Burton "Buzzy" Kerbox is an American surfer, photographer and model. He is best known for co-developing

tow-in surfing Tow-in surfing is a surfing technique which uses artificial assistance to allow the surfer to catch faster moving waves than was traditionally possible when paddling by hand. Tow-in surfing was invented by surfers who wanted to catch big waves a ...

with

Laird Hamilton Laird John Hamilton (born March 2, 1964) is an American big-wave surfer, co-inventor of tow-in surfing, and an occasional fashion and action-sports model and actor. He is married to Gabrielle Reece, a professional volleyball player, television ...

Dave Kalama Dave Kalama is a big wave surfer/tow-in surfer, stand-up paddle (SUP) surfer and racer, surf and SUP board shaper, windsurfer, outrigger canoe racer, private adventure guide, and celebrity watersports enthusiast. Kalama, his wife, 2 sons and 1 d ...

and a handful of other surfers in the mid-1990s.

Early life

Kerbox was born in 1956 in

Indianapolis Indianapolis (), colloquially known as Indy, is the state capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the seat of Marion County. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the consolidated population of Indianapolis and Marion ...

Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...

. His family moved to

Kailua Kailua () is a census-designated place (CDP) in Honolulu County, Hawaii, United States. It lies in the North Koolaupoko, Hawaii, Koolaupoko District of the island of Oahu, Oahu on the windward and leeward, windward coast at Kailua Bay. It is i ...

, in eastern

Oahu Oahu () (Hawaiian language, Hawaiian: ''Oʻahu'' ()), also known as "The Gathering place#Island of Oʻahu as The Gathering Place, Gathering Place", is the third-largest of the Hawaiian Islands. It is home to roughly one million people—over t ...

, in 1965.

Surfing renown

Shortly after having moved to Hawaii, in 1966, Kerbox began surfing. He was ranked in the top ten in 1977, 1978 and 1980. He won the 1978 World Cup at Sunset Beach and the 1980 Surfabout in Sydney. His development of

, along with fellow surfers Dave Kalama, Laird Hamilton and others, paved the way for surfers worldwide to catch waves which were previously thought to be out of reach, either because they were far from natural breaks like beaches and coasts or because they were too big. The first few tow-in sessions were done using Kerbox's 15-foot Zodiac motorboat. In more recent years, Kerbox has been an advocate for standup paddle boarding, also known as SUP.

Tow-in surfing

Surfers are towed out to a breaking wave via a

PWC PricewaterhouseCoopers is an international professional services brand of firms, operating as partnerships under the PwC brand. It is the second-largest professional services network in the world and is considered one of the Big Four accounting ...

(personal watercraft, such as a

Jet Ski Jet Ski is the brand name of a personal watercraft (PWC) manufactured by Kawasaki, a Japanese company. The term is often used generically to refer to any type of personal watercraft used mainly for recreation, and it is also used as a verb to ...

) or a

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...

. The surfer holds a line attached to the motorized vehicle. He or she is then set into place, at which point he or she drops the line and surfs the wave. Prior to the development of the tow-in method, surfers were generally unable, on their own, to catch waves topping much more than 20'. With the advent of the tow-in method, surfers were able to catch waves two and three times that height, or even taller. Driver and surfer generally trade roles during a surfing session, which helps to build both rapport and trust in a situation which can quickly turn dangerous for both. Tow-in is generally thought to have revolutionized big wave surfing. Kerbox and other professional surfers were featured in Susan Casey's 2011 non-fiction volume ''The Wave''.

Modeling career

In 1977, famed photographer Bruce Weber saw a photograph of Kerbox in a surfing magazine and persuaded him to come to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

to try his hand at modeling. Kerbox subsequently modeled in major national advertising campaigns for

Levi's Levi Strauss & Co. () is an American clothing company known worldwide for its Levi's () brand of denim jeans. It was founded in May 1853 when German-Jewish immigrant Levi Strauss moved from Buttenheim, Bavaria, to San Francisco, California, to o ...

Ralph Lauren Ralph Lauren, ( ; ; born October 14, 1939) is an American fashion designer, philanthropist, and billionaire businessman, best known for the Ralph Lauren Corporation, a global multibillion-dollar enterprise. He has become well known for his co ...

and

United Airlines United Airlines, Inc. (commonly referred to as United), is a major American airline headquartered at the Willis Tower in Chicago, Illinois.

Personal

Kerbox has three sons.

References

External links

Encyclopedia of Surfing

Official website

The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kerbox, Buzzy 1956 births Artists from Indianapolis American surfers Male models from Indiana American photographers Living people