It’s 7 am, Malibu, California time, and two-year-old Yama, is bright-eyed, slurping on a milk bottle, happily sandwiched on the bed between her parents Frankie Harrer and Hugo Boserup. Balance, unsurprisingly, doesn’t seem to be an issue. Her mum grew up in Malibu surfing the beaches just to the north at Point Duma and Zuma Beach. A competitive phenom as a teenager, Frankie turned her back on the competitive scene in her early 20s to carve a name and career out of her effortless style and tuberiding talent in waves of consequence.
Hugo is a Danish skateboarder who after a stint building terrain parks at home, turned pro. His speed, style and grace come with a fast, hard-charging style. Flow is hard to define, though watching Hugo’s clips isn’t a bad place to get a handle on the concept. The pair, or trio, have just signed on as Db Ambassadors.
“We were just in Hawaii, with Frankie competing in the Vans Pipe Masters,” said Boserup. “When Pipe was breaking, I was on baby duty, and in between Frankie's surf sessions I'd hit the skate bowl close to Pipeline.”
The 26-year-old grew up in Copenhagen, where most of the skating is done on ledges and street features. “On the North Shore though, the kids were flying around, surfing the bowl, doing fun lines and less technical tricks, but with a real fun feel to it," he said. "I loved that style of skating.”
Meanwhile, Harrer was getting a feel for Pipeline. Known for her hard charging at barrelling waves such as Teahupo'o, she has a dislike for competition and crowds.
“That meant I was pretty nervous at The Pipe Masters,” she said. “But the chance to get to know the wave better and surf the wave was incredible.” Harrer finished a credible sixth place, just missing out on the Final. The Hawaii trip was a pretty good illustration of the way the young parents manage to combine their surf and skate careers, whilst putting Yama at the centre of it all.
“If it’s a location like Hawaii, then surfing gets a little more of the priority and if we are at a skate location, then Hugo’s work and filming takes precedence,” says Harrer. “It basically works out we share the load pretty much 50/50.”
The juggling aspects came to the fore in 2023. She spent the latter part of the year filming a profile project with her new shaper Haydenshapes Surfboards. The goofyfooter travelled to Indonesia, Australia, and Namibia, where she surfed the iconic Skeleton Bay on one of the biggest swells of the year.
The pair also spent a good chunk of the summer in Copenhagen while Hugo filled several smaller projects in Europe and back in LA. In 2024, he too is concentrating on a bigger video part and has planned a skate road trip throughout Australia, hitting the smaller towns between Sydney and Melbourne with a mix of Aussie mates and his regular skate crew.
“I’m so jealous that he can plan a trip six months in advance. Sometimes I get about six hours when a swell hits, and now being a parent, there’s more pressure on making the right call because I'm leaving Yama behind,” said Frankie.
She says she feels way more productive since having her daughter. When she commits to a project or a swell, with the time being away so precious, she is 100 per cent all-in on getting the job done. That showed in her breakthrough video clip titled Frankie:) which led to her being labelled by Stab as the "Most Barrelled Mom of 2022."
“I’ve been experimenting with different equipment, so I want to ride some bigger boards, and get some barrels and surf different waves in different ways this year,” said Harrer. “Hugo has his filming goals for 2024 too, but as long as we are all together, travelling, surfing and skating as family, we’ll be happy.”
Just as she finished that sentence, Yama, milk bottle drained, let out a mighty fart, causing the young parents to collapse in laughter. “That’s Yama, she always likes to get the last word,” laughed Hugo. “And that's the way we like it.”
