An old friend named Steve Ball came upon us, and said to me, ‘Come on Charlie, I can see it in your eyes, you want to paddle out. “We were watching guys like Joey Cabell, Peter Cole, Buzzy Trent, and George Downing. “I was sitting at Waimea with (Mira Costa classmates) Dru Harrison and Steve Slickenmeyer in the winter of ’66, eyes wide open,” Quesnel recalled of the day he surfed his first big waves. Purpus, an inaugural Walk of Fame inductee, is now one of the Walk of Fame judges, along with Mike Balzer, John Joseph, Randy Meistrell, John Baker and Dennis Jarvis. “Whenever I paddled out at Pipeline, Sunset or Waimea, I did what Charlie told me that day,” Purpus recalled recently, in discussing Quesnel’s induction into the the Hermosa Surfer Walk of Fame. Purpus credits the answer Quesnel gave him with his own, subsequent success as a big wave rider on Hawaii’s North Shore. He wouldn’t even surf the Redondo Breakwater on big days,” Purpus recalled. “We called Charlie ‘Flea’ because he was so small, and was afraid of big waves. Upon his return to school, schoolmate Mike Purpus asked how he did it. Photos courtesy of Quesnel familyĪfter moving from Hermosa Beach to Maui in his teens, Charlie Quesnel lived, and led surfingĬharlie Quesnel surfed his first big waves at Waimea Bay over Christmas break during his junior year at Mira Costa High School. He was living on Honolua Beach in a pup tent. 1969, on an 8-foot-3 Dick Brewer Red Rocket pintail. Charlie Quesnel at Honolua Bay, Kauai during the legendary Dec.

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