August and Wingnut hit the beach
Sara Rosner
I&M Staff Writer
Hi, I’m Seth and I’ve been a fan of yours since I was about this big,” a
middle-aged man pointing to his waist said to another man who was standing
among the throngs of beach-goers at Cisco in a pair of faded blue swim
trunks and an old baseball cap Sunday morning.
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Photo by Jim Powers Robert “Wingnut” Weaver and Robert August watch surfers at Cisco Beach this weekend. |
If it weren’t for the frequency of such praise and the request for pictures
and autographs, legendary surfer Robert August may have been
indistinguishable from the crowd during his visit to Nantucket which marked
the final stop on his promotional East Coast Endless Fun Tour with renowned
surfer Robert “Wingnut” Weaver.
August and Weaver began the tour June 15 and have traveled from Maryland to
Maine in order to promote two new movies and the Robert August line of
surfboards and T-shirts.
The two arrived on the island Saturday afternoon, after a four-hour delay at Logan Airport due to foggy conditions, and were found at Force 5 Watersports signing T-shirts and posing for pictures with fans.
“My sons are big fans,” said a woman who walked up to August and Weaver with
her two young sons.
“Well thanks! How’s it going there, guys?” August said casually to the boys
who looked up at the 1966 “Endless Summer” star with unblinking eyes and
mouths shaped in small O’s.
August, who hails from the surfing Mecca of Huntington Beach, Calif., shot
to fame when he participated in producer Bruce Brown’s surf classic “Endless
Summer,” which was one of the premiere films to document a “surfari” by
following a group of surfers through Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti,
Hawaii and California in search of the perfect wave.
August has continued to ride the wave of notoriety by remaining an active
and supportive member of the international surfing community as well as
participating in dozens of other surfing flicks and producing his own line
of surfboards.
Weaver is sponsored by August and has his own high-performance surfboard
models, the “Wingnut I” and “Wingnut II,” under the Robert August line.
Weaver had acquired an excellent reputation as a competitive and stylish
longboarder during the 1980s, a time when longboarding was considered passé
in the surfing community, and he gained international recognition when he
starred in the 1994 film “Endless Summer 2,” which retraced the steps of the
original “Endless Summer” crew with an all-star cast that included Tom
Curren, Laird Hamilton, Rabbit Kekai, Gerry Lopez and seven-time world
champion surfer Kelly Slater.
Force 5 salesperson Teddy Feldon said that having August and Weaver at the
shop would be an unforgettable experience.
“It’s epic I would say,” Feldon said of the visit. “The turnout here has
been like a cult following. They’re classic guys.”
August and Weaver can also be found in their latest movie “Robert August,
The Endless Journey Continues,” which is produced by Robert August’s son
Sam’s production company Endless Fun Productions and follows the two surfers
and several others around Guatemala in a two-week search for waves. The film
was released in May.
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Photo by Jim Powers Wingnut getting ready to hit the waves this past weekend at Cisco. |
“We try to go places where nobody has been,” August said of the trip. “There
was nobody around but us and there’s not many places in the world like that
anymore.”
August and Weaver were also promoting the Endless Fun Productions film
“Robert August 30th Anniversary Tribute,” which chronicles the life of
August from learning to surf at age 6 with his father surf pioneer Blackie
August to becoming a living legend in the surfing community.
In light of all their time spent traveling together, Weaver had no
complaints about his traveling companion.
“It’s great, he’s like my dad,” Weaver said.
After their autograph session on Saturday, the two were treated to dinner at
The Boarding House and then hit the beach Sunday morning to catch a glimpse
of the surfing scene on Nantucket through thick fog.
“It’s really the attitude of the people. They’re just so happy to be out
here,” August said as he squinted into the mist at Cisco Beach, trying to
make out the surfers in the water a hundred yards away. “There’s a resident
population of hard-core surfers and they’re adventuresome.”
Though the waves barely broke above the ankles, Weaver took to the water on
Sunday morning on a borrowed yellow Robert August longboard and paddled in
and out of the kids in the shore break. Weaver had similar observations
about the surfing community of the island.
“You’ve got a pretty dialed-in surf crowd here, so that’s good,” Weaver
said.
August also said that his time on Nantucket was a pleasant break from a busy
schedule of trying to visit two to three surf shops a day in Virginia,
Maryland, New Jersey, Long Island, Rhode Island, Cape Cod, New Hampshire and
Maine.
“This trip has been a little too intense,” August said. “But this is great.”