Before Bruce Brown put Manu Bay on the worldwide map back in 1966 with the release of The Endless Summer, the Raglan Point Boardriders were already here.
The club was established in 1962/63 by a group of passionate surfers who would go on to be known as ‘The Originals’—the first surfers of Manu Bay. The Point Boardriders, as it’s more commonly known these days, was started as The Hamilton Point Boardriders, because at the time, that’s where the surfers lived. That, of course, very quickly changed.
Manu Bay’s surfable left-hand break was first surfed by Peter Miller, who would drive from Hamilton to Whale Bay to go out on his 16-foot surf ski. It wasn’t until a fateful day in the late 1950s that the large waves forming around a point on the headland finally caught Peter’s eye, and he stopped his car at the top of Manu Bay to walk down the hill and “give it a go”.
After riding The Point that day, Peter rang another fellow ‘Original’ at the Mount, Chas Lake, with one message, “get here.”
Back then, there was no Surfline, Instagram, or Windy App to check the conditions or predict the swell. If it was big, Peter would ring the Mount Surf Club from the old Petchell’s Bakery in Raglan, and they would make the 80-mile mad dash from the Mount across the Kaimai Range; what surfers now call a “strike mission”.
Peter Miller would quickly be joined in the lineup by a handful of others, including Mike Court, who would become one of the first ding repairers in the country and the first to secure the Billabong Franchise in New Zealand. They would go on to establish the club together alongside the other Originals. They even successfully shifted a ‘clubhouse’ from Hamilton down to Manu Bay one day so they could store their boards next to the waves.
The Point Boardriders would go on to host their first local contest, The Junior Point Boardriders Competition, in 1964, which a local Raglan guy by the name of Butch Walters would win. The trophy can be found in the Raglan Museum’s Surfing Exhibition alongside the other Point Boardriders trophies and historic boards shaped by the many local shapers who have called Raglan home. As for the clubhouse? It was overrun with rats a few years after the Originals put it out at Manu, so Mike Court burnt it to the ground.
From The Originals, the ones who were the first to surf Manu Bay, to the many shapers who showed up in Raglan through the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s—Don Wilson, Mikey T, Craig Hughes, Marc Camenzind, Ray Finlay, to name a few—to the many members who have gone on to represent Raglan around the country and across the world at competitions and championships, the club has been the backbone of surf culture here.
Club members have gone on to compete in some of the most notable surf contests around the world, from the ISA World Championships all the way to the Olympics. And this month, two of the club members, Billy Stairmand and Alani Morse, will join the top surfers in the world in their bid to take out the WSL’s CT event at Manu Bay.
With more kids involved in the club than ever before, The Point Boardriders club days are an opportunity for those kids, their families, and of course the seasoned saltydogs to ride their home break in the same way The Originals did, without the crowds and the worry of getting dropped in on by an out of towner on a soft top… word to the wise: don’t take soft tops to Manu Bay.
As the years have gone by, The Raglan Point Boardriders have remained steadfast. While the never-ending stream of visiting surfers can feel quite daunting at times, the club and its longstanding history provide a home base and a sense of ownership among the surfers in the community when they’re out in the lineup alongside 40 others.
The Originals couldn’t have known what they were starting back then, when it was just a handful of them out in the waves, or that 60 years on, Manu Bay would be hosting the best surfers on the planet, two of them homegrown.
