Ghost Wave

by Chris Dixon

  Parsons, Gerlach, Skindog, Slater, and Mel find Zuckerman’s ideas fascinating—particularly as they relate to fear and danger. For example, in most humans, a startling event—someone firing a gun nearby or jumping out and shouting “boo” from behind a door—would create a panicked increase in anxiety and heart rate. The high-sensation seeker will actually experience a decrease in heart rate and might actually find the experience pleasurable. At very high levels of danger, the sensation seeker becomes highly calculating, thinking several steps ahead, working out various survival scenarios at lightning speed. He becomes calm, even euphoric. Every sense is amplified. I’ve interviewed a few marines who are veterans of the Iraq War and who also surf big waves. They actually describe combat in a similar fashion. Of course, Jim Houtz described something very similar in himself while trying to motivate his fear-frozen crew on the deck of Jalisco.

  “I remember everything in big waves,” Skindog says. “Every single thing. I get totally clear. You get this wide sight—you can see everything. When you put your hand down in a wave, you feel everything.”

  Sensation seeking can be maddening, too. Some come to need either constant access to or the promise of impending danger just to get through the day. When he was younger, Evan Slater’s wife, Jennifer, found him almost impossible to be around whenever there was a chance Maverick’s might break. He insists that age and fatherhood have mellowed him a bit, but not entirely. “I’ve never been a fighter or very confrontational. But one thing I always did enjoy was going into a mosh pit and getting my ass kicked. Coming out of that at the end all bruised and beat up and, like, hugging everybody, going, yeah, that was sick. Big waves are kind of the same thing. Way more of a rush, and probably more healthy overall. Today, knowing that at any time I could go grab my nine-six [9-foot, six-inch surfboard] and put myself in that position is a good feeling. I have no problem being the guy to go and shop for gymnastic leotards for my daughters—all that domestic stuff. If that was all I did, I’d be pretty depressed. But big wave surfing makes me like, Super Mister Domesticated.”

  Skindog’s wife, Annoushka, calls her husband a complete addict. “If he knows a swell is coming, he’s just so amped the night before,” she says. “He’ll have so much energy. Like a kid waiting for a Christmas present. I’ll be like, simmer down.”

  “My heart’s beating a hundred miles an hour,” Skindog says. “But as you get older, too, you get conditioned for the hangover—the adrenaline hangover—that comes from a weekend of riding big waves. I’ve seen it with my friends. Pete gets super grumpy after a big swell. No matter how high you get, the bigger the comedown. That’s why you need the high again.”

  Gerlach was the offspring of a stuntman and a stuntwoman, so his future was pretty much foregone. A high-sensation seeker is simply what he is. It’s part of every decision that’s made through their whole life, for better or worse. “You know, I was one of the best guys on the World Tour,” he says, eerily echoing his dad. “Sometimes I think, I could have just stuck with it and been financially secure. But I couldn’t. I just can’t be bored.

  “Surfing these huge waves—I never thought it was something I would do. I’ve really had to rely on Mike telling me, ‘You’re good enough to do this.’ I am? Really? I can’t even believe I’m here right now. I’m picturing the enemy. I’ve had to conquer so much fear. I’ve had some of the most amazing days of my life conquering fear—seeking sensations.”

  “I think about my motivations,” Parsons says. “God, it’s funny sometimes. I went and did the highest bungie jump in the world in South America. I went with Taylor Knox, Kelly Slater, and one of Kelly’s other friends. The funny thing was that me and Kelly were probably the most reserved—the most calculated. Taylor, he just went to the edge and jumped. I mean, I don’t fit the profile of the guy who will go and skydive—I’m actually pretty conservative. I’m actually terrified of certain things. I drive slow, I’m always worried when I’m on the road. I fly airplanes now—and I’m super by the book. You’d think I’d be the guy barreling in the clouds, but I’m not. I triple-check the weather. I’m super calculated.”

  In a way, Parsons might claim Starbuck, the whaler in Moby Dick, as a cousin. As Melville wrote:

  “I will have no man in my boat,” said Starbuck, “who is not afraid of a whale.” By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.

  “Aye, aye,” said Stubb, the second mate, “Starbuck, there, is as careful a man as you’ll find anywhere in this fishery. But we shall ere long see what that word ‘careful’ precisely means when used by a man like Stubb, or almost any other whale hunter.”

  Implicit in Parsons’s world of calculated risk is the idea that somehow because he looks before he leaps off the highest bungie jump in the world, triple-checks the weather, and flies by the book, that he is less of a high-sensation seeker, or risk taker, than his friends. He’s not. Flying by the book doesn’t mitigate the fact that if he loses an engine above the hills of San Clemente, he’s dead. And why does he fly, anyway? It’s so he can surf big, empty waves along Baja’s loneliest, most dangerous stretches of coastline—far, far from any medical attention. Parsons might be careful. He might be calculating. But like Starbuck, he deliberately chose brave yet terrified crewmen like Chris Mauro and eventually Brad Gerlach to go with him, and he still hunted the whale.

  If Mike Parsons is an addicted big wave hunter, he and Starbuck share another trait in their earnest and general sobriety. Parsons always managed to turn his daredevil addiction into the hunt—something physical, an activity that provides a recognizable living, even if it’s not as socially and commercially productive as, say, harpooning whales. For Peter Mel, on the other hand, the big wave hunt was not enough. This was something I learned of on February 14, 2008, while I was perched up on Rob Brown’s boat watching Greg and Rusty Long, Skindog, Evan Slater, and Pete Mel drop bombs at Maverick’s. Mel went ass over elbows on a huge wave. He paddled over to the boat. He was done. Rob Brown offered him a painkiller.

  “No, thanks,” Mel replied.

  “How ‘bout a beer?”

  “Nope. Don’t take anything anymore.”

  “How come?”

  “Because I was a fucking drug addict.”

  Pete Mel comes from a line of watermen. His grandfather Peter was a fisherman. His dad, John, started shaping surfboards in the South Bay of Los Angeles in the 1960s, and he eventually moved to Santa Cruz, where he set up a shaping business and opened the Freeline surf shop—a place that’s now been in business for forty years. When Pete was six, his dad pushed him into his first wave at Sewer Peak in Santa Cruz. Pete’s board pearled, and he became entangled in slimy kelp. The experience so terrified him that he didn’t try surfing again until he was thirteen. That time though, the hook set, hard. Pete, Skindog, and the Santa Cruz Ratpack would become a force to be reckoned with in the powerful waves around Steamer Lane. Pete was big, close to Laird Hamilton in stature, and his rugged frame served him well in bone-crushing surf. His graceful, swooping turns inspired his nickname, “The Condor.” Eventually Pete and buddies made pilgrimages to the North Shore of Oahu and were introduced to Maverick’s in the early 1990s.

  Pete met his future wife, Tara, in 1991 at a party. She was tall, drop-dead gorgeous, smart, and funny to boot. Pete was a hilarious guy with a grand personality. “He just lit up a room,” she says. “But he was also very kind. My son was one year old. Pete was so sweet to him. Played with him in the water. Taught him how to surf. My ex was never really in the picture, and I remember one day my son called Pete ‘Daddy.’ I said, ‘Is that okay?’ He said, ‘Actually, I like it.’ I was like, ‘Okay, he’s a keeper.’ I felt safe and very protected around him. I still do.”

  At the turn of the millennium, Pete Mel was at the top of his game—Evan Slater called him the best all-around
big wave Surfer on Earth. He appeared alongside Skindog, Darryl “Flea” Virostko, Brad Gerlach, and Mike Parsons, all naked, in a Vanity Fair spread. Yet he was, he says, “a selfish motherfucker.”

  For Mel, the substance abuse began with drinking during the big wave off-season. Something to keep up the buzz during the long, frustrating months when the surf was down. “It’s funny,” he told me later. “The best part of it all is actually when a big wave session’s all said and done. Sometimes the buzz lasts a day. Sometimes a few days. It’s euphoric. Just something you can sit well with. Like, yeaaahhh. But then eventually you get a comedown and the soreness will kick in. Sometimes I’ll get sick. You wanna keep it going. Maybe a drink and a cocktail to keep up the buzz. Then other drugs, too, unfortunately.”

  One night when he was fairly well lit up, he snorted a line of cocaine. It lit him up further, so he tried a little more. “I’ve always overindulged and done stupid things,” he says. “It runs in my family.”

  Mel thought he was keeping the powder and sauce a secret from Skindog and Tara, but he gained forty extra pounds, which is tough to hide. “I was watching Pete and a few guys and going, ‘Are you fricking kidding me?’” says Skindog. “Especially Pete. He has a wife and kids. For me, my family is my cocoon. I always enjoyed having a good time, but once you’re not having a good time, it’s done, and I don’t let anything like that near my house. So I’m like, ‘Pete, dude, what’s up? Oh really? You’re doing a gram of coke a day and drinking forty beers?’”

  Peter Mel and Ken “Skindog” Collins. Project Neptune, January 2001. “It was awesome,” said Mel. “Heaven on earth.” Photo: Rob Brown.

  It was simple. Big waves made Mel high. When he didn’t have that high, he craved it. Drugs and booze became a crutch. Mel went cold turkey and stayed clean for a while, but he remained frustratingly overweight and out of shape. Maybe, he thought, a little speed would get him back on track. He snorted some methamphetamine. Now this was something. It took away his desire to drink. He started losing weight, surfing a lot, getting shit done. He was soon hitting it all the time—all the time. Before long, he could once again survive a two-wave hold down at Maverick’s and come up laughing.

  “You could see it in Pete’s head—he was going a million miles an hour,” says Skindog. “Spun out. He started getting all skinny. He’s like, ‘Yeah, I cut back on the red wine.’ Then he disappears. I can’t get hold of him. When I did see him, I could just see him looking at me ashamed.”

  Skindog’s buddy and three-time Maverick’s surf contest champ Flea Virostko was also getting in very, very deep.

  One day, Mel began to wonder if the house had shifted on its foundation. When voices began speaking directly to Mel through the box on his cable TV set, he cut the cable to quiet them. Shortly thereafter, he sat at home with his head in his hands after a major bender with Flea. Tara put her hand on Mel’s shoulder. “I said, ‘Honey, are you okay? Have you been using some drugs that could make you paranoid?”

  Mel looked up at Tara through bleary eyes and said, “Yes.”

  “It makes me kind of sick to remember,” she says, dabbing her eyes.

  That moment became Mel’s wake-up call. Forty years ago, his grandfather heeded a similar call and has remained sober to this day. Back in 2002, though, meth killed Mel’s aunt—a fact he wouldn’t learn until after he’d made his own decision to quit. “I’ve had other family members who didn’t get it,” he said. “It took me a while, but I got it.”

  Mel’s been clean now for nearly six years. He’s opted to channel his sensation-seeking genes back into big wave surfing—and keeping himself in top shape. As of this writing, Flea’s been clean for better than two years. He’s put his focus back into big waves, and into a rehab program for guys like him. He calls it “Fleahab.”

  Tara’s been left in the terribly difficult position of having to hear the awful things Flea and her husband did, as they are rehashed publicly time and again. Both surfers told their stories for an article in 2009 in Surfer, titled “Coming Clean” by Kimball Taylor. Taking the fifth in the twelve steps—admitting “the exact nature of our wrongs”—Mel and Virostko voluntarily recounted everything from Flea’s literal fall from a cliff that should have killed him to the times he and Mel served both their addictions to drugs and big waves simultaneously. They revealed the grisly depths of their addiction to a drug—meth—that Taylor called Santa Cruz’s “gorilla in the room” in the hopes that, maybe, they could keep others from sliding down that same icy slope.

  The story garnered a great many online reader comments. “Some people had some nasty things to say,” Tara says. “But most were really grateful and thanked Flea and Pete for the article. Then there was one guy—it was just one sentence.”

  She pauses. Her eyes again well with tears and her voice breaks.

  “It said, ‘I think you just saved my life.’”

  Chapter 9:

  ON THE

  SHOULDERS

  OF GIANTS

  “Here comes one scurvy type leading another! God pairs them off together, every time.”

  —Melanthios, from Homer’s The Odyssey

  By January 2001, Larry “Flame” Moore had spent just over a decade being thwarted in his attempts to document a surf session again out at the Cortes Bank. In that time, he and Mike Parsons had launched at least three weather-aborted paddle surfing missions, and he and Mike Castillo had flown out over Bishop Rock perhaps fourteen times. They buzzed the waves at rooftop level on west swells and north swells, during long periods and short periods, and relayed their observations back to Sean Collins. Flame returned puzzled every time. Though they found big waves, they were never the eight-story titans they had witnessed during the seminal Eddie Aikau swell of 1990.

  Then on January 14, Flame rang up Parsons. A 956-millibar storm was plodding across the Pacific. If the forecast held, hurricane force winds would soon be raking a thousand-mile swath of ocean between Hawaii and California. “I’m putting out the yellow light for this Cortes thing,” Flame said.

  On January 17, the forerunner waves swept beneath NOAA’s Southeast Papa buoy, a storm-tossed distant early-warning system six hundred nautical miles west of Eureka, California. A solid twenty-second swell was two days out. According to Collins’s calculations, the angle of approach looked ide al for Cortes to work its magic.

  Still, on January 18, Collins began sweating bullets. The winds on the Tanner Banks buoy had been bad out of the northwest all week long. Cortes was perched even farther out, so conditions would be even windier and choppier. The mission called for an expensive armada of sea and aircraft and Flame told Collins that if they blew it, they wouldn’t have the budget for the trip again that year. “There was very serious thought to pull the plug on everything and saving the expense of doing the trip in bad conditions,” says Collins. “Needless to say, it was a very nervous night of sleep. I could hear the swell build overnight on the beach with the long-period ‘thumps.’”

  Yet no one would know for sure until they were out there—bobbing in and hovering over MacRae’s Rock—if the wind would lay down enough so they could harpoon Flame’s elusive white whale.

  During the last decade, big wave forecasting had matured a great deal, beginning with Collins’s first reliable forecasts for Todos Santos, but it was still exceedingly complex. To begin with, NOAA’s data buoys weren’t really telling the whole story. Your weather radio report might state that a swell hitting the Half Moon Bay buoy was 20 feet at twenty seconds—an earthshaker. Yet that swell might actually be a combination of a 5-foot, twenty-second westerly groundswell and a 15-foot, six-second southerly windswell—a comparatively miniscule event. Data buoys actually transmit data on all swells hitting them—a remarkable bit of scientific wizardry—but NOAA doesn’t make that data available to the public. If Collins and Flame wanted consistent, pinpoint forecasts for the Cortes Bank—or any big wave spot—they needed to sift through every swell in the water.

  To help
do this, Collins hit up a buddy who developed computer code for NASA named Jon Chrostowski. They eventually created a program that hacked those buoy data streams. “It was such a bitch to figure out that code,” says Collins.

  The second piece of the Cortes puzzle lay concealed along the tortured, craggy seafloor off Bishop Rock. Collins partnered with a Scripps Institute Oceanographer named Bill O’Reilly, whose doctoral thesis involved modeling incoming swells around different bottom topographies. The Bishop Rock fascinated O’Reilly. At around six hundred feet, he and Collins noted a peninsular thumb of sandstone and basalt that juts out three to four nautical miles to the northwest of Bishop Rock. A long-period wave, something in the eighteen- to twenty-second range, carries energy down beyond a thousand feet, but the energy really begins to concentrate at around six hundred feet. If a wave swept toward the Bank from the proper northwesterly angle—somewhere between 270 (true west) and 360 (true north) degrees on a circle (though it should be noted that Collins keeps the best combinations of period and swell angle a secret)—the wave should hook onto that thumb, slowing and bending inward on itself and curving toward the shallows. The Cortes Bank’s ancient terraces would then cause the wave to shoal steadily, while the hook would focus even more energy onto the Bishop Rock like sunlight through a magnifying glass. The wave would rise higher and higher in the shallows until reaching the final big stair step. There it would trip up, careening and falling forward like an enraged giant while peeling down the shallow waterline like a line of toppling dominoes.

  Collins and O’Reilly marveled. If they were interpreting the bathymetry properly, a 15-foot, twenty-second swell might grow to four, maybe five times its height as a breaking wave. With a pure swell of 20 to 25 feet, the comically impossible would become real—a peeling wave 100 feet high. Fifty feet of pure groundswell—perhaps a once-in-a-century event at these southerly latitudes—might create a 200-foot wave. If you could generate enough swell, a reeling, Malibu-style wave 1,000 feet high was theoretically possible.