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Get a bunch of the guys together who surf and love Solana Beach and see if there’s interest in a group that represents the surf community.

The idea was to get a bunch of the guys together who surf and love Solana Beach and see if there’s interest in a group that represents the surf community.

Ira Opper put the word out, had a couple of informal gatherings at his house, and then drew a crowd of about 40 local surfers at the first semi-official public meeting of the Solana Beach Surfer’s Association Jan. 29. “It’s a work in progress at this point,” said Opper, whose love of the sport encompasses his life with Opper Sports Productions, which produces documentaries and cable programming on surfing. With Opper’s side appetite and passion for history, he also started www.surfhistory.com, a site he hopes will “provide the most comprehensive resource on the Internet for the heritage and history of surfing.”

The group was quite an eclectic mix of the community, according to Opper. “We had lawyers, one or two dentists, the mayor, contractors, a couple of surf filmmakers, and a top-10 surfing pro,” Opper said.
“We’ve got enough diverse professional people to really stir things up if we have to,” he said.

“I’ve surfed all my life and I know most of those guys,” said Solana Beach Mayor Douglas Sheres, now one of the association’s members. “I think it’s looking to be an organization that is hopefully looking out for the interests of the ocean and the beach, and also surfers and the community.”

Opper said he has been surfing Solana Beach for 20 years, and although there was no one main issue people were upset about that was the impetus for the group’s inception, he said he has recently seen the greatest amount of impact between the urbanization of the area and the surf. “It’s impacted the quality of the surf and the water quality,” Opper said. “They have to shut the beach down periodically because of outfall, and the surf reefs have become an issue as well. So there’s just a lot going on that affects the sport and the quality of the sport.”

Still, while environmental issues may have been part of the reason for organizing the association, simply getting together socially with like-minded people was another. “There are so many interesting things we could learn about related to surfing history, the geography, or wave forecasting, or even understanding reefs,” said Opper, who hopes to have guest speakers at meetings. “For instance, at this first meeting, we tracked down one of the first persons who ever surfed Solana Beach and one of the guys who was on the beach when he did it,” he said.

The special guest at the meeting was 85-year-old Jerry Ward who surfed Solana Beach in 1935.
Opper said he found out about Ward from the book “Early Solana Beach,” which had a very short section about recreation and surfing that discussed Ward and his wood surfboard.
“He was taking wood shop at Oceanside High School, which was the only high school in the area, and met a Hawaiian kid, who had brought a koa solid wood surfboard from Hawaii,” said Opper. “Jerry replicated it with the materials they had in wood shop; plywood and pine. So he built a 10-foot long paddle board with 200 brass screws, which was then lacquered, and he brought it down to Pillbox, and surfed Fletcher Cove.” While Fletcher Cove is the official name of the main beach in Solana Beach, explained Opper, it is known in the surf world as Pillbox. “Because there used to be a military pillbox on the hill,” Opper said.

“I typically surf three to four times a week, but since I’ve been the mayor, it’s probably down to one or two times a week,” said Sheres. “But I’m optimistic with the days getting longer, I can manage more time. That’s why we need this group, so that we can all sit around with somebody who actually was in the water, and it makes us feel like we were there.” return to top