Hynson’s life became the stuff of lore starting in 1963, when he was invited by the filmmaker Bruce Brown to join him and Robert August, another young Southern California surfer, on a trek that would lead them through Senegal, Ghana, South Africa, Australia, Tahiti, New Zealand and Hawaii, hopping the Equator to avoid the slightest chill of winter while searching for the perfect wave.
Hynson was only 21 but had already built a reputation as a maverick power surfer on the beaches around San Diego. He could be cocky and aloof, friends recalled — but not without reason: He already proved his mettle as one of the first non-native Hawaiians to ride Pipeline, on the North Shore of the Hawaiian island of Oahu, sometimes called the most dangerous wave in the world, in 1961.
He certainly looked camera ready, with his caramel tan and sun-whitened hair pomaded back in Dracula fashion, a hairstyle soon to be imitated by surfers around the world.
Mr. Brown had only $50,000 for his project, leaving his stars to pay for their own tickets around the world. To finance his trip, Hynson turned to the renowned board maker Hobie Alter, whom he had worked for, to provide him $1,400 for airfare, “even though I’d stolen nine surfboards off him a few years earlier,” he said in a 2017 interview with the British newspaper The Guardian.
