Caught Inside Again

Walking up the beach after a near-death experience, still a little spaced out, and probably trying to forget how close I had come to the ‘Big One.’ Photo: Denjiro Sato

In the winter of 1980, I felt like I was sitting on top of the world. I had spent a long spring and summer embroiled in an exhausting legal battle over the Lightning Bolt Company. My part in it was finally settled. I put it as far behind me as I could.

I was the marketing director of a new company called Pipeline and loved the responsibilities that entailed. My friend John Porter and I had just finished our new beach house at Pipeline and were enjoying the thrills of being ringside at this great surf spot.

Lastly, I was to leave that night for Spain where I would be joining John Milius and Arnold Schwarzenegger to play the co-lead in Conan the Barbarian. I felt like everything was going my way. But life has a way of surprising a person when he least expects it.

The Pipe Masters was being held that day, and even though I was leaving that night, I planned to surf my heat and enjoy myself. There was a rising swell out of the west with light offshore winds, a perfect Pipe swell. In my mind, it couldn’t have been a more fitting send-off to my six-month acting job in Spain: some perfect Pipeline before I left.

There were only six guys in the sixth and last heat of the first round. It was an ideal amount of surfers for the Pipeline lineup. Hans Hedemann, Mark Warren, and Steve Massfeller were riding backside and not regular faces at the Pipe. Eddie Rothman and Brian Bulkley were there every time the place broke. Brian was our neighbor and one of the top underground surfers at the Pipe. This contest was a big deal for him. For me it was a lark. I only had this one session, and then I would be high and dry for the next half a year on a movie set. I wasn’t serious about the competition, but I am always serious about surfing the Pipe, especially when the waves are in the eight- to ten-foot range and tubing out of the west.

It was a beautiful swell. Standing on the beach before we paddled out, I remarked to Brian that we were both sure to get some great waves. These were the best conditions one could hope for at the Pipe Masters. I wished him the best of luck in the heat and the continuing contest after I was gone. We got out to the lineup and waited for the horn to begin the heat. The surf appeared to be on the rise, but the sets were clean and beautiful, and all of us were anxious to start surfing.

The heat started. Brian and I, both very comfortable with the ideal conditions at our home break, immediately got a couple of good waves each. I was leading the heat with Brian in second when a good set started to show on the horizon. It was my turn, and I had my eye on a good wave approaching. Brian, sitting next to me, surprised me by asking if he could have this wave. We could both tell it was a beauty. He said he needed a good ride to elevate his surf career and, since I was already famous, could I please give him this wave.

I couldn’t refuse a plea like that. I pulled back, signaling him to take it. It really was a great wave and I sat for a moment watching it. I heard the crowd roar and knew he had done exactly what I would have done: pulled in, got tubed, and spat out the end. It was the best ride of the heat and pushed Brian into the lead.

As I turned to see what was next, I caught a glimpse of some much bigger waves outside. Thinking I could get a bigger and maybe a better wave, I paddled hard out to sea to get into position. The other competitors must have all been inside because I was alone on the outer lineup. As I crested the next wave, I could see that the waves behind were quite a bit bigger than anything that had come in so far. I paddled harder, but it was obvious that I was too far inside and was not going to be in any position to catch this next wave.

As I paddled, the wave continued to grow bigger and bigger. I knew I was in a race just to get out of its way. The biggest sets up till then had been ten feet; my first impression was that this was about a twelve-foot wave. I quickly realized, however, that it was already in the fifteen-foot range and still rising. I was now paddling as hard as I could. As I started up the face of this monster, it was still growing. It must have been twenty feet when it began to throw out at the top, and I was still only halfway up the face.

I attempted to duck-dive my board through the wave, but it was just too big and too powerful. I couldn’t penetrate the wave at all. Instead it felt like I was in an elevator on the way up. I just kept going upward, still in the face of the wave, not able to go any deeper. I rose farther up, then I felt the rise slowing and for a long moment I was floating. Then I started to drop; down and down I plunged.

I had paddled out almost to the second reef to get this wave and now it had me. The water is much deeper out there and down I went into it. The deeper I went, the darker it got. So far everything had been smooth without any rough stuff. I could tell by the pressure on my ears that I was at least twenty feet deep. I had a brief thought that maybe I was deep enough to escape a pounding. But no sooner had that thought crossed my mind than I found myself in the most violent wipeout of my life. It spun me around like a rag doll, over and over again. I struggled to maintain my sense of direction.

In a bad wipeout it is very important to remember which way is up. If I lost my direction, it was possible that I could swim the wrong way and find myself going deeper instead of up, a bad position if I was low on air.

The thrashing was not letting up. To this day, I still wonder how that wave could have been that intense so deep below the surface where the wave’s energy seldom reached. It was like being in the jaws of a huge dog and being violently shaken. Every time I tried to get away and swim up, the turbulence grabbed me once more, pulled me back down and thrashed me all over again.

I was becoming desperate for air. My struggles were to no avail. I couldn’t get free. I kept getting pulled down into the turmoil. I somehow knew which way the surface was but I couldn’t do anything about it. I must have been near the end of my will to resist. I still had my mouth shut against the water, but I could feel everything becoming sort of dreamy.

I happened to look down, or I thought I did, and there below was my own body tumbling around in the whitewater. Somehow I knew in an instant that I was having an out-of-body experience. Through my interest in yoga I had read many books on this subject. I had marveled at yogis who described astral traveling.

I had also read about ordinary people talking about out-of-body experiences. I knew that these occurred in near-death situations. The ones who had lived to talk about it said they found themselves floating above their physical bodies and experienced re-entering their bodies before coming back to consciousness. I knew I had to do that.

The thought of what I needed to do helped me somehow, and I managed to dive back into my body. I don’t really know how to explain that moment except to say that I was filled with energy and revitalized. I felt strong again and easily swam away from the powerful pull of the wave. I ascended to the ocean’s surface and got my head above the water just as the next, even bigger wave broke right on top of me.

I didn’t get much of a breath, and this time the thrashing was even more violent than the first. For some reason though, I was at ease, in control, and feeling powerful. I relaxed and had no trouble riding out the pounding this wave gave me.

When I resurfaced inside, I looked back out and saw Brian Keaulana, the water patrol, frantically searching the whitewater outside. He had seen me get caught by the first wave, but did not see me surface. He watched uneasily as the second wave rolled over my position. He had been over one hundred yards inside of me on the first wave, and now I was at least fifty yards inside from him: I had been dragged about 150 yards underwater by the two waves.

Brian couldn’t believe his ears when I yelled to him from the inside that I was all right. I swam in, retrieved my board, and paddled back out to catch another wave before the heat ended. I placed third behind Bulkley, who took first, with Rothman in second, but the contest was over for the day. The wind had turned onshore, ending the perfect surf conditions.

I wish I had spent more time examining what had happened to me out there. I filed the incident away as just another wipeout, one of many more to come. I was young and foolish at the time. Sadly, I let some of the vividness and the color of this experience fade, even though the significance had left an indelible impression on me. I’ll never forget that sensation of being filled with a strength and power that came when I needed it.

Getting caught inside is such an everyday occurrence in surfing that it becomes a metaphor for dealing with adversity of any kind. Obviously any lessons learned in the water can have a significant application back on the beach. We live today in a civilized world where life-or-death situations are rare in our everyday lives.

Sometimes, however, those critical moments when a person’s whole life flashes before him is an opportunity to see into the inner self. The inner self is a part of each of us and holds answers to complete happiness and a life free from pain and suffering.

This inner place of harmonious bliss is layered over with ego, individual belief systems, and mundane concerns. We live in the past where nostalgia makes us sad or in the future where our worries cause us anxiety. We fail to grasp that this moment we are in is all there ever was or ever will be. Life is, was, and ever will be, simply now.

Moments of surf realization are here to remind us of our true potential. If that is why we surf, that’s good because surfing reconnects us to who we really are. This is all the more reason to keep surfing. Life is good. Surfing reminds us of how good life is.

Carefully threading the deep line on a Pipe beauty—total concentration, nothing else going on except my board, the wave, and me. Photo: Steve Wilkings

c. GALLERY

With Rory Russell, my team rider, and Jack Shipley, my partner in Lightning Bolt Surfboards, and a yard full of boards. Photo: Steve Wilkings

Photo: Jeff Divine

Rory confidently deep in a beautiful tube at the Pipe, a position he was very familiar with. Photo: Jeff Divine

A view from Pupukea of the corduroy lines of big waves marching in. Photo: Jeff Divine

This shot gives an interesting perspective of a tuberide at the Pipeline. The wave will break in front of the surfer, but it is the Pipe so he will be able to ride through the tunnel … or so he hopes. Photo: Jeff Divine

My last wave at the Pipe before six months in Spain filming Conan the Barbarian with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Photo: Gordinho

Before the duck dive was possible, a good, hard, and well-timed shove was a surfer’s only hope of getting his board through a wave when he was too late to paddle over or around it. Photo: Jeff Divine