Surf’s Up, and Upscale, as Sport Reverses Its Beach Bum Image

For $10,000 a day, you can have the ulti­mate surf­ing sojourn in Indone­sia aboard the 110-foot Indies Trader IV, a sort of float­ing hotel with 15 cab­ins, a heli­pad and three-course meals with wine. A motor­ized ten­der takes you to the waves.

Sandy Huf­faker for The New York Times

Liv Gal­en­dez learn­ing to surf in Cal­i­for­nia. Cater­ing to wealth­ier surfers has become a big busi­ness.

Or for a daily rate, in addi­tion to the cost of his air­fare, Brad Ger­lach will give pri­vate instruc­tion to select clients any­where in the world. Mr. Ger­lach, who was ranked No. 1 on surfing’s world pro­fes­sional tour dur­ing the 1986 and 1991 sea­sons, termed the cost “not cheap at all.”

Surf­ing, once the sport of Hawai­ian kings, has come full cir­cle. After becom­ing a coun­ter­cul­ture activ­ity for beach bums and bohemi­ans, it has emerged as a sta­tus sport, like ski­ing and golf.

“It’s sort of lost that dirt­bag appeal,” said Isabelle Tihanyi, who with her twin, Car­o­line, started Surf Diva, a school based in La Jolla, Calif., that caters mostly to women, a grow­ing seg­ment of surfers. “Now you see more yup­pies in the water with a brand-new board and a brand-new S.U.V. — all the lat­est tech­ni­cal gear.”

This new species of surfer con­tributes to a boom­ing mar­ket for vaca­tion pack­ages, instruc­tion, equip­ment and real estate near some of the world’s best surf breaks. Like golf, surf­ing has become an ideal activ­ity around which to dis­cuss busi­ness. Surfers find plenty of time for talk while dri­ving in search of good spots, while chang­ing into and out of wet­suits in the park­ing lot, and espe­cially while wait­ing between sets of waves.

“There’s more down time in surf­ing than any other sport,” said Chris Mauro, the edi­tor of Surfer Magazine.

It was not always this way. “In the 1970s, you would stop at 25 and went to work or you were going straight to loser­dom,” Mr. Mauro said. “It used to be a strike against you if you were a surfer.”

In those days, con­tin­u­ing to surf while car­ry­ing on a career was a mat­ter best left secret. “If you were a surfer and you wore a suit and tie to work, you tried to hide the fact you surfed,” Mr. Mauro said. “Now, it’s like you’re the star on the com­pany bas­ket­ball team.”

Todd Juneau, a real estate con­sul­tant in San Diego and a long­time surfer, trolls for busi­ness in local line­ups. “I’ll sit in the water and lis­ten to con­ver­sa­tions, and if some­one says some­thing about real estate, I’ll find a way to inter­ject,” he said. “And it pays off.

“In San Diego, you never know if the guy next to you could be a mul­ti­mil­lion­aire, or a judge or an exec­u­tive, and he’s surf­ing.”

Dionne Mochon, 32, a pros­e­cu­tor in San Diego, began tak­ing surf lessons last year. “Surf­ing has opened so many doors to meet peo­ple, net­work and just enjoy being a woman inter­act­ing with other pro­fes­sion­als on a social level,” she wrote in a recent e-mail mes­sage. “Judges I appear with surf, oppos­ing coun­sel surf, my col­leagues surf, and I made so many friends who surf as well.”

Enrique Huerta, who is known as Moose, said he landed a job in Manhattan’s fash­ion indus­try partly because of surf­ing. A for­mer pro­fes­sional long­boarder, Huerta, 28, works in inter­na­tional sales and mer­chan­dis­ing for a denim com­pany. He got to know two of the company’s founders dur­ing surf ses­sions off Long Island.

“That was kind of the ice­breaker,” Mr. Huerta said.

Jeff Kolodny, a tal­ent agent for the William Mor­ris Agency in Bev­erly Hills, Calif., said he had seen a surge in inter­est in surf­ing at work. Mr. Kolodny began surf­ing at 12 and worked as an asso­ciate edi­tor at Surf­ing Mag­a­zine before join­ing William Mor­ris, a com­pany with a grow­ing num­ber of surf­ing devotees.

“Only in the last few years has any­one cared that I’m a surfer,” he said. “Now I’m really pop­u­lar. Peo­ple you would never imag­ine in your life are going to the beach, senior exec­u­tives at my company.”

It is unclear why surf­ing has found a broader respectabil­ity. Some point to the ini­tial pub­lic offer­ing of Quik­sil­ver, the board apparel and acces­sories com­pany, in 1986 as a catalyst.

Per­haps reflect­ing surfing’s laid-back roots, con­crete fig­ures on par­tic­i­pa­tion are hard to come by. Two mil­lion peo­ple con­sider them­selves active surfers in the United States, twice as many as 20 years ago, accord­ing to Action Sports Retailer, the lead­ing board-sports indus­try trade show. An active surfer is con­sid­ered some­one who goes out at least eight times a year.

Surfing’s pop­u­lar­ity has helped drive inter­na­tional real estate sales, with prop­erty along remote coast­lines being bought and devel­oped into resorts and vaca­tion homes. Parts of Costa Rica are con­sid­ered so crowded that some surfers have pushed north to Nicaragua. And in Mex­ico, rumors abound about devel­op­ment in a remote area of Baja Cal­i­for­nia known as Scor­pion Bay.

A drive of more than 800 miles from San Diego, Scor­pion Bay can be dif­fi­cult to reach, and it lacks most ameni­ties. Only pri­vate air­planes can land there, and those who drive must cover a few hun­dred miles along dirt roads through the desert. For years, most peo­ple stayed at a cold-shower camp­site on a rocky bluff above the beach. On their Web site, Scorpionbay.net, the campground’s oper­a­tors denied that they would sell out.

Surf schools have become another growth indus­try. San Diego had so many that the city began to reg­u­late them.

Richard Schmidt, a renowned big-wave surfer, started giv­ing lessons part time in 1978, while work­ing as a life­guard in Santa Cruz, Calif. Six years ago, his surf school began tak­ing clients to Costa Rica dur­ing the win­ter. They stay near the beach in a house where Mr. Schmidt’s wife teaches yoga. They also retain a masseuse.

Sandy Huf­faker for The New York Times

Todd Juneau, left, a real estate con­sul­tant, and Dave Sims com­mut­ing to Pacific Beach in San Diego. Juneau lis­tens in the surf for busi­ness talk.

In addi­tion to trips to Costa Rica, Surf Diva holds about 50 cor­po­rate clin­ics a year in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. Pack­ages can include accom­mo­da­tions, trans­porta­tion, golf and spas.

Many of Surf Diva’s clients are from New York City; they work on Wall Street or in the enter­tain­ment or fash­ion indus­tries. Some stay at La Valen­cia Hotel in La Jolla, where rooms start at more than $300 a night.

“It’s more than just a vaca­tion,” Isabelle Tihanyi said. “It’s a girls’ adven­ture trip.”

But for more adven­ture, surfers can take boat trips to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Indone­sia and East Timor.

“Good surf is pre­dom­i­nantly a third-world deal,” said Jake Bur­ton Car­pen­ter, founder and owner of Bur­ton Snow­boards. “In surf­ing, you’re try­ing to get away from the crowd.”

Mr. Car­pen­ter, 52, whose com­pany bought Chan­nel Islands Surf­boards in June, began surf­ing as an adult and now rides waves an aver­age of 60 days a year. He plans to take a boat trip to the Mal­dives in the Indian Ocean this summer.

“A big part of what’s hap­pened,” he said, “is that the mar­ket has aged, and not in a neg­a­tive way. I would run into so many peo­ple who say, ‘Oh, I used to surf.’ But peo­ple are stay­ing with it more. These board sports you can do the rest of your life.”

As a result, high-end boat char­ters in des­ti­na­tions like Indone­sia have begun to serve older, more afflu­ent clients. “With boat trips, it’s an older demo­graphic because these trips are so expen­sive,” Mr. Car­pen­ter said.

Through Sur­fAid Inter­na­tional, a non­profit pub­lic health orga­ni­za­tion started in the Mentawai Islands, Indone­sia, by a doc­tor who is also a surfer, Mr. Ger­lach met one of his well-heeled clients. That client intro­duced him to oth­ers. They fly him to places like Costa Rica for lessons.
As a surf coach, Mr. Ger­lach func­tions like a golf pro, offer­ing insight on the mechan­ics of catch­ing and rid­ing waves, and shar­ing some shortcuts.

“You’ve got to pick the right surf­board for the con­di­tions,” he said. “You wouldn’t want to play 18 holes with a wedge, and you wouldn’t want to play 18 holes with a driver.”

Mon­tauk, a prime East Coast surf­ing spot at the tip of Long Island, serves as a sym­bol for the sport’s evolv­ing status.

Last sum­mer, in a dirt park­ing lot near Ditch Plains, a bot­tle­necked surf break, Mr. Huerta said he over­heard a com­ment that spoke to the state of surf­ing today. Through a breeze, he heard a voice say, “I can get ser­vice on my Treo at Scor­pion Bay.”