International Surfboard Builders Hall Of Fame Inductee Details
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| Inductee Name Abel Gomes | Event Year 2018 | Inductee Location Deceased | Inductee Contact |
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| Inductee Bio Half Hawaiian, Paul Strauch's Hawaiian name is Kalakimau, meaning "The Lucky One." He started surfing when he "was about seven years old," he told Chris Ahrens. "My dad was a very good surfer, and he grew up right in Waikiki, two blocks back from the beach. I think that he had one of the first balsa boards that was ever made in Hawaii. It was made by the father of Alan Gomes, who was a woodworker, in 1919. They put a veneer [a thin layer of finer wood covering the surface of chaper wood] over the top and varnished the board. I still have that board." Abel Gomes, Alan's father, was "an accomplished Honolulu craftsman," a 1997 obituary on Alan described, "was renown for building sought after wooden planks for Alan and his friends, as well as canoes and paddles. " Wally Froiseth made sure I knew, after I had written an article on Tom Blake's development of the hollow board, that Abel had actually been the one who built the first Blake hollow boards. Blake would provide the specifications and Abel put it together. "Tom Blake didn't actually make those hollow boards down there," Wally told me. "This guy Abel Gomes made the boards. He was a woodworker. Tom wasn't that much of a woodworker. But, he had the ideas, you know. He knew what he wanted." | |||
| For the complete biography, go to: Posted on August 12, 2010 by Ian Lind | |||
Thanks to: http://www.ilind.net/tag/waikiki-surf-club/page/5/ for the photo | |||
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