15½-year-old Gidget falls in love with a surfer and with surfing, discovering a new sport and a new lifestyle along with it; Anne reads Gidget's fanciful diary and assumes that all of her sister's outlandish entries ("...and I sink into nothingness") are true.

Gidget becomes infatuated with a rootless surfer bum calledKahunaand wants nothing more than to accompany him around the world to the greatest surfing sites. She changes her mind after inviting him home for dinner and discovering he has middle class aspirations