Last week, without much ceremony, an era in San Diego surfing came to a close.
Mike Eaton, the seemingly timeless San Diego surfer and shaper, shut the doors on his La Salle Street surfboard production facility in Mission Bay for the last time. Come June 1, the 73-year-old icon, who reckons he's shaped well over 50,000 surfboards in his half-century as a board builder, will leave the Sunset Cliffs home where he's become a fixture over the past four decades and take up residence on the big island of Hawaii.
“It's time,” he said unsentimentally last week. And while that may be true, the San Diego surf community is losing a living legend.
To encompass Eaton's significance to Southern California surfing in a space as small as this is simply not possible, but we'll give it a go.
The Eaton bio, condensed, looks something like this:
He was raised in the waterman culture of Los Angeles' South Bay, and his swim coach was the legendary pioneer waterman Tom Blake, who instilled in him the traditional waterman ideals at a young age. Eaton learned to surf in 1947. While in the Coast Guard in the late '50s and stationed in San Francisco, Eaton began shaping surfboards in the garage of Jack O'Neill, who went on to found O'Neill wetsuits.
After working as a dolphin trainer at Marineland in the South Bay (“They said, 'Can you train a porpoise?' And I said, 'Probably as good as anybody,' ” Eaton jokes), Eaton began shaping surfboards for iconic labels Bing Surfboards and Rick Surfboards, before striking out on his own.
After moving to San Diego in the early '70s, Eaton became one of the most influential shapers in the area, producing some of the most well-crafted surfboards, including early twin-fins and bonzers-designs, which would have a lasting impact on the San Diego surf community. In the late '80s, Eaton noticed the surge in popularity of paddleboarding, and began churning out some of the most refined paddleboards in the world, a product for which he is perhaps best recognized today.
In the water, Eaton has always held himself to the ideals put forth by Blake and other influential watermen. To that end, he most recently paddled the Catalina Classic Paddleboard Race – a grueling 32-mile shot from Catalina to the Manhattan Beach Pier – in 2005, at age 71.
“I'd like to do it when I'm 75,” Eaton said last week, “but we'll see about that.”
Eaton says the secret to his longevity in the Southern California surf community is that he never really got caught up in it.
“I was a greaser surfer,” he says. “I was into hot rods and cars.”
Eaton was also a sailplane devotee, though he no longer owns one. “I always figured that's how I'd adios this world,” he jokes.
Today, Eaton still surfs regularly and paddles three times a week, about three to five miles at a stretch. He's got a spread all set up on the Big Island, where, he says, he's got one of the last little pieces of country available in Hawaii, and where the waves suit him just fine.
You can reach Brad Melekian by e-mailing him at sports@uniontrib.com
