Wes Laine

Categories: ,

Well-scrubbed regular-footer Wes Laine was born in 1960 and moved around the country with his military family before settling in Virginia Beach at age 10. He was one of the East Coast’s strongest amateur competitors in the mid-to-late 1970s, winning the Boy’s Division of the 1974 East Coast Surfing Championship, the Junior’s Kneeboard Division in the 1976 U.S. Championship, and the Junior’s Division in the 1978 East Coast Surfing Championship.

Laine turned pro in 1979 and joined the World Tour in 1982, finishing the year ranked 22nd. He was the top-rated East Coast surfer for the next three years, finishing 9th in the world in 1983, 11th in 1984, and 9th again in 1985. Laine left the World Tour after the 1989 season to concentrate on the East Coast pro circuit, where he finished the 1993 tour ranked fourth.

Laine had a functional and polished wave-riding style, connecting his turns smoothly and always keeping his long limbs in balance. He was particularly skilled at frontside tube riding, slotting his 6’4”, 170-pound frame into the wide open cylinders of Off the Wall and Backdoor on the North Shore of Oah’u, Hawai’i, and neatly folding himself into three-footers at preferred East Coast breaks, especially Cape Hatteras. Laine was one of the most brightly outfitted surfers of the period, donning wetsuits in preschool color combinations, including an iconic fullsuit of canary yellow and hot pink with black accents.

In an isolated brush with surfing politics, Laine said in a 1990 Surfing Magazine interview that he didn’t agree with a recently organized pro surfer boycott against South African surf contests to protest apartheid. “I’m not going to jeopardize my livelihood or miss out on a good surf trip for anything.” Three months later, contest officials in the anti-apartheid Caribbean country of Barbados prevented Laine from entering a pro event held there. Laine responded by saying that he would organize a boycott against future contests in Barbados. 

Laine appeared in about 20 surf movies and videos, including The Performers (1984), Atlantic Crossing (1989), and No Exit (1992). He was inducted into the East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame in 2004.

Photos by Peter Brouillet, Tom Dugan, and Bruce Walker.