“I was a security guard at Gisborne Hospital and when I reached 68 I thought that was old enough to retire from being a security guard. I stopped surfing at national champs, too.”
But he was far from inactive. As well as his regular recreational surfing, he competed at the Easter Masters competition at New Plymouth, the Polar Bear Surf Classic near Whangarei, and at Gisborne Boardriders Club events (he has 65 of their titles).
When Gisby heard an over-70s division was being introduced to the nationals, he couldn’t resist. His early-December entry was among the first received for the division.
His success on Monday means he has won every division above the open grade at least once — that’s over-30s, o35s, o40s, o45s, o50s, o55s, o60s and o70s. They’ve never had an o65s division, and the five-year groupings have been replaced by decades.
With his first age-group national title coming in 1984 at Gisborne, Gisby has won 40 titles in 40 years.
His feat was helped by 11 “doubles”, when he won two titles by surfing in his own age group and at least one below it.
Born on August 14, 1953, Gisby turns 71 this year and says, all going well, he will definitely be a starter at next year’s nationals.
“I’m feeling so fit, and paddle-fit . . . I’m going to keep going.”
Gisby had his first surf at Roberts Road in the 1965 August school holidays. On a borrowed 10-foot wooden surfboard, he stood up on his first wave and was hooked.
He had come down from Rothesay Bay to spend the holidays with his father, Gisborne-based fisherman Jack Gisby, and wanted to try the new craze.
Back in Auckland — his parents had split up and Gisby and his two sisters lived with their mother — he bought a 9ft 6in fibreglass board when he was 13 or 14 and got what he could from the small North Shore surf.
When he was 15 he left school and came to live in Gisborne, just for the surfing.
“I didn’t even sit School Certificate,” he said in a 1995 interview.
“Education-wise I have had regrets but I was lucky. I seagulled on the wharf, working two or three days a month, and that would carry me through. You could get away with living like that then, but not now.”
Gisby revelled in the number and variety of surf spots in and around Gisborne.
“If it was choppy at one beach you’d just go to another.
“Nobody had wetsuits in the early days. They’d have rugby jerseys or the black woollen jerseys shearers used. You’d get caught inside the wave and be held under for ages.
“Nobody had leg-ropes. If you lost your board half a mile out you’d have to chase it.”
Gisby entered his first competition about 1970, but it was the growing number of age-group competitions in the 1980s and ’90s that really got his competitive juices going.
He was a surveyor’s assistant with the Ministry of Works for 17 years, then caretaker at the YMCA for a few years before finishing his land-based career with 16 years in hospital security.
They were jobs that allowed him to surf nearly every day, and in the summer of 1979-80 he started recording his surfs . . . every fun surf, every contest.
He writes down where he has surfed and for how long, and what the surf conditions were. He has entered those details in over 40
diaries.
Included will be his performances in the ISA (International Surfing Association) world champs at Taranaki in 2003 when, in an entry of 64 surfers, he won the over-45s division when he was only three months short of his 50th birthday.
“Jay Quinn (ISA under-18 champion in 2001) and I are the only two Gisborne surfers to have won a world title,” Gisby said this week.
“I owe Gisborne everything. I could work, raise a family and still surf every day because of Gisborne’s beaches.”
Four surfers — three from Gisborne and one from Piha — contested the over-70s division at the national champs on Monday. Gisborne Boardriders’ Gisby, Ross Moodie and Benny Hutchings filled first, second and third places respectively, and Lion Rock Boardriders’ Clive Barron was fourth.
Spectators cheered the efforts of the veteran surfers on each wave and gave them a standing ovation as they came out of the water. And at the evening prizegiving, Gisby got another standing ovation when his 40-title feat was announced.
