The Big Juice: Epic Tales of Big Wave Surfing

by John Long

  Once I made the decision to go for "the Wave," I just put my head down and paddled. When I surfed big waves, I had the ability to dump all the side chatter and just go. People have always asked, "Why'd you paddle for that wave when you knew you were never going to make it?" But I always believed when you paddle for a big wave, if you start wondering, Am I gonna make it? Am I gonna do this? Am I in the right spot? Am I blah, blah, blah? that you tend to hesitate, to stall out and get caught in the top of the wave. And then you're done. So the moment I decided to go, I turned everything off, put my head down, and just went for it.

  On these epic waves, once you commit you forget about everything else. You put the nose of the board down, and if the fucking thing's breaking 2 miles in front of you, that's immaterial. You focus everything on catching the wave and getting down the thing. And if you're lucky enough to get down it, to pull your bottom turn and to make it, that's okay. And if you don't, that's okay, too. Except this wave was different.

  I can only speak for myself, but that bomb at Makaha was the biggest wave I ever caught, at least 10 feet bigger than anything I'd ever ridden at Waimea Bay or anywhere else. And it scared the shit out of me. You should understand that Makaha s a whole different ball game-it's like no other big wave out there. Waves like Waimea and Mavericks and Jaws are all concentrated peaks that jump up out of nowhere and grab you. But at Makaha-I'm talking giant Makaha Point Surf-you have to sit there like a goddamned deer in the headlights and watch these monsters come charging down the coast and around Kaena Point. It's intimidating, you know?

  Everybody else had already gone in, so I'm sitting out there alone, watching this huge set breaking from Yokohama, all the way down the line. They were like-well, you could easily have stacked two sixteen-wheeler tractor-trailers inside each barrel as they were dropping sections 3 blocks long. And as each wave broke, the concussion made the water droplets dance on the deck of my board. That's power right there.

  I'd never, never been in a situation like that. It wasn't like the normal big surf emotion, where I'd go, Goddamn, this is huge! then grit my teeth and paddle on through. It was more a mixture of fear and anguish: the fear that I might let this opportunity pass me by because I was a chicken shit. So as the set rolls closer I just put my head down and paddled into what I thought was the channel. And I remember thinking, Do I really wanna do this shit? Do I really want to find out what's on the other side of the cliff, especially if it means not being able to get back? And the answer wasn't heroic. It was probably nothing more than picturing myself as some old shit in a wheelchair, lashing the ground with my cane and saying, "You chicken shit, motherfucker. Why didn't you go for it?" I wouldn't be able to live with that, so when the set hit the point, I shut everything else off and started paddling. Hard.

  I got into the wave pretty early, but then the bottom dropped out, and I could see the Bowl lining up all the way to goddamned Waianae. I remember thinking, Just don't pearl! That would mean cartwheeling onto my ass and not penetrating the face. Really, my only hope was to get to the bottom on my feet and then look for a place to punch a hole and penetrate. Which is what I did: I got to the bottom and dove off the rail, trying to get as deep as I could while the thing detonated above me. And for a second it was so quiet, I thought I had it made. But this wave was so much thicker, had so much more mass than anything I'd ever experienced, that when the lip finally folded and exploded, I just got pummeled. It swept me along like a leaf. And this wasn't Waimea, where you get drilled hard but bounce down and then ricochet up again. This wave just kept rolling and rolling with me tumbling around inside-I must've been underwater for 100 yards or more when I started to worry a little bit.

  When we first started surfing big waves, we'd come busting to the surface after what we thought was a bad wipeout-like when we'd almost be out of breath-and think, Oh God, I almost drowned. But the waves kept coming, and we kept riding and getting all this experience, so maybe a year later, say, we'd get held down so long we were seeing stars, and we'd finally burst up to the light and say, "Christ, I almost drowned. " Then a couple more years and a couple thousand more big waves, and we got washed out past regular stars and started seeing red stars. And we'd say, "Jesus Christ, I almost drowned." And this last time we were right.

  Of course, we were experiencing the progressive stages of oxygen deprivation and learning to deal with heavier and heavier wipeouts and in the process getting better at surviving hypoxia. Toward the end of my big wave career, if I got held down long enough I could anticipate the different stages. I could almost see what was coming and deal with it. Like, Okay, here's the thrashingaround stage. And Here come the stars, and then Hello, red stars. But under that wave at Makaha, I shot right past the red stars and actually saw blue. Dark blue stars. And I remember thinking, Uh-oh, I don't want to know what's behind blue. Because I got a glimpse, and all I saw was darkness. And luckily it was right at that point that I struggled back up into daylight, back into reality.

  Problem was I was still getting the shit beat out of me by the rest of this giant set. I got washed all the way down past Klausmeyers to the east end of the beach at Makaha. I tell you, I barely made it through the thing. Buffalo [Keaulana] was following me in the lifeguard Jeep, as far as he could drive. I could see him off to my left, but there was nothing I could do because the current and the shorepound were ripping sideways so bad I could hardly swim against them. Finally, I staggered out onto the sand about 20 yards from the start of the lava rocks. Had I not gotten out there I'd have been totally screwed. The next sandy beach is 3 miles down the coast, and I never could have made it. Then Buff comes up and stuffs a beer in my hand and says, "Good ting you make 'em, brudduh, cuz no way I was comin' in afta you."

  So it was a hairball deal start to finish. And you know, that morning, when I went in the water, I thought, Boy, I'm gonna be surfing until my arms fall off. This is the only life for me! But that night, after the mist slowly settled, everything in my life settled down as well. I woke up the next day and felt like I could finally go surfing for fun and enjoy my family and eventually go fishing. The monkey was off my back so far as proving anything. I'd ridden a wave at least 10 feet bigger than anything I'd ever ridden before. And I realized I didn't want to know what was way, way out there, beyond the blue. So that's where I left off.

  It was one of the greatest days in surf history, rendered into the stuff of legends by the fact that its ultimate moment-the giant Makaha Point wave ridden by Greg Noll during the epic winter of 1969-wasn't captured on film. Over thirty years later, however, a chance discovery provided a glimpse of one of the more subtly dramatic moments to occur on that fateful big day.

  If you've ever been to Makaha Beach, that classic slice of sea and sand nestled against the Waianae Range on the west side of Oahu, you've probably found yourself wondering about that house. The stylishly designed, opulent home that, when viewed from almost anywhere on Makaha Beach-from the main lifeguard tower down to the bathhouse-sticks out over the point, its concrete pylons anchored in the flat lava reef, the back deck jutting out almost over the water. The one with the flagpole, Old Glory as reliable as a windsock. The house that always makes you wonder, "What's it doing there?" having outlasted so many of the funky Quonset huts that once typically comprised the neighborhood. The house that countless photographers have settled into the foreground of a thousand exposures, utilizing its deck and flagpole for scale when shooting Makaha Point Surf, a perspective that has the Point's thundering walls appearing to rear up and swallow the place whole.

  "The Rich People's House," or so it's been described by generations of keikis like Anna Trent, daughter of Buzzy, who during the 1960s spent her childhood playing in the vast tide pool below its deck. A very unnatural tide pool, it turns out, deliberately dynamited into existence by its builder to provide a safe swimming area for the neighborhood kids.

  Anyhow, a couple years ago I was at Makaha, competing in Buffalo's annual Big Board contest. There on the beach, between t
andem and canoe surfing heats, I struck up a conversation with a group of spectators I first thought was a tourist family who'd missed the turnoff to the Ko'Olina resort back past Nanakuli. They certainly looked like tourists: no tan creases or splayed feet and a little too neat in their beach garb. Southern U.S. accent, probably Texan. But after a few moments of chat, I picked up on something running beneath their "out-of-towner" appearance, an easy rapport with the milieu rarely seen in tourists, who normally gawk and fidget on Hawaiian beaches. In a few more minutes it became obvious why. The father's name was Stuart Beal; he was from Texas, and he owned the Rich People's House on Makaha Point. Owned as in "it's in the family." Turns out one Carlton Beal, his grandfather, built the house back in the early 1960s and christened it "Luana Kai." Stuart had spent a series of idyllic summers here as a kid, surfing, tide pooling, and learning many of his life's lessons at "Grandpappy's" knee.

  The grandfather's tale was a classic: A jen-u-whine Texas oilman, Beat Sr. was also an intrepid sportsman who, while on a Hawaiian vacation back in the day, headed out to Makaha for a surf session. Caught inside somewhere between the Bowl and the Blowhold, Beal Sr. parted ways with his board, which banged him in the head for his efforts, sending him to the bottom, unconscious. Luckily for Beat (and, in turn, his descendant Stuart), Makaha's very first lifeguard was on duty. Buffalo Keaulana assessed the situation, plotted the underwater course of the drifting body, paddled out, swam down, and pulled Beat Sr. from a watery grave.

  At once impressed and grateful, a recovered Beal Sr. subsequently helped build a house in Nanakuli for Buff and his wife, Momi, then built one for himself on the point at Makaha, their respective fates now linked. How Beal Sr. pulled off the dynamiting caper, shaping the exposed reef in front of Luana Kai into a semiorganic neighborhood swimming pool, is a testimony both to a more innocent era and the social dynamic of an authentic, hierarchal, clan-based Hawaiian culture in which the good graces of the alii ruling class-in this case the Keaulanas-ensure pervasive cooperation. In any case, Beal Sr. blasted his pool and dedicated it to the community with a plaque that once read: "Beat's Pond."

  This was the sort of story I love hearing while sitting in the sand, and I guess it showed. "Why don't you paddle on over this evening," came the invitation from Stuart Beal. "Dinner's at seven."

  Which is how I came to be seated before a feast at the Rich People's House, complete with linen tablecloths and attendants in white jackets poised for every remove. I had, in fact, paddled over from the Blowhold, cutting inside Sunn's Reef and eventually crawling up and into Beat's reef pool, then making my way through the gated portico and up into the immaculately landscaped yard. But don't let me make it seem stuffy. The newest generation of Beals were delighted hosts: unpretentious, good humored, and lots of fun. Dinner was a raucous affair, with stories and smiles from the whole Beal brood, including Stuart's wife, Kate, and his three sons, Alex, Phillip, and Thomas. After dinner and dessert, we moved to the lanai, the trade winds blowing down out of Makaha Valley and whisking the laughter out over the reef. A week or so later, back on the mainland, when I received an e-mail from a Texas oil company, I opened it with a grin. It was from Stuart, just a short, friendly follow-up note, with a file attached.

  "Here are some old photos that my grandfather took of a big day at Makaha," he wrote. "Thought you might enjoy seeing them."

  That's neat, I thought, and stored the file somewhere on my computer to be opened later.

  Two years later, as it turned out, I was sitting with Surfer's Journal photo editor Jeff Divine assembling a collection of archival shots for an upcoming book when I came across the Beal file.

  "Hey, here's some old photos of Makaha," I said. "Let's check these out."

  Click. Scroll. Holy shit!

  That's right. The file of "a big day at Makaha," which had been languishing on my computer desktop for the past two years, was a collection of photos taken by Carlton Beat during a big swell on December 4, 1969. Oh, yeah, that "Swell of '69" and that giant day at Makaha when Greg Noll caught what would be, for the time and for many years after, the biggest wave ever ridden-one of the most legendary single days of surfing in the sport's entire history.

  It was a real Howard Carter moment as we scrolled through the images. They seemed to capture the entire day, shot with a medium-sized lens from a variety of angles, not quite pedestrian but not a pro's work either. This gave the shots the feel of witnessing the awesome swell event rather than covering it. Here it was: the smaller morning session in the Bowl, guys screaming in off the Point as the swell stepladdered. A sequence of Rolf Aurness. I think. A young Randy Rarick, dropping in late in front of Fred Hemmings. Big waves with surfers riding for scale. But then a series of images of giant waves, huge waves with nothing for scale but, compared with waves shot from the same angle, looking at least twice as high. Looking at them even all these years later, you got a sense of drama-a gut wrench-as with the rising swell those blue-gray monsters came growling down from Kaena Point, clearing the lineup of surfers one by one. Nobody left in these pictures, just massive waves exploding out past the back deck of Luana Kai.

  "Hey, who's that?" asked Divine, pointing with a pencil at Beal's only shot of a surfer on the beach.

  Click. Divine and I looked at each other. Of course. It had to be Greg Noll-who else could it have been? There's Noll, dashing down Makaha s steep, storm-gouged berm into the shorebreak, absolutely no hesitation in his step. His head is raised, the long, yellow gun tucked under his arm, just a hint of the jailhouse trunks peeking out from under the rail. Only one set of tracks in the sand. And in this single photo, apparently the only photo of Noll on the beach that December 4 (no still images of the humongous wave he eventually rode exist), the entire essence of that epic day is captured as no surf shot ever could. Surf history's only truly Homeric saga: one man heading out after everyone else had come in, daring to face alone whatever new terror appeared from beyond the horizon.

  I looked at my watch. It was 2:30 in the afternoon on December 3, 2008. The following day, on December 4, exactly thirty-nine years to the day after Carlton Beat snapped this photo, three dozen or so intrepid surfers, with as many photographers, would take on what would later be called the biggest waves ever paddled into at Mavericks.

  They followed this lone set of footprints in the sand, seen here for the first time.

  A DEATH SENTENCE

  There are waves out there that we surfers hope to ride before pulling into that big closeout in the sky: the super tubes at Jeffrey's Bay, the mile-long walls at Chicama, and the notebook-drawn perfection of Tavarua, to name a few. Shipstern's Bluff is not on the list and for good reason. Less than 1 percent of the global surfing population could navigate its steps, slaps, lips, and ledges well enough to consider the average session out there remotely fun. For you and me, its a death sentence. This fact was driven home when Andy Irons, Joel Parkinson, Mark Matthews, Dylan Longbottom, and nineteen-year-old tagalong grom Laurie Towner from Angourie, Australia, made a surgical strike on the cauldron of Tasmanian hellfire. By day's end, all were perfectly amazed, none more than Towner, who blew minds by dropping into a hideously deformed right-hander some are now calling the biggest barrel ever paddled into. The swell continued to build and strengthen throughout the day, with the waves growing nastier by the set, to the point that even this extreme ensemble found the line between sanity and insanity blurring. As Parko put it, "You get only so much adrenaline."

  -Jake Howard, "To Hell and Back"

  That surfing lore doesn't include very many female big wave stories is understandable: There haven't been very many female big wave riders. Until recently. Over the past ten years a small but very determined cadre of waterwomen have worked their way into the peak at heavy water breaks previously considered "for men only. " One of the most intrepid is Brazil's Maya Gabeira, who's earned much respect for her commitment to the steep and deep. But she's also learned that that sort of rep comes at a price-in this case a near drowning at
Hawaii's Waimea Bay.

  I've had asthma since I was one year old, so I've grown up with that feeling of struggling for breath. And the fear of suffocation. Not the best situation for riding big waves. And the 2009 big wave season ended up being the toughest one ever for my asthma. A lot of the time I was struggling for air, sitting on a chair on land, so it was an especially big challenge for me to be in the ocean, tossed by huge waves, knowing I had such a serious limitation. I learned to work around it. There were a few swells that I was actually 100 percent for and other days when I had to go cautiously and still others when I couldn't be out there at all. And that was a hard thing to live with because surfing big waves is my life.

  But how do you face a big set with no air? If I was going to surf on those really big days, I would have to control my breathing and my heart rate, impossible demands during an asthma crisis. To have an asthma attack during a long hold-down was one more variable to deal with. I had to learn which days I could actually manage, and that meant knowing my limitations. In a crunch, I breathed slowly and hoped for the best.

  On the 11th of January, a Monday, the biggest swell of the year hit the North Shore. I was just coming out of a bad asthma crisis and had been taking crazy amounts of cortisone for ten straight days. I wasn't anywhere near 100 percent. But I couldn't miss that swell. When Waimea Bay began breaking, I was there.

  I paddled out at eight that morning. The bay was big but not out of control. I rode a few waves, but I wasn't pushing myself hard. Not yet. Every breath was important-and difficult. Those ten days on massive cortisone had left me at about half strength. I'd been out for about five hours and was tired enough when this huge set rolled in and caught everyone inside, just cleaned up the whole bay. The entire pack was scratching like crazy to get over this monster, and I'm stroking hard, trying to slow my breathing, trying to stay calm. But I was last in line when the lip curled over with about twenty boards and bodies all over the place. I had nowhere to go. I got sucked up and over the falls and driven down deep. I'd never experienced anything like it. Twenty feet down and all these boards are banging up against me, and I can feel people flailing underwater-total chaos. Then I'm tangled bad in leash lines, mine and several others as well. You can't see anything under a wave like that. Not up or down. After the first wave washed over, the ocean calmed slightly but I still couldn't battle to the surface. I was totally wrapped up in leashes, dragging along underwater and getting nervous about the whole situation, feeling like I was in a fatal accident happening in slow motion. Really slow motion-now fighting for air and for my life.