John Geyer
Surfing Background

John started surfing seriously in 1955. His dad managed the Jolly Roger restaurant in Waikiki and John kept an old balsa 9'2" in the racks where Rabbit Kekai hung out. Rabbit really got him into the surfing lifestyle; paddling races, walking the nose, hanging out with the local beach boys and so forth. In 1960 John's family moved back to California in Corona del Mar.

In California he was a member of the Surfboards Hawaii Surf Team and had a 3A contest ranking. In 1967 he took 4th at the San Miguel, Mexico, contest before moving to Maui in 1968. There he became one of Hawaii's top big wave surfers and had a chance to pioneer many of Maui's big breaks.

He eventually moved to Oahu on the beach at Sunset Beach where he surfed Sunset and Wiamea most of the time. His house at Sunset is shown on the right with the break in the background. While at Sunset, many locals used his house as the staging area when Sunset was breaking big.

In the late 70's he got started Windsurfing. John Severson rented a windsurfing board and off they went. Severson became publisher of WindSurf Magazine and John became a traveling pro. In those days if you could surf and windsurf you were a pro. Through the eighties he worked as a traveling journalist for WindSurf and competed in pro windsurfing events around the world.

In 1986 John visited Australia for some events and eventually moved to Fremantle. He currently owns a longboard and windsurf shop, SOS (Surfing and Sailing) in Fremantle.

In 1999, John won the State Championships in over 50, and then finished 4th at Bells Beach in the Australian Longboard Nationals.

These days John is surfing not-normal 9'1" styro/epoxy thruster longboards (supper light/ultra thin/bulsa skin), and mostly being dad to his daughter, Georgia and son, Cooper. He says if he wants serious surf he drives down south to Margaret River.

Read this interesting article on John


John in Surfer Magazine 1977. Honolua Bay.



Cable Station, Freemantle - Western Australia (2000)


Cable Station, Freemantle - Western Australia (2000)

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