The Big Juice: Epic Tales of Big Wave Surfing
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By shrewdly managing his image, Lopez was able to be different things to different people. He was never really an anticontest surfer, for example. He traveled to California, Peru, and Australia to compete and entered just about every pro event on the North Shore during the early and mid-seventies. Being involved didn't mean he was consumed, however. He took contests on his own terms-a trait first demonstrated in 1969 when Lopez, then twenty years old, showed up at Huntington Pier for the U.S. Championships. He was small and slender (5 foot 8, 140 pounds), quiet and watchful, unknown outside of Hawaii, and he wowed the Huntington judges with his patented fin-drift maneuver.
He surfed through the prelims, into the finals, and took fifth. He made an equally strong impression on the beach, sitting next to the pilings just before the last heat of the contest, eyes closed, in perfect full lotus position. It looked as if he'd completely tuned out the entire whirligig beach scene-twenty thousand spectators, the PA announcer, the damp lime-green nylon competition vest he was wearing. Lopez was in his own world. By such means, he was able to surf in all the contests he wanted yet also remain the epitome of the soul surfer.
Modesty was part of Lopez's charm. All he ever really hoped to do at Pipeline, he once said, was "figure out how not to eat it." But he wasn't above the occasional quiet display of confidence. During a filmed interview in 1974, at the end of a detailed address on the mechanics of tube-riding at Pipeline, Lopez paused, gave a little shrug, and said, "It's a cakewalk." He knew better. A brief clip in Pacific Vibrations showed him catching an edge halfway down a smooth 12-footer at Pipeline and getting horribly pitched into the maul. In 1972, while surfing an oversized afternoon at Pipeline that the magazines would immortalize as "Huge Monday," Lopez went head-first into the bottom and walked off the beach with loose teeth and blood running down one side of his face.
The failures just underscored Lopez's mastery. He walked an impossibly fine line at Pipeline. The fact that Lopez had scars on his back, shoulders, and head from bouncing off the reef made it that much more incredible that he could ride with such poise. Everybody else grimaced or frowned as they came off the bottom and set a course through the tube section. Lopez usually rode with an expressionless tai chi gaze-except when he broke out into a little smile, at which point it really did look like a cakewalk.
Lopez defied expectations throughout his career, in ways both large and small. While fortifying himself on the path to enlightenment with a twice-daily yoga practice and endless servings of brown rice and steamed veggies, he also turned up in an ad wearing a hunter's vest, holding a shotgun. For a surf magazine portrait, he arranged to stand dutifully behind his mother-a small, fine-boned Japanese okaasan in a white ankle-length silk dress. He built a three-story dream house directly in front of Pipeline, then rented it and moved to a twenty-acre ranch on the foothills of Maui's Haleakala crater, then left Hawaii altogether for the Pacific Northwest. Finally, Lopez built up a towering surf-world commercial presence, which seemed to have no effect whatsoever on his reputation as "The Last Soul Surfer"-as Surfer magazine entitled its longest and best Lopez profile. He attached his name to a failed surfwear company called "Pipeline," played Arnold Schwarzenegger's sidekick in the iron-and-blood fantasy movie Conan the Barbarian, and played himself in Warner Brothers' overwrought surf drama Big Wednesday. These were the kind of career moves that typically got a surfer branded a sellout. Lopez walked away clean every time.
-From The History of Surfing, by Matt Warshaw
It is considered one of the greatest surfing exploits of all time. In the winter of 2008, during a massive North Pacific storm that ravaged the entire west coast of North America, while the rest of its more reasonable population cowered out of the rain and wind, an intrepid crew of big-water hunters spit into the eye of the hurricane, daring the tempest to do its worst. They were going surfing, come hell or . . . well, read on, and we're sure you'll agree that these guys should've either been committed or given a medal. We recommend the medal.
Mil
So the swell is supposed to hit land the following day, and I'm reading the weather charts for the hundredth time. And 3:00 p.m. I speed-dial Greg and say, "Are you lookin' at this?" And he says, "I can't believe you just called me. I'm looking at the exact same thing." The latest weather charts were predicting that the wind would lie down out at Cortes Banks for about three hours in the afternoon, during a brief lull between storm fronts.
Greg Long: As the day wore on, the weather charts were all over the place. Half were calling for a raging, windy nightmare out at Cortes, all day long, while the other half were saying the winds might die off for a few hours, meaning we might pull off a guerrilla-style trip out there. So what do we do? The logical side says, "There's a storm raging. Don't bother going outside today, and forget about bashing all the way out to Cortes Banks, 100 miles out to sea." Then the other half goes, "Okay, but what if?" You keep pacing around and checking the swell models and wondering what if? And you die in your mind like a hundred times because you know you're going to go.
So we put out the call to Brad (Gerlach) and Twiggy (Grant Baker). They didn't even hesitate, even though Twiggy was sitting out the same storm up in northern California, and to make it here in time, he had to immediately gas it for San Clemente, an eighthour drive. Our next call was to photographer and Cortes skipper Rob Brown, who was at a boat show down the road in San Diego. He answers his cell right there on the showroom floor, and I said, "Hey, R. B., it could be on tomorrow at Cortes." And he was, like, "Are you guys crazy or what? It's supposed to be a howling southern gale out there. For days." But he must've heard the fire in our voices because he considered for a moment and said, "Well, if you guys are serious enough to commit, then I'll drive up tonight and get the boat ready. If you're really serious." But he already knew the answer, and he never asked again.
Greg Long gives Mike Parsons some Lineup beta during their crazy Cortes Bank mission. PHOTO © ROBERT BROWN
The whole mission was so last-minute that we had no time to prep our backup safety equipment-the backup boats, skis, and all the water safety rescue gear normally considered essential for an adventure this serious. We couldn't have organized a more barebones expedition to Cortes Bank and in the heaviest conditions ever seen out there.
I called Matt Wybenga, who'd shot video with us for years, and told him to start packing his gear. He bursts out laughing, like, "Tomorrow? You're jokin', right?" By now it's just hammering rain, one of the heaviest winter storms in years to hit the California coastline. I told Matt, "Just be ready." By then we were so gung-ho I could barely stand still. But we could still back out if the predictions all changed. Then around midnight we started seeing the buoys light up in northern California, the biggest buoy readings we had ever seen. Greg and I both knew we had no choice. I think he said it first: "We have to try."
GL: Rob's boat is just insane. He pretty much custom designed it for Cortes runs. But we couldn't get all the gear onto just the one boat, so we'd have to drive one of the skis, tag teaming all the way out to the bank. We're talking 100 miles, and it's like Victory at Sea out there
. So as we're loading up at Dana Point Harbor, I volunteered to go first. I pulled on my wetsuit, and over that I tugged on one of those Coast Guard survival suits-this big-ass orange thing that keeps you nice and warm in the heaviest conditions. But none of us was prepared for how heavy it would get. Soon as we cast off and start motoring out through Dana Point Harbor, I could see these massive swells smashing against the seawall, exploding up and over it. This rarely if ever happened and then only during a big northwest swell. But this swell was coming from due south. And soon as we carved around the corner we slammed straight into an 8- to 10-foot south wind swell chop. After half a mile I was barely hanging on.
So we're pounding along at about 10 knots, and Greg's slamming along in the wake, just getting worked on the ski. And I looked at my watch and started doing the math. At the rate we wouldn't make Cortes until about 5:30 p.m. Right around dark. I yelled this to Rob, up front muscling the helm. "We can do one of two things," he yelled back. "Turn around. Or I can throw the hammer down. Well, average about 30 knots like that, but you guys are gonna have to hang on for your lives." We stopped and pulled Greg up, and I said, "Dude, this is gonna destroy you, but we pretty much have to go full bore. It's the only way we'll ever get to surf. But it's your call." He dove back in, dragged himself onto the ski, and yelled, "Hit it."
I've never been on a rougher mission. Not even close. No break, just grinding up those swells and slamming down hard, like cratering off 10-foot moguls. We had to get out there by 1:00 p.m. at the latest to hit the window, and Rob's just powering through this mountain range of swells and wind and furious cross chop. I'm back there getting the crap knocked out of me. My shoulders are aching and super tight, and I figured any minute now we'd be past Catalina Island, about 22 miles out. Finally I pull along side the boat and scream, "Hey, guys. Someone else has gotta take over. I'm done." The only sound was the howling wind, and the guys on board start looking at each other, almost embarrassed. "Well, how far have we gone?" I finally yelled up, and they're like, "We've barely gone 14 miles, Greg." I shook my head and said, "Okay, let's go." And we pushed on out. I could see the guys on the boat were taking a serious beat-down as well, so I figured maybe the ski wasn't such a tough ride after all. At least I wouldn't get seasick. At least not for another half an hour, when Mike and Twiggy took their turns driving the ski.
Everyone on board had experienced rough ocean crossings, hundreds of them, really, and none of us ever had problems. But 15 miles out, and we were into open ocean storm surf on a completely different level. After a couple hours all but Greg were violently ill. In all of my time on boats I'd never seen someone look so sick as Matt Ybenga, almost comatose. He must've thrown up ten times. I'm just staring at him, letting it fly over the gunwales, and I start wondering, "Can a person actually die of sea sickness?"
Cortes Bank whitewater
PHOTO © ROBERT BROWN
GL: I never get seasick. Ever. But after a few hours beating into that storm I was pretty close to losing it. I was also thinking we should turn around, but I didn't say anything. Then about 65 miles out, maybe 15 miles past San Clemente Island, everything went dead calm.
The wind, the chop, everything started lying down, and the next thing we knew we're closing in on the bank. Around 1:00 p.m., when we were around 6 miles off, we started seeing the avalanches of whitewater in the distance, and we were just beside ourselves.
GL: The Cortes Banks aren't a true reef but the tip of an underwater seamount, some hundred miles offshore. But plowing out there on a day like that, in the rain and wind and giant swells, you don't see any land for 95 percent of the time, so it feels like you're a thousand miles out in the ocean. Then suddenly you pull up, and there's this gigantic wave breaking in the middle of nowhere at all. It's one of the most incredible things in one of the most out-there places I have experienced in my life. That such a wave exists at all is a miracle. That it's a quality, perhaps matchless, big wave, breaking 100 miles out, is a wonder of the world. And this time it was unbelievable, all these giant plumes of whitewater exploding. It didn't matter what we just went through, how beat up, exhausted, wet, freezing, and seasick we were. The moment we hove to, we were all reborn. Now it was time to surf.
MP: We all were pretty trashed. Just wasted. But we were crazy stoked to try and surf this place-plus we wanted to get the hell off of that boat. So we all scrambled into our gear and got the skis out and the gear sorted in record time.
Straight away it was obvious the bank was just going off, that these were the biggest waves any of us had ever seen. We had to be right on our game, or else. During the next four or five hours, had any of us made a mistake, it immediately would put everybody in a life-threatening situation. We made it clear going out there that everyone was on point-no mess-ups. Not there. Not on that day.
M P: Rob was up against it, having to drive the boat and shoot photos at the same time. Because the waves were so gigantic, they were breaking in places we'd never seen before. Right before we went out, Rob says, "Just remember, anything happens to the boat, and we're all walking home."
GL: We started feeling our way into it, edging over into this massive A-frame widow's peak, breaking way out and way over from where we normally would line up. Of course, "line up" doesn't mean much in a place with no landmarks. But anyway we towed in as deep as we could so long as we could make the waves. Each set kept getting bigger and bigger, until about halfway through the session I towed Twiggy into an absolute bomb. The second wave in this set was bigger than I'd ever imagined. I powered over the back of this beast and glanced back at Mike and Brad, towing into the biggest wave I've seen in my entire life.
In massive surf, the third or fourth wave of the set is often the huge one. So Greg towed Twiggy into the second one, and we went over it, and there's this massive, flawless wave standing up in front of us like a drive-in movie screen. Brad was driving, and he looked back at me, and I yelled, "No, go over this one." And he was giving me that look, as if to say, "You gotta be kidding me. You really think there's something better behind this? Or bigger?" He looked irritated that I didn't want it. So we motored over this macker, and right there rearing up in our faces is the fourth wave of the set, and I was like, "Oh my God, I'm going to have to try to ride this thing. Then Brad whipped around, and I was committed to the biggest wave of my life. The biggest wave I'd ever seen before or since.
GL: I could not believe the size of this animal. Twiggy's wave was huge, but Mike's wave was breaking so much farther out and farther over that Twiggy's could have been an inside break. Mike dropped the tow rope. I watched him drop in slow motion, looking like an ant on a mountain of dirt. And even with all his speed, he was barely going down at all.
Brad put me right in the sweet spot, but about three-quarters of the way down the face, and my board started cavitating. Sometimes in giant surf your board gets going so fast that there's not enough space for the water to flow between the fins. The water loads up, and your board starts to drag in the water, which is what happened, like pulling an emergency brake. So I start getting pushed back up the giant face-the very last thing I needed on the hugest wave of my life, 100 miles out to sea.
GL: For a moment, Brad seemed glued in place, not making any headway down the wave. When you look at the photos it looks as though he's drawing up the face, like a video sequence run backward. And I'm going, "Go, Mike, go, Mike, don't fall, don't fall, whatever you do, don't fall!" Then the whitewater just exploded all around him.
I was praying to God that I wouldn't fall off. Then I was covered by white water and couldn't see a thing, and I remember thinking, Just point it and hold on, point it and hold on. Do not fall. Then I come flying out of the spume, and I knew I was going to make it.
GL: I picked up Twiggy in the channel, and Mike was coming right up behind us. I looked at Mike, and he was trembling, completely speechless. Then Brad pulls up, and I told him that was the biggest wave ever ridden. I'm sure of it. Who knows how you could ever measure such a b
omb, but it had to be well over 70 feet. The swell kept picking up through the rest of day, and later that afternoon we all rode waves approaching that size. I know that I caught the biggest wave I've ever ridden. Meanwhile Rob was dodging 60- to 80-foot sets and trying to shoot stills and video from over half a mile away, at the only place he could safely put his boat. Seasickness had so ruined videographer Matt Wybenga that he was semiconscious the whole time. So the session was poorly documented. But photos or no photos, video or no video, for the rest of my life, and with fear and gratitude, I'll always remember that afternoon out at Cortes Bank. Hands down, the wildest adventure I've ever been a part of.
Brad and I decided to drive the skis all the way home. The young guys, Greg and Twiggy, had pushed us all day, and we loved that, but it was our pleasure to say, "We'll take it from here." We battened down the gear and headed for land around dark. In pitch-black seas, Brad drove all the way to San Clemente Island, and I took it on home to Dana Point. It was a long, brutal day but well worth the struggles. And what a feeling to know we were scoring huge while Hawaii was junk and everyone else was sitting out the storm in northern California or hunkered at home watching Pimp My Ride.
Despite the dangerous conditions, our biggest concern was that someone else saw what we saw on the weather charts. We were all like, "Please don't let there be another boat there." I thought for sure we'd run into Garrett McNamara or some of the Santa Cruz crew. With all the wave technology available today and all the bold chargers, I never thought we'd have the bank all to ourselves. And when we beat it all the way out there and found the place empty, we kept screaming, in so many words, that it couldn't be real. There's no way, in 2008, that the waves of the century could be breaking out there just for us four. It's just not possible.