CARLSBAD, Calif. — Straddling a longboard, Kim Kennis scanned the incoming waves, searching for one packing enough height and force.
A week earlier, she had stepped off an airplane from Rochester, N.Y., with one goal in mind: Ride a wave just like the women she had seen in the surfing magazines.
For five days, she had listened, practiced and shared the frustration that came with learning a new sport. Kennis and 20 others are enrolled at Surf Diva, a camp for women.
Now in the water, the 35-year-old antiques dealer bobbed on her surf board as she looked at the waves rolling in to South Carlsbad State Beach. Then she saw it, a soft swell building in the distance.
"This isn't the end--you know, a come-to-California-and-learn-to-surf vacation, and then go home and forget it," she said later on the beach. "This is the beginning. This is a sport I'm learning, I'm going to continue, and I'm going to invest in."
That's the attitude, industry analysts said, that a growing number of women have been expressing about the sport in recent years. In response, surfing companies increasingly cater to women, sponsoring weeklong camps and clothing lines.
Analysts point to the rising number of women with disposable incomes, the adventure sports movement and the success of targeted advertising by mainstream retail giants, such as Nike.
"Suddenly, in the summer of 2001, the climate is just right for a lot of these women to take that step and get out there," said Elizabeth Glazner, founder and co-editor of Wahine, a women's surfing magazine.
"It's not because somebody created a board short for women. It's because people have been out in the sand for years watching their kids, their boyfriends, their husbands do it and finally asked, 'Why can't I do it?' "
The Surf Industry Manufacturing Assn. reported at its annual meeting this spring that the number of businesses offering surfing products for women and girls had increased nearly 75% from 1997 to 2000. There are no estimates available on the number of women taking up the sport.
It also found that major surfing retailers, such as Billabong and Reef, had made significant marketing changes to target women.
The babes in bikinis who dominated advertisements in the 1980s and 1990s have been replaced by professional and amateur athletes. Most visible are world-ranked competitors such as Lisa Anderson, who became the first female professional surfer with a signature shoe line.
