Bodysurfer With Southampton Roots Breaks Record

For many on the East End, surfing is a beloved summer activity they look forward to all year. For Andrew Karr, it’s bodyboarding that has become his true passion, and he’s capitalized on that passion to become one of the best bodyboarders in the world.

Karr, who grew up in Ambler, Pennsylvania, and spent summers in Southampton, set a world record for the largest wave ever surfed by a bodyboarder in February on a trip to Nazare, Portugal, by riding an approximately 60 foot wave. Karr is currently pursuing a professional career in the sport after first finding his passion for the sport while bodyboarding at Flying Point Beach.

Karr, 22, started bodyboarding with his father, Dave Karr, when he was 8 years old. His Dad taught him the basic bodyboarding techniques, and Karr said he loved it and started bodyboarding as much as he was able.

“By the time I was 11 or 12 years old, I was getting good at it,” Karr said. “A lot of people asked me when I would start surfing, but I was already at such a high level bodyboarding that to get to that level in surfing, where I’d be able to ride the kind of waves I wanted to ride, that learning process wouldn’t have been as satisfying.”

During Karr’s sophomore year of high school at Germantown Academy in Pennsylvania, he said he became obsessed with surfing a wave in Puerto Rico called Tres Palmas, a big wave spot that only swells, which creates the big waves ideal for surfing and bodyboarding, three to four times a year.

While in pursuit of that goal, he saw a video of Kurt Rist, a surfing instructor in Southampton, surfing a 50-foot wave in Ireland. Karr said he had never seen an East Coaster ride a wave that size.

“I was like, ‘I know this guy!” Karr said. “I see him in the place where I grew up bodyboarding all the time. And if he could do that, I wanted to do that, too. So the next summer, I just became obsessed with getting to know Kurt.”

Rist said he didn’t think riding big waves on a bodyboard was possible before meeting Karr. Initially when Karr reached out to Rist about riding Tres Palmas, Rist shut him down. But after Rist heard of Karr’s extensive preparation to surf the wave, he agreed.

In January of the following year, Karr finally got his shot at riding Tres Palmas. After “obsessively watching the charts all winter” waiting for a large enough storm to trigger a swell, Karr and Rist took a weekend trip to Puerto Rico to ride Karr’s first big wave.

Karr said that was a huge turning point for him and his bodyboarding career, and the first time he identified as a big wave surfer.

The summer after Karr’s senior year, he went to Puerto Escondido to live with Rist and to practice surfing big waves more consistently. Though Karr said he didn’t ride anything larger than 15 feet, spending time with the community of big wave surfers in Puerto Escondido was invaluable.

“That time of year, a lot of the best big wave surfers in the world go down there,” Karr said, who returned to Puerto Escondido the following summer. “So to be around a lot of guys who are larger than life figures to me, people I’d only see in surf movies, I’m now surfing with them.”

Karr said he wanted to take a gap year to train to surf Mavericks, a famous big wave surf spot in California where waves can be up to 60 feet. But since Karr had never ridden a wave anywhere near that size, and Rist was still unsure whether a wave that size could be ridden by a bodyboarder, Rist said he didn’t recommend that he go.

During his freshman year at Bates College in Maine, Karr took frequent trips to different destinations to surf. In January, he went to Portugal with his family, a place known for big waves. One day, when the waves were around 30 feet, Karr tried to get out to surf.

“I went down to the harbor to ask for a ride from a Jetski driver,” Karr said. “Everyone was like, ‘You’re crazy. People don’t bodyboard when it’s this big here, we don’t even know who you are, everyone out here is a professional big wave surfer. This is like a death sentence.’ I just kept begging them to let me go. And finally, one guy said yes and took me out.”

Karr wiped out, but said the experience of withstanding wiping out and staying relaxed proved his training had paid off. Photos of Karr on that wave went viral in the bodyboarding community, with people saying they’d never seen a bodyboarder attempt to surf a wave that large. Those comments inspired Karr to start thinking about starting a professional career.

Karr’s next big wave was Jaws, in Maui. Karr said he immediately fell in love with the spot, and while there, he successfully barreled a 40 foot wave, the world record for a bodyboarder at the time.

“The first wave came to me like 10 minutes into the session,” Karr said. “No one else was in position to go and I thought it looked like a good one. Usually, I like to wait for a long time in big waves before I go on my first wave, but this was a perfect opportunity. I couldn’t blow it. I had to go on this one.

“I went and got barreled on it and spit out of the barrel into the channel,” he added, “and a lot of my favorite big wave surfers in the world were just freaking out, they didn’t even think it was possible. I don’t think it fully registered with me at first, not until I was back on the beach safe after that session, but it was the culmination of everything I had been working for.”

After that, he pitched himself to Red Bull to try to earn a professional contract, saying he would take a year off of college and train in Maui and bodyboard Jaws as much as he could. Karr got in touch with representatives from the company, and they now sponsor some of his travel, including his record-breaking trip to Nazare, Portugal.

“Originally, I was bummed, like my best friend’s heading away, but I think it was the right move for sure,” said Maya Seckinger, one of Karr’s college friends. “He’s just had so many more opportunities there because you have to travel, which you can’t really do as easily if you’re in school. Everyone’s on their life path, and him wanting to take a year, I supported that.”

In February, Karr took on his biggest challenge yet, surfing Nazare. One of his other mentors, Kai Lenny, towed him into a 60 foot wave, and Karr rode it, making it the largest wave ever ridden on a bodyboard.

After achieving goals he’d set for himself at the beginning of his bodyboarding career, Karr now said he wants to parlay his success into more sponsored opportunities, and to help start contests for big wave bodyboarders. Karr said he wants to inspire more people to pursue bodyboarding, and that despite his success, he feels his best bodyboarding is still ahead of him.

“Riding big waves is the most rewarding feeling in the world,” Karr said. “If it doesn’t work out as a career for me, it’s still something I’ll never stop doing. I never feel more alive than when I’m piling into a 40-, 50-foot wave.”