by John Long
Both Fleas and Johnson's waves pushed the Mavericks width and height boundaries to comic proportions. Not surprisingly, though, they're not laughing. In fact, they're still striving for bigger, faster, and stronger.
"You definitely get caught up in it," admits Johnson. "As soon as I saw that Flea was okay, I started giving him shit. I was, like, 'Why didn't you snap under the lip on that thing?"'
Peter Mel also is admittedly caught up in it. He says tow-in surfing does that to you. You get a big one? You want a bigger one. And then a bigger one after that. As Mel found on December 22, this addiction is hard to satisfy when more than a half-dozen tow teams are in the water. The West Coast's most complete surfer happened to catch the next wave after both Fleas and Noah's top-bitters, and although he tore both of them to pieces with tight, swooping arcs and commanding high lines, Mel knew he missed the highlight reel.
"It's a little frustrating," he says, "but you gotta show respect for your friends. So you take a number. A lot of it's positioning. On one hand, you're catching more waves than ever. On the other, you feel like you have to be on the biggest ones that come through."
"That one set that Noah was on-I don't know how it worked out like that," continues Mel. "Me and Ross [Clarke-Jones] were out of position and ended up in the back of the line. When there's stacks of guys, like on the 22nd, everyone tows from out the back and rides the swell in. With fewer guys, it's better: You can sweep in from the side or straight on, and it makes it far easier to judge the wave. I hate to say it, but those huge days like October 28, when it was just us and another crew-those days are gone."
Todos Santos, December 23, 2000: Hand-picked
Todos surfers have a distinct advantage. Instead of guessing the size of the next swell, all they need is to check what Big Leagues of the north did the day before and cut it in half. Half of 70 feet is still enough to scare the shit out of any mortal, but there's a young crew out of San Clemente and San Diego who are serious candidates for big wave beatification at Isla Todos Santos (All Saints Island).
Twenty-two-year-old John Walla, his friend Drew Card, teenagers Rusty and Greg Long, and Solana s Brian Conley went through the Todos ritual that morning believing they'd face the biggest waves of their lives: an ungodly wake-up call of 3:00 a.m., powering straight through to Ensenada and arriving by six. From there, they hired a panga from one of the hustlers in the alley and pulled up to Killers by 7:30.
The early morning lineup revealed inconsistent 15- to 18-foot sets, light offshores, hazy sun, and one tow team. Walla and the Longs gave Mike Parsons and Brad Gerlach another half-hour before killing their motor-assisted waltz with their 9'8" guns. As the swell filled in and sets continued to turn the Todos boil into the Colorado rapids, Parsons, Gerlach, and the young guns pecked away at their paddle-in wave count. But it wasn't easy.
"I caught only two waves, and I got worked on both of them," said Rusty Long. "I skipped down the face on one, and on the other, Greg and I both ate it on the boil. I just got pummeled. I was pretty shaken up after that second one, so I decided it was time to paddle over to the boat."
Walla had a better go at it but cut his session short after he hit a chop on a massive, white double-up.
"I don't know what happened," said Walla. "I hit a foam bump and just skipped across the flats. I ended up breaking my board on that one."
Parsons, naturally, maintained his kingpin status with a few late drops, but he's glad to see a new crew of surfers who are able to look beyond the "launch ramps" at their local beachbreak.
"It's so great to see a new, committed young crew out there," said Parsons. "Every time I see them out there, they've upped it another notch."
Laissez-faire
Mike Parsons and Brad Gerlach are true disciples of the tow-in faith. They're born-again big wave riders, surfing better and faster than they ever imagined possible when it was all about the drop. And at Todos Santos-save the occasional paddle-in crewthey're alone. Screw the feelings of emptiness, they're happily feasting off the tow-in tree. And the greed? Greed isn't part of the equation if there's no one there to share it with. Aren't they jaded if it's smaller than 90 feet? No way-they'll take all comers, from 2 to 200 feet. The truth is, Gerlach and Parsons-like all tow teams who click-are just getting their act wired, and they can't get enough of it.
The thirty-something duo was on it at dawn on the morning of the 23rd, long before the first panga even stirred in the harbor. "I rode the biggest wave I've ever ridden out there, easily a 40-foot face," said Parsons. "Granted, I towed into it, but it was definitely as big as that wave I caught in 1990. And this time, I actually surfed the thing."
Parsons and Gerlach towed for two solid hours in the morning and rode about twenty waves each. During the few hours they paddle-surfed, they could count their wave quota on one hand. After the paddle-in surfers cleared out around midday, the two former NSSA teammates went back at it again for another round of twenty each in the afternoon. For Parsons, just one day of tow surfing yielded more big waves than two winters' worth in years past.
Has West Coast big wave surfing made its official transformation from a labor of love to a labor of tube? Are gearheads destined to clutter the big wave lineups with that maddening buzz every time the California buoy hits 10 feet? Perhaps, but consider this: Most of those gearheads are the same surfers you worshipped when they were doing it the old-fashioned way.
"I still love to paddle," Parsons says. "But racing at the bowl at 30- to 40-foot waves on 6'10"s and riding thirty, forty waves in a day? Come on, it doesn't compare. Gerr and I are having the times of our lives right now."
Automated
Take pride in your labor, advised Marx, especially labor that is done by hand. For the more work is done by machine, the more you are removed from the production process itself and the less connection you will have with the final product. In the most extreme cases, you will become alienated from your labor.
Grant Washburn knows about alienation. He and his labor are doing just fine, thank you, but Washburn was one of the last of the core Mavericks surfers to resist the tow temptation. He's done plenty of driving and has whipped Jeff Clark into dozens of 20-plus-foot pyramids, but tow in himself? Nah. Something told the 6'6" San Francisco regularfoot that it just wasn't for him. During the opening ceremony for the Quiksilver/Men Who Ride Mountains event, Washburn even found a sympathizer in Brazilian charger Danilo Couto. "Fucking towing in!" Couto told Washburn. "You and me, we charge 50-footers with our bare hands!"
But if there were ever a day to set aside purist convictions, December 22 was the one. Washburn spent a good portion of the morning filming from a ski and helping with rescues, but after watching his usual paddle-in comrades ride upward of twenty waves each, he'd had enough. "All right," he said. "I'm in."
Washburn strapped himself into Jay Moriarty's board and let Clark return the favor after so many one-sided sessions. He motored out, not feeling entirely confident on Jay's board but resolved: "All I want is one, just to see what it's like."
When Washburn first released the rope, he couldn't believe he was on a big wave. "This must be a tiny one," he thought. "There's no . . . woah. Here we go." Planing across the face at speeds he never thought possible, Washburn couldn't resist. He faded when he promised himself he wouldn't fade; he turned when he told himself he wouldn't turn.
He ... just then the wicked west bowl decided to end his fun and, faced with no other option, Grant ejected.
After a thorough spanking, Washburn popped out the back, relieved that it wasn't any worse. "I knew I shouldn't have faded," he said.
Then it got worse. Way worse.
About 30 yards beyond him, a wave-bigger than anything he'd ever faced-began to unload outside of the normal takeoff spot. "If it had been half the size, I still would have freaked out," remembers Washburn. "And I was right at home plate-couldn't have been in a worse spot. It looked like a 100-foot-tall whitewater coming at me."
Fearing retribution from th
e paddle-in gods, one of Mavericks' most loyal disciples hyperventilated for a few quick seconds, flutter-kicked under as deep as he could, and balled up. Violence. Whitewater demons taunted and pulled at him from all directions, trying to get him to fight. But Washburn stayed put, ten, fifteen seconds. Thinking the worst was over, he released his grip, but the beatings began all over again. Back in fetal position. Twenty seconds, twenty-five. At last, his somersault rotations began to slow, the turbulence gradually subsided, and he surfaced. Air.
Never mind the three more solid 15-foot combers that detonated on him before Flea could finally snag him; if he could survive that first avalanche, he could survive anything.
It's not easy finding a surfer who's towed and then pined for the paddle-in past. Granted, Washburn didn't exactly have a pleasant first tow-in experience, but after being amongst it for the past four years and finally clasping the rope on December 22, he knows where his heart lies, and it's not behind a WaveRunner.
"There's this feeling you get from paddling in," he says, "when your heart's in your throat, and you're just not sure if you're going to be able to claw over the ledge and make the drop. There's nothing like looking down the vertical ramp on a 20-footer. And to be honest, all of that's gone when you're towing in. You have to do so much more to even get any kind of rush-and even then, there's something totally missing in the tow-in equation.
"It was funny," Grant continues. "On that same day I saw Danilo Couto out there, and we both kind of looked at each other. 'Did you tow?' I asked. 'Yeah, but only a couple, he said. 'Did you?' and we both just sort of held our heads down. So much for our pact."
It's an island whose northwest coast gets plenty of big swells, with reef breaks capable of offering 20- to 30 foot barrels, being ridden by a hardcore crew of hellmen who think nothing of hucking themselves over the ledge or towing themselves into some of the heaviest waves found in any ocean. Sumatra? Tahiti? Tasmania? Try Ireland, which, though it may be the Old Country, is big wave riding's newest frontier. Leonard Doyle, a reporter for the Independent in London, penned an outsider's look at the Irish insider's awesome surf break.
On the heart-stopping edge of the Cliffs of Moher, a few miles from Aran as the gulls fly, John McCarthy's enthusiasm is infectious as elfinlike he skips over a dry-stone wall and points down into the surf 800 feet below. Ignoring warning signs that read "Danger Cliff Edge!" combined with a pictogram of a person plunging backward off a precipice, he guides me toward a sandstone veranda overhanging the churning sea. We are inches from doom, and the hungry wind swirling up the cliff face threatens to suck us over the edge.
"There she is! That's Aileen's!" McCarthy yells over the gale. I make out that he is pointing toward a singular ocean swell coursing in toward the bottom of the cliff. As it passes over a submerged reef, the wave suddenly jacks up, its leading edge curling into a perfectly rounded C, as though thrust upward by a giant hand.
"That's our wave-the most perfect wave you'll find in Europe," says McCarthy. Moving toward the cliff face, the lip of breaking water is suspended some 20 to 30 feet above the surface of the sea as it races forward. Aileen's, as the local surfers affectionately call this monster, is a new discovery and until last October had never been surfed. A similar barrel-shaped wave called "Teahupoo" occurs off Tahiti-one of the crown jewels of big wave surfers. When the conditions are right here at Aileen's-usually a deep depression far out in the Atlantic and an offshore southeasterlythe perfect wave will come in regular sets of seven for hours at a time. When Aileen's goes off, it is a most elusive phenomenon, beautiful to behold but with the capacity to kill or maim as well. Only in the past six months has anyone dared to attempt to surf Aileen's. And it has been surfed only about ten times since.
Bloggers and podcasts have scatted the word across the globe, and now the west of Ireland is suddenly a center stage in the world of big wave surfing. Wikipedia enthusiastically lists Aill Na Searrach (or Aileen's) as one of the world's famous tow-in surf spots, along with Jaws in Maui, Teahupoo, and the giant Belharra off the Basque Country. Weatherwise, Ireland is not Hawaii. Midwinter's wind-chill factor makes the sea unbelievably cold. Big wave surfers who head out in subzero conditions don 6-millimeter wetsuits, hoods, and gloves and have to combine the endurance of a mountaineer and the athleticism of a ballet dancer to survive the conditions.
The setting for the Cliffs of Moher could not be more dramatic. Paddling in is like entering a scene from The Lord of the Rings, says McCarthy. Off in the middle distance the three Aran Islands lie low and black in the water like great basking sharks. Closer to hand a great sea stack juts up beneath the cliffs, and humpback whales frequently break the surface within sight of the sandstone battlements. On shore, the Cliffs of Moher provide an unrivalled view across the vast boiling wildness of the Atlantic Ocean, a world unchanged since the pre-Celtic masters of magic, the Tuatha De Danann, ruled Ireland. In protest of the arrival of Christianity and the loss of miraculous rituals, the Tuatha transformed into horses and hid in caves for centuries. One day seven foals emerged from the caverns, and, frightened by the bright sunlight, they bolted. Galloping along the edge of the cliffs they met their fate at a spot known as Aill Na Searrach ("Leap of the Foals" in English). Today the surfers call it Aileen's.
"Maybe the spirit of the foals has been harnessed by the waves," says Katherine Webster, director of the Cliffs of Moher Interpretive Centre. The cliffs, one of Ireland's most visited places, attract more than a million visitors a year. On any given day, conga lines of tourists in bright raincoats stream out of buses to puff their way up the hill and gape out into the cold abyss.
A Recent Discovery
The west coast of Ireland has some of the finest, if intermittent, surfing conditions anywhere. Aileen's was a well-kept local secret until fifteen months ago when the acclaimed English surf photographer Mickey Smith brought some Australian body boarders to peer over the Cliffs of Moher. They decided on an immediate attempt. It is all but impossible to descend the sheer cliff face, so the Australians began an insane attempt to paddle from 2 miles away after jumping off a lower cliff face. There seas were treacherous, and it was getting dark and dangerous as they reached the wave. Exhausted, they turned back, guided by the flame from Mickey's Zippo lighter on the headland above.
In a nearby village, where McCarthy-Ireland's foremost surferwas taking a break from coaching the next generation of surfers at his Lahinch Surf School, the idea took hold for a proper attempt on Aileen's. "For a year I watched the wave and could not get it out of my head," he recalls. "So many surfers told me they had watched it. There is even a girl from Maui who lives around here who goes up to look at Aileen's because it reminds her of Peahi [Jaws]."
Trying to Stay Alive
Last autumn, as the surfing season began in earnest, Mickey Smith showed up again in County Clare with Robin Kent, one of Britain's top big wave surfers. By chance world-renowned California surfer Rusty Long (returning from a failed mission to the Hebrides) was also in the area, and they teamed up with McCarthy and his good mate Blount. McCarthy had just splashed out seven thousand pounds sterling on a jet ski, finally making an attempt possible.
Makua Rothman is only 16 years old when he snags this six-story wall at Jaws and wins a Billabong XXL Global Big Wave award.
PHOTO © RON DAHLQUIST/BILLABONGXXL.COM
Without the backup of a rescue vessel and with no real knowledge of the conditions, they set out. And like many a world first, whether bagging a mountain peak or crossing an ocean singlehanded, this little expedition to conquer Europe's most terrifying wave would soon degenerate into controversy. It is one that still echoes through the world of big wave surfing.
On the fateful first attempt McCarthy launched his new jet ski into high winds and pitching seas off Doolin, some 2 miles north of the cliffs. Battered by waves, he was leading an expedition of surfers, body boarders, and Mickey Smith. When they arrived under the line of tall cliffs the group was awestruck. "It sounds cliched," recalls S
mith, "but it truly was like stepping through a portal into another world. Beneath the massive rock faces we were completely sheltered from the wind."
McCarthy remembers "an elemental feeling; we were like Lilliputians in a land of giants. Giant cliffs, giant rollers, and the thundering roar of water as the waves crashed against the caves under the cliffs-an unearthly boom."
Rusty Long was the most experienced big wave surfer among them, and he, McCarthy, Blount, and Kent spent their time trying to stay alive-avoiding more than riding the first tube-shaped monsters.
"You are not thinking about it at the time, but you realize that if this huge weight of water lands on your head, it can kill you," McCarthy remarks. "It's one of the biggest waves anywhere, but what makes it unique is its shape. It throws off this enormous ovalshaped tube, and that is where the surfer needs to place himself."
Several months after this first charmed day at Aileen s, an article was fashioned from whole cloth for the British surf magazine Carve. In this imperial farce the two Irish surfers were reduced to blathering Paddys, mere bit players to the heroic American and British surfers, and attributed with such expressions as: "Aye, fellas, d'ya know what? I've only gone and forgot to put some petrol in the bloomin' jet ski!"
Since that October day last year, McCarthy and Blount have been out in bigger seas catching enormous tubes. Towed in by the jet ski, the surfer whipsaws behind the peak of the wave, then stands tall in the pulsing chamber barreling headlong for the cliff. "It is an unearthly feeling, being inside a swirling tube of green water, moving at about 30 miles an hour with the terrifying sound of the collapsing wave behind," says McCarthy.
For the million visitors who puff their way to the highest point of the cliffs, there is now another extraordinary spectacle to be seen where the foals leapt to their doom at Aill Na Searrach all those millennia ago.