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The ancient ocean loving pastime of he’enalu is the only Polinesian pastime to dig deep and flourish wherever it has been introduced. Today it is practiced on either coast of the United States, Australia, Brazil, France, Portugal, South Africa, Japan, Peru, Mexico, Ecuador, Hawaii and even in the frigid waters of Alaska. In 1777, British explorer Captain James Cook observed islanders surfing at Matavai Point in Tahiti. He explained this happening by writing, “[they] place themselves on the summit of the largest surf by which they are driven along with amazing rapidity toward the shore.” Cook also noticed people surfing when he visited the Sandwich Islands in 1778. In 1821, surfing was almost completely eliminated by European Christian missionaries, who considered it an immoral form of amusement and suppressed it along with much else in the Hawaiian culture. By the time surfing was revived around the turn of the century, there were only a few Hawaiian surfers left. The beginning of the sport as we know it was introduced in North America by Duke Kahanamoku, a native Hawaiian, who surfed Santa Cruz in Northern California in 1885. Kahanamoku is generally known as the ambassador of the sport of surfing. Surfing, however, rema