Jack O'Neill

📍Pleasure Point, Santa Cruz, CA 95062, USA

“In 1959 I moved my family from San Francisco to Santa Cruz, and opened a Surf Shop at Cowell Beach. I had been surfing the cold waters of Ocean Beach in San Francisco, where I started making wetsuit vests from neoprene in my garage surf shop on the Great Highway, so that I could stay in the freezing water longer. Santa Cruz, with its point breaks and its kelp beds, was where I wanted to be, and I made my home in a moss-green house perched on the cliff along East Cliff Drive, above the waves near Pleasure Point. The surfers called the break below my steps Jack's. From my house I could check the surf every morning and paddle out whenever it was good. I kept improving my wetsuits, testing them in the cold Santa Cruz water, and O'Neill wetsuits opened up cold-water surfing all over the world. I lost my left eye in a surfing accident, and I wore an eye patch ever after, which made me look like a pirate, and I liked that. I also flew hot-air balloons and sailed, and I loved my family; my son Pat later developed the surf leash. In 1996 I founded O'Neill Sea Odyssey, a programme that takes schoolchildren out on a catamaran on Monterey Bay to learn about the ocean and how to protect it; tens of thousands of children have sailed with us. I lived in the house above Jack's for the rest of my life, surfing into my eighties. The cliffside house on East Cliff Drive remains a landmark for every surfer who drives past, and the kids of Santa Cruz still learn about the ocean with O'Neill Sea Odyssey.”

Sources: surfertoday.com towsurfer.com nssmag.com eos.surf