No Man Is An Island
Surfer|Volume 60, Issue 1

At the intersection of modern science and Hawaiian tradition, Cliff Kapono is uniquely poised to affect positive change along his home coastlines and beyond

Todd Prodanovich
No Man Is An Island

I was sitting on my board at the opening of a river mouth just outside hilo, hawaii, getting jostled in cloudy, brackish water by sizeable swells that had looked much more manageable from the shore. Now in the lineup, the unruly surf was only made worse by backwash as waves warped and crashed on a sinister row of boulders just 10 yards inside. “Hey, don’t get too far out!” yelled Cliff Kapono, who sat on my inside, an anxiety-inducing distance from the rocks. “The current will pull you out, and the closest place to paddle in would be…” He paused for a moment to think. “Just don’t go too far out.”

I nervously scratched against the current until I was next to Kapono, who then informed me that I shouldn’t paddle too far inside, either. In addition to the boulders, he said, there were also jagged chunks of concrete and rebar that lurked just below the surface—remnants of the sugar industry that had long since withdrawn from this particular valley.

Outwardly, I nodded like I understood completely. Inwardly, I wondered why Kapono had taken me to a deathtrap masquerading as a surfable wave—until he swung around on an ugly-looking 6-foot lump, smoothly linked a few well-timed pumps and then blasted a clean frontside air somewhere in that extremely narrow safe zone he’d described.

It made a perfect kind of sense that Kapono would find that middle ground and turn it into his own personal dance floor. Kapono is a great surfer, sure, but more broadly speaking, Kapono’s life has been defined by his ability to deftly navigate the spaces between, to find a middle ground where few others could—and use it to do incredible things.

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Bu hikaye Surfer dergisinin Volume 60, Issue 1 sayısından alınmıştır.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

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60 Years Ahead
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60 Years Ahead

We had a whole plan for this year. Funny, right? Surfer's 60 year anniversary volume was going to be filled with stories nodding to SURFER’s past, with cover concepts paying homage to the magazine’s most iconic imagery. Our new Page One depicts something that’s never happened in surfing before, let alone on a prior SURFER cover. And our table of contents was completely scrapped and replaced as we reacted to the fizzing, sparking, roiling world around us. In other words, 2020 happened to SURFER, just like it happened to you.

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THE LGBTQ+ WAVE
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THE LGBTQ+ WAVE

Surf culture has a long history of marginalizing the LGBTQ+ community, but a new generation of queer surfers is working to change that

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For Generations to Come
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CHANGING OF THE GUARD
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After decades of exclusive access to Hollister Ranch, the most coveted stretch of California coast is finally going public

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How does becoming a mother affect your surfing life?

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Volume 61, Issue 2
The Art of Being Seen
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How a group of black women are finding creative ways to make diversity in surfing more visible

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