by Chris Dixon
Rusty probably took his first puff of weed at around fifteen. “I’ve used it for yoga,” he says, “stretching deeper. It slows the thought process a bit—helps with my flow. But I’m like my brother in that I never had the urge to get into anything else that was going to get in the way of my goals.”
Also like Parsons, Rusty and Greg both gravitated toward the biggest waves they could find. Why they were so attracted to big waves, becoming classic high-sensation seekers themselves, is impossible for them to say; when they grew up, San Clemente was rife with surfers, yet few chose the path they did. Perhaps acquiring a taste for the thrill of surfing in infancy had something to do with it. Perhaps having a lifeguard father whose profession involved an adrenaline- and wave-filled life did, too. In any case, both can pinpoint the moments that set the trajectory of their adult lives.
When Rusty was fifteen, he pulled an airdrop on a Sunset Beach macker. “That one wave set the hook,” he says. During the stormy El Niño winter of 1997–98, Greg began soloing out at San Clemente’s West Reef, a lonely bombora that breaks nearly a mile out. “That Big Wednesday swell—the one where [Ken] Bradshaw caught his giant wave at Log Cabins—I sat out on West Reef the entire day,” Greg says. “Legitimate 20-foot faces. Biggest I’d ever surfed to that point. I fell on a couple and went through the motions, but I found it was really no worse than bodysurfing at State Park when it’s big and closed out. Break your leash, swim a half mile, paddle back out. That’s when the spark went off.”
Greg recalls how he and Rusty would skateboard across the I-5 to the San Onofre Surf Shop to listen wide eyed as Joe McNulty spun yarns on hairball trips out to confront Todos Santos with Mike Parsons, Evan Slater, and John Walla. Then, on a chilly winter’s afternoon in 1999, fifteen-year-old Greg rang up Walla. “Ummm, hi, Johnny,” he said. “There’s a good northwest swell in the forecast. I was hoping you’d maybe take us down to Todos and show us the ropes.”
John Walla had known the Longs for years, and he was even dating Greg’s sister, Heather, at the time. Walla well remembers the early winter morning that he left with the Long clan—Steve, Heather, Rusty, and Greg—for Todos Santos. They hired a panga out of Ensenada and reached the lineup by Southern California’s rush hour. Heather’s presence amazed the panga captains. They’d never seen a girl out there.
The swell was delivering waves up to 20 feet on the face—lumpy and irregular with the high tide—but still more powerful than West Reef, Sunset, or anything they had ever surfed. “I was amazed at how much water was moving,” says Greg. “You can actually hear the boulders clicking and crackling underneath you when you’re duckdiving through a wave. I sat next to the rocks watching where John and the other guys were sitting, but I couldn’t figure out how to catch a wave. When you’d think it was going to stand up and break, it wouldn’t. It would move way past you. You’d have to sit waaayyy deeper, basically sitting underneath it and then paddle as hard as you ever have to catch it.”
Eventually, Walla helped coax Heather into a solid wave. Greg started to get a flow and then lined up for a big one. “It was right when Kelly Slater had started doing these carving 360s,” Walla says. “Greg drops in on a 20-footer and does a carving 360 off the top. I’m like, ‘My God, what’s going on out here?’”
Walla knew Greg was a solid surfer, but even good big wave surfers don’t pull small wave maneuvers at 20-foot Todos. In fact, it’s unheard of.
Late in the day, the biggest wave the Longs had ever seen in person tripped over the reef. “My brother got caught, but me and my dad took the thing directly on the head,” Greg says. “Just got blasted, came up, and there was another one after that.”
The pummeling tore Steve’s rotator cuff. “We eventually come up, and he goes, ‘You all right?’” says Greg. “I’m fine. I was winded and a little freaked out but I was psyched. When you get blasted, in a twisted way, you get this self-gratification and a sense of accomplishment in getting your ass handed to you and walking away from it. It’s bizarre. People are like, ‘Oh my gosh. If that happened to me once, I’d quit.’ But it happens, you survive, and it’s like, Let’s do that again. All I could think about was going back and surfing it—again and again and again.”
The brothers became addicted to the rush, yet few were earning a living among big waves. Rusty wasn’t interested in competing, and so he set his sights on college. Greg figured that making a hard run at becoming a pro would open the doors to a surf-based livelihood. He trained relentlessly and won the Men’s Open Division at the 2001 NSSA Nationals at Lowers—the equivalent of moving from the minor to the major leagues in a day. Dick Baker, the president of Ocean Pacific, offered Greg a sponsorship straight out of high school. The natural expectation would have been that Greg would follow in the footsteps of Mike Parsons, Brad Gerlach, and Kelly Slater—and make his own run at the ASP World Title. But that wasn’t where his heart lay. He told Baker, “I really love the adventure side of surfing. I want to go on trips to obscure locations where people haven’t surfed before—spend a couple of months riding big waves and immersing myself in the cultures, rather than just going from contest to contest.”
To Greg’s amazement, Baker replied, “You know what? Do what you’re gonna do.”
“That was it,” says Greg. “I basically had a license for creativity when I was eighteen years old—to go travel and surf where I wanted and make stories happen for the magazines. That’s when this big wave thing was taken to a whole new level.”
Two years later, in mid-2003, Greg and Rusty made their first journey to South Africa in an “endless winter” pursuit of cold-wave adrenaline. In Capetown, they made the acquaintance of a funny thirty-year-old maniac named Grant “Twiggy” Baker and his bawdy, beautiful girlfriend, Kate Lovemore.
During his formative years, Twiggy roamed the world with his father, Vincent, a rabid fisherman and professional golfer. He cultivated a love of heavy waves while cocooned in the sand-spitting barrels of his native Durban, a thousand miles north of Capetown. Then when Twig was seventeen, Vincent was stabbed to death in a carjacking. Even today, it’s not a subject he cares to broach, though it informs his surfing life. Kate says, “It’s just so heavy. I’ve said to him, after some of the things he’s done, some of the waves he’s ridden, ‘Don’t you wish your dad was here?’ He’ll just sort of brush the subject under the carpet.”
It took years for Twiggy to fully emerge from a fog of depression. When he did, he forged and tempered nerves of titanium at a lonely, white shark–infested hellhole that Capetown locals called Dungeons. The wave is basically a toothier, shiftier version of Maverick’s, fronted by a landscape equal parts Grand Canyon and Big Sur. He also surfed deep in South Africa’s desolate Transkei region. To keep from being torn to pieces he wore a great white–repelling “Shark Shield”—a battery-powered surfboard leash that delivers jolts of electricity into the surrounding water.
Greg and Rusty were quickly woven into Capetown’s tight-knit circle of Dungeon masters, and despite an age difference of ten years, Greg and Twiggy found they had the same goal, the same mindset—simply paddling and towing into the biggest damn waves they could find, no matter what, no matter when, no matter whether they could afford it. Greg would become Twiggy’s California connection, introducing him to guys like Parsons, Mark Renneker, Grant Washburn, Skindog, Peter Mel, and Jeff Clark.
“We started having such a blast, traveling the world for waves,” Twiggy says. “It was like, fuckin’ let’s go. We were spending eight months a year surfing. More time together than we were spending with our girlfriends.”
Kate laughs and nods. “That’s true.”
In June of 2003, the Red Bull Big Wave Africa went off in stellar, bonecrushing conditions. The twenty-year-old Californian won despite being the youngest invitee in contest history, while Twiggy finished fourth. For both, the contest marked the start of the most phenomenal run in the history of big wave surfing. A run due in no small part to their friendship.
&n
bsp; “Twig and I, we just clicked,” says Greg. “We’ve always kind of had two different approaches, but they complemented each other. It’s like with my brother. People will say, well, you guys are brothers, you make perfect surfing and towsurfing partners. But no, our personalities really conflict. Rusty’s just supermellow, like, ‘Take it easy, Greg.’”
Yet, with Twiggy, Greg is the quieter one. Despite being younger, he’s more subdued, even if it’s a difference of degrees, not nature. With mock seriousness, Greg says, “Twig’s the yin to my yang. The peanut butter to my jelly.”
Today, Greg Long’s name already comes up when surfers argue over who deserves the title of best big wave rider in history. It’s a short list, and in recent years Long received the benediction of one of the few other surfers on it, his namesake Greg Noll. The two men, arguably the best big wave surfers of their generations, have become fast friends.
“I was an adrenaline junkie, a glassy-eyed bird dog when the surf came up,” Noll says. “And that’s what’s so great about Greg. He paddles into these big fuckin’ waves that everyone else is towing into. I don’t know anyone who is doing it as well or as dramatically as he does. I mean, I’ve tried to understand how he gets away with this shit. You take your lineups, you check your reefs during the slack periods, and then you try to hit ‘em on the button when the surf comes. That’s what I tried to do, and I still couldn’t do what this kid is doing. He has some kind of communication with God or the supernatural. But then what I think is so special, besides his ability, is his attitude. I’ve never seen a wave rider with such a relaxed, bitchin’ attitude.”
Long is characteristically humbled to hear Noll’s comments. But Noll also puts his finger on an apparent dichotomy in Greg’s personality. Is it possible for someone to have “such a relaxed, bitchin’ attitude” and also be a glassy-eyed adrenaline junkie, a high-sensation seeker? Long thinks of himself in the Mike Parsons mold, as a very calculating Surfer who takes off only on a wave he feels he has a good chance of making—”as opposed to thrill seekers,” he says, “who will take a risk even though they’re going to get murdered. I mean, I’ve been on surf trips with people who, if they don’t get waves in a week or two, will have to do an extreme act—like swimming a gale-force ocean—just to get the rush they need. Garrett McNamara is probably as extreme a high-sensation seeker as there is. I’ve seen him take horrendous beatings and just come back laughing. I’m not like that. I never like to fall.
“But still, I know that adrenaline and dopamine rush is where a lot of the satisfaction I get from a big wave session comes from. But there are a lot of other activities where you could get a big rush without such heavy consequences. I’ve never characterized my need as that. It’s the whole adventure side of things, going into the unknown. Seeing a new corner of the world. I mean, if you can’t find satisfaction in just being around the ocean and partaking in all the things it has to offer, you’re really selling yourself short.”
Greg and Rusty Long joined the towsurfing flock after their mid-2003 South African baptism with the specific intention of surfing the Cortes Bank. Steve Long gave them the Jet Ski training materials used by the city of Honolulu, insisting that they learn everything about one-man rescues, slingshots, and rollovers. The boys began training hard along the long, empty stretch of beach south of San Onofre. They were ambivalent about the ski at best, particularly after December 11. On that day, Greg watched an angry paddle Surfer named Keith Head get the crap beat out of him at Todos Santos after Head cut the anchor line to a towsurfer’s ski.
“A fundamental personality trait of mine is simplicity,” Rusty said. “I don’t like dealing with this big, inanimate object that you have to fill with gas and oil. But out at Cortes it would be the only way.”
By the second week of December, after a year of tantalizing, frustrating waiting and praying for conditions to come together for another Bank job, Mike Parsons and Sean Collins noticed a lump of low pressure that had spun southward off the Aleutian Islands. Initially Parsons had simply thought he’d be heading for Maverick’s. Then Rob Brown called. He had just bought a twenty-nine foot Worldcat with twin 250s. When Parsons mentioned Maverick’s, Brown said, “Well, have fun.”
Parsons noted Brown’s sarcasm and asked what his problem was. “I don’t care what you’re doing,” Brown said. “But what the hell do you think I bought this boat for?”
“So what, you want to go to Cortes?” asked Parsons.
“I am going to Cortes,” replied Brown.
Parsons told Brad Gerlach, “Keep your fricking mouth shut on this one.” The only people Parsons called were Greg and Rusty Long. They were the hardest young chargers California had produced in some time, and their dad was a lifeguard. Steve Long would come, too, and he lined up longtime coworker and Todos surf veteran Jeff Kramer for rescue. They would journey in a separate boat piloted by Bob Harrington, a paraplegic former Surfer who liked to live vicariously through Steve’s kids.
A solid, long-period swell at 10 to 14 feet rolled beneath an oily smooth ocean. Cell phones lit like Christmas trees. Everyone wanted to know Mike and Brad’s plans for December 17. Lies were told—even to old friends. “Everyone was calling and leaving messages,” Mike said. “‘Where you going? What are you doing? You ass. Did you already leave? C’mon call me back.’ Rody [Peter Mel’s new towsurfing partner Adam Repogle] must have called me twenty times at least, and it just killed me to see his name popping up on my phone. Then it was Bill Sharp, then Chris Malloy. The guilt was just eating me away.”
That day, when Harrington rounded San Clemente Island, the butterflies in Greg’s and Rusty’s stomachs morphed into dragonflies. “It was a real, deep glassy, long-interval swell,” said Greg. “Stretching from one side of the Pacific to the other.”
Fifteen miles out, he and Rusty spotted the Cortes Bank’s first waves, which reminded them of moving, snow-capped mountains.
The two teams were all alone. Not a breath of wind. The Longs were dazzled. Some of the waves tumbled and thundered in from far off the top of the point. Others loaded up on the slab of reef Parsons identified as Larry’s Bowl and “went square,” a Surfer term for a wave that throws out a steep, slabbing barrel. Rusty was a little sickened. They looked like sheer cliffs. The only way out of a wave like that would be through the tornado. In their nascent towsurfing careers, they hadn’t ventured into anything remotely this big, deadly, and perfect.
The brothers figured they’d just watch the pros for a little while. Parsons and Gerlach wanted to explore the top peak. It was so consistent, so glassy—even smoother than 2001. Quiet. Deafening. Surreal. Gorgeous. No airplanes. No film crews. No walkie-talkies. No egos. They glided across edenic watery plains. Few surfers ever stumbled upon conditions like this, and none of these riders might ever find them again. A pair of waves stood majestic over the outer reef, their blue faces unscarred by ski or surfboard tracks. They barreled all the way through to the inside, a distance of better than a half mile. A divine reward for lying. “It was awesome,” says Gerlach. “Heaven on Earth.”
“There’s seriously no way I can put into words what it’s like to be able to drop into a perfectly glassy 40-foot wave seemingly without a worry in the world—it’s an incredible feeling,” added Parsons. “It’s like the kind of thing we could only dream about as kids. The only time it sinks in that you’re human is when you kick out and you’re sitting out there floating in the whole scene. There are these giant waves lurking nearby and there’s absolutely no sign of land anywhere. You start to feel like you’ve just been dropped off on Mars without your oxygen tanks.”
The Longs started out by methodically surveying the sea bottom and gingerly motoring around the edge of MacRae’s Rock, trying to get a sense for where and how the waves were breaking. When they did decide to tow, they took equally cautious strapped steps, pinning down the easier prey like a pair of young jungle cats on their first real hunt. They rode the last waves in the sets so they wouldn’t be caught
inside. Sliding down the faces at forty-five miles an hour was like skateboarding on a cushion of air. They made no mistakes. “They were on fire,” said Parsons. “It was their coming out party.”
A perfect, 6-foot wave at Lower Trestles might carry you a hundred yards and last fifteen seconds. A monster at Maverick’s might end after a quarter mile, a twenty-second ride. Yet several of Parson and Gerlach’s rides lasted the better part of a minute. On one wave, Gerlach counted six fifty-yard-wide silky bottom turns. At 50 feet tall, these were perhaps the most perfect giant point break waves any human had ever surfed. Steve Long, Jeff Kramer, and Bob Harrington watched the whole scene in awe, unaware their boat was sinking.
The sun lowered to the horizon. The boys were spent, but the photo shoots, the weather, the waves were still so perfect. Rob Brown called Sean Collins on his satellite phone. “Spend the night,” Collins said. “There will still be waves in the morning.”
As they stowed gear, Steve realized that the bilge pumps aboard Harrington’s boat had been working overtime. He lifted the hatch cover to find an engine bay half full of ocean. Rusty and Greg clambered aboard Rob’s boat. Steve and Harrington motored off into the dark to return to shore. They had life jackets and wetsuits, and they alerted the Coast Guard to their situation. Still, it was a terribly spooky journey. They reached the mainland at 2 A.M. to discover that a simple valve had been left open in the live-fish bait tank.
Rob Brown drifted southward off the Bank and eventually into the open ocean. “We all had a good dinner and just kicked it for a little bit and then fell asleep,” says Gerlach. “I love sleeping under the stars. There’s no light pollution out there, beautiful stargazing. It never felt unsafe or anything. It just felt right.”