his shirt pocket and slammed his hand against my palm.
I looked down into my hand, and there was a fat doobie and a pack of matches.
“Light that up and let everybody see,” said Owl.
Now, I was hesitant to tell this true tale because I didn’t want to be a bad influence on the kids who read these stories, but that’s life.
I hadn’t smoked any weed since I had arrived on the islands.
I put that big joint in my mouth and lit it up. I passed it to the Hawaiian, drifted backward into the crowd, and went home.
A year later, back in California, I ran into Mike Armstrong and told him what had happened, how I, too, had gotten a walk-on beach invite to the big Pipe Masters contest.
“But you didn’t surf in it, you idiot,” said Mike, laughing.
“You should have had your name put on the board, like the guy said. Now, you got nothing to prove it.”
I guess I don’t, and it’s probably the tiniest footnote in Pipe Masters history, but I thought it might be a tale worth mentioning.
Words by Roger Raffee | Surfer and Writer
