When the record-breaking big-wave bodyboarder Andrew Karr opened his surf school in the summer of 2021, the name came naturally. “I have always called people ‘legend,’ like affectionately. And I’ve done that since I was a kid,” he said. So when a student’s father suggested he name his company Legend Surf Co., he didn’t think twice. “I was like, yeah, that sounds sick. It just kind of worked well.” Now 27, and preparing for his fifth summer running his own surf school, he reflects on what brought him here and where he hopes to go next.
From a young age Karr was fascinated by “big-wave” surfing, characterized by a history of individual surfers pursuing waves in extreme conditions previously thought unattainable. He grew up in Pennsylvania but spent summers surfing in Southampton, and it was on the beach there that he first encountered the local legend Kurt Rist, who would go on to become a mentor to him. “I knew who he was from the time I was maybe like 12, 11 years old. I would see him out in the lineup when we’d surf in Southampton.”
Rist was one of the only people Karr knew of from the East Coast who rode the sort of waves he was interested in — “year in, year out, he would get some of the biggest, gnarliest waves around the world” — and the two started interacting a few years later. “I guess what really stood out to me about him was that not only was he a really good surfer but just like really respectful, like someone to look up to,” Karr said. “He carried himself in a really cool but confident way. And so when I started seeing Kurt and seeing all the acclaim he was getting, and realizing that he was the guy I would see surfing at the cut all the time, I was very interested in learning from him.”
In the winter of 2015 Rist took him to catch his first big wave, at Tres Palmas surf break in Puerto Rico. “That’s kind of when I started considering myself a big-wave surfer, which is funny because, looking back, the waves I rode were a good size but nothing I would consider big-wave surfing.” That set him on the trajectory that led to the creation of his own “legend” when, in October of 2019, he was reported to have been the first bodyboarder to ride in the barrel of world-famous Jaws surf break in Maui.
“Yeah, I mean, by some accounts that might be true. I did get a really good wave at Jaws which is still, I would say, probably the wave of my life.” Surfers specifically go to Jaws, he explained, with the goal of “getting barreled” — catching a wave at the perfect moment to ride in the hollow as it curls over, creating the experience of moving through a tunnel of water. “I’ve been surfing Jaws every winter since then, but I haven’t gotten one like that — where I’m, like, fully disappeared and travel through it and come out.” At the time, only a few people had ridden Jaws on a bodyboard at all. In order to catch any wave, you have to match its speed as you paddle out into it, and most surfers ride waves of that size on nimble boards specifically designed to facilitate that speed. Because bodyboarders surf prone, and the board is shaped to fit the body, they have to be extremely precise in their positioning. “Since then I’ve realized how hard it is to get a wave like that, like, how perfectly everything has to go,” Karr said.
The feat garnered him a lot of attention in the surf world, including a deal with Red Bull that involved the company funding a few surf trips a year for him — and it was at the height of that support that he founded Legend Surf Co., which he operates out of East Hampton, Amagansett, and Montauk each summer. “The whole idea of being a sponsored athlete, it’s nice and it’s a glorified thing, but you’re kind of owned by whoever sponsors you at that point,” he said.
It also added a new sort of pressure that took some of the joy out of what had been his passion since childhood. “It kind of feels like everything you’re doing, you have to get it documented and find a way to create accessible content from it. I could have a really good session surfing somewhere, but it almost felt like it wouldn’t count if I didn’t get it filmed and stuff like that, you know?”
His relationship with Red Bull ultimately “fizzled” around 2022, but his business has continued to grow. “Over all, as a job, I love it and it gives me total freedom,” he says. “I’m able to make a living between May and the end of August, and then the rest of the year I’m pretty free to travel.” This year he focused more on branding, and sees many possibilities both for his own future and that of his company. He will be releasing T-shirts this year, which he can see eventually developing into a full-on apparel line.
He looks forward to eventually stepping into more of a mentor’s role himself — what he calls “crossing the threshold into ‘unclehood’ ” — but feels he is not in that position yet. “There are so many things I still want to experience in my life. I almost think of it like building a museum, like each experience is part of the museum, and there are so many wings I still want to construct. And then one day I’ll get to the point where I feel like I have a completed museum and I’ll want to show people through it.”
