The Big Juice: Epic Tales of Big Wave Surfing

by John Long

  1995

  One year to the day after Mark Foo's death while surfing Mavericks in northern California-and following a memorial service held that morning at Waimea Bay-Ventura surfer Donnie Solomon is sucked over the falls on a closeout set and, in an eerie repeat of Foo's demise, is found floating facedown in the channel. Desperate attempts to revive him are unsuccessful.

  1997

  Hired as a stunt double on the production of Sony's In God's Hands, North Shore legend-in-the-making Todd Chesser dons a skullcap and doubles for writer/producer/actor Matt George in serious Offthe-Wall, one of Chesser's favorite breaks. During a big swell later in the production schedule, however, with the film crew moving to Jaws on Maui for its climactic final segment, Chesser opts to call in sick, choosing instead to paddle to an outside reef west of Waimea Bay. Surfing with only a few friends, including Kauai goofy foot Cody Graham, the popular, fearless young hellman actually laughs when they are caught inside by a freakishly huge set but then is held down for two waves and loses consciousness. By the time his shaken friends reach his body, it is too late. Chesser's death sends shock waves through the tight-knit New School and reinforces the revelation following Solomon's death: that a big wave can hold you under until you drown.

  1974

  Reno Abellira, Hawaii's most successful surfer/shaper/competitor, wins the Smirnoff Pro, held in giant Waimea Bay. Much will be made of the fact that when faced with closed-out Waimea, even many of the veteran Hawaiian competitors are reluctant to paddle out until shamed into doing so by contest organizer Fred Hemmings. Hemmings, faced with a big wave boycott, claims that if the pros won't, he'll go out and prove that the sets are rideable (a strategy he admits in a later autobiography was all bluff). But more indicative of the challenges faced by those early pros is the response that Smirnoff victor Abellira receives when, stopping by Kammie's Market on the way home from his epic win, he asks proprietor Mr. Kammie, who in the course of his long career behind the counter knew virtually every surfer on the North Shore, for a celebratory bottle of champagne, gratis. Fat chance.

  1998

  The biggest swell since the winter of 1969 hits the Hawaiian Islands, except this time under blue skies, with light trade winds grooming the massive walls to perfection in what the still-delusional North Shore experts describe as "35- to 40-foot" surf. In some cases it is almost twice that, a point made clear by North Shore vet Ken Bradshaw who, during a monumental tow-in session at Outside Log Cabins, drops the rope on what looks like a 75-foot version of Queen's surf: a perfect, smooth peak that, if not for its extreme height and mass-and its ability to kill you-looks almost fun. To the delight of the crowds of more mortal surfers who take to the roofs of their houses and the Pupukea Highlands to get a view beyond the horrendous shorebreak, Bradshaw rides the behemoth to perfection, the culmination of his long, vaunted big wave career. Other surfers aren't so lucky. Brock Little, who has been waiting for this sort of swell his entire life, is denied access when the State Harbors and Beaches Division shut down the harbors and beaches, including PWC launches. And at Waimea Bay, after the Eddie is cancelled because of too much surf, police for the first time in history declare the surf off-limits, a decision that infuriates more than a few danger-surfers, keen to vie for the $50,000 offered in the XXL Big Wave Award. North Shore resident Jason Majors slips past the police barricade to the cheers of the crowd that lines the bay and paddles out into the seriously closed-out lineup. After rolling under several waves that gapped the entire bay, Majors washes back to the beach, where he is arrested by waiting police.

  2002

  On the biggest day of the 2002 winter season, twenty-one-year-old Mark Healey parks in the lot next to the Catholic church overlooking Waimea Bay, takes his 10-foot gun, and negotiates his way over the black lava rocks to Waimea s sandy crescent. There he spends a few charged moments regarding the swell's size and direction, waits for a gap in the legendary shorepound, sprints down the berm into the water, paddles through the deep, unsettled center of the bay, makes his way out past the black lava and green palms of the point, takes his place in a knot of fellow surfers waiting restlessly on their boards and, with the approach of a massive, broad North Pacific swell, turns his big board and paddles for all he's worth, digging deep as the impossibly steep wall looms up behind, stroking hard as the water beneath his board turns to sky. He finally leaps to his feet and drops into the one situation that, despite the changing decades, styles, and surfing sensibilities, will forever and always remain quintessential North Shore.

  BLACK BUTCH AND THE BIGGEST, FASTEST RUSH IN SURFING

  Phil Edwards rode Pipeline first (1961), but it was John Peck and Butch Van Artsdalen, two more southern Californians, both younger than Edwards, who set the early Pipeline standard.

  Peck was the more innovative surfer. Tube-riding is easier to do while riding frontside (facing the wave), and Pipeline is a left-breaking spot, which meant that a right-foot-forward "goofy footer" had a big advantage over a left-foot-forward "regularfooter." Peck, a gangly teenage regularfooter, not only figured out how to reduce the backsider's handicap but also did it pretty much all at once, on New Year's Day, 1963, with a vicious hangover.

  Peck came up with two basic techniques. First, he dropped his back knee toward the deck of the board on takeoff, almost like a sprinter in the blocks, which gave him added stability during the ride's first few crucial moments. Then, while in trim, he swung his right hand forward and clamped onto the outside rail. This low and solid "rail-grab" stance reduced Peck's exposure. If the curl did whip down onto his head and shoulders, he might still hunker down into an even tighter ball and ride it out.

  Peck was a finesse man. Butch Van Artsdalen, a goofy footer from San Diego, was surfing's own Raging Bull. He'd already proven himself fearless in La Jolla's hard-breaking reef waves and was virtually impervious to pain; his back and shoulders would be raked and bleeding after a wipeout at a shallow break called Big Rock, and Van Artsdalen would crane his head around for a quick look, swear, pick his board off the sand, and stroke back out. He was chatty and friendly as a rule but a streetfighting terror when drunk, which was often. Friends and foes alike called him "Black Butch," and the surf world in general gave him a lot of room.

  Van Artsdalen flew to the North Shore in October 1962 and moved into a dry-docked boat just west of Pipeline. He'd been there the year before-his first visit to Hawaii-but left a few days before Phil Edwards rode Pipeline for the first time. Van Artsdalen heard the stories and saw the photos and knew Pipeline was his break even before he rode it.

  That November he paddled out for the first time, on a new fire-engine red Hobie; before the month was out he was the break's dominant surfer. He matched power with power. Nobody charged into waves with as much speed and force, and the advantage from this running start alone was enormous. Beyond that, Van Artsdalen had a genuinely intuitive feel for the break. He knew which waves to ride and which to let go. The line between a perfect Pipeline tube and a malformed closeout is so fine it's nearly invisible, and Black Butch had a jeweler's eye for picking out the narrow vertical seam that would get him from crest to trough in one piece. The drop was the hard part. Tube-riding itself, for Van Artsdalen, was comparatively easy: turn, crouch, extend the arms, and floor it.

  That December he late-dropped into a cavernous 10-footer, found his line, and vanished behind the curl, with just a foot or two of his bright red Hobie board sticking out from the mouth of the tube like a toothpick. Two seconds passed. Three seconds. Then Van Artsdalen shot back into daylight, while cheers went up from the beach gallery. Someone shouted out, "Nobody does that!" Another surfer fell dramatically to the sand, as if he'd been shot, and rolled around muttering, "Oh my God." It was the ride of the year, and Van Artsdalen, improvising as the wave now fizzled out, sat back on his board, grinned, and rubbed his hands together.

  From then on, the surf media devoured "Banzai Pipeline." Waves broke close to the beach, the color and lighting were beautiful, and ea
ch ride was like a miniature rocket launch, with a better than even chance of blowing up spectacularly. By the mid-1960s, Pipeline was well on its way to becoming the sport's most-watched, most-photographed break. Phil Edwards's opening-day experience had been edited into a perfect little two-minute epic for Surfing Hollow Days. John Peck's New Year's Day performance earned him a Surfer gatefold cover. A surf journalist called Butch Van Artsdalen "Mr. Pipeline," and it stuck. Meanwhile, the Chantays' 1963 surf instrumental "Pipeline" reached number 4 on the charts, making the break only slightly less famous than Malibu and Makaha.

  Long before anybody died at Pipeline, surf journalists and moviemakers did their best to present it as a killer on the loose. Surf Guide's first article on the break was called "Rest in Peace at the Pipeline," and it predicted this little stretch of beach was about to become "a surfer's graveyard." Bruce Brown chilled Endless Summer viewers by describing the Pipeline bottom as studded with coral heads that "stick up like big overgrown railroad spikes," and he showed a clip of Australian surfer Bob Pike, after a bad wipeout, being helped off the beach with a broken collarbone and three broken ribs. Waimea Bay heavy Peter Cole said he wouldn't ride Pipeline because of the "coral pinnacles that could actually sever my head from my body." In truth, the Pipeline bottom is cracked and fissured but relatively flat and coral-free, but the legend persists.

  Joaquin Miro Quesada of Peru slammed onto the reef in 1967, broke his neck, and died a few hours later. It was the first Pipeline fatality. Thereafter, about every three years or so, Pipeline would claim another surfer. Lesser injuries were common: cuts and abrasions, plus the occasional broken bone, dislocation, or concussion. Most of the time, though, surfers who took horrific wipeouts at Pipeline came up without a scratch.

  But the risk was always there, and Pipeline had everyone psyched out like no other surf spot in the world. The break defeated newcomers by the dozen. Some sat on the beach, unable to screw up the courage to paddle into the lineup. Others made it into the channel, stared into the pinwheeling tubes, and were frozen in place. Most first-timers who took a big hit left the water immediately, trembling and relieved, never to try again.

  Each year a few stuck it out for reasons that were embedded in that clip of Phil Edwards getting shot like a cannonball from his first big Pipeline wave. Time magazine was completely wrong. Tube-riding wasn't like smoking hashish. There was nothing opiate-like about it. Pipeline was the biggest, fastest rush in surfing, the aquatic equal of hitting a crack pipe. Surfers who got a lungful couldn't get enough.

  -From The History of Surfing, by Matt Warshaw

  File this one under the heading of stories that, although they may be hard to believe, are of the sort that surfers really want to believe. Because when given the choice between the truth and the legend, surfers will take the legend every time. Mike Davis's epic tale of a particularly epic ride during one of the most epic swells in history is a perfect example. Are we really to believe that the legendary Pat Curren actually surfed a wave across two different zip codes? Davis never winks, so you'll have to figure this one out for yourself.

  "Humongous!" was Larry West's weather-forecasting guru dad's response when I asked "How big?" in relation to the "Big One" in '69. He'd predicted it days before it even showed up on the earliest weather maps or any mention of an especially deep front and the resulting northerly swell that'd arrive Thursday afternoon or Friday morning, 5th of December 1969-"Never seen anything like it-huge-perfect conditions, 21-2-second intervalsFriday latest."

  I spent Thursday afternoon with Renny Yater sandbagging an old lady's backyard on the point at Rincon, which gets clobbered every time there's a big swell and any kind of tide. We spent the afternoon with one eye on the job and the other on Indicator for the slightest hint of anything.

  It was still flat at Coral Casino when I checked it before my night class at Santa Barbara City College. Still nothing. I checked it again after City College at ten. Nothing. The ocean was strangely serene at sunrise and the hour following on Friday morning. Eerie calm.

  I checked it again at ten o'clock from the end of Coral Casino pier, just north of Hammonds Reef. There was nothing for the first twenty-five minutes.

  I was about to leave when a 6-foot set broke-crisp, clean, and perfect as you please.

  Before I could turn around, Pat Curren appeared next to me, eyes keen on the horizon. A few minutes later a 10- to 12-footer lapped the decking underfoot.

  "Get a couple?" I ventured.

  "Tide's too high for anywhere else," he answered absently, eyes still scanning the horizon. "May's well," he grumbled after a second, banging my arm as he turned toward his pickup and the 11-footer.

  We were waxing up on the wall when the shriek of protesting metal and cracking timber beckoned us to the pier. We watched in awe the death throes that marked the end of the still-unused, brand new VIP landing platform. The bits of which would be pulled out from under houses at Miramar, a mile distant, or as small flotsam and jetsam at Summerland beach several miles west.

  After we'd thrown our boards off the end of the pier and jumped in, Pat led the way on his 11-foot gun toward what we hoped was the takeoff at Hammonds Reef. I followed on a nearly new 7'9" Yater Hawaii. I swallowed hard, more than once, because each set was way bigger than the last and continued to increase until every wave we paddled over was bigger than the previous one.

  Then there'd be these absolutely still lulls. It was eerie, not a whisper of wind, dead glassy, and yet strangely alive. Awesomely alive. Conditions couldn't have been better. Except for the fact that we'd paddled into the unknown zone. At least I had. I'd never seen waves forming this far out even under the wildest of storm surf conditions, and I'd been looking hard for ten years by that time.

  When Pat crested the biggest wave yet, my heart stopped as he suddenly changed direction in midair. He'd shifted up another gear and swung south, heading way wide as I cleared the clifflike wall of water. As bad a sign as you can get if you're out there with Pat Curren. Consider yourself caught inside.

  He was 50 to 70 yards outside me when he wheeled around and paddled for a monster. He took it early, got to his feet, and began his slide. It was way, Way, WAY overhead.

  As he passed outside, he motioned frantically for me to come in behind him, in no uncertain terms. His insistence told me that we'd never make it over the next one, so without hesitating. I spun around, dug deep, and clawed my way into this thing.

  By the time I'd caught the wave, Pat's wake had already been drawn up and over the face, leaving me a clean wall, bigger and more perfect than anything I'd ever seen or in fact dreamed of. Not a ripple. No wind jewel or anything. Pure, green glass.

  We rode that wave from outside Hammonds into the area outside of Miramar Point, way outside. The wave had no taper. The wall in front of us was as big as the takeoff had been. Amazing!

  At the end of the boardwalk, Pat straightened off and motioned for me to follow. Still climbing and dropping, I had plenty of altitude and speed, so I climbed as high as possible and drove toward the bowl forming outside of Fernault's Point. Just one more bowl; I had to do it. I rode the wave hard. Way past parallel and extremely steep and late.

  Halfway through the bowl, I realized that if I didn't make it, I'd be in that monstrous current that was sweeping the point, where I'd then be dragged into the rocky groin. I pumped again. Held my high line and squirted past what would have been a fatal trajectory. Perfect!

  Miraculously, I made it just as Curren would've breached it, but I wasn't watching anything but the next bowl forming outside of Sharks Cove, and it was even heavier. It looked like the takeoff at insane Indicators. I swear I could hear it growling.

  Carrying a lot of speed, I hung high before running straight down, aiming for the tiny patch of sand just beyond the point at Sharks. Then I realized that if I got caught in the current beyond that little triangle of sand, I'd be driven onto the rocks they'd dropped at the base of Summerland Hill to protect the railroad line from days
like this. And that would be it.

  I squirted out as far in front of the whitewater as I could and drove hard left until I had to prone out, still driving hard toward that 30-foot-wide patch of sand in the corner.

  I beached it safely enough, only to confront an 8-foot wall of sheer sand and mud scoured out in a matter of minutes. A vertical wall between me and safety.

  I ran to the base and heaved my board up onto the berm, backed down to get a running start, not even daring a furtive glance over my shoulder because if I failed I was dead. There was no doubt in the world that next wave would sweep me into the base of the cliff, where everything in the water-for half a mile up, to 200 yards out-was getting dashed against the gigantic granite blocks strewn along the shore line.

  Gasping, I made it up the mud wall first try. I grabbed my board and sprinted for the ice plant below the cyclone fence that separated the railroad line from the beach, running as far up the squelchy green ramp as possible before throwing the 7'9" Yater onto the ice plant, diving onto it, and wrapping my arms and legs around it and as much ice plant runners as I catch hold of.

  I glanced over my shoulder when the next wave of whitewater smacked the berm, shooting at least 30 to 40 feet in the air before rushing across the sand and creaming, then up over me, clinging to the ice plant like a crab.

  I hung on for grim death for a long and turbulent time.

  When the wave receded, even as I sucked in that first breath, I was untangling myself so I could grab my board and bolt for higher ground before the next wave, knowing it would wash even higher than the last one.

  I didn't stop until I was safely on the road behind the beach, where Ricky Vogel met me with a hot coffee.

  "Saw the whole ride from the balcony. You okay?"

  "Yeah ..."

  "Next wave wiped out all that sand in the corner! GONE! Just like that!"

  My jaw went slack. Trying hard to comprehend how much water those monstrous waves were moving.