Big Waves, Part 1

Every surfer dreams of riding the big wave. I mean the really big wave. Now when we talk about big waves, we're seeing big wave surfers travel the world to challenge breaks like Teahupoo (Tahiti), Maverick's (Half Moon Bay, northern California), Todos Santos (Mexico), Jaws (Maui), and now, Surfer Magazine reports, Shipstern's Bluff, Ours, and Cyclops (all in Australia). Technology in marine weather forecasting, marine geology, and oceanography have now combined to predict the best time to be at a particular break any place in the world to catch epic conditions. Although sometimes still an email or phone call from an observant friend will do.

When surfers of this caliber take on waves like this, today it can easily be captured on film or DVD like no other era prior to this one. A big wave surfer's fantasies and nightmares can be laid before him and the world to see.

The known big-wave world we saw in the 196o's surf flicks featured Greg Noll, George Downing, Buzzy Trent, and Woody Brown riding monster swells in Hawaii at Makaha, Sunset Beach, and of course Waimea Bay on the north shore of Oahu.

These guys were taking off on racing mountains of seawater thrust at immovable reefs which in turn, tossed these 25'+ mountains and their riders toward the sky as the wave took form. Wipeouts were disastrous. We'd see a rider taking off on the wave's peak in a low crouch, gripping his board's rails (edges) trying to make the drop. Huge winds scouring up the wave face would lift his surfboard's nose into mid-air, heaving him up at first, then dumping him down the wave face and launching the board into a vertical spin some fifteen feet above the wave. We'd sit there aghast seeing ourselves on those waves.

We thought this was how we would learn how crazy it could be in big waves. You see we memorized these sensational wipeouts. We knew them well through the safety of the camera lens.

We did not yet know however the reality, that instant when a surfer gets one of three things at the point of takeoff in big surf: attempting the terrible drop and taking off down the wave face; pulling back behind the peak fast and hard enough so as not to be pulled over the "falls"; or being pulled over the "falls" to be pile-driven to the bottom by tons of water, hoping he gathered enough air to stay conscious until able to swim to the surface. At this point he must swim to the beach with other monsters bearing down from behind.

Was all this punishment worth it? If the thrill of riding smaller waves was any measure, without a doubt, we would find the worth. We all hoped our day would come. We did believe it would. Could we measure up? Everything we intended to do in the water until then was to ready us for our baptism.

Here on the East coast we saw the surf stars from Hawaii and California on surf flicks at special showings in the theaters of Virginia Beach in the 1960's. We strode into the theater with our buddies feeling like we were the core surfers on our piece of the coast---special---the real guys. We weren't I'm sure, but we felt that way and it felt good.

We'd look around the theater to see who was there. Were there any local big names like Bob Holland, of Smith and Holland Surf Shop, or Bob White, of Wave Riding Vehicles fame? There weren't many other names we knew for this was close to the birth of surfing and surf culture on our coast. In fact I was positive we wouldn't be surfing after say, age 30 because we didn't know hardly anyone older than us who surfed, except maybe Holland and White, but they owned surfing-related businesses.

I sat in the wash beside my best friend, Steve, at Croatan Beach south of Rudee Inlet in the late fall, 1969. I was seventeen. We were taking a break from surfing clean, but small waves. Steve and I shared the dream of riding big waves at exotic locations. We were the "Endless Summer" generation of surfers as well and Bud Brown's film was woven neatly into our dreams. This vision of traveling the world surfing seemed possible for us.

I carved the number "30" in the sand between us as the shallow wash receded. Steve asked, "What's that?" I told him that's about how old we'll be when we probably won't be able to surf anymore. The wash ran over the 30 and left two seventeen-year-olds sinking into the wash sand and thinking.

Could this be true? We didn't really know anyone much older than us who surfed, so maybe this theory held some truth. Maybe we would change that, but we never verbalized it. You have to understand how deep this subject ran in us and the urgency it bred. Yeah, we were boys worried about life as men with full time office jobs and Vietnam and riots off in the distance and our beloved sport even farther away.