Catherine Rosset
Catherine building surfboards, circa 1966
She was born Catherine Marie Abbott in Santa Clara, California, 1922. When Catherine was a young child, her family moved to the Long Beach area where she grew up in a small beach house on Terminal Island. It was there that Catherine developed a great love for the sea. An artist at heart, and a non-traditional spirit, she wasn’t worried about bucking that which was normally expected of women from her time. Catherine was in her forties when she taught herself to surf. Not many women surfed in those days, and the boards were heavy. Soon, she was shaping and glassing her own surfboards out of her single car garage in Carson CA, under the trade name “El Bandito”. The Rosset family moved to Seal Beach in 1971. Surfing was a very large part of Catherine’s life. With her daily trips to ride the waves, she quickly became a fixture at Bolsa Chica in Huntington Beach. No longer building surfboards, Catherine kept her creative interests flowing by producing “Bag Lady” surfboard bags and “Yankzee” surfboard leashes. Back then, there were few females involved in the surfing world. They had no particular representation. During its formation in the early seventies, Catherine was one of the founding board members of WISA (Women’s International Surfing Association) for which she did poster and advertisement artwork. Catherine entered surf contests held at the Huntington Beach Pier, placing in the top three. She was fearless in the water. Her daughter recalls a huge day in front of their trailer at Campo Lopez watching her mom take off on ten-foot faces. “No one else was out there!” Catherine surfed until her mid seventies when a hip replacement caused her to give it up; but her love for the sport, the culture, and sea, never wavered.
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