Ghost Wave

by Chris Dixon

  5. Among the other sources:

  A. Staff, “New Nation May Rise 120 Miles From Coast,” Los Angeles Times, October 14, 1966.

  B. Harold Keen, “Promoters of Abalone Ship Plan May Face Federal Prosecution,” Los Angeles Times, November 17, 1966.

  C. “New Island Plan Pushed by Kirkwood,” Los Angeles Times, November 29, 1966.

  D. Bill Duncan, “The Grand Plan for Building an Island Paradise off our Coastline,” Long Beach Press-Telegram, December 18, 1966.

  E. Samuel Pyeatt Menefee, “Republics of the Reefs: Nation-Building on the Continental Shelf and in the World’s Oceans,” California Western Journal of International Law 25, no. 1 (Fall, 1994): 104–05.

  6. Ben Sherwood’s The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life (New York, Grand Central Publishing, 2009) provides remarkable, hair-raising insights into the minds and genes of survivors of all manner of deadly things.

  7. Rob Bender’s Web site http://concreteships.org is fascinating. You can still see the hulks of Jalisco’s nearly indestructible sister ships lined up as a floating breakwater off Powell River in British Columbia and forming the Kiptopeke Breakwater in Lower Chesapeake Bay, Virginia.

  8. At least one public record showed a Joe Kirkwood in San Diego who matched the age of Joe Kirkwood Jr. as passing away in 1995. This seems to jibe with a rumor Houtz heard. Yet Kirkwood’s Wikipedia page shows no date of death. Kirkwood would now be ninety-one, so of course, it’s possible he’s still alive. If so, I hope to one day meet him.

  CHAPTER 5

  1. Ramapo fascinated me from the first time I read Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm. Thanks to Bill Sharp for sharing his copy of “Great Sea Waves” by R.P. Whitemarsh, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 60, no. 8 (August, 1934). The story cites motion picture footage shot from Ramapo. I would appreciate any leads.

  2. R.P. Whitemarsh’s family contact was made possible through a biography provided by James Allen Knechtmann, at the Naval History and Heritage Command. This led to contact with great-niece Angie Gregos-Swaroop and her mother (and R.P.’s niece) Nancy Whitemarsh Gregos, who provided me with photos and contact information for both James Whitemarsh (R.P.’s nephew) and R.P.’s daughter, Francis “Taffy” Wells.

  3. A fascinating analysis of the sinking of the Japanese midget sub by the USS Ward, a PT boat under Whitemarsh’s command, “The Search for the World War II Japanese Midget Submarine Sunk off Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941” can be found on the University of Hawaii’s Web site (http://www.soest.hawaii .edu/HURL/midget.html).

  4. Insights into the science and theory of wave propagation were provided through years of relentless interrogations of Sean Collins for Surfermag.com, Surfer, and The New York Times (Chris Dixon, “A Site for Real Surfers Catches a Wave,” The New York Times, June 13, 2002); a telephone interview with Walter Munk in February 2010; and through two books: Tony Butt and Paul Russell, Surf Science: An Introduction to Waves for Surfing (Cornwall, UK: Alison Hodge Publishing, 2002), and Craig B. Smith, Extreme Waves (Washington DC: Joseph Henry Press, 2006).

  5. 1933 weather stories:

  A. “Cold Wave Strikes City Again Tonight; Blizzard in West; Worst Storm in Years Sweeps Middle West,” The New York Times, February 8, 1933.

  B. “Ireland Is Swept by Gale and Snow; Towns Isolated and Shipping Suffers Heavily in Worst Storm of Century,” The New York Times, February 26, 1933.

  C. “Gale-Borne Snow Hits New England,” The New York Times, February 27, 1933.

  D. “6 Die, 20 Missing As Gale Hits Coast; Fishing Boats Lost; Giant Waves Capsize Many Craft, Imperil Hundreds of Fishermen,” The New York Times, August 21, 1933.

  E. “13 Dead, Many Hurt In Pacific Floods; Thousands Are Homeless as Northwest Gets Ray of Hope in Colder Weather,” The New York Times, December 24, 1933.

  F. Paul Bonnifield, The Dust Bowl: Men, Dirt, and Depression. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1979).

  G. Background on the extreme weather of 1933 was also gleaned from Monthly Weather Review, January 1933.

  H. 1933 record hurricanes—NOAA (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/tropical-cyclones/2005/13).

  I. Oregon weather records—NOAA (http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/pqr/paststorms/index.php).

  J. Larry Greenemeier, “Welcome to the Coldest Town on Earth—Oymyakon, Siberia, is bracing for temps as low as minus 90 degrees Fahrenheit,” Scientific American, December 24, 2008.

  6. On the topic of “rogue” or “freak” waves:

  A. “Ship-sinking monster waves revealed by ESA satellites,” European Space Agency News, July 21, 2004 (http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMOKQL26WD_index_0.html).

  B. Peter Müller, Chris Garrett, and Al Osborne, “Rogue Waves—The Fourteenth ‘Aha Huliko’a Hawaiian Winter Workshop,” Oceanography 18, no. 3 (2005).

  C. A fascinating interActive wave machine on PBS’s “Savage Seas” Web site (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/savageseas/multimedia/wavemachine.html).

  D. Bruce Stutz, “Rogue Waves—The Physics of Pure Hell at Sea,” Discover Magazine, July 2004.

  E. The “Max Wave” project was featured in the BBC Horizon Freak Wave series (http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/freakwave.shtml).

  7. To determine the energy in the Ramapo wave, the following simple mathematical equation provides a rough but still reasonable estimate: height2 (meters) x period (seconds) x .5 = kilowatts per square meter of horizontal wave front (if you were able to see how wide the wave stretched across the horizon).

  A. In this case: 34(meters)2 x 16 x .5 = 9248 kilowatts (a kilowatt being 1000 watts) or 9.2 million watts per square meter.

  B. Next, assume this wave presented a front at least two miles wide from end to end—perhaps considerably more. Two miles = 10,560 feet or 3,218 square meters.

  C. Thus, 3,218 square meters x 9,200,000 watts = 29,605,600,000 (29.6 billion) watts of energy in this single wave.

  8. Custom of the Sea – A Shocking Tale of Shipwreck, Murder and the Last Taboo, by Neil Hanson (Wiley Publishing, London, 2000), is the gripping, tragic account of the cannibal crew of the Mignonette.

  9. The logs of the Ramapo are held at the National Archives in Washington DC, and contain entries from Whitemarsh and captain C. B. Mayo.

  CHAPTER 6

  1. This chapter was made possible through hours of interviews over the course of the past decade (most however, were undertaken when I started research for this book in 2008). Interviewees: Rob Brown, Sean Collins, Bill Sharp, Mike Parsons, Brad Gerlach, Sam George, Walter Munk, Candace Moore, Flippy Hoffman, and Mike Castillo. Other Larry “Flame” Moore material came from interviews Bill Sharp conducted for a 2004 big wave book project to be coauthored by Sharp, Sam George, Steve Hawk, Evan Slater, and myself that was later abandoned—yet Sharp shared it for this book.

  2. Regarding Walter Munk’s film Waves Across the Pacific (1967): Archival video files are available on the Web site of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (http://libraries.ucsd.edu/locations/sio/ scripps-archives/resources/collections/movie-clips.html).

  3. Surfline’s video Making the Call (2003), available for purchase on Surfline.com, contains fascinating details on what makes Waimea, Maverick’s, Todos Santos, Jaws, and the Cortes Bank work.

  4. For insight into California surf culture “BG” (Before Gidget), the book Gidget by Frederick Kohner (1957, reissued in 2001 by Berkeley Trade) is a must-read.

  CHAPTER 7

  1. This lede quote comes from Dave Parmenter’s seminal “On the Shoulders of Giants,” Surfer, August 1999.

  2. Considerable background was provided by Matt Warshaw, The Encyclopedia of Surfing (New York: Harcourt, 2003).

  3. The Keaulana quotes in this chapter came from spending a few days with the Keaulana clan in August 2008 for a story in Men’s Journal magazine. The comments from Greg Noll came by phone and during a visit Twiggy, Greg Long, and I paid him in 2010.

  4. Kepelino Keauokalani’s description of Hawaiian surfing appear in the book Kepelino
’s Traditions of Hawaii by Kepelino Keauokalani (Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 2007).

  5. The descriptions of Abner Paki and the recollections of Woody Brown appear on legendarysurfers.com—the incredible Web site of Malcolm Gault-Williams: (http://files.legendarysurfers.com/surf/legends/woody.shtml; http://files.legendarysurfers.com/surf/legends/ls01_volume1_06.pdf).

  6. I interviewed Randy Laine on motorized big wave surfing by telephone in late 2010. I spoke with Herbie Fletcher on the topic back in 2008.

  7. Brock Little described his epic Waimea wipeout to Evan Slater for Slater’s blog on the Hurley.com Web site and in “Pressure Drop” by Brock Little, Surfer, May 1990.

  8. Sean Collins’s Todos recollections came during an interview at his offices in Huntington Beach in October 2009. I first understood how long period waves worked when I traveled with Sean to cover the Reef@Todos contest in 1999 for Surfermag.com.

  9. Rob Brown and Mike Parsons described Mark Foo’s death personally in 2009. Evan Slater described Jay Moriarity’s wipeout personally in 2009. Ben Marcus’s seminal story “Cold Sweat” introduced Maverick’s to the world and appears in Surfer magazine, June 1992. The film footage of Parsons immediately after Foo’s death appears in Mark Matovich’s 1994 film, Monster Maverick’s. There’s a clip of the moment on YouTube.

  10. The interviews with Laird Hamilton were conducted during work for stories for Men’s Journal and The New York Times in late 2007 and early 2008. The result of some of those interviews appears in a Men’s Journal story, “Beneath the Waves” (March 2008). The rest of the Laird interviews came about through a piece I was to write for The New York Times on the XXL Awards, as a follow-up to the story on the January 2008 Cortes surf mission. A few quick questions with Laird on the premise of the XXLs instead became a full-blown philosophical discussion on big wave surfing in general. I then became buried beneath another story, and the Times piece was, unfortunately, never published. Interestingly, this same abandoned story produced the trip to Maverick’s where Rob Brown and I learned of Peter Mel’s methamphetamine addiction (Chapter 8). I greatly appreciate Laird and Pete Mel’s time—and honesty.

  11. The “This changes everything” quote from Ben Marcus actually came about watching prerelease footage that would appear in the video Wakeup Call with Ben in 1994. In the ensuing years, I would listen to spirited and occasionally angry debates between Sam George, Ben Marcus, Evan Slater, and Steve Hawk over what towsurfing meant and how it should, and should not, be covered in Surfer.

  12. The video Wake Up Call (1995, available on Amazon.com) is a terrific chronicle of the early days of the towsurfing revolution.

  CHAPTER 8

  1. Everest fatality figures came from the mountain climbing site Alanarnette.com. A 2006 study by the British Medical Journal found that overall mortality of 14,138 Everest mountaineers above base camp during the entire eighty-six-year history of climbing was 1.3 percent. J. S. Windsor, P. G. Firth, M. P. Grocott, G. W. Rodway, and H. E. Montgomery, “Mortality on Mount Everest, 1921–2006,” British Medical Journal, December 2009 (http://www.bmj.com/content/337/bmj.a2654.full).

  2. I wrote about motocross casualties for The New York Times (“A Motor Sport Takes off Leaving a Trail of Broken Bones,” September 2, 2002). In 2000, some 52,000 motocrossers visited American emergency rooms.

  3. The interview with Bob Parsons was conducted by telephone in early 2009. I met Jodi Pritchart (Mike’s mom) in October 2009 at Mike’s boyhood home. Later Cortes interviews with Brad, Mike, and Joe Gerlach were conducted during 2009, while the first Jaws and Cortes interviews happened in 2004.

  4. The story on Joe Gerlach: Sandy Treadwell, “Down, Down And Away!” Sports Illustrated, March 20, 1972. It’s a great insight into thrill-seeking genetics and is also available in SI.com’s “Vault” section (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1085900/1/index.htm).

  5. Brad Gerlach and Mike Parsons were featured heavily in Surfer through the 1980s and ‘90s in particular. Articles include:

  A. Staff, “Testing One Two Three—Brad Gerlach,” January 1986.

  B. Matt Warshaw, “Talk Show—An Interview with Brad Gerlach,” August 1987.

  C. Robert Beck, “Todos Santos—¿Quien Es Mas Macho?” June 1988.

  D. Matt George, “A For Effort” (lengthy Parsons profile), December 1988.

  E. Derek Hynd, “Yankee Domination,” January 1992.

  F. Jeff Divine, “Size Counts, a High Impact Session at Todos Santos, Baja” (the story of the 1990 “Eddie” and Flame’s first “Cortes” swell hitting Todos), June 1990.

  G. Steve Barilotti, “Emotional Rescue—The Son of Jumpin’ Joe Gerlach Struggles to Save Surfing’s Pagan Soul,” October 1992.

  H. The information on high sensation-seeking came from a telephone interview with Marvin Zuckerman in March 2009, and the book, Sensation Seeking and Risky Behavior, by Marvin Zuckerman (Washington DC: American Psychology Association 2008). I would also highly recommend: Florence Williams, “This Is Your Brain on Adventure,” Outside, April 2009. Read more about Pete Mel and Flea in “Coming Clean – A Searching and Fearless Moral Inventory” by Kimball Taylor, Surfer, April 2009, and dying, or not dying in “Death Trip” by Brad Melekian, Surfer’s Journal, Winter 2011.

  CHAPTER 9

  1. I first interviewed Dr. Bill O’Reilly in 2003. Follow-up interviews took place in 2007 and 2008. I’ve nearly driven Sean Collins crazy on the topic of waves for the past decade and spent in-person time with Parsons, Gerlach, Skindog, Mel, Dana Brown, and Rob Brown (no relation) dissecting the January 2001 Cortes session starting as far back as 2003.

  2. Stories:

  A. Evan Slater, “Project Neptune,” Surfing, June 2001.

  B. Evan Slater, “Bank Job,” 2004 (unpublished).

  C. Joe Mozingo, “Surfers Catch Monster Waves Off California,” Los Angeles Times, January 22, 2001.

  D. Matt Walker, “The Poseidon Adventure,” Surfline, January 19, 2001 (http://www.surfline.com/mag/pulse/2001/jan/01_19_cortes.cfm).

  E. Evan Slater, “Into Thick Water Part One: Mike Parsons, Brad Gerlach, Peter Mel and Ken ‘Skindog’ Collins summit Cortes Bank,” Surfline, January 22, 2001 (http://www.surfline.com/mag/pulse/2001/jan/01_22_bank_one.cfm).

  F. Evan Slater, “Into Thick Water: Part Two,” Surfline, January 22, 2001 (http://www.surfline.com/mag/pulse/2001/jan/01_22_bank_two.cfm).

  3. Thanks to Evan Slater for a hilarious comparison of equipment for this surf mission.

  JOHN WALLA 1 10’0” Christenson gun • 1 12-foot big-wave leash • 1 pair 3mm booties • 1 3/2mm Billabong fullsuit • 1 bar of cold water Sex Wax

  PETER MEL 1 10’3” JC gun • 2 12-foot big-wave leashes • 1 pair 3 mm booties (size 13) • 2 4/3 Quik-silver fullsuits • 1 Quiksilver life vest • 2 7’0” x 16” x 2” JC tow boards (straps included) • 1 30-foot tow-rope • 1 Yamaha XL 1200 WaveRunner • 1 BZ rescue sled • 1 trailer • 2 10-gallon cans of fuel • 1 case of Yamalube oil • 1 roll of duct tape • 1 bag of bungees and tie-downs • 3 oily rags • 1 crescent wrench • 1 hose w/special nozzle • 1 tube of silicone sealant • 1 hammer • 1 vise grip • 1 can engine fogging oil • 1 can Salt Away motor flush • 1 can Engine Stor long-term metal protector • 1 can Corrosion Pro anti-corrosive spray • 1 tube Tri Flow superior lube • 1 can gasoline water absorber • 1 tube performance cable lube • 1 can silicone spray • 1 roll paper towels • 1 funnel • 3 screwdrivers (two flat, one Phillips) • 1 socket wrench • 1 bar cold water Sex Wax

  CHAPTER 10

  1. In-person interviews were done with Greg, Rusty, and Steve Long, particularly in the fall of 2009. Steve spun a fascinating history of San Clemente and the point break holy land of Trestles. He pointed out, among other things, that Trestles and the San Mateo valley just inland and behind San Clemente were long inhabited by a peaceful tribe called the Ajachemen who farmed, fished, and probably surfed aboard canoes made of the dense reeds that still grow along the rivermouth. Their 10,005-ye
ar reign ended after the arrival of Gaspar de Portola and the Spanish in 1769. Portola’s men christened each river valley they encountered based on whatever day the next Saint’s feast fell. San Mateo Creek honored Saint Mathew while San Onofre was an obscure Egyptian holy man. “Onofre began life as a very pious woman who was to be wed, but she didn’t want to marry,” said Long. “She went deep into prayer and overnight grew a long beard and men’s attributes. She was the first transsexual saint.”

  2. The videos What’s Really Goin’ On and What’s Really Goin’ Wrong are classic snapshots of not only San Clemente, but American surf culture in the 1990s. They’re available from Lost.com.

  3. Laird’s “Oh My God” wave at Teahupoo appeared on the cover of Surfer, February 2001. It also anchors the film Riding Giants.

  4. To see Mike Parsons’s January 7, 2002, Jaws Tow-In World Cup wave that opens the film Billabong Odyssey: visit http://tinyurl.com/parsonsjaws and you’ll understand why it’s so heavily viewed.