Ghost Wave

by Chris Dixon

  To date, this is a combination of factors that exists at no other big wave spot yet revealed. Waimea, Maverick’s, Todos Santos, Outer Log Cabins, Jaws—all seem to have upper limits between 50 and 100 feet. Above that, a swell would simply rear up along the outermost reefline into a terrifying and unrideable wall that would close out along its entire length. In fact, Maverick’s is known to have done this on at least a couple of occasions.

  “Cortes is a ridgeline,” says O’Reilly. “The crest has an orientation that lines up off to the northwest. Where a wave breaks depends on the size of the swell. You have this natural slope that can take just about anything thrown at it.”

  Really, anything? I ask. What about an earthquake-generated tsunami? O’Reilly and Dr. Gary Green, a professor at the Moss Landing Marine Laboratory who has worked on exquisitely detailed sonar-mapping projects of the Bank, point out that a tsunami is fundamentally different. A huge, storm-driven Cortes wave might be 100 feet high, while the tsunami that hit Japan in March of 2011 was, by most accounts, 60 feet at its highest. Yet rather than, say, a sixty-knot, mile-wide storm wave with a twenty-second period from trough to crest, a tsunami might be a four hundred-knot wave one hundred miles wide with a twenty-minute period, and thus countless orders of magnitude more power. The effect at Cortes would depend on how far away the tsunami was generated and the force that spawned it. There might only be a violent surging and swirling of waters and a slow rise and fall of only a few feet of sea level, or the results might rival a science-fiction movie. “If you have 60-, 80-, 100-foot waves out there just from a storm, and you have a big tsunami in the Aleutians that comes up on that island, it’s going to build up at least that high,” Dr. Green says. The Cascadia subduction zone—a massive fault stretching from southern Canada to northern California—tends to generate apocalyptic tsunamis every three hundred years or so. Over millennia, particularly when Cortes Bank was Cortes Island, plenty of such science fiction waves likely swept entirely over it.

  Naturally, the enormous January 2001 swell that was brewing caught the attention of big wave surfers everywhere. In Northern California, Jeff Clark served notice on January 17 that the Maverick’s Invitational contest might run in two days. This presented a problem. Pete Mel, Skindog, and Evan Slater were expected to show in Half Moon Bay for the contest, but Flame wanted them at Cortes.

  Further, Mel and Skindog had promised filmmaker Dana Brown they’d surf the Maverick’s contest for his film Step into Liquid. On the morning of the eighteenth, Mel’s phone rang. “Hey, are you going to Maverick’s tomorrow?” Brown asked.

  “Uhh, I’m kind of doing something else, and I’m kind of sworn to secrecy,” Mel said. “Let me call you back.”

  Mel nervously called Flame. Was it okay if Dana came out to Cortes? “I don’t care what he does,” Flame said.

  Mel then called Jeff Clark. “Ummm, I have this other deal, to go down south,” he cryptically told his old friend. “Mavs is supposed to be windy and, umm, not that good.” Mel laughs about it today. “I don’t remember actually trying to bait Jeff into not running the contest, but I told him, ‘if you’re not running the contest, I wanna do this.’”

  Clark decided to delay his Maverick’s contest, and Mel called back Dana Brown. “We’re going to surf the Cortes Bank, a hundred miles out to sea. Get yourselves a boat.”

  Once Flame made the decision to go, everyone flew into action, preparing for the trip. The first order of business for Flame was ensuring their boat and its crew were ready. He and Evan Slater had earlier lined up Gary Clisby, a former pro Surfer and professional sportfisherman who owned a fifty-one-foot charter vessel called Pacific Quest. When the word was given, Clisby assigned his twenty-one-year-old captain John Walla to lead the effort. Walla didn’t have much notoriety, but Parsons and Slater knew the rugged youngster was one of the most driven, hard-core young watermen in all of California. As a surfer, he charged Todos Santos just as hard as they did. Maybe harder.

  Walla was over the moon. He called his buddy James Thompson, a young man he regularly terrified with hair-ball diving, climbing, spearfishing, and surfing adventures. Walla offered him a first mate’s position for the trip. “We’re going to the Cortes Bank to surf,” Walla told Thompson. “You in?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Thompson asked. His new boss at a day trading stock office was standing over his shoulder.

  Walla said, “Bring your big board. We’ll paddle in.”

  Thompson turned and apologized to his boss. Even if it cost him his job, he had to take a vacation day.

  Walla had captained plenty of tuna fishing excursions along the inner waters of the California Bight, and he was essentially, frightfully unflappable. He was also familiar with the open-water conditions around the Cortes Bank, a place he only half-jokingly referred to as “The Flemish Cap.”

  “It’s just a different ocean once you get outside of Point Conception,” says Walla. Waves of albacore appear between San Clemente Island and Cortes in June and July, “but that’s when you don’t want to go out there. The wind’s howling, it’s freezing. It’s a lot more like being in Northern California. It’s the real ocean. You see whales everywhere and these huge baitballs of anchovies. Albacore and finback whales—they come a foot from the boat, just tearing through them.”

  Walla set about ensuring the Pacific Quest was outfitted. Clisby told him they’d be hauling a trio of thousand-pound WaveRunners, and they would have to use the boat’s sketchy hoist to lift them aboard. That, Walla thought, would be interesting.

  Meanwhile, those who would not be going were also getting the news. At the Surfer offices, rumor of the mission reached Sam George late on January 18 via lensman Jason Murray. “Jason said, ‘Look, I can rent a plane and fly out there and shoot it,” George recalls. “He got all excited. Then Larry, my beloved Flame, got word of it and called me up.”

  “I spent ten years on this Sam,” Flame ranted. “That’s my wave. I can’t believe you wanna poach this mission.”

  “That’s the word he used,” laughs George. “Poach.”

  George let Flame spew, then finally interjected, “Larry, can I speak for a second? If you’re asking me, as a magazine editor, not to cover this story, I’m going to say ‘fuck you.’ But if you’re asking me, as a friend of twenty years who has shared many adventures with you, then I will do so.’”

  The line was silent for a moment. “Sam, I’m asking you as a friend,” Flame said.

  George replied, “Then Larry, we won’t go to Cortes.”

  George kept his word and didn’t go. Neither did George Hulse, who despite being on the original 1990 Cortes trip had moved away from pro surfing and helped found the now popular Shoreline Church of San Clemente. Yet, at the very last minute, the one person Flame didn’t forget was Bill Sharp, the man who, as the author of “Project Neptune,” had dreamed up this mission in the first place. No one had wanted Sharp’s Surf News to break the story, and Bill held no official ranks at Surfing or Swell. If he’d asked, Bill could have probably journeyed aboard the Pacific Quest, but the boat was relatively small, and it would be mighty crowded on board. He didn’t have the dosh for his own boat, photographer Rob Brown had already motored off, and Mike Castillo had flown off to Baja to chase swells. Flame was going to go in a tiny Baja bush plane, which would be flown by another Surfer named Vince Natali. Bill could have the spare seat.

  The surfers Flame and Evan Slater invited were Mike Parsons, Brad Gerlach, Skindog, and Peter Mel. Per the usual routine, these men quickly let their girlfriends, wives, and in some cases children know that as of, let’s see, tomorrow they were dropping everything to go surf. Whether their surfing life was considered a selfish choice or an addictive compulsion, it was never easy for their loved ones to live with.

  Mel and Slater were both husbands and fathers of babies in their first year of life. Mels’ wife, Tara, wasn’t overly concerned. Mel had always survived these missions, and it was easier for Tara if Mel simp
ly didn’t reveal too much.

  Skindog’s wife, Annoushka, on the other hand, was freaking out. It didn’t help that her brash husband was typically nonchalant.

  “You’re just pissed that I’m going on a surf trip,” Skindog told her.

  “No,” Annoushka replied. “That’s not it. I’m pissed because you’re going on a surf trip to try to surf 100-foot waves—with a pretty good chance of dying. Nobody’s ever done this. It’s uncharted territory.”

  “I’ll get life insurance,” Skindog replied.

  “That is not what I want to hear,” she shouted.

  On the morning of January 20, the day they were going to leave, Mike Parsons was still frantically trying to get gear in order. Parsons was the planner, and a towsurfing mission a hundred miles out was not like a jog down the path at Trestles.

  Parsons latched his cell phone to his ear and began a panicked rundown with Brad Gerlach. They would need spare rope, tie-downs, bungie cords, carabiners to lash the rescue sled to the WaveRunner, surfboard leashes, five cans of gas, two-cycle oil, spark plugs, jumper cables, wetsuits of varying thicknesses, neoprene booties, gloves, hoods, life jackets, walkie-talkies, a spare ski tow rope, anchor, extra foot bindings and screws, lead weights, an assortment of fins, several bars of surfboard wax, and, oh yeah, a 10-foot paddle surfboard—just in case.

  “I couldn’t believe how frazzled he was,” Gerlach told Evan Slater. “When we were growing up doing contests, it used to piss me off how prepared he was. He had backups for his backups. Now when I’m thinking I can actually benefit from that, he’s like, ‘Hey, do you have a leash I can borrow?’”

  Mel and Skindog reached San Diego Harbor at 11 A.M. They were anxious to get their WaveRunner in the water. But the long, bouncing drive had dislodged the ski’s exhaust manifold. When Skindog pulled away and motored toward Pacific Quest, the ski began to sink. Skindog screamed for Mel. By the time Mel made it back to the ramp, his buddy was stripped down to his boxers and struggling to keep the drowning machine’s head above water. Then a kid rolled to the ramp on a skateboard.

  “Hi,” the kid said. “I’m Johnny. I’m going to take you guys out to the Cortes Bank.”

  Mel raised an eyebrow. “So you’re the—deckhand?”

  “No, I’m the captain.”

  Skindog laughs. “It scared the hell out of me.’”

  Walla was scared, too, but for a different reason. Watching them wrestling their sunken ski out of the water, he thought, Oh my God, these guys are gonna die out there.

  Skinny and Mel rescued the ski and were soon met by Slater, Gerlach, Parsons, photographer Aaron Chang, his ski driver Randy Laine, Chang’s backup photographer Brendan Hayes, and videographer Fran Battaglia. Bro handshakes were exchanged all around. Flame remained in the Surfing offices, with a phone plastered to his ear frantically directing last-minute details, while also keeping an eye on the light box—doing his mundane day-to-day duty of picking photos for the next issue.

  Dana Brown arrived with his film crew; they would venture out aboard Pizzazz, a sportfishing boat he had hastily managed to line up. The most impressive item in Brown’s arsenal was an enormous, gyroscopically balanced camera rig that would allow for a steady shot even in a heavy swell. Dana had to assemble his crew with such haste that he didn’t even know everyone. He joked about the mission into the unknown with his newly minted assistant cameraman. “Then the captain started talking about how he’s heard about Cortes and how scary and gnarly it is,” Brown says. “But you know, he’s a real good captain and not to worry.”

  The captain of Brown’s boat then gave his safety debriefing on life jackets, life rafts, and fire extinguishers. As he spoke, Brown noticed that his assistant cameraman was slowly, steadily stepping backward out of the pilot house. Suddenly, he leapt off the boat. “Sorry to hang you guys up, but I can’t do this,” he said. “I have a really bad feeling.”

  He broke into a full sprint up the dock. “How are you gonna get home?” Brown yelled.

  “Don’t worry about it,” came the reply.

  Brown turned to his production assistant, a girl named Julian. “Well, that kind of freaked me out,” he said.

  Julian laughed nervously. “You think?”

  The two boats departed San Diego at sunset. When the crew of Pacific Quest learned that bananas had been brought on board, they followed an ancient maritime good luck protocol and chucked them over the side.

  Early that same day, photographer Robert Brown had driven his catamaran out to Catalina Island with a sailing buddy named John Connors, who also happened to be his insurance agent. The pair anchored off Avalon and paddled Brown’s tiny inflatable to town. They had dinner and rented rooms in a local hotel, intending to land a few hours’ sleep before heading out to join everyone at the Bank. Then around midnight, Brown flipped on his weather radio. The Tanner Banks buoy had suddenly lit up with something Jim Houtz would have recognized immediately. The swell height was a relatively small 8 feet, but the period was an astonishing twenty-five seconds. It’s going to be fricking huge, Brown thought, and there is no wind.

  Brown leapt out of bed. “Let’s go,” he told Connors.

  They hoisted the inflatable above their heads, walked past the noisy bars of Avalon, and stroked back out to the catamaran. Brown hailed the Harbor Patrol. “We’re going to the Cortes Bank,” he said.

  “You are?” Came the reply. “Well, good luck with that.”

  Brown followed his newfangled GPS around the backside of San Clemente Island. The military was conducting bombing and artillery exercises and the vast bombing range was lit up by huge flashes and laser-like tracer fire and wracked by deafening explosions. It looked like an attack from Star Wars.

  The captains of all three boats had agreed to make contact on the VHF to keep one another apprised of their progress. Brown hailed them all through the lonely night as he motored toward the unknown. No one answered.

  The surfers aboard Pacific Quest turned in at 10 P.M. They’d all had a beer or two but were still jittery. Parsons lay in a bunk in the bow, feeling the long, low swell build as the boat nosed farther into the open ocean. The Santa Ana wind was disconcertingly strong when they had left, but now it seemed to be laying down. He kept asking himself, What the hell is it going to be like out there?

  At around 1 A.M. , the sound of silence woke Peter Mel. He found Walla, Thompson, and deckhand Mike Towle assessing a situation. One of the fuel filters had apparently clogged, starving an engine. Walla replaced the filter, but the engine then refused to restart. An hour of checkouts yielded nothing. Perhaps there was air in the fuel line. Maybe a pump had failed. No one knew.

  Walla fired the remaining engine and continued on. “He didn’t yell at anyone,” says Mel. “He never blamed anybody. And in the end, there was no debate. We’re going.”

  “Johnny, wake up. Wake up, dude.”

  Walla took a groggy look around the darkened cabin of the pilot house. It was 4 A.M. James Thompson’s face was bathed in a soft, green glow. He was staring transfixed at Pacific Quest’s tiny lithium radar screen. Eerie pixelated lines were flickering into existence, scrolling down, and then fading back into black.

  Thompson was well spooked. A huge freighter had steamed across the black horizon, but her lights had been suddenly and then regularly eclipsed by some barrier between the boat and Bishop Rock. Then these ghosts began to haunt the radar screen.

  “What the fuck is that?”

  “It’s the Bank,” Walla replied, his finger following a line as it began a matrix-like descent. “Those are waves.”

  Everyone soon gathered round the radar screen, watching real waves detonate virtually in the invisible distance. Evan Slater saw a strange, symmetrical beauty in the imagery. Dana Brown’s and Rob Brown’s boats were tiny blips. The waves were anything but.

  The sky still lay under a smothering blanket of stars and the ocean was an inky, infinite black. Walla crept northward, keeping the Bishop Rock to his northeast flan
k. They couldn’t see a damn thing. Above the idle of the Pacific Quest’s single engine came a crack of distant thunder followed by a long roar. The glass in the windows shook a little.

  The radio crackled. Rob Brown crawled into position, too, keenly aware that other shoal spots on the Bank might spawn deadly rogues. “Where have you guys been?” he asked.

  Ten minutes later, dawn’s early light revealed a shimmering plume of spray. A Himalayan peak rose to life far off the bow. It was shaped like a great, volcanic cone—43 million pounds of water, terrible and unrideable. Its foam exploded an unknowable number of feet into the air and churned the surrounding waters into a 360-degree maelstrom of confusion. Then as the set swung closer to the boat, a second peak was revealed. A righthand wave stood majestically before throwing out a yawning barrel whose size was, again, impossible to estimate.

  Pacific Quest took up a position near the Bishop Rock buoy, its bell clanging a lazy wake-up call. On the shoulder of the waves, the surfers saw that the real locals had already beat them out—a floating posse of argumentative sea lions with fins pointed to the sky.

  Unloading the WaveRunners was a precarious affair that Evan Slater likened to moving pyramid stones. It had been tough enough to maneuver the hoist at the dock. The skis were raised via a pair of slings, and they were now swinging wildly in the swells. When Randy Laine’s thousand-pounder was jacked into the air, its rear end slipped and crashed onto the deck of the Pacific Quest. Had the nose also slipped, the ski’s next stop would have been the engine room.