Woodbridge "Woody" Parker Brown (1912–2008) was an American surfer and watercraft designer best known for inventing the modern catamaran.
He was also instrumental in promoting the growth of surfing in the mainland United States; among his accomplishment in surfboard shaping was an early fin design.
Woodbridge Brown was born into a wealthy family of Wall Street brokers on January 5, 1912, in New York City.
At this time, he had moved out of the family home and was sleeping on hangar floors, helping with chores with early aviators such as Charles Lindbergh, whom he waved off on his historic 1927 flight to Paris.
[1]Inspired by Lindbergh, he bought a glider for $25 and towed it to California with his new four-year-old stepdaughter Jenny and wife Betty Sellon, a widowed daughter of a retired army officer with a distaste for the glitz of the "gilded age", whom he'd met at a society party he'd been persuaded to attend.
Realising that if he could stand up he could catch waves before they broke, he used glider construction techniques to build his first hollow plywood surfboard in 1936, a forerunner of modern boards.
Thinking back on how [his] second "plywood box" responded in the surf, Woody exclaimed, "It was just like these modern kids' boards, now!
"[1]For more maneuverability, he added a skeg, or small keel, a breakthrough independently developed by another legendary American surfer, Tom Blake, a year or two earlier.
Depressed and near-suicidal, he left the baby Jeffrey and stepdaughter Jenny with Betty's family and moved to Hawaii, not making contact again until they were grown up due to his remorse and guilt.
[1]He had intended to move to Tahiti, but World War II's intervention prevented him getting a visa so he was forced to stay in Hawaii.
Brown was a conscientious objector during the war and became a vegetarian during his youth after he had wounded a chipmunk with a shotgun.
[3] He joined half a dozen other surfers who collectively became known as the Hot Curl surfers, named after a new type of board they carved, semi-hollow, with a V-tail to avoid what they called "slide-ass" and help them stick to the "hot curl", the breaking curve of a wave.
He was captured in a 1953 photograph by Thomas Tsuzuki which helped turn Hawaii into a mecca for surfers worldwide.
He was 88 at the time, and he surfed better than I did.After the war, Brown served as a United States government surveyor on Christmas Island.
Upon his return to Hawaii he adapted the idea, using lightweight hulls and adding huge sails.
In 1947 he designed the Manu Kai ("Sea Bird"), which was built by the Hawaiian Alfred Kumalai,and Rudy Choy.
Rachel died in 1986 and the following year, "feeling lonesome", he married Macrene Canaveral, whom he met in the Philippines on a trip specifically "to get me a new wife".