A longtime Huntington Beach surfer, Chuck rode his first wave in 1954, was a men’s finalist at the 1958 Oceanside Invitational and competed in his first U.S. Championships in 1959, held in his hometown.

Linnen was among the first wave of California surfers to travel to the North Shore in the early 1960s and was a finalist at the 1961 world contest held at Makaha. He also competed at the 1964 world contest in Peru and was runner-up at the Malibu Masters event in 1973.

Linnen helped shape the culture and character of Huntington Beach as a mentor and role model to local surfers—teaching future legends like Corky Carroll how to “shoot the pier.” The “surf king” as many called him was a member of the Huntington Beach Surfing Association and ‘The Boys of 55’ surf club.

A retired Irvine high school teacher, Linnen most recently held the NSSA Senior Champ and WSA Grand Master titles.

A keen student of weather and its impact on swell formation, Downing blended this knowledge with surfboard theory and construction. He not only created one of the earliest quivers with subtle variations in length, rockerand volume, but in 1950, produced the first board for truly big surf, and it soon became the template for all serious surfers. While the Hot Curl was finless, Downing’s 10-foot “Rocket” had the first removable fin. George and others like Walter Hoffman and Buzzy Trent, cracked first the 20, then 30-foot barrier at Makaha riding the innovative Rocket.

As a competitor, George won the Makaha International in 1954, 1961 and 1965, finished seventh at the 1965 World Championships and second at the 1967 Duke. He coached the Hawaiian team to victory in the 1968 World Surfing Championships and set numerous paddling records from 100 yards to one mile. As a businessman George Downing created the venerable Downing Surfboards, which his son Keone continues, and has worked to prevent the corporatization of the Waikiki beach concessions.

Mentor to dozens of Hawaiian surfers over the years, Downing also worked as one of the famed Waikiki beachboys for more than three decades. The longtime contest director of the Quiksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau event, George Downing holds an important place in surfing culture.

That’s when Anderson went to work on perfecting the existing three fin concept (a single fin with two smaller outer fins) for added power and stability. His prototype featured three equal-size fins so he named it “Thruster” because the water gets pushed through the fins in the turn. According to Anderson, the single fin (just) holds that speed through a turn whereas with the twin fins, obviously the speed was quickly released and you’d just zip along. The third fin was controlling that thrust throughout the turn.

Anderson’s Thruster design was met with skepticism initially, thought perhaps merely a gimmick, or only for Anderson’s particular size and style. Following design enhancements in 1981, he won the Bells Beach Classicand the Coke Surfabout in Sydney, for a second time, then later the Pipe Masters at Banzai Pipeline in Hawaii. Those victories silenced the critics and brought the thruster to everyone’s attention; from 1984 onward every world champion has used a thruster.

“What Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple) and the “iPhone and iPad” have done for the World, Simon Anderson and the “Thruster” have done for the Sport of Surfing’” said Surfers’ Hall of Fame founder Aaron Pai. “Just as the iPhone and iPad revolutionized consumer technology; the Thruster revolutionized and advanced our Sport of Surfing!

“Simon has given generations of surfers the gift of progression and the ability to do what they can do today!  We are honored and extremely excited that Simon Anderson will be inducted into the Surfers’ Hall of Fame this summer!”