Hobie Alter鈥攊nnovator of the foam and fiberglass surfboard, inventor of the lightweight and affordable , patriarch of the Southern California beach lifestyle鈥攑assed away Saturday at his home in Palm Desert, California, after a long fight with cancer. He was 80 years old.
Born , Alter was prodigious tinkerer from an early age. 鈥淗e was a doer, not a reader鈥攅xcept perhaps of instruction sheets and manuals about making things,鈥 wrote Paul Holmes, author of .听
Just out of high school in 1954, Alter opened his first surf shop in Dana Point on the Orange County coast. Along with a local kid named , Alter began experimenting with polyurethane foam as a substitute for the heavy balsa wood then used to make surfboards. Alter and Clark鈥檚 foam-cored surfboards changed surfboard shaping and riding forever.
鈥淭he foam thing was all Hobie,鈥 Clark, who became a foam surfboard core tycoon, told Holmes. 鈥淎nd it was all done in the Hobie shop.鈥
But it was a serendipitous catamaran ride off Oahu鈥檚 Waikiki Beach in 1956 that transformed Alter鈥檚 idea of what was possible on the water. Once home in California, Alter and his crew of tinkerers went to work designing a low-cost, lightweight catamaran. By 1968, a handful of 14-foot catamarans had been built and the Hobie Cat Corporation was born.
鈥淗e totally democratized sailing,鈥 Holmes told the Los Angeles Times this week. 鈥淧rior to the late-1960s, it had been the preserve of a pretty elite group.鈥
While he was transforming the sports of surfing and sailing forever, Alter was also busy putting his stamp on skateboards (see Dogtown and Z-Boys), flying model airplanes, and creating beach lifestyle apparel. Until his passing, Alter spent considerable time dreaming and tinkering in his workshop at his home on Orcas Island, Washington. He was inducted into the Huntington Beach Surfing Walk of Fame in 1997 and the National Sailing Hall of Fame in 2011.
鈥淏uild them a toy,鈥 Hobie would say, 鈥渁nd give them a game to play it with.鈥