Born in San Francisco but raised on Black Point in Honolulu after his parents moved to Oahu,
John Kelly Jr. bore the mind of his two artist parents, John Kelly Sr. and his wife Katharine. John and his parents were good friends with the Kahanamoku family.
Unsatisfied with how the plank surfboards would not hold into the wall of a wave, by 1937 he designed the Hot Curl surfboard, a board that modified the squared plank design of surfboards of that time by rounding the tail section of the plank. A Kelly finless redwood hot curl board sold for more than $40,000 in one of
Randy Rarick’s Surf Auctions.
From redwood to balsa, from finless to added skegs, surfboard design flourished through the 1950s. By 1963 in a quest to take more control over the biggest waves at Makaha and Sunset Beach, Kelly designed and patented a split hull design surfboard which he called the
HYDROPLANE. I believe his intention was to give the board the speed to paddle into big waves while giving the same board better turning control once on the wave.
John was one of those early surfers featured in Bud Browne’s early surf films like Gun Ho.
John Kelly authored a 304 page book, 'Surf and Sea', which Matt Warshaw cites as the most comprehensive book on the aspects of surfing ever written up to that time.
A Marine Corps Medalist for diving exploits after WWII, his history is peppered with the social politics of the early 1960s as a communist party member with Pete Seeger, as a cofounder in Hawaii of Save Our Surf (after the loss of Garbage Hole surf break at the entrance to Ala Moana Harbor), and as a graduate of Julliard School of Music. He advocated Hawaiian Sovereignty (John’s wife Marion was Hawaiian) through the 1980s and tirelessly advocated for environmental awareness.
I received word that three surfboard collectors would be getting together at Inter-Island Surf Shop in Kapahulu to compare their three Kelly Hydroplane boards.
Greg Lui-Kwan, Barry Morrison, and Darren Park were surprised to compare the differences in their boards and to see three of the more famous surfboards in surfing history at the same location sixty years after the original board was designed and patented.
