Hound of the Sea

by Garrett McNamara

  Uncle Dane had to take off and it was just Buttons and me as the sun dropped in the sky. The sets started getting bigger. Instinct told me that some big waves were still on the way. It takes some convincing, but I finally talk Buttons into putting me on a wave. He doesn’t want to disappoint me, and on the first wave of the next set he drops me at the perfect spot. But another tow team drops in right behind us, and I’m only halfway down the face when I collide with the other surfer and a yard sale ensues. While I’m held under the only thing I can think about is whether Buttons is going to be able to rescue me. I wouldn’t have been surprised to surface only to see him sitting in the channel shaking with fear. But when I finally pop up he’s right there, and he reaches down and grabs me and hauls me on the sled. I thank him and I’m so grateful for his competence I want him to have at least one good ride before we call it a day.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Garrett. I just don’t know. I’m pretty scared,” he says.

  I beg and plead and wheedle and coax and finally, reluctantly, he agrees. He eases himself into the water, slides onto the board. When the next wave comes, a big one but nothing heart-stopping, I put him on the shoulder and he drops straight to the bottom, just like he did before, and gets pounded. When I swing over to pick him up, he says, “No more, Garrett, please, no more!” We call it a day, and from that moment on we are friends.

  IN AUGUST 2013 Nicole and I returned to the North Shore from Nazaré and the first piece of news we heard was bad: Buttons was in Queen’s Hospital in Honolulu. He’d been complaining of pain in his back for almost a year. It got so bad he finally summoned the courage to go to a doctor, who suspected he was there only for the painkillers and sent him home with ibuprofen. He spent every day on the beach at the surf school he’d opened on the North Shore, and every day the pain got worse. This went on for a year. One day he reached back and felt a lump the size of a mango. A new doctor diagnosed him with stage IV lung cancer.

  When we got to the hospital his room was packed. Buttons had had several families during his life, producing eight children and nine grandchildren and all those children had friends who loved Buttons, and friends of friends who loved Buttons. Pretty much everyone on the entire island felt a connection to him, and were stunned by the news, stricken, and had come there to be in his presence. Every day more friends from around the world came to be with Buttons.

  Buttons lay in the bed in a blue cotton hospital gown. His skinny tattooed arms poked out of the sleeves. His dark face was gaunt and lined. When we made our way through the crowd his big eyes, normally snapping with mischief, looked scared. “Garrett, Garrett,” he said, “I don’t want to die. I don’t know what to do. Please help me.”

  He gave us permission to meet with his doctor, who said the prognosis wasn’t good. Only six months to live, even with chemotherapy provided he was strong enough to tolerate it. He said there was nothing more he could do, but if Buttons was interested in alternative options that was certainly something we might try.

  He was discharged and went home to the little house in Waialua he shared with his current wife, Hiriata, and their children, both under the age of five. We went to visit and the place was jumping. Empty pizza boxes scattered around, TV blaring, friends coming and going and weeping at Buttons’s bedside, beside themselves. Everyone really did love Buttons and could not imagine losing him.

  He called me over and I sat next to him on the couch. He took my hand and leaned over to whisper. “Garrett, Garrett, I don’t want to see nobody. But what can I do. What can I do?”

  Buttons asked if he could move into our house, and Hiriata agreed. She was all for it. She was sad and worried and pulling her hair out from trying to prevent his well-meaning cronies from slipping him cigarettes. The next week we moved Buttons into the master bedroom of our house in Moku-lē’ia. From there he could watch and listen to the waves. It was just the two of us, very quiet. Nicole made him green smoothies. She made him oatmeal. We drew up a blueprint for his survival, which included eating clean, light exercise and rest, allowing us to dispense his pain medication, and staying away from cigarettes. We said we were there for him in every way we possibly could be, but he also needed to commit to his own healing. He signed off on the plan without a beat of hesitation.

  For the first few weeks he seemed to be feeling better. He was relieved to be alone, to be free of having to bear witness to the grief and distress of other people. He would take little walks on the beach and sit in the sand and watch the waves. He dutifully drank his green smoothies and ate his steamed vegetables. Every so often he would pull me aside and say, “Garrett, Garrett, you need to give Nicole a baby. She would make the best mother.” I’d laugh and remind him I already had three beautiful children. He would giggle and say, “But you and Nicole, Garrett. You and Nicole.”

  Perhaps because he was feeling better he thought it would be safe to cheat a little on the program. One day I went to take out the garbage and saw that he’d been throwing away the veggies, only pretending to eat them. Another day, when it was time to give him his pain medication, he didn’t want it. “I’m feeling great without it, brah, great without it. I don’t think I need my pain pills anymore.” That night, Nicole found a baggie of drugs in his shoe. A friend who’d showed up unannounced for a visit had slipped it to him while we weren’t looking.

  When we confronted him he cried and said he was sorry.

  There was a well-respected doctor in Los Angeles who offered an alternative cancer treatment. It was expensive, of course, and not covered by insurance. I called my friend Rick Salomon to see if he could help. He had become good friends with Buttons in the winter of 2009 while he was in Hawaiʻi filming a reality TV show with me. He is a generous guy with a lot of resources thanks to his skill as a high stakes poker player, and without skipping a beat he offered to help in any way he could.

  In September we brought Buttons to LA to begin treatment. Rick agreed to pay for it, and he also arranged for us to stay at a house in Paradise Cove, Malibu. Buttons continued to get stronger. He was still rail thin, but his eyes were brighter and he had more energy.

  In October I was expected in Nazaré, and we asked Nicole’s brother CJ if he would come and stay with Buttons. CJ agreed so we flew him to LA from his home in Florida. We’re still not sure what happened, how things went south so quickly. CJ came to help out, and a few days later Hiraita came, followed by Buttons’s friends from around the world, who started trickling in, some bringing healthy love and support, and others their version of love and support: junk food, booze, cigarettes, and drugs. A trickle became a flood, and soon Buttons was steeped in the chaotic, toxic environment he’d begged to be rescued from. CJ is a laid-back, gentle guy. He’s not an enforcer. He wasn’t about to chase off the dear friends of a dying surf legend.

  We suggested to Buttons that he go home to Hawaiʻi, go be with his children and everyone he loved. Shortly thereafter he contracted pneumonia and was hospitalized. The doctors quickly administered chemotherapy, but he passed that night. Looking back now on everything that transpired, I feel everyone involved was just doing their best, what they thought Buttons would want, trying to make him happy.

  ON THAT very day, before we heard the sad news, our son was conceived. I strongly believe Buttons’s soul flew over that day. And on August 9, after twenty-three hours of intense labor, my love, my best friend, my soul mate, my inspiration, and my biggest hero gave birth at home to Garrett Barrel Moore McNamara, 9 pounds, 14 ounces, 21 inches long. He was strong and healthy and a perfect cross of his mother and me, but I would not have been surprised if he’d come out giggling, a black baby with tiny button curls all over his head.

  My daughter Ariana was eighteen and had grown into a lovely young woman. She had a fledgling business designing bikinis and also played the ukulele with lively charm. Titus was sixteen. Big-shouldered and quiet, he was kicking around the idea of becoming a firefighter. Tiari, at four, was fearless, and liked to get things stirred up. I could alre
ady see myself in her. Now that I’d been blessed with baby Barrel my beautiful ’ohana was complete.

  ’Ohana is Hawaiian for “family.”

  WE TRAVELED to Fort Lauderdale for the birth, so that we could be with Nicole’s parents. I had also been invited to give a talk at the Bienes Center for the Arts at St. Thomas Aquinas High School. It would be an hour-long conversation with a young local surfer, Hunter Gambon. They would also show clips and there would be a question-and-answer period. This was a little out of my comfort zone, sitting in front of a paying audience (all proceeds donated to the local Surfrider Foundation chapter) and holding forth. But I treated it as I do a big swell rising up on the horizon. I don’t think about it. I put on a nice plaid shirt with a collar and some clean jeans and made sure to show up on time.

  Right off the bat Hunter asked how I got into surfing. When I said how our mom forced us to move to Hawaii everyone laughed. I told how we didn’t have much, but our mom saw to it that we had a surfboard and how I cut it in thirds in my bedroom and stuck it back together with resin. I told how the waves were a place to escape, a place to express myself, a place to be free. I said that then, as now, every time I paddle out I thanked God for my life, and for the ocean—my playground, my office, my church.

  When asked about fear I said that fear is a choice, something we manufacture in our minds. When we think about the past or the future, we become afraid. We’re afraid because we remember when something bad happened before, and we’re scared it’s going to happen again. If we’re in the moment and enjoying the moment and making the best of the moment, there is no fear.

  They showed a clip of me getting worked over at Jaws, falling off my board a second after I took off and cartwheeling straight down the face, the equivalent of falling off a five-story building. I said that people thought I was crazy because I didn’t fear my wipeouts, but that I trained for them and had safety in place so that I could be sure of a rescue.

  I thought of wipeouts as the ride after the ride. When I was getting pounded I just let go and went with it. I’ve probably had some of the worst wipeouts in surfing, and I’ve enjoyed every one of them. I said how getting tumbled beneath the surf, thrown this way and that and having no control, made me feel alive.

  I was asked how I’d been able to turn my passion into a career and told about how I’d had a so-so pro career, and how by the age of thirty-four my sponsors had dribbled away to nothing, so I opened the surf shop for security. I told about the blueprint, and how I wrote keep surfing at the top. The audience laughed at that, and I was surprised. I didn’t know whether it was because the goal seemed so pie in the sky or because here I was, all these years later, surfing for a living.

  I told how under keep surfing I wrote down win the Eddie and Jaws Tow-In contests, and then what I would need to do physically, emotionally, and spiritually to achieve my goals and how I then focused 110 percent. And lo and behold I won the Jaws Tow-In and was able to close the store and keep surfing. Everyone applauded. It was a streamlined, setback-free version of the truth, but it was the truth nevertheless.

  I told how the key was figuring out what you’re passionate about. Maybe you’re not the surfer. Maybe you’re the photographer. Maybe you’re the designer with a clothing company. Maybe you’re the medic and jet-ski driving expert specializing in rescue. Maybe you’re the one who organizes and publicizes the contests. No matter what you do in life, everyone is born with a unique talent. It may not be a grand, world-shaking talent, but it’s something that you do a little differently, a little better than everyone else. Figure out what you need to do to be able to do what you want, and also how you can be of service to others while doing it.

  I said that I was living proof that if you make your blueprint and follow it that anything is possible. It’s never too early and it’s never too late.

  Onstage I sat across from Hunter in nice, living room–type chairs, a little table with a black cloth draped over it between us. There were water bottles on the table. On the wall behind us there was a big screen where they showed clips and also projected the interview for the people sitting in the back. On either side of the screen, propped up like a pair of Hawaiian tikis, were my bright green surfboards, created for me by Mercedes-Benz.

  Immediately after the world-record wave a lot of big global corporations had reached out, wanting to sponsor me. McDonald’s wanted to create a signature GMac fish sandwich, and Wild Turkey wanted to feature me in an ad campaign. I turned them both down without a second thought. I was always thinking about kids these days, and careful about what I endorsed. Then one day in 2013 I received an e-mail from someone at Mercedes. He said they had an idea for a campaign. He said, we don’t just want to sponsor you. We don’t want to write you a check or give you a car. We want a chance to get in the water with you.

  I thought someone was pranking me. I’ve been known to pull a lot of pranks myself, to the point where my Nazaré friends had started calling any kind of a practical joke “pulling a Garrett.” I thought one of them was pulling a Garrett on me. But the call was legit. Soon I was flying to Germany, where I sat down with a team of technicians, engineers, and designers in Mercedes headquarters in Stuttgart. I described my magic surfboard to them, based on all my years of experience. They went to their drawing boards and designed a board especially for me, my style of riding, and the waves of Nazaré. Like a racehorse or a yacht it had a fancy name—the Silver Arrow of the Sea—and a built-in telemetry system that reads sensors in my wet suit to provide data about my performance. Across the back in bold black letters it said “Designed Especially for Garrett McNamara.” It is the best tow board I’ve ever ridden, and hands down my most prized possession.

  Since then they’ve continued to build me new boards, experimenting with different materials and designs. Together we designed one made with Amorim cork. Portugal is the world’s top producer of cork and also boasts the largest cork forest in the world, and wouldn’t you know it is pretty much the perfect material to withstand the impact of Nazaré’s powerful wave. We are also experimenting with a material called Varial foam, a staple of the aerospace industry, that is also both incredibly strong and flexible.

  I’m still at a loss for words.

  About six months after my talk at the Bienes Center, Nicole and I went to the French bakery in town, Le Vinois, one of her family’s favorite spots. A man approached me as we were standing in line to order, and stuck out his hand. He was of average height, middle-aged and unassuming. Unexpectedly, he said he wanted to shake my hand for everything I had done for his country. I recognized his accent as Portuguese. He didn’t mention having been at my talk, but this sort of encounter always moves me, and I was very touched but then thought no more about it.

  The next spring we flew back to Nazaré for business. It was off-season, and I was only moderately obsessed with keeping an eye on the swells. We were there for meetings to set up a summer surf camp for disadvantaged kids, to film a commercial, and do some interviews and visit some schools.

  We also met with some city officials, the Portuguese minister of tourism, and professors from the University of Coimbra about turning the first floor of the lighthouse into an interactive museum of oceanographic science. The lighthouse roof was convenient for standing on and wave-spotting, but when we arrived in 2010 the building itself had been closed for many years. The locals were skeptical that it could be reopened and repurposed, but after a solid year of meetings with the city fathers, we had succeeded.

  These days pictures of the world-record waves hang on the stone walls, and Zon’s and my North Canyon project documentary is played on a continuous loop. Our meeting took place on the roof of the lighthouse. It’s the off-season, cold and gray, but the place is busy with people climbing the stairs to stand and soak in the amazing view of the sea, and also poke their heads into the exhibit and have a look around. A young couple who’d obviously been traveling—tan, frayed shorts, little knapsacks—emerged from the exhibit and kept looking
over at where we sat, pointing and whispering. I excused myself and walked over and introduced myself. They asked for an autograph, and wanted to know whether intermediate surfers could ever surf here. I said there was pretty much room for every level, for paddle-in and towing both; it just depended on the waves. True whether you were a beginner on a fun board or, well, me.

  The village seemed lively on that day, a random Tuesday in late March. It made me think back to the first day we showed up five years before and there was no one at the lighthouse, no one on the beach, no one at Restaurante a Celeste. We would stroll in at noon and the place would be empty.

  Now, the first swell hits in the fall and surfers start arriving, with them the media and also visitors from other parts of Portugal and beyond, there to see Mother Nature in action. The lighthouse is crowded most days with people mesmerized by the waves, and by the thundering white water you can feel in your chest and the power and energy of those crazy heavy swells that have been here all along.

  Also, most days, there’s a wait to get a table at Restaurante a Celeste. Sometimes we even have to stand in line and wait our turn.

  ON THIS day, part of our hectic schedule included traveling to a city in the northern part of the country to meet with the director of innovation at Amorim Cork. He had contacted me and was interested in designing and developing a cork stinger for surfboards. It would be a nice addition to the company portfolio, he’d said, and also stimulate the local economy.

  Nicole and I walked into his office, and there stood a man I couldn’t place, but who looked familiar. I meet a lot of people these days and I couldn’t remember how I knew him.

  He grinned and shook my hand. “That night in Florida, after your talk, I went home and made a blueprint.”