by John Long
Shane Dorian: Soon as I learned a monster swell was heading for Mavericks I flew up to San Francisco and drove south and joined the crew at Half Moon Bay. The first day was all-time, and this was day 2, and a group of us were set to go out on Rob Brown's boat. Greg Long was organizing, and he kept texting me: No good-too low. Well, it's high tide right now, and we're gonna wait a little while. Oh, the swell got smaller. I figured, let's eat breakfast and go out there later. It's not that good, right?
So we ate, got our stuff together, and eventually piled onto Rob's boat and powered out to the lineup. And it's totally huge and epic. I pulled on my wetsuit, jumped in the water, and caught a bomb right off the bat. I felt pretty confident and started talking with the guys in the lineup. It was super crowded. Couple guys had been out since early morning, and they said maybe once an hour, a huge set rolled through. But nobody had tried to snag one. Yet. I asked, Where's it breaking? and they said, The giant ones are breaking a ways off the outside boil, maybe 80 yards farther out.
It was one of those magic days when everything comes together, and I quickly scored big. But after an hour I still hadn't seen one of those giant waves, and now I wanted one. So I paddled farther out and waited for a bomb. I'm not out there long, and this [wave] started piling up way out, one of the biggest I'd ever seen in the ocean. Everyone inside started paddling out like maniacs because it's a huge set, getting bigger.
My first instinct was, I can't paddle onto this. Too big. This is a tow-in wave. Period. But then I'm thinking, Well, I'm out here, so I'll try and get into a good position. When it rolls through, I can decide if I'm going or not. I got lined up perfectly and a couple strokes, and the wave almost caught me. I'm on my feet, no problem, totally confident. I'd already caught ten or so solid waves, and I hadn't fallen, so I'm like, Sweet. This is gonna be one of the biggest waves I've ever caught. And another part of me is going, This is a monster. I can't believe I'm catching this wave.
Marl( Healey: Shane had been going nuts, pulling it off all day long. Now he was way out there, and here comes a wave that probably stretched 5 miles in either direction, as far as we could see, like a mountain range on rollers. It's a huge wave. A giant wave, with more water in the swell than we could imagine. I'm thinking, Oh my God. Shane's in the spot. He's gonna go. He's definitely gonna go.
Then he's up and charging, and I'm yelling, Holy crap! That's the biggest wave anybody's ever paddled into. He starts shooting down the face, but he flattens out weird, barely handling the speed wobbles through sloppy, knee-high chops. I'm surprised he's still up. Then just ahead a couple big chop bumps are shoved up together, and I'm like, Nobody makes that. It's ass over teakettle for Shane Dorian.
SD: I get a third of the way down the face, and I'm flying. Then I'm way down, toward the end of the drop, and there's a couple big lumps. But it doesn't look so bad from my angle. So what, I tell myself. There's a lump or two. That's Mavs. I got it. I brace and bash over, going crazy fast-not normally a problem, but I'm on a 10-foot long gun that's 31/2 inches thick, and it handles like a canoe. So smacking these ledges feels like hitting speed bumps in a Cadillac at 40 miles per. My board goes, va-voom, va-voom. Somehow I'm still up. Then I nail the next one, and I'm saying, I got this. I got it. Uh, I'm not sure if I got it. Then it was all slow motion, like the worst movie in the world. And in my head I'm saying, This is bad.
I hit the water and skipped. I tried to catch a breath but instead got plowed under and sucked up the face. It felt like it took an hour to rise up to the top of the wave. I had to get a good breath or I was finished, because I was taking the ride for sure. So I stroked hard to the surface and for a split second punched out the back of the wave, hovering at the top of the lip. I pulled down a breath right as I got sucked over. Then I shot down the falls and got absolutely annihilated. Just annihilated.
Without a floatation vest I got drilled deep and bounced off the bottom, and the wave kept shoving me along forever. I tried to relax and go with it because there's no way to fight a wave that size. Finally the pressure eased, and I started up for the light, and I got pounded once more, beat right back down to the bottom and started tumbling over the shallows. Then off a shelf, and I plunged down into deep parts, freezing cold and almost black. I kept tumbling along hole to hole, and I'm thinking, All right. Anytime now you can let me up.
As it happened, I went over the falls on the edge of the outside bowl. So the moment I pitched off, the concentrated force of the wave launched me onto the reefs. The power out at Mavericks happens in surges. The wave hits a reef, doubles up and barrels, then stalls for a second until it impacts the next reef, where it jacks and barrels again, then lurches onto another reef, and so on. I got to know all those reefs.
So I'm dealing, trying to stay relaxed until the spin cycle finally starts dissipating and it's time to use my energy and get to the top, no matter what. I start kicking like crazy, pulling for the surface. Finally it's right there. It has to be. But it's all white, all foam and bubbles, but still I'm thinking, I'm okay. It's only 4 or 5 feet to surface. Maybe less. But I need a breath right this second.
By now I was making involuntary gurgling sounds, the throat spasms deep free divers had warned me about. They said these happened shortly before you black out. I didn't have much time. I needed air bad, and I'm straining for the surface, and my arms reach out through the spume, and that's when I heard, and felt, the next wave break. Ba-boom.
We watched Shane get whooped all the way through. Actually, we could see only the tip of his board, tombstoning along on the surface, because he's way down there at the end of his taut leash, getting keelhauled over the bottom. The next wave doubled up to pretty much the same size as the first bomb, and the tip of Shane's board disappeared for a while until this next wave was almost on him. This was bad.
Frank Quirarte was out patrolling on his ski, buzzing around in circles trying to find Shane. But we're talking about many acres of water here, and Frank was the only water safety guy out there. So he had only one shot between waves before he had to blast out past the shoulder to calmer water and then go all the way back around for another try. Meanwhile we're all up on top of the boat, bobbing out there off the edge of the reef and the impact zone, looking across at Shane's board tombstoning through avalanches of foam. Then everything settled for a moment, and Shane's board straightens and points straight up from the water because he's fighting his way up his leash to the surface. Sure he was. But he never got there, and the third wave breaks right on his board. You had to be there to appreciate how much water was in that third wave. I'm just going, This isn't good. This isn't good. This isn't good ...
SD: The next wave absolutely pounded me, and I instantly went from, I need a breath right now to I'm dead. Like, really, my hopes fell right off a cliff. There I was, swimming up, almost to the surface, and then I'm drilled right back down to the bottom where I just came from. And I had no air. None. At all. I honestly thought my chances of surviving this situation were really low.
And I started panicking, straight up panicking. Then I saw flashes of my son's face looking at me, and I was thinking, What the hell am I doing at the bottom of the ocean in San Francisco? I could be at home right now, on a soft longboard, surfing Pine Trees with my son. This is so stupid. Why am I down here? It sounds dramatic, but I knew-This is how it happens. Right here. This is what Todd Chesser went through, totally out of breath, pinned on the bottom and getting pounded by a huge wave. This is what my friend Donny Solomon went through. This is truly what big wave guys experience right before they drown. It's a shitty feeling.
I struggled like hell. I was on the cusp of blacking out, and weird things started happening. I kept struggling, and finally the turbulence spun me up to the surface, and I got a breath. There were spots everywhere, and I couldn't tread water, and I couldn't swim. I had zero energy. I was zapped.
We didn't see if Shane popped back up after that last macker, and I was hoping to God his leash didn't break. We were searchin
g for the nose of his board, tombstoning around. It was scary. I have a certain level of detachment sometimes, when stuff like that happens, and I knew this is what it looks like when people drown in big waves. And it was happening right then and right there. We were definitely worried, yelling at guys to go try and find Shane. Luckily, Frank was close, and he swooped in and got him.
Dorian, seriously shaken but still breathing, on the way back to the boat PHOTO © ROBERT BROWN
SD: After the fourth wave washed over me, Frank and one of the photographers sped up on the jet ski, and I could barely crawl onto the sled I was so wasted. Frank got me over to the boats. I instantly had this pounding migraine headache, and I could barely move my arms. I had no batteries left. Zero. I wanted to get the hell out of the water and out of the ocean. The thing was trying to kill me. I needed to get out of there. Get away. I was desperate.
Dave Wassell: Once we hoisted Shane up onto the boat I kicked into lifeguard mode and gave him a quick assessment to see how serious it is. Obviously, Shane's physically worked and emotionally shaken-broken, really. I looked in his eyes. He mumbled something about hitting things on the bottom, so I checked for lacerations, contusions, anything. I tried to get a fix on his pupils, but he starts vomiting something squeezed out of his liver. It's green and fluorescent. Food doesn't look like that, let me tell you.
He still couldn't really talk. His lips were blue, his eyelids were blue. He looked like a Smurf. That's oxygen deprivation for you. He kept yanking at his wetsuit, trying to pull it off, and spewing this jade shit all over. And mumbling, making no sense. I'm, like, Hey, look at me real quick, Shane. I need you to answer me. I'm asking very simple questions, and he's still not responding. He's only puking that day-glo crap and literally shaking apart.
SD: When I crawled up onto the boat, Dave was right there. He's been a lifeguard forever, super capable and experienced, and he was looking at my pupils and asking all these questions, and I was like, Give me a ride to the beach, anywhere, just get me out of here. Physically I was alive. I was safe. But it was close, and it was bad. I had that insane headache and didn't want to eat. I didn't want to talk to anybody. I didn't want to be around anybody. I wanted to clear out and go steep for like two days because mentally, I was totally thrashed.
Anyone who's been through something heavy knows it's like a fighter pilot after a close call. What do you say? Hey, that was intense, but good job. You didn't kick the bucket. And he's like, See how my lips are blue? No shit, I almost died. Now beat it, you're bugging me.
All that blah blah blah is so annoying. You leave the guy alone and chill until he rattles his way back to the living. You can be there for him, but he's gotta come back on his own. And it might not be pretty. Like that time green stuff he kept hurling. Dude.
DW: People on the boat didn't know how to approach the situationwhat to think, what to say, what to do. Shane was a wreck, was still in that wave, tumbling through this huge gamut of emotions. We're both in the back of the boat, and after ten minutes, he says, My son! I'm so selfish. But all broken and jumbled, little broken tidbits from a broken man.
When he was getting dragged along the ocean floor, he apparently saw his son's face, with his hair blowing in the wind. He actually had that vision.
It was tough to hear and see this guy I respected and looked up to reduced to a quivering mess like this.
But a lot of guys who surf the big stuff have groped through these experiences. It's personal, you know, so I did my quick assessment and left him to deal with it alone. But he was disturbed right then, literally disturbed, so over the next forty-five minutes I kept checking in on him, and all he said was, I gotta get outta here. Just get me outta here. Get me off this boat! So we got him a ride in.
I called Shane that night, and he said, I can't believe I did that. That was the stupidest thing. It was selfish. It was immature, and I'm never doing this again. I'm over it. That's a bold statement there. I was like, You did exactly what you were supposed to do: Show up and blow up. That's what Shane Dorian is all about. And now one of the great hellmen is going to up and quit? I was blown away.
SD: The next day I flew back home and didn't mention anything to my wife except that I'd surfed Mavericks, and it was good. She's not usually worried when I leave, but later she's like, Everyone's calling me telling me you almost died and stuff. What's up with this? And I'm saying, You know people are dramatic like that, blowing things out of proportion. But when she kept getting phone calls from guys who were there or in the water, and she heard the same basic account from them all, she knew who was lying, and she definitely got scared. I tried playing it down, but I still wasn't right, and she knew it.
I had a concussion from hitting the water and being out of breath, or whatever. Physically, emotionally, mentally, I was rattled, totally, to the core. It was all fun and games when I was catching those mackers and everything was going well and confidence was high. It never crossed my mind that the game could get fatal-until it did, and there wasn't a thing I could do about it.
I live and breathe big wave surfing. I train all year long and try my hardest to stay in top physical condition, try and eat right, do all the things I need to be the best I can be. But if a wave comes along and wants to drown me, it's going to drown me. I thought again about my close friend, Todd Chesser, who was in such great physical condition, so experienced, so mentally strong in big waves. And in 1997, on an outside reef near Alligator Rock on the North Shore of Oahu, a wave wanted to kill him, and it killed him. Now I knew what that meant. A realization at depth, I think they call it.
I needed a break. At first I was like, I don't know if I'm gonna do this anymore. Maybe leave it to some younger guy that doesn't have kids. But then a couple weeks went by, then a month, and I'm thinking, I'm gonna surf Mavericks next year for sure. But I'm getting a custom floatation vest made because if I'm in the right place-well, just thinking about it I get excited and caught up in the moment because I know one thing for sure: When that big wave comes, I'm not gonna not go. I'm going.
SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED FOR BIG SURF
The showpiece of ancient Hawaiian surfing was the royal olo (surfboard), the wiliwili wood colossus used exclusively by the ruling alii class. Specs for the olo were almost cartoonish: 20 feet long by 2 feet wide, 200 pounds, and domed along both the deck and bottom so that the center was nearly 8 inches thick.
During the mid-1920s, Tom Blake, America's first surfing champion, visited Hawaii and restored a pair of weather-beaten olos that for years had hung on an exterior wall at Honolulu's Bishop Museum. Blake was the first surfer of his generation to take a real interest in ancient surf history and lore, but part of his response to the olos was a simple wide-eyed awe, like a rural schoolboy seeing his first skyscraper. A few years later, Blake and Hawaiian surf icon Duke Kahanamoku each made themselves 16-foot olo replicas, more than half again longer and heavier than the average board of the time. Duke's olo weighed a full 130 pounds. Both surfers reported that the boards worked especially well in large waves. "During our last big surf, which only comes three or four times a year," Blake wrote in 1935, "the Duke did some of the most beautiful riding I have ever seen on his new longboard."
While just a handful of examples survived into the twentieth century, the olo is nonetheless viewed as the showpiece of ancient Hawaiian surfing. Replicas stand in museums and are sold to collectors for tens of thousands of dollars. Yet, the olo has about it a kind of grand absurdity, like a stretch limousine or a floor-dragging ceremonial robe. There are no eyewitness accounts of olo surfing, but it seems likely that the boards were used solely for riding unbroken waves.
"It is a good board for a wave that swells and rushes shoreward," nineteenth-century Hawaiian scholar John Papa Ii said of the olo, "but not for a wave that rises up high and curls over." Huge, heavy, and finless, the olo would have been nearly impossible to guide or steer-less a surfboard than a small canoe, which was also used by the Hawaiians to ride waves but with the operat
ional advantage of a paddle. The kapu laws preventing commoners from using the olo may have been a matter of public safety, given that a loose olo would blast through the wave zone like a log pitching through rapids.
Another theory is that the olo was specifically designed for big surf. Large waves move faster through the ocean and are much harder to catch than small waves, and the olo had a great paddling advantage over other types of boards. Even more so in big surf, however, it seems likely that the idea would have been to steer clear of breaking waves. Many Hawaiian surf spots have a deep-water channel adjacent to the break, allowing the surfer to paddle out without running into any broken waves. Some of these breaks, too, have a broad shoaling area beyond the surf zone, where open ocean swells first begin to tilt. This may well have been the intended field of play for the colossal olo, he 'e nalu of the kings.
-From The History of Surfing,
by Matt Warshaw
While the young Santa Cruz surfer was best known for a single spectacular wipeout, by the time of his tragic death in 2001 Jay Moriarty had earned a reputation as a great all-around waterman and, even better yet, as a great all-around human being. Longtime surf journalist Ben Marcus grew up in the original Surf City and was the obvious choice to pen what amounted to a paean to lost youth and potential unfulfilled.