As a 15-year-old truant from a posh school in New York, the would-be pilot Woodbridge Brown washed Charles Lindbergh’s aero­plane, Spirit of Saint Louis, and waved his hero off from Roose­velt Field, Long Island, on his historic 1927 flight to Paris. The teenager had spurned his wealthy family home, slept on cold hangar floors and mopped up oil leaks just to be close to the era’s romantic new flying aces.

It was the start of a lifelong fascination with wind and water that was to turn Woody Brown, who has died at the age of 96, into a record-breaking aviator, sailor and designer who built the first modern catamaran. Above all, he will be remembered as a legendary surfer. He said of the surf in Hawaii, where he lived for more than 60 years: “I loved to get just as close to death as I possibly could and then dodge it. That was my thrill in life.”