by Susan Casey
“Ohhh, look at this set!” King said, pointing. The wave rose up, its face veined with white, and it lunged against the sky and hung there, steepening and feathering, before the lip knifed down and burst the surface, unloading for a deafening three seconds. And then everything was white, boiling water, shimmering air, the liquid shards of a shattered mirror, and the Kai Kane rocked in the aftermath. This was a different Pe’ahi than I’d encountered before.
Don Shearer’s yellow helicopter swooped over the cliff and across the water, pulling in front of the barrel. Shearer flew so low that at times the wave’s crest was above him. His movements were so precise and intuitive that his helicopter could trace the path of the rider, close enough to monitor his facial expressions. Miller, strapped in a harness, leaned out of the doorless chopper, filming. When a board or a Jet Ski or a surfer was lost in the whitewater, Shearer would spot its location from above and then hover directly over it, signaling the rescuers.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a Jet Ski approaching. Doerner, wearing a red windbreaker and surf shorts, with a pair of rescue fins strapped around his waist, pulled up alongside. He was a normal-looking guy with abnormal intensity, and though I’d never watched him in action before, I had the instant impression of deep expertise. Doerner often unleashed his sharp wit against the clueless flailers of the tow-surfing world (though he was always prepared to rescue them). “This is the Sport of Kings,” he had said. “Not the Sport of Bozos.” Today his dark brown eyes flashed the message: This wave is serious, and anyone who’s out here had better damn well be serious too.
Cradling his bulky camera housing, King slung a leg over the gunwale, then turned back to give me some parting advice. “If you get hit by a wave,” he said, “the thing is not to panic. You don’t want to stay completely loose—that’s how things get dislocated—you want to kind of ball up. Remember: you do have the lung capacity to wait it out.” His voice sounded as though it were coming from a great distance, as the roar of the wave warped the noises around us, gulping them up. Then he jumped onto Doerner’s Ski and was gone.
Five minutes later Hamilton shot up to the boat to get some water from the cooler on deck. “What’s it like?” I asked, handing him a bottle. “It’s all you want,” he said. “You can bite off as much as you want. You’ll get an idea of the energy …” The rest of his sentence was swept away by the thunder of another breaking wave. Then he circled around and yelled something I didn’t catch except for the words “out there.” He left as quickly as he had come, but Terry Chun arrived next, and he motioned me onto his Ski.
The massive waves stayed for two days. Even after that, for the rest of the week, the seas remained unruly. If it wasn’t the historic swell that had been heralded—the demon storm that would wipe Maui off the map—it was still something very good and very rare. In celebration of the waves, as the dusk began to settle after Day One, the tradition resumed of gathering on the cliff to toast Pe’ahi.
Trucks and golf carts bumped down through the pineapple fields: Hamilton, Kalama, Mitchell. Sierra Emory was there, and so was Teddy Casil. Miller, King, and the French photographer Sylvain Cazenave brought their cameras. I saw Lickle standing against a flimsy fence that someone had erected, and I walked over. He was watching a lone tow team through binoculars, still out on the wave; a die-hard duo that hadn’t yet learned how Jet Skis break down constantly, and when that happens it’s unfortunate if you’re out in the storm-tossed Pacific Ocean at night. “It’s still got size,” he said as I approached. “And my prediction is that it’ll be bigger tomorrow.”
“Having any second thoughts?”
Lickle lowered his binoculars and shook his head. “The way they hyped this swell, I was so stoked not to be involved. I mean, I’m already broken, so when they start going ‘THE BIGGEST WAVES IN A HUNDRED YEARS!’ I’m thinking, ‘I don’t want to be there.’ ” He laughed. “I just want to be here, on the cliff.”
From this vantage point Lickle had watched the scene unfold in full Technicolor, and it had given him much occasion to feel grateful for the solid ground beneath his feet. Three Jet Skis had been lost to the rocks, along with multiple boards and a yard sale’s worth of gear. Though Hamilton, Kalama, Mitchell, Emory, Shearer, and others had expended no small effort trying to help people who had gotten themselves into tight situations, there were several close calls. Australian rider Jason Polakow barely survived a three-wave hold-down after being sucked over the falls and having his flotation vest blown off. He’d been pinned below—among the crevices—for a full minute, an eternity in that kind of turbulence, and when he finally emerged on the surface, his lungs were half-filled with water. “I am so lucky to be here,” he said afterward, his face ashen. “I saw myself dying. I could feel my brain just systematically shutting down.”
Out on the Ski with Chun, I had seen a rider get struck square on the head by the lip of a wave, then disappear for a painful duration. “That’s like being hit by a car,” Chun said. “He’s in darkness right now. I hope he’s all right. But I doubt it.”
There was a steady stream of carnage. Inexperienced drivers had been caught inside, Jet Skis trapped below the peak; tow lines had crossed, causing high-speed collisions; shaky riders had dropped into waves that had already begun to close out, doomed before they started, erased in a cannonade of whitewater. Midafternoon a front had moved in, the temperature dropped, the wind changed, and with it the rules of the game. “Onshore wind,” Hamilton pointed out, watching the latest casualty, a guy in a neon green wet suit, his face covered in white zinc oxide, bouncing backward down the face of Jaws. “He’s gonna be under there for a while.”
The circus, the jeopardy, the nerves—Lickle made it clear he didn’t miss them. “I actually slept last night,” he said. “I wasn’t like some spun monkey, getting up every hour in a cold sweat.” I believed him. Yet I wondered if a person with a taste for the edge would ever be fully content on the sidelines. There was always something bittersweet about passages, the awareness that time turns everything, even the most reliable truths, into talismanic memories. While Hamilton and Kalama had dominated the lineup on this day, just as they always did, a post-big-wave era had arrived for Lickle—and mixed in with his obvious relief, I sensed a dash of sadness. I asked him if this was true.
He answered quickly, as though he’d already given the question considerable thought: “The only thing I’ll say is that the accident was kind of a ticket out, you know what I mean?” His voice was gruff but full of emotion. “What we had was a gang. And you couldn’t get out of the gang. There was no way out. There’s so much peer pressure like, ‘Come on, you’re the man! Let’s go!’ You can’t just walk away because … you just can’t. But if you get shot up and almost die, they let you out.”
It was a heavy price to pay, but that was why it mattered. Though Lickle’s time in the big-wave arena was over now, that didn’t take away what had been. “Looking back on that day,” I said, “knowing what you had to go through, would you do it again? Was it worth it just to surf that one wave?”
“Absolutely,” Lickle said emphatically. “I was the highest I’ve ever been when I got off that rope and got on the Ski to tow Laird.” His face turned grave. “Then I went from there to a place that was so low, basically bleeding to death. But oh, yeah, even if I knew … I still would’ve ridden that wave.”
I glanced down at his left leg, the scar so prominent that it seemed as though his entire calf had been melted. The flesh was scrambled, annealed. Lickle raised his binoculars again. “There might be a little more north in the swell right now,” he said, brusquely changing the subject.
Behind us things were raucous, the red wine and Coors Light flowing. “You’re cut!” Kalama shouted affectionately at Don Shearer. “You’re making us look bad! We used to be the ones looking cool in the waves! Now it’s ‘Hey, who’s the guy in the helicopter?’ ”
Miller, standing nearby, let out his trademark infectious laugh. “Our band hasn’t pla
yed in a long time,” he said, and gestured toward Jaws. “It’s like the sleeping giant has awakened!” He leaned against the bumper of Hamilton’s truck. “There are some crazy waves that people are getting into, Tasmania and wherever, but on a day like today you’re reminded—Pe’ahi is the master of them all.”
Hamilton, overhearing, agreed: “When she’s on, everybody better have their heads bowed.”
In recent years tow surfing had opened a new frontier, the “crazy” waves to which Miller referred. Called slabs (or sometimes death slabs), they were more like oceanic car wrecks than proper waves, as thick as they were tall, fractured and brutally misshapen, with cavernous, sucking holes at their bases. They formed around reefs and ledges where strong ocean swells were forced abruptly from deep to very shallow water, leaving a rider no margin for error. “Some waves are walls and some are ceilings,” Hamilton had said once, talking about Teahupoo, which was at heart a slab. But that wave had been to finishing school compared to some of the slabs off Australia’s coast, which seemed to have come from Nature’s insane asylum. “It’s ridiculous,” Mitchell told me. “It’s a whole different deal. There’s a line. Fall on one side of the line, you’re fine. Fall on the other, you’re dead.”
The raggedy slabs held little interest for Hamilton, though other wave frontiers did. While age had blunted some of his sharper edges—his regular 120-foot cliff jumps, for instance, were now a thing of the past—in no way was he slowing down. “I’m in it for the long haul,” he’d said, adding that experience was exactly what he needed to progress. “You’re a better gambler when you can afford to pay the bill.”
Still, there were things he disliked—the flash and hype that now surrounded tow surfing at the top of that list—and I suspected that in the future he would try to avoid them. One means for doing so was the hydrofoil surfboard, a hybrid device he’d jury-rigged about a decade ago and had toyed with ever since. Foiling, as it was known, was an odd-looking pursuit where the surfer floated four feet above the wave, clad in snowboard boots. The foil board itself was even smaller than a tow board, steered with an underwater rudder connected by a vertical strut. As ungainly as it appeared, hydrofoil surfing allowed riders to carve graceful arcs through even the choppiest waves. All friction was gone.
But some kinks remained in development. Falling, for instance, was a fast route to serious trouble. It was one thing to eject from a pair of foot straps, and another to unbuckle snowboard boots underwater while getting whipsawed by the contraption itself. The steel hydrofoil—the wing that sliced through the wave, just below the surface—was heavy and pointed, capable of terrible damage. In one mishap, Don King, shooting underwater, had narrowly escaped decapitation.
Regardless, Hamilton was optimistic. “I think foiling will evolve to help us get through the barriers on giant surf,” he said. “It will allow us to go to the next dimension, which is faster. We won’t be affected by surface conditions.” Force Twelve storms in the North Sea, dangerously raw swell at the edge of a hurricane, waves too enormous or chaotic for towing—with the right equipment, all of these rides would become possible: “Ultimately the objective is to ride the biggest swells the ocean can create.”
These new extremes that Hamilton sought? He was likely to find them. Everything in the oceans, it seemed, was rising: wave heights, sea levels, surface temperatures, wind speeds, storm intensities, coastal surges, tsunami risks. “Now is the Time to Prepare for Great Floods,” a July 2009 editorial in New Scientist magazine advised, predicting that “great swathes of urban sprawl will vanish beneath the waves” as the oceans creep higher. “It’s easy to imagine an apocalyptically soggy future for New York,” warned New York magazine, “high waves soaking the hem of Lady Liberty’s robes, flash floods roaring through subway tunnels, kayakers paddling down Wall Street.” “The future of the UK’s coastal cities is in jeopardy due to rising sea levels,” Lloyd’s of London reported in one of its bulletins. “The Bigger Kahuna,” read a recent headline from Scientific American. “Are More Frequent and Higher Extreme Ocean Waves a By-Product of Global Warming?”
The relationship among the waves, the weather, the planet’s rising temperatures, and the overarching ocean cycles is wildly complex—and our understanding of it is far from complete—but the short answer is: almost certainly yes. “The increases are important in their impacts ranging from ship safety to enhanced coastal hazards, and in the engineering design of ocean and coastal structures,” researchers at Oregon State University concluded. In a hallmark paper, they had just revealed that the hundred-year wave height in the Pacific Northwest, measured at 33 feet in 1996, was now closer to 46 feet, and by some calculations might even top 55 feet.
It wasn’t hard to imagine seas that size—and larger. All I had to do was look over the fence. At Jaws the waves just kept coming. Whitewater billowed and tumbled from the break to the cliff, the energy that had surged across the Pacific coming to an end on these rocks. Hamilton walked over to Lickle, trailed by Buster, his rat terrier. “It’s still bombing,” he said. “And the buoys are up.”
“Well, if you look at the blob,” Lickle said, “it’s still here—and it’s still purple. It’s not leaving. It’s just sitting here.” He nodded sagely. “There were some big waves today, but they were probably just the front-runners. I think tomorrow’s when we’re really gonna get it.”
Hamilton leaned across the fence, suddenly focused on the water. “Some of these waves are unbelievable.”
“Hopefully it doesn’t peak tonight,” Lickle said. “Hey, just for the record,” he added in a low voice, as though he were about to reveal a secret.
“Yeah?” Hamilton looked up.
“That one wave almost took you out.” Lickle chuckled darkly.
“Which one?” Hamilton thought for a moment. “Oh … yeah. That one. The paint stripper.”
“You were ten feet under the lip!” Lickle’s tone was incredulous. “The fact that you made it through at all …”
“I’m glad you saw that,” Hamilton said, laughing. “Submarine ride.”
The air felt moist; the sky was full of moody grays and purples. A front was moving through, shifting the winds back offshore. But the gusts remained light and would likely stay that way come morning. “This day’s had three days in it,” Hamilton said. “That’s what makes it so beauti—”
“How did you ride today?”
A tiny voice interrupted Hamilton from behind. Sky Lickle—all four feet of her—stood there, hands on hips, wanting to know.
“How did I ride?” Hamilton said, searching for an adverb. “Um—successfully?”
“You made it through!” Sky’s face lit up in a smile.
“Exactly!” Hamilton laughed, his entire body radiating happiness. He leaned over to give Sky a high five, and then he stretched out his arms as if to embrace it all, the waves and the fields and the people around him. “That’s what I’m talking about!” he said. “You know what? That sums it up: ‘You made it through.’ ”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I never expected it to be easy, examining the secrets of giant waves. It would be a dicey kind of hunt, I thought, and for any hope of success I’d need a guide. For this I approached Laird Hamilton. My gratitude to him is immeasurable: Not only was he willing to open up his world to me, providing an extraordinary glimpse of the ocean with its gloves off, he and his wife, Gabby Reece, opened up their hearts as well. Through them I learned the true meaning of aloha—the lovely Hawaiian tradition of giving deeply of yourself, even to someone you don’t know very well.
I found that same generosity of spirit throughout my reporting, no matter where in the world I ventured, but especially in Maui. My profound thanks also go to the Lickle family—Brett, Shannon, McKenna, and Skylar—who provided me with my favorite home on the island, along with many wonderful conversations and dinners; Dave and Shaina Kalama; Teddy Casil and Devri Schultz; Don and Donna Shearer; Sonny Miller; Jeff Hornbaker; and Don King. On the mainland, I owe
much to Don and Rebecca Wildman, and Ron and Kelly Meyer. And how can I possibly thank Jane Kachmer, an extraordinary woman without whom this project never would have happened. Her endless support, hard work, and infectious optimism are truly appreciated.
So many people helped me in the waves. In the surfing world I send a most heartfelt shaka to: Darrick Doerner, Sierra Emory, Gerry Lopez, Greg Long, Twiggy Baker, Sean Collins, Garrett McNamara, Kealii Mamala, Jeff Clark, Tony Harrington, Mike Prickett, Jamie Mitchell, Art Gimbel, Terry Chun, Nelson Kubach, Martha Malone, James “Billy” Watson, Mike Parsons, Brad Gerlach, Peter Mel, Ken “Skindog” Collins, Raimana Van Bastolaer, Teiva and Nina Joyeux, Tim McKenna, Randy Laine, Maya Gabeira, Ricky Grigg, Greg Noll, Bill Ballard, Josh Kendrick, Scott Taylor, Butch Bannon, Rob Brown, Tom Servais, Erik Aeder, and Sylvain Cazenave.
In the science realm my list is equally lengthy. Huge thanks to: Penny Holliday, Don Resio, Val Swail, Al Osborne, Peter Janssen, Margaret Yelland, Sheldon Bacon, Peter Challenor, Christine Gommenginger, Russell Wynn, David Levinson, John Marra, Steven N. Ward, George Plafker, Lawrance Bailey, Ken Melville, Enric Sala, Jeremy Jackson, Paolo Cipollini, Meric Srokosz, Peter Taylor, Andy Louch, Joanne Donahoe, Kim Marshall-Brown, and Mike Douglas.
In South Africa, I am indebted to Nicholas Sloane, Jean Pierre Arabonis, Dai Davies, and Desiree Bik. In London, I thank Neil Roberts at Lloyd’s of London, and Bill McGuire at Aon Benfield UCL Hazard Research. Anyone interested in venturing deeper into Lloyd’s of London’s fascinating world will find its Web site riveting; you can get lost in there for hours. Likewise, I highly recommend Bill McGuire’s books for further reading about nature’s harrowing extremes.