Surf Is Where You Find It (Revised and Expanded)

I like big waves. I was called to them not out of machismo but instead from practical necessity. As soon as the surf rises above what in Hawai’i we call ten feet, the crowds jockeying around in the water decrease by 90 percent.

My brother Victor, a couple of friends, and I pioneered quite a few outer reefbreaks on Maui during the 1970s. Those occasions when the surf was up with the right wind conditions were memorable. But there was a price to pay. There usually is in big surf. Positioning is difficult, especially at outer-reef spots with vague lineups and few other surfers to mark a starting place. During most ten- to twelve-foot swells, occasional sets in the fifteen-foot-plus range appeared suddenly and forced us to dive for the bottom. At twelve to fifteen feet, the twenty-foot sneaker set could have serious consequences.

The few waves ridden were always great, but too many got away, and there were plenty that required immediate payment of big-water dues. With Mother Nature firmly in charge, we learned to expect these situations. Some days were better than others, and everyone hoped it wasn’t his turn to be the unlucky guy.

The best return for a full day of traversing a vast blue-water arena might be six or eight successful waves. I went to sleep those nights with brief recollections of a nice drop or a good section. Still, my mental playback could not exclude the waves that had marched through our picket line that day unridden, the wonders we never knew. Big waves are the most frustrating and elusive part of the entire surfing experience. The effort is daunting because the waves are there to see in all their grandeur, but paddling into them requires as much luck as skill.

Assisted takeoffs have been part of surfing since Hawaiian chiefs used their outrigger canoes to help them into waves moving too fast to catch on a board. Standing on the outrigger while his strongest paddlers stroked their mightiest, a chief used this momentum to launch into the wave. In the 1970s Jeff Johnson attempted to tow Flippy Hoffman into a wave at Ka’ena Point with a boat. In 1987 Herbie Fletcher used his first-generation Kawasaki Jet Ski to tow Martin Potter into a nice Second Reef wave at outside Pipeline. Those early attempts did little to encourage further pursuit into the realm of assisted takeoffs. Big-wave riding remained as it always had been: a lot of effort for a limited return.

A corner was rounded when in 1992 Laird Hamilton, Buzzy Kerbox, and Darrick Doerner found some small success with a Zodiac inflatable at Himalayas. All three surfers were driven to expand their experiences of big-wave surfing. There were too many guys in the lineups, on boards growing longer and less performance-oriented, to compensate for the crowded takeoff zones. That first foray at Himalayas revealed to Laird an epiphany. The prevailing big-guns-for-big-waves theory was more about paddling to catch the wave than about riding it.

Laird responded. For his next time out with the Zodiac, he fastened some windsurfing foot straps on his 7’2”, a board believed by the experts of the big-wave surfing world to be much too short for the waves he wanted to ride. Laird zipped into a big wave at Outside Backyards with his feet in the straps. On that first wave he knew that his experiment worked. The shorter board was faster, more maneuverable, and much easier to control than a big gun. But Laird was a solo spontaneous mind against the long years and strong currents of the slowly evolving theory of big-wave surfing.

Laird enlisted my help, and on our first attempt to build a tow-in specific board, we agreed that 7’10” was short enough for the waves he had in mind. By then much more had evolved in this new surfing direction. A surf spot at Pe’ahi Bay on the north shore of Maui, aptly named Jaws, had a perfect setup for towing into waves that appeared to be substantially larger than Waimea Bay or any of the other existing big-wave locations.

Yamaha WaveRunner jet skis were substituted for the trusty old Zodiac. The skis were fast and proved to be much more efficient. The skills and teamwork required to attempt Pe’ahi developed quickly and improved at a rapid pace. The reaction from the rest of the surfing world, however, ranged from cold to hostile. Big-wave purists scoffed, expressing disdain for the notion of riding a wave without paddling into it under the surfer’s own power. They said it wasn’t real surfing.

I saw what Laird and his close-knit crew were doing, and it looked like surfing to me. Lack of interest afforded Laird and his group the advantage of empty lineups in which to try new techniques, sharpen skills, and build on their strengths. By the time anyone else recognized the merits of the program, Laird and team had already refined their expertise.

Immediately, the specialized tow-in boards were a vast improvement over conventional boards adapted for the new environment. I was stoked to be working directly with Laird during a quantum leap in surfboard design. Narrow outlines made the tow-in boards much faster. Laird swept across the faces of gigantic waves at breathtaking speed. The speed alone took surfing to a different place.

For decades surfboards had been built as light as possible to enhance performance. Tow-in boards had to be different. They needed to be stronger because with foot straps they were more like a windsurf board than a regular surfboard; they could be jumped. Landing jumps on a lightly glassed board usually resulted in two pieces. That only had to happen a few times before we beefed up the glass jobs.

The need for more weight in the boards also became clear when lightweight boards skittered out of control, falling down the faces of huge, very bumpy waves. Heavier boards cut better through the chop and had more momentum. Tow-in boards and Ferraris don’t feel heavy when they’re moving: like a race car designed to hug the ground while speeding above it, a tow-in board is designed to slice with control into a wave face that is never as smooth as it appears. Tow-in boards opened the door to bigger waves than anyone ever before had ridden.

All of the members of Laird’s crew were expert windsurfers. Laird, Buzzy, and Darrick were also very experienced big-wave surfers. The others—including Dave Kalama, Mike Waltze, Pete Cabrinha, Mark Angulo, Rush Randle, and Brett Lickle—were not. Wiping out or being caught inside by huge surf is always terrifying, but the jet ski proved to be a reliable rescue tool that became increasingly more efficient as the crew learned how to master it in big waves. Being in the big surf began to be less scary.

A windsurfer myself, I had discovered something extraordinary while wave sailing. A windsurfer was able to ride a much bigger wave than a surfer, simply because the windsurfer could catch that wave before the surfer could even try. Laird’s group had been the first to pioneer the break at Jaws on their windsurf boards. Through windsurfing, all of them had experienced riding into waves from far outside where the waves were actually breaking. This was a crucial skill.

Coming into the wave from the shoulder gives a false sense of security at Pe’ahi; the wave quickly becomes a fire-breathing dragon, and the only real safe place is sitting in the channel. Photo: Sylvain Cazenave

Most surfers seldom had ventured beyond the lineups. Apart from diving and spearfishing, there had been no reason to go. A surfboard couldn’t catch the waves except during a short moment before they actually broke. The appearance of a wave well outside the takeoff zone is much different from the steep crest where paddle-in surfers catch them. If the ocean is deep where the wave of energy passes, it may be difficult to discern on the surface. Coming toward shore through deep water at Pe’ahi, a wave just doesn’t look like much before it gets into the area where it is ready to break. The ability to differentiate between one wave and another out beyond the break takes a lot of practice, and this skill was an advantage that windsurfers had over surfers.

At first I thought these guys were nuts. As I watched them get better, however, they made it look easy. Almost effortlessly, each one of them could select the wave of his choice in any set, ride into it at speed already standing up, and maneuver into any position on that wave that he wanted. They became so good that every one of them was capable of riding several waves in a set without getting his hair wet.

I was sold. I suffered no purist reservations about this not being surfing. I wanted to get in on the action and ride waves. The end of winter and the big surf didn’t preclude Laird and company from continuing to learn what jet skis could do. They took me out to Mud Flats on the south shore and taught me the quick water-start, as well as how to drive the ski to do the pickup. I paid close attention, knowing I would be in a desperate situation at some point, down in the water, waiting for my partner to bring me the towrope for one quick chance to get up and get away from the next impending huge wave. Tow-in surfing was a partnership, a two-man team. The two took turns, with one guy driving while the other surfed.

My first few times towing were in relatively small waves of little consequence. I needed those training runs. A quick pickup is not as simple as Laird made it look, nor was it as easy in breaking waves as it had been in flat water. There were a number of fumbled attempts that could have been disastrous had the surf been serious. Also, the tow-in boards were not as easy to ride as they appeared under experienced tow-in surfers.

The high speed off the towrope required me to adjust. I outran almost every wave I caught during my training sessions, ending up too far on the shoulder, where I lost speed and bogged down. Again, that would have been bad in big surf. The foot straps were difficult to use on a surfboard where a surfer is accustomed to shifting his feet around constantly. My years of windsurfing again proved invaluable, and I soon figured out how to surf strapped into one position. To windsurf without foot straps imposed limitations on speed, jumps, and other maneuvers. As I gained more experience, tow-in surfing proved to be the same. The tow-in board straps offered the same advantage as they did on sailboards. I kept practicing, thinking about how it would be when I got out into the big waves, concentrating on things I knew I needed to improve.

I went out in some medium surf in the ten- to twelve-foot range at a spot I knew well. Immediately I marveled at the ease of wave selection, takeoff positioning, riding a shorter board, going much faster, and especially the quantity of waves taken in a short period of time. At once I understood that this was a very efficient way to ride big waves. The tables were turned—it was a huge return for little effort. I was convinced that big-wave riding would never be the same.

One evening I flew into Maui from my home in Central Oregon knowing a big swell with prime offshore Kona wind conditions was imminent. I woke the next morning to a sight most surfers love, corduroy lines stretching out to the horizon. The crew gathered at Maliko Gulch to launch from the small boat ramp there. I had made Laird a new 7’4” tow-in board and myself a scaled-down version in the same length.

The banter among the boys was light and carefree, but while watching the set waves pour into the narrow bay I began to experience the first stages of anxiety. The sets were bigger than any I had seen there before. The biggest sets broke across the entire mouth of the bay, sending whitewater far up onto the normally dry ground of the parking area. Launching the skis was tricky, impossible from the boat ramp, which was being pounded by breaking waves. We dropped the skis off the trucks and trailers onto what normally was high ground to wait for a big surge of whitewater to float them away seaward.

Eventually we got the trucks secured far from the surge inundating the shore. We loaded boards and people onto the skis and began the twenty-minute journey up to Pe’ahi Bay. The surf was huge and unruly near the shoreline, the sound thunderous and the ‘ehukai hung like a fog in the still morning air. We motored well out to sea to avoid any of the sets that were breaking farther out than we had thought possible. I was very familiar with this area, having fished and dove there during the summers. It seemed crazy that waves were breaking where I knew the water to be impossibly deep. Yet swells marched in, steepened, and crashed over in the blue water.

Laird appeared indomitable, a mountain of muscle and strength. I could sense this was exactly the kind of day he waited for his whole life. Dave Kalama was stoic, secure in his own strength, skills, and experience, calmly following Laird’s lead. The others, Waltze, Angulo, Rush, Brett, and Pete exhibited little outward apprehension and looked well composed in spite of the enormity of the surf. The fact that we were headed for a place where we would be entirely at the mercy of the waves with no one but ourselves and these often temperamental two-stroke machines didn’t seem to faze them.

On the other hand, I was almost soiling myself. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so anxiety-ridden. I tried to break it down in my mind. What was I afraid of? I hadn’t been out to Jaws before, but I had plenty of experience first-timing waves this big at other new spots. Why was I feeling so uptight?

In most situations, a surfer checks the surf before he goes out. From shore he makes a conscious decision to go or not. Even if he is unsure but game, his normal routine follows a pattern that offers the surfer a number of fall-back options. If the surf is too much for his ability, there is a good chance he won’t be able to penetrate the shorebreak and will be driven back to the beach where he belongs. Should he somehow manage to make it out to the break, there is always the channel where the closer vantage can help him make the decision to engage or retreat. After that it is still possible to take a small bite by staying out on the shoulder, catching the edge of the wave, relatively safe from the dangers of the main peak.

Thinking about this, I began to understand my anxiety. Tow-in surfing leads straight into the power of the wave, launching into the swell even before the peak forms. There are no little bites, no half-hearted approaches from the shoulder. When the surfer releases off the towrope, he gets the whole wave. I knew from my early training runs that too far out in front was very far from safe. There is a zone in or directly in front of the curl to safely ride a wave. Too far back is disaster but too far ahead can be bad as well. Losing speed risked allowing the curl behind to catch the rider before he regains speed to get away. Even worse would be to lose the wave in the impact zone and have to deal with the wave behind, fumbling around a quick pick-up attempt with a surprised jet ski driver who had expected his rider to take the wave until it ended. Thinking about what can happen during the worst situation in big surf is a deep, dark alley.

I looked around me; it was a magnificent day for surf—a magnificent day for anything. The sky was clear blue and cloudless. Apart from the latent energy of this huge swell running through the ocean’s surface, it was smooth and calm, a result of the still wind conditions. The forecast was for early light and variable winds turning to Kona, ideal for this entire stretch of coastline. Glancing at the other skis and their riders, I had a sense we were all on a great mission, even though it was one entirely of our own choosing. I remembered a line from an old favorite movie Little Big Man. A sigh escaped me as I said the line out loud: “What the hell, I guess this is as good a day as any to die.” And somehow, I understood its absolute reality in that moment.

I must have meant it because suddenly all apprehensiveness, anxiety, and fear left me as though they had been washed away. I had a little chuckle to myself and realized I was ready for whatever.

We always joked about our reason for chasing big surf: We ride to succeed or to die. Other than the acknowledgement of each for the other, the only thing to get was some small personal glory. There is no tangible reward from surfing, no antlers to take home and hang on the wall. Eventually even the memories fade. And we risk our lives for this? Well, none of us wanted to die, and except for Laird, we never really went that close to the edge anyway. From an outside perspective, death was a possibility, but from our perspective it was actually pretty damn safe. Statistically, we would be much more at risk in a car on a Maui road.

I had been watching the break at Jaws since a day in the late 1960s when a friend took me out there to see a wave he called the ‘Atom Blaster.’ From high on the hill above, the empty waves look much smaller than they actually are. An unusual optical illusion forms to diminish the appearance of waves breaking when seeing them from up above. And without surfers in the water to provide scale, the illusion is even greater. At first glance, the waves looked very surfable.

During the 1970s I relocated from O’ahu to Upcountry Maui. I made an effort to regularly check out the wave at Jaws on big west swell days with Kona winds. Several times on exceptionally clean days, Victor and I tried to get up the nerve to paddle out there. After climbing down the steep trail to the rocky shore below, however, we changed our minds. From the rocks near sea level the place was utterly forbidding.

At sea level the waves revealed their true heights. A clean peak broke well outside, peeling left in a long wall while hooking hard right into a vicious bowl. That bowl is what we called the Atom Blaster. At what we conservatively estimated to be fifteen to twenty feet, it went thickly cylindrical with immense force. The blasts of spit out of those cartoonish barrels hung in the air for minutes afterward. We heard and felt the compression even up on the cliff where we watched in open-mouthed awe.

The magnitude of force didn’t abate even after the wave had passed. The immediate aftermath was a cauldron of freakish whitewater boils as high as four feet, an impossible place to swim or stay afloat. The broken waves appeared to flatten in deep water again, leaving an indistinct surf-free zone before they reformed into a slamming shore pound. But even this moment of relative calm was unreliable because sometimes a bigger wave would push the churning whitewater right through without stopping.

The shorebreak was horrendous. The average wave was six to ten feet high but easily four times that thick. One after another they exploded onto the shore of huge boulders and slippery rocks that were rolled and tossed around like so many pebbles by the heavily surging shore pound.

We figured we might get lucky and ride a surge out safely—maybe. But getting up the beach would be a nightmarish gamble at best. The rocky shore was steep; a mistimed approach would likely result in the unlucky person being sucked down into a hole between the boulders. The slippery, rolling rocks were big enough to break any leg. Then, there would be the next wave pushing in to pound and pulverize.

Every time we climbed back up the cliff trail, all of our brave talk was silenced; we felt beaten, our tails tight between our legs. But fear never stopped us from watching, and letting our imaginations soar.

What had seemed impossible to Victor and me during those years before tow-in boards and jet skis not only was possible, but Laird and his crew had done it. And now my day had come, it was my turn.

As we sped along over the rolling swells, the ride up the coast took us past the lighthouse at Kuiaha Bay where, on a small north swell, a great surf spot lies hidden. But on this day, the waves broke far outside the narrow entrance, cascading up and almost covering the lighthouse tower, turning the little bay into a torrential washing machine.

We passed angry waves erupting in water I knew to be fifty feet deep with no bottom contours to promote such a thing; they were driven only by the size, power, and speed of this incredible swell. Just before Pe’ahi, Laird pointed out a left he said he was watching as another potential surf spot. One look was all it took to know I wouldn’t be joining him; the wave looked deadly, breaking with full power into the rugged rocky shoreline.

A short way past that spooky left we motored into the deep channel that allows Jaws to be the ideal tow-in surf spot that it is. Shutting down the skis in the safety of the blue water, we sat ringside a short distance from the gargantuan end bowl section. One set was all the crew needed to see. They began loosening the tow-in boards and talking about who would ride first.

I had watched many times from the cliff above or the inside shore, but this was my first opportunity to be so close and still be a passive spectator in safe waters. I was content to sit out the first session and take some notes from the channel. Both the waves and skill of the tow teams were impressive. Up close the guys still made it look easy, but I could see that the wave faces were not as smooth as the placid surface conditions suggested.

The power of this northwest swell was very evident to me. I understood how it hooked first on the tip of West Maui at Kahakuloa, refracting off in a slightly different direction. Imagine swinging a wad of chewing gum. The hand holding it would be the tip of Maui, the long skinny string would be the refracted swell, and the thick gob at the end would be the wave at Pe’ahi. As a function of the refraction process, all the power of the swell slid down the line to amass precisely on the lineup at Jaws. As big as the waves had seemed on the ride up the coast, they were more than double that size here at the end.

The smooth waves I had watched for so many years from the shore reverberated through the channel like steady, continuous thunder. At close hand, the appearance of blandness without obstructions dissolved like a vapor. Power and violence surged beneath the surface. Although difficult to see, the potent energy was impossible to contain, creating wave faces bursting with subtle impediments. The crew encountered rough going as they bounced down what should have been smooth drops. It was like a ride on a wild killer bull thirty feet tall and trying his hardest to buck off the puny human on his back.

‘The Strapped Crew,’ as these windsurfer/tow-in surfers became known, were all marvels of athletic ability. Even in those monster waves, they made the rough riding look easy. No one seemed disturbed in the least as they continued surfing wave after wave. Laird and Kalama often rode together on the same wave with Blue Angels-like precision, swooping around each other and the huge bowling sections. The other crew members rode as if they were surfing gentle Ho’okipa rather than tempting fate at deadly Jaws.

I carefully watched the water boil up in the wake of each wave, the aftermath of power so violent and obvious that it made me feel sick thinking what it would be like to be trapped in there. In all respects, Jaws was the heaviest break I had ever seen. But watching the crew have fun was infectious. I began to formulate a plan.

Eventually some of them tired and returned to rest at the Zodiac we had anchored in the channel. Dave Kalama got on one of the skis and motored over to where I sat. He cut the engine, looked me right in the eye and quietly asked, “Are you ready?”

It was a simple question without pretense or expectation. I knew Dave was rock-solid, like the eye in a hurricane, ever calm while others might be losing their heads around him. With him as my partner I felt confident. “Why not?” I replied.

He handed me the ski rope handle while I put my board in the water and my feet in the straps, still sitting on the Zodiac’s pontoon. When he had idled the ski out to the end of the rope, Dave looked back at me.

I nodded, and he gunned it, pulling me up off the Zodiac, and we were away. In that tense moment the small ironies of life’s journey made me laugh. Here I was on the way into my first wave at twenty-foot-plus Jaws and I wasn’t even wet yet.

A set approached as we got out near the peak. Dave watched the waves, looking for a good one, and watched me to see whether we had selected the same wave. He pointed and I nodded. This was it. The ski swept around in a smooth arc and aimed back toward the others in the channel. I watched the swell well up and felt it pick up my board, the tension in the rope beginning to slacken.

Dave was driving with one knee up on the seat, halfway turned around so he could watch me and the wave ahead at the same time. He gunned the engine one more time as he turned off the back of the wave. This was my signal to pull on the handle, sliding out to the side of the ski wake to catch the whip off the rope as Dave turned away.

The slingshot effect just about lifted my board out of the water as my hull speed seemed to double instantly. I was in, standing up, with speed, not even wet and still far outside on the swell before it became a wave and raised up to break. It was just like I had dreamed. Wow!

The plan I had formulated while watching all the videos during the preceding months, and finally in the last hour sitting on the edge of the channel, was simple. I would play it safe by staying on the shoulder of the wall, well ahead of the heavy section. As I sliced into the huge mass of water, I had difficulty even estimating its size. My entry was far out beyond where the wave would encounter the shelving ocean floor, slowing the energy at the wave’s base, pushing its top higher until it curled over. By then I would already be safely into the mid- to lower-section of the wave.

That thought brought a smile; this was going well according to the plan. Gently changing my angle of attack, I redirected toward the channel. I was careful not to bank too much, nor to push water and lose speed. Staying loose and playing it very safe, I rode across the whole wall ahead of the curl. It was no sweat. The guys sitting in the channel marked the goal line and I knew I had made it. The wave tapered down and I exited, easing over the back while Dave swooped in around me on the ski.

Grabbing the handle as it came by, I nodded to Dave. He gassed the ski, pulling me back out of the water. He had a huge smile on his face, and I suppose I probably did too. The guys in the channel hooted as we went by heading out to do it again.

Dave’s smooth driving and uncanny wave selection put me into several more easy rides, and my confidence began to climb. Emboldened by my success, on the next big wave I decided to fade deeper toward the curl. Feeling pretty cocky I took my time as I pulled my bottom turn around, trying to stall closer to the barrel than I had on the previous rides. This was easy. With all the speed and extra time to choose positioning, there was nothing to it. Standing tall and casual at the bottom, secure in my line, I turned to look back at the curl behind me. That was almost my undoing.

Only inches away, hot on my heels was the gaping, swirling maw of a real monster. That roaring, collapsing tunnel was so utterly enormous as to be almost beyond my comprehension. The sight of it was so immediately and wholly frightening, I felt faint. I was completely stunned, humbled, and spooked by its close proximity. I was sure that if the thick, powerful lip landed on top of me, I would shatter instantly into a thousand pieces.

My confidence faded like a light going out. My body abandoned its jaunty stance and instinctively folded into a survival crouch, wishing to be further away no matter that I was already safely ahead of this potentially devastating curl and firm in that position. The wave ended like the ones before: without incident except for my horror flash. It was a good thing a lull happened when we got back outside.

I climbed up to sit on the back of the rescue sled and told Dave about the scare I had on the last wave. He nodded understanding, a serious look on his face.

“Yeah, it can go from good to bad in a hurry here; this is a seriously heavy wave,” Dave replied.

I got a couple more waves that day and felt that I had definitely pushed beyond the previous limits of my big-wave experience. All said and done, it really wasn’t that much different than any of the other first days in the past had been. The waves looked bigger and scarier from the channel, but after riding a few, I felt it had been about the same as always. In the snowboard world, mountains always look a lot steeper and hairier when at the top looking down. From the bottom looking back up, they don’t look steep at all. I continue to wonder why that is.

Such is the life we can know. Living in the past and in the future—in recollection and in anticipation—creates a less clear picture of the present. By being in the here and now we understand that the past and future only exist in the present. That’s all there is, but speaking for myself, I couldn’t ask for more.

Bali in the mid-1970s was as laid back and inviting as any surfer could hope for. Photo: Dana Edmunds