O'Neill SS17: Thousands of surfers join hands to celebrate the Life of Jack O’Neill
The life of legendary waterman Jack O’Neill was honored spectacularly in a worldwide series of memorial paddle outs on Sunday 9th July and Monday 10th July 2017. The moving display united surf communities across the globe with over 3,500 surfers joining hands in the world’s biggest floating memorial sequence to date.
Jack’s hometown of Santa Cruz, California led proceedings with simultaneous paddle outs taking place in Australia, Canada, Portugal, England, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Japan and South Africa.
With no greater way to honor a man whose life was led by the ocean, the memorial paddle outs were a chance for surfers across the world to pay their respects and remember the man who “just wanted to surf longer.”
As the clouds parted and the fog lifted in Santa Cruz, a huge crowd of surfers gathered at Pleasure Point in Santa Cruz next to Jack O’Neill’s house to form the biggest memorial celebration the surfing world has seen to date. Over 2500 people joined the celebration on surfboards and in boats in the water and lining the cliff. With the O’Neill family on Jack’s legendary sailing yacht in the center of the circle, former world champion and close friend of the O’Neill family Shaun Tomson honored Jack as one the pioneers and founders of the surfing industry. "For all of us floating out here, some of the best moments of our lives have been spent in the water – waiting under the great dome of sky and catching that perfect wave that has taken us to where we need to be," said Tomson.
Jack was born in Denver, Colorado on 27th March 1923. He moved with his family to California, where he acquired a love for the beach early in his youth. Following service in the US Navy during World War II, Jack moved to Ocean Beach in San Francisco in the early 1950s and immediately began experimenting on his kitchen table with various materials designed to protect against the frigid ocean water in Northern California. He said, “I just wanted to surf longer.”
By the 50s, Jack had both invented the first surfing and bodysurfing wetsuits and opened his first surf shop near Ocean Beach. He also coined “Surf Shop,” a term for which he later received a Registered US Trademark.
Inspired by the growing surf scene, Jack moved with his growing family 75 miles south to Santa Cruz and opened his next surf shop. Shortly thereafter he began making surfboards, promoting the first surf movies and producing wetsuits for the expanding population of surfers in Santa Cruz and throughout California.
Paying homage to Jack, pioneer, maverick and surfer, O’Neill presents a new film, I Knew Jack O’Neill, directed and produced by Peter Hamblin. Detailing the story of the wetsuit and the first ‘surf shop,’ the mini documentary reveals Jack O’Neill’s life and adventures.
Download the video here: https://we.tl/SNGg3AIYqa
Jack O’Neill Memorial Paddle Outs:
Pleasure Point, Santa Cruz, California USA
Great Western Beach, Newquay, Cornwall United Kingdom
Cox Bay, Tofino, Vancouver Island Canada
Anglet/Biarritz France
Freshwater Beach, Sydney Australia
Lisbon Portugal
Scheveningen Netherlands
Surfer Paradise, Knokke Belgium
Jeffreys Bay South Africa
Shonan Japan