Windansea Surf Shack: a small shelter with a long history

When was the Windansea Surf Shack built?

Local surfers built the first shack in the years just after World War II, using eucalyptus supports and palm fronds. Accounts differ on the exact year: a preserved city hearing record dates construction to late summer 1946, while the landmark plaque itself says 1947.

The shack has come down in storms more than once and been rebuilt each time. According to Friends of Windansea, the people behind the 1998 landmark designation wanted protection for the shack if it were ever destroyed. The same account describes a later storm and the effort to rebuild it as it had been. As one longtime advocate for the shack put it in that same account, it's less a building than "the heart of our surfing community."

Friends of Windansea's photo collection is worth a look, too: there's a picture of the shack with a sign for a luau in 1947, and another of a rock band setting up in July 1968. They give a glimpse of what went on around it.

A surf club formed for one contest

In 1963, a group of local surfers wanted to enter the Malibu Surfing Association Invitational at Malibu. They needed a club to compete, so they formed the Windansea Surf Club. The club's own history describes a chartered bus leaving Windansea at around four in the morning on August 25, 1963, with surfers and beer on board. Club lore has it that a few of the surfers were too hungover to compete in the day's first events; whatever the truth of that, Windansea still swept the day, taking five of the six individual trophies along with the paddle contest and the overall team trophy. A pretty good start for a club formed only to make the trip.

Windansea and The Fantastic Plastic Machine

The club's 1967 surf trip through Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti and Fiji later became the subject of a film, The Fantastic Plastic Machine, released in 1969. The trip mattered for more than the footage: the club's own history says the surfers came home exposed to the shorter boards Australian surfers were riding, and brought some of those design ideas back with them – part of a wider exchange that helped change surfboard shapes on both sides of the Pacific. It's a connection through the surfers and their travels, not a claim that any of the film's scenes were shot on Windansea Beach itself.

Got a Windansea story?

Do you remember a gathering at the shack, helping with a repair, or your first visit? We'd like to add some of the smaller stories alongside the dates and competition results.

If there's something we've missed or got wrong, let us know – we'll ask before publishing your contribution and agree with you how to credit it.

Our Windansea print

The shack is the main feature in our print, with golden rock, blue water and a palm behind it. You can see the Windansea print in the collection.