by John Long
Jake assumed his dad's fishing boat had simply failed to report. "'Think positive; I said. 'He'll make it in: But then I found out he was surfing."
Jake stood in Saint Angela Merici Catholic Church in Pacific Grove two days later, listening to friends eulogize his father. Hundreds turned out at Lovers Point in Monterey that afternoon for a paddle-out memorial. Jake watched from the rocks until his friend Darryl "Flea" Virostko paddled by on an 11'7" Dick Brewer board that Peter had given Jake. Jumping into the frigid water in his full Versace suit, Jake rode the board as the crowd cheered.
Ghost Tree wasn't finished wreaking havoc. In late afternoon, Russell Smith towed his brother into a monster. Unaware of the prodigious beating he was about to take, Tyler styled straight down the beast's massive face. The crowd assembled on the adjacent cliff moaned and yelled in horror as Ghost Tree dropped a 50-foot ax on the elder Smith. Without hesitation, Russell raced into the impact zone but couldn't snag Tyler before the next wall of whitewater blew him off his ski and into the sea alongside his injured brother, who had torn a rotator cuff in the wipeout.
-Ryan Masters, Heroes and Ghosts
Drained but unable to steep, the next morning Jake drove to the mortuary to say a few final words to his father. There was stuff that Jake wishes he'd told him. He wishes he hadn't been so embarrassed by things his dad did when Jake was a kid, like dropping him off at school in posh Carmel with no shirt on. "He was a fucking caveman, and he'd embarrass me all the time," Jake remembers. "And we fucking butted heads. He knew how to yell because he was a fucking Sicilian. But he was one of a kind. He fucking raised me right and taught me a lot of good lessons. And I'm thankful for it all."
Jake was angered by Don Curry's claim that Davi wasn't in shape to be out in the waves and by another person's suggestion that it was the drugs that allowed his father to fish through the night. "My dad worked his ass off fishing," says Jake. "If he hadn't, he wouldn't have been able to afford a million-dollar house. He had to fucking take care of shit, and he did."
On the way to the mortuary, Jake fell asleep at the wheel going 85 mph. Driving behind him, Liam McNamara was horrorstruck to see Jake's truck drift into oncoming traffic. At the last instant, Jake says, he felt a slap to the face that could have come only from his father. He swerved, avoiding other cars but plowing into trees. Sure that he'd broken his neck, paramedics airlifted Jake to San Jose, but aside from a load of glass in his head, Jake and his dog Hueneme miraculously escaped unharmed.
It was part of a string of signs, Jake says, that began on December 4. Shortly after Davi disappeared, Flea Virostko endured what onlookers say was the heaviest wipeout they'd ever seen, sucked into the lip of a huge wave and augured in deep. "He told me he should have died on that wave," Jake says. "He said my dad grabbed him and brought him to the surface."
With medical bills and his father's mortgage, Jake knows he has to get serious about life right now. He wants to start up an outdoor equipment company and one day earn invitations to the Mavericks and Eddie Aikau big wave contests.
A few days after Davis funeral, Jake, his sister, the McNamara brothers, Kealii Mamala, and a few other friends held a private memorial above the Carmel River mouth. As they sat, the biggest red-tailed hawk they'd ever seen perched nearby and stared at them for thirty minutes. "Dad was sitting right there," Jake says. "He never got recognized at Pescadero Point, and they named it Ghost Tree. Now it's Peter's Tree. If you read the Bible, Peter means 'the rock: Peter was a fisherman, and he was a fucking legend. Just like my dad."
In a hospital bed a week later, Lickle has had time to reflect on the most intense experience of his life. "With these high-performance aluminum fins, we've always said if anyone gets hit, it could be nasty," he says. "It was a lot nastier than anyone expected.
"I'm getting too old for this shit," Lickle says. "This was the big one. The near-drowning taught me that I can make it. But do I want to go through that again? No."
Hamilton might wish he could make that decision, but he can't. "A lot of it, truthfully, is out of my hands," he says. "When I see giant surf, it's not like, Should Igo? It's automatic."
Exactly one month after Davis death, an even stronger storm hit California, bursting levees and dumping 10 feet of snow on the Sierras. Another group of top-drawer big wave surfers-Brad Gerlach, Mike Parsons, Grant Baker, and champion Greg Long-found it impossible to resist the pull of the great waves and on January 4 headed out to a legendary spot called Cortes Bank, an underwater mountain range 100 miles off the California coast, and plunged down 80-foot faces in the middle of the ocean. One speeding wave caught Gerlach and Parsons's PWC, burying them underwater. But their flotation vests brought them back to the surface.
"I've never had a more adventurous day," says Parsons, fortytwo. "I'm way more calculating now than when I was twenty-four and would drop in on anything. I know my days are numbered, but days like this are so special, you don't ever want them to end."
BIG WAVE SURFING'S MOST DRAMATIC EVENT (1958)
Big wave riding advanced to a new and terrifying place during a two-day run at Makaha on January 13 and 14, 1958. The weather was hot and windless as Makaha shuddered from the output of a gigantic North Pacific storm, which meteorologists later estimated covered nearly a million square miles.
A day earlier, the West Side had been flat. On the evening of January 12, Buzzy Trent had gone to sleep in his Makaha Valley home after drinking two or three Primos, only to snap awake just after midnight to the thundering noise of incoming surf. He ran outside and spent two hours watching huge moonlit waves roll through before going back to sleep.
Paddling out not long after daybreak, Trent was thrilled and a little spooked to find the deep-water channel adjacent to the break, normally a calm zone on even the biggest days, slowly rolling and shifting, while 20-footers looped over in the Bowl section. Paddling farther outside, he found George Downing already sitting at the far end of the takeoff area, waiting. A few more surfers would paddle out as the day progressed and ride with varying degrees of fortune and mishap. (Not long after catching a screamer from the top of the Point all the way through, filmmaker John Severson blacked out underwater during a wipeout and nearly died.) But Trent and Downing, already known as the era's ranking big wave masters, owned the day.
Of the two, the Hawaiian Downing was the more accomplished surfer. But Trent was more compelling. At the beginning of a ride, after snapping up into a wrestler's squat, he'd launch his board like a missile on the highest possible line across the wave face and hold position until he either coasted into the channel or was deep-sixed by whitewater. There was more technique involved than met the eye, but Trent's style looked like surfing's version of power-lifting. Downing, strong but wiry, had a lower angle of attack and was able to make small, fluid adjustments as he raced forward. Unlike Trent, he wouldn't sacrifice himself to a lost cause; once the ride began to fall apart, Downing would quietly step off the back of his board, tuck into a ball as he plunged beneath the surface, and avoid-usually-the worst of the explosion that followed.
Makaha during that mid-January swell was perfection on a never-seen-before grand scale. Trent, grabbing the only point of reference he had, often described it as looking like a "giant Malibu." Even so, the waves were generally so fast as to be unrideable. Most of Trent's rides came spectacularly undone at some point, but he got at least a half-dozen keepers from the top of the Point, through the Bowl, and into deep water, each one a catapulting 300-yard race where maximum board speed was an exact match for the chasing speed of the wave.
Wave size climbed steadily on the 13th, leveling off in the midafternoon somewhere around 30 or 35 feet and still smooth as cream. At about 3 p.m. Trent repositioned himself near the channel to watch six or eight sets of waves funnel slowly down the coast from distant Keana Point. Each wave seemed to inflate as it hit the top of the Makaha lineup, just before the curl arced out and down to create a huge, black, pinwheeling hole of a tube, the size and diameter of w
hich remained unchanged from the top of the Point through to the Bowl. The waves weren't getting much taller, but a line had been crossed. Trent later claimed his whole existence had led to this moment, and the realization that the waves before him were in fact too big and fast to ride, he said, was "terrible . . . just terrible." Humbled, he turned and caught a smaller wave to the beach.
Downing's run ended the next morning after he sprintpaddled over four progressively bigger waves and was caught out by the fifth. He pushed his board away and swam for the bottom, felt his sinuses rupture from the pressure change as the wave moved overhead, and broke the surface a few moments later with blood pooling in the back of his throat and rushing from his nose.
The 1958 Makaha swell was big wave surfing's most dramatic event to date, but it passed by largely undocumented. John Severson shot a roll of film over the two days, but the quality was poor. A few rides were used in Surf, his first movie (the only copy of which was either stolen or lost), and a few 16-millimeter "frame grab" prints were made. None of the images, though, really showed off the surf's true height and amplitude. In decades to come, Trent, Downing, Severson, and a few others, without fail or hesitation, would all say that Makaha during that two-day swell had served up the finest big waves in the sport's history.
Yet, it never really became part of surfing lore. Makaha remained the anchor of West Side surfing, and huge Point Surf would always be an incomparable surf-world challenge. But by 1958 it was in fact already losing its place at the fore of big wave surfing to Oahu's North Shore-surfing's own beautiful, tropical, hostile mecca.
-From The History of Surfing, by Matt Warshaw
It happens to every surfer: Eventually you've ridden enough waves, been there for enough classic swells, watched the sun set on enough memorable days that you begin looking back as much as you used to look forward. Call it age, call it perspective ... call it wisdom. Big wave heroes like Hawaii's Brock Little call it difficult to experience something as a man that they once lived for as a boy. In this case, a big, scary day at Waimea Bay.
I missed the Eddie because of a hurt rib. Anyway, here we are six weeks after hurting my rib, and I'm ready to go. I've surfed three or four times, swam a little in big surf, and feet pretty confident. By the way, lying on a hurt rib and trying to paddle a surfboard is not pleasant. The point of these excuses is I haven't surfed much.
The good part is I'm back home in Hawaii, ready to start surfing again, feeling pretty good and about to go to bed. I decide to take a quick look at the buoy readings at Waimea Bay before knocking off. It's 25 feet at 17 seconds. For people who don't speak buoy language, that's giant. It's as big as the Bay can handle and still hold some kind of shape-or possibly too big. I have no reason to be nervous. The Eddie is over, and I've proved myself enough times. But I still can't sleep.
When I wake up in the morning and drive down the hill, I see it's really big. I have a doctor's appointment I shouldn't blow off, so I go. Driving around the Bay I'm seriously hoping it will drop by the time I get back. When Waimea is this big, it's not fun; it will kill you, or me.
When I get back from town around eleven, it's as big as it gets. I'm not sure why, but I have to go out. Waimea has nearly killed me twice at this size, and I'm afraid. When Waimea is huge like this I never watch it before I go out. I get down to the beach and paddle out. People usually follow because I've been around a while, but paddling out when I do is a dangerous idea.
This time my friend Arnold Dowling followed me out. He paddled toward the channel; I stuck next to the rocks. He got his ass kicked in the middle of the Bay; I got tossed around by twenty waves with 5 feet of whitewater next to rocks. When the waves finally let up, I paddled my ass out to the lineup. All the way out I was worried about a closeout set. When I made it out, I was winded.
I knew I shouldn't be out there. I was not in shape, mentally or physically, for maxed-out Waimea. And this was maxed-out. Usually when I'm on the beach, I'm scared. I feel sick in my gut. On my way out, though, those feelings start to change, and by the time I reach the lineup, I'm fearless. This day was different. When I got out I could think only, Shit, it's going to be hard to catch a wave in. With that mind-set, you're just asking for it.
All of my life I've seen that when people surf closed-out Waimea, and I'm talking about champion-level chargers here, very few want a real wave, one of the true monsters. They paddle out thinking they want one, but when they get out it feels like a bad idea. On this day there were twenty guys out, but only three or four who wanted a 20-plus-foot wave. Kahea Hart surprised me: He charged. Arnold, and also one of the South African brahs, was big game hunting. Pretty much everyone else looked like they'd seen a ghost.
I was on the fence and not sure which way to go. I told myself many times, when I became one of the guys not wanting a set wave, I'd quit. That's the session I realized that I might be one of those guys. I'm forty-two, I have a great wife, and I can't achieve much more, wavewise, than what I've already done. Why am I out here when I know it can kill me? I also know that when I'm out in the thick of things, I make bad choices in regards to my well-being.
1989. before the famous Eddie Aikau contest. Titus Kinimaka paddles out into the 18-foot swells and spends several hours catching bombs. His final wave closes out, the lip collapses on top of him, and his surfboard "chops" into his right leg. "I dove under and got tumbled around again," Titus says, "and when I finally came up there was something hitting me on the side of my cheek, back by my right ear. I was kind of dazed, wondering, 'What is this thing?' and I grabbed it and was looking at it, and then I realized it was the bottom of my foot." After a steel rod was inserted through his right hip and he spent four months in bed healing himself, the first thing Titus Kinimaka did was go out and surf 10-foot waves at Hanalei Bay.
-Maura O'Connor, "Big Wave Surfing: Tales from the 'Unridden Realm"'
So all this crap is going though my head, but I'm starting to get my wind back. I've been out about ten minutes, and a set starts to form way out in the ocean. Horns are honking; everyone is paddling for the horizon. I don't paddle out because I know if you want to catch one, you have to stay close to the reef. For some idiotic reason, all of a sudden my mindset has changed, and I'm going to get one. When the set rolled through, I was too far in for the first one, out of position for the second one, and the third and biggest was steaming right at me.
I turned around and took off, knowing I'd make the wave. It was outside the main reef, so catching it wasn't hard. A wind chop pushed me in, and before I knew it I was halfway down the face. Then the wave hit the regular Waimea reef and created a little bump. I went over that and knew I had the wave made. I sighed with relief. My board slowed down, but my body did not and crashed shoulder first into the bottom of the wave face. No big deal. I'd be under a while; I've done it before. I got worked. And when I made it up, I felt fine.
Then I noticed that although I was swimming with two arms, one was just floating. I freaked out, screamed like a little girl. I dislocated my left shoulder, and it was heavy to see my arm just dangling. A 20-footer was bearing down, so I had to start thinking about functioning with three limbs instead of four. I took off my leash because I didn't think it would be a good idea to drag my arm through the water with the leash pulling me. The wave thrashed me around pretty good. Underwater I swam like I had two good arms; it didn't feet much different than normal. When I popped up, both arms were working. I was actually swimming. Did that just happen?
Somebody out on the shoulder came in and let me jump on the back of his board. I'm sure he heard me screaming because before that wave I was howling like a big pussy. Clyde Aikau came over to help push me into the channel. Everybody was waving for the jet ski. The weird truth was I felt fine. I was paddling on the back of some guy's board, and my arm didn't even hurt. Lifeguard Abe Lerner came over on the ski and had me climb onto the sled. He took me in and dropped me perfectly right on the sand. End of story.
But I don't know. I've come a
lot closer to drowning, broke my kneecap, blah, blah, blah. But I keep asking myself if I should keep surfing giant Waimea. For years I was usually the best guy out, and there's still some truth to that, though Shane Dorian and a few others are definitely better than me now. But I can't pass up a closeout if I'm in the spot and in the mood. I'm forty-two with nothing to prove. No decision made just yet, but leaning toward walking away. We'll see.
I just saw the photo. Kind of a nothing wave and a nothing fall-not so good for my ego. If my shoulder pops out on a medium wave at the Bay, what'll happen on a real wave? It makes me think about Mark Foo's medium wave at Mavericks, his last one.
I think I think too much.
THE BIGGEST, THICKEST, MEANEST WAVE OF THE DAY
A dozen or so California pioneers saw to it that the North Shore replaced Makaha as surfing's big wave capital. Each year they returned in slightly bigger numbers, with a slightly raised level of confidence. Informality was the rule. With few exceptions, California surfers on the North Shore didn't come off as determined sportsmen, like bullfighters or mountaineers, grimly pursuing their dangerous dance with fate. Rather, they acted like frat boys on spring break.
They climbed to the top of Waimea Falls and double-dared each other to jump 60 feet to the lake below. When it rained, they hiked into the backcountry and went mud-sliding down pig trails. After a few beers, somebody might walk out to the porch and fireball a mouthful of lighter fluid onto a lit match. They went shirtless, stole chickens, played poker, and broke wind with the kind of volume and frequency that comes only from twicedaily servings of canned beans. John Severson bought a rusted '41 Chevy sedan for $19.95, painted it from bumper to bumper in swirls, scrolls, and curlicues (tires included), hand-lettered "Sunset Special" across the passenger doors, then drove the car for months before selling it for $15.