How Jojo Roper Became One of the Best Big-Wave Surfers on Earth

Jojo Roper really likes to surf. Sure, everyone who likes to surf really likes to surf, but Roper’s got something else going with it. Something a little more passionate. You likely know him for his big wave exploits — of which there are certainly many — but he is downright fanatical about any sized wave. And that obsessive enthusiasm has manifested in him becoming one of the best big-wave surfers in the world.

“I love it,” he told me over a bad phone connection. He’d just arrived on the North Shore and had to drive somewhere up the road to find better service. “I surf every day if I can. Whether it’s one-foot Windansea or whatever else it might be. I’m always surf stoked, luckily.”

Roper grew up around surfing. The San Diego native’s father is Joe Roper, who could accurately be described as a legend. About 45 years ago, Joe opened the doors to Joe Roper’s Surfboard Repair, a hometown surfboard repair shop in Kearney Mesa, San Diego.

Joe Roper is part of a group of people who shaped San Diego’s surf culture, alongside other icons like Mike Diffenderfer and Carl Ekstrom, to name a few. The elder Roper dominated at places like Big Rock, Windansea, and the reefs around La Jolla, and made a name for himself at Pipeline in the 1970s and eighties. As many did at the time, he fixed his own dings, then began fixing his friends’. His talents grew into the shop, and Jojo basically grew up there — and as he grew, his father’s passion for surfboards and surfing was instilled in him like a strong-brewed tea.

“I’ve been working (at my dad’s shop) since I was little and just learning it all and doing it all,” he said. “It was somewhere to hang out and help dad out.”

Ask anyone and they’ll tell you that Jojo is an extraordinarily hard worker. It’s something that rubbed off on him from his dad, who, as Jojo says “has worked his ass off his whole life.” Even now, although he makes enough to surf full time, he’s helping in the family repair shop.

“I still go in there four to five days a week and put in six to eight hours a day,” he laughed. “It’s just a part of me. It’s a lot more than a job. It’s pretty awesome, you know?”

A lot of kids grow up idolizing their dad, and Jojo was one of them. Between surfing and working in the shop, he had his career carved out early.

“I was a huge fan of dad,” he remembered. “It just kind of went without saying that that was what I was going to do, too. It was something to chase. He’s got some big shoes to fill.”

Having a son who followed in his footsteps wasn’t something that Joe pushed for. It just happened. They did other things; tested out other activities, but from the first time Joe pushed Jojo into a wave at three years old, that was it.

“We tried the whole tee-ball thing, just because it was what all the kids were doing, but I just wanted to go to the beach and go surfing,” said Jojo. “Dad probably hated it just as much as I did, but he was just doing what he thought parents are supposed to do.”

As Jojo got older, he, like many other San Diego kids, surfed the NSSAs. Although he did well, he soon realized that contests weren’t really his thing. “When I was about 16,” he said, “I was just… not that psyched on it anymore.”

So Jojo stopped competing for points and started surfing for the love of it. He began chasing bigger and bigger waves, and it quickly became apparent that he had a knack for them.

Somewhere around 2005, Rusty Preisendorfer took notice. Rusty knew Jojo — Rusty and Joe have been connected since the seventies, when Rusty surfed Blacks and Joe surfed Big Rock and the reefs — and they’d stayed in touch. Somewhere around 2005, Rusty began shaping Jojo’s surfboards. But it’s been a different kind of shaper/surfer relationship, since Jojo’s family had a glassing factory. Jojo picks up a shaped blank from Rusty, then takes it back to his shop and glasses it himself.

“I’ve been making him boards for almost 15 years,” Preisendorfer told me via email. “Maybe longer. Virtually all of them have been shaped blanks that get glassed at Joe Roper’s Surfboard Repair.  I’m not quite sure how long, but he’s been doing his own glassing for quite a few years.”

Rusty, of course, is one of the most legendary surfboard shapers in the game. He’s got a half-century of shaping guns under his belt – a wealth of knowledge that he transfers into his surfboards. But that knowledge is gained from surfers like Jojo, who serve as test pilots.

“A lot of great surfers have ridden my boards in surf as big as it gets,” Rusty wrote. “I’m always learning. Jojo is an incredible source of feedback. He’s so focused on big-wave riding. He gets over 50 boards a year and quite a few of them are guns. One refinement at a time. He’s really a pleasure to work with.”

For Jojo, having Rusty shaping his boards is a blessing. “He’s just a mastermind,” he said. “He’s done a lot for me and I’m so appreciative of it all.”

The big wave scene, however, is a little finicky at times. It’s a game of patience when it comes down to it — waiting out the back for the right wave. The consequences of a mistake are much higher, so the ability to let waves go by is of paramount importance. In recent years, the number of big-wave events has dwindled, making it hard for a big-wave specialist like Jojo to prove his skills in contest setting.

“When I first started, there were like six contests around the world,” he said. “By the time I got on Tour, it was three events. Now it’s just one at Jaws. You kind of have to free surf because there’s no other route to be taken.”

As I mentioned, big-wave surfing as a free surfer is a lot different than it is when there are judges involved. Jojo knows exactly which wave he wants before he even paddles out, and he’s prepared to wait for it. But in a contest, you need to have a different mindset.

“In a contest format,” he explained, “there’s a lot more risk. You’re pushing yourself to get a couple of good waves in 45 minutes, which is pretty crazy on paper… You just have to be a bit more willing to take risks and push it harder. Your heart rate is going to be through the roof the whole time and you’re going to let it roll.”

When I asked him about the inherent dangers in chasing big waves around the world, he paused and thought for a long time. AT 31 years old, Roper’s relatively young, but to him, becoming one of the best big-wave surfers in the world requires more time than becoming one of the best in regular-sized waves.

“You look at some of the guys who are the best in the world, like Twiggy,” he said. “I think he’s approaching 50, and he’s a two-time world champion and he’s still pushing it as hard as ever. It seems like the more experience you get over time, the better you are in big waves. I think that — aside from Kelly Slater — a lot of the guys on the other side peak in their late-20s, maybe early 30s. I’m 31, so I’m long past my prime.”

Like anyone involved in surfing — and especially the type of person who has an affinity for enormous waves — Roper is always keen to try something new. Which is part of the reason we called him up for a recent film project entitled Peak California. In short, we asked Jojo and climber Nina Williams to put themselves in each others shoes. Jojo would learn to climb with Nina as his instructor, and Nina would learn to surf with Jojo as hers. The experience was jarring, to say the least. Although he’s weirdly comfortable in tall waves, he’s afraid of heights.

“It is so scary,” he said about climbing. “I was tripping. That was the first time I ever did it, and I don’t want to say it’s the last time I’ll ever do it, but god, I was tripping. I got thrown right into 60-foot Nazaré on her side, and she surfed two-foot PV. The movie didn’t show how gnarly some of it was, at least in my eyes. It came out amazing, but some of the stuff felt a lot gnarlier than it looked. I was like, ‘damn it, I look like kind of a wuss here!'”

Jojo Roper, out of his comfort zone and looking decidedly un-wuss-like. Photo: Jordyn Romero

When I asked him why, exactly, he was far more comfortable riding a moving wall of water than he was climbing a static wall of rock, he laughed before giving me me a very simple explanation.

“I’m just more comfortable in water,” he chuckled. It’s my environment. With climbing, the ground is hard. When you’re up there, you don’t know if your fingers can handle something. If I’m putting myself in harm’s way surfing, I know the risks. With climbing, I don’t.”

Jojo certainly knows about the dangers in surfing, but he’s just as knowledgeable about how to deal with problems if and when they should arise. He’s heavily involved in the relatively recent focus on safety in big waves.

“I’ve seen some horrible things,” he said. “I’ve seen death in big waves and it definitely put me in a more safety-oriented mindset. I’ve gone through the whole BWRAG [Big Wave Risk Assessment Group] courses, and I help instruct them. I get really into it and I push for anyone around me to strive for success in that region before just doing the whole ‘show up, paddle out, and don’t think about anybody else.’ Although I can appreciate that too, because that’s how I started. That’s how I got into it. But I really appreciate the safety side of it.”

When he looks towards the future, Roper has lofty goals. Although they might be lofty, it’s entirely possible that he’s going to accomplish them, and accomplish them soon. Sure, he wants to perform well in contests, but he’s got something a little bigger in mind: he wants to do something that will stand the test of time.

“My biggest goal — I’ve had it from the start — is I just want one thing that stands out for all-time… Something that stands out forever has always been my goal. Whether it’s a ride of the year or the biggest paddle wave. A 70-foot Nazaré wave or a 60-foot Jaws wave. I just want to paddle something gigantic. That’s always been my focus.”