1935
Tom Blake, doing research in Honolulu’s Bishop Museum, discovers that the last remaining redwood olo surfboard in existence belonged to Chief Abner Paki, reportedly a nineteenth-century big wave rider from Makaha.
1936
Honolulu surfers Fran Heath, Wally Froiseth, and John Kelly collaborate to produce the first surfboard designed specifically for bigger waves. They call their narrow-tailed, deep-V creation the “hot curl.”
1937
The Waikiki “hot curl” crew begins riding winter surf at Makaha, establishing the right reef/point break on Oahu’s West Side as the epicenter of big wave riding development.
1937
Northern California’s “Steamer Lane,” a booming right reef/point in Santa Cruz, is first surfed.
1943
Trapped outside by a rapidly building swell at Sunset Beach on Oahu’s North Shore, surfers Woody Brown and Dickie Cross attempt to paddle 6 miles down the coast to the ordinarily calm waters of Waimea Bay. Caught by a huge set that closes out the bay, Brown washes to shore naked. Cross is never seen again.
1951
George Downing, a surfing prodigy from Waikiki, shapes the first modern big wave board, a 10-foot balsawood pintail complete with raked fin. Thus armed, Downing establishes himself as the sport’s premier big wave rider.
Pete Cabrinha on one of the biggest waves ever ridden—70-plus at Jaws—good for a 2004 Billabong XXL Global Big Wave Awards check and a Guinness Book world record
PHOTO © ERIKAEDER.COM/BILLABONGXXL.COM
1952
A front-page Associated Press photo of Woody Brown, George Downing, and Buzzy Trent sliding across a 15-foot Makaha wall lands on America’s doorstep, triggering an almost immediate migration of intrepid California surfers to Hawaii.
1955
Surfers Downing and Froiseth and California transplants including Flippy Hoffman, Buzzy Trent, Peter Cole, Rick Grigg, and Greg Noll begin regularly riding the big waves on Oahu’s North Shore.
1956
Waimea Bay is successfully ridden for the first time in modern times. Its summit team included Greg Noll, Mike Stang, Mickey Munoz, Bob Bermel, Bing Copeland, and Pat Curren.
1961
The hollow left-breaking North Shore tube later known as the “Banzai Pipeline” is first board-surfed by Californian Phil Edwards.
1962
Greg Noll and Mike Stang ride an 18- to 20-foot winter day at Palos Verdes’s Lunada Bay, a hint at the potential of West Coast big wave riding that would not gain traction for another twenty-five years.
1963
Noll and Stang again make North Shore history by riding the seldom-breaking, deep-water cloud break known as “Third Reef Pipeline.”
1964
American International Pictures releases Ride the Wild Surf, a full-length Hollywood feature set in Hawaii’s big wave surfing scene. California hot-dogger Miki Dora doubles for star Fabian, Greg Noll for his nemesis “Eskimo Dobbs.”
1965
The Duke Kahanamoku Invitational, the sport’s first big wave competition, is held at Sunset Beach. It’s won by sixteen-year-old Jeff Hakman.
1967
A massive winter swell hits Waimea Bay, creating what were then considered the biggest waves ever surfed. Filmed by a score of surf filmmakers, this day seals Waimea’s reputation as surfing’s ultimate challenge.
1969
The biggest North Pacific swell ever recorded (even to this day) rocks the coasts of California and Hawaii. Santa Barbara’s Rincon is ridden at 20 feet. In Hawaii Greg Noll, alone in the lineup at Makaha Point Surf, drops into surfing immortality when he takes off and survives on the biggest wave thus far attempted, an estimated 55-foot closeout.
1972
Surfer magazine runs a travel article featuring Craig Peterson photos of huge, 15- to 18-foot tubes breaking along the coast of mainland Mexico. Although the break is left unidentified (it’s later revealed to be called “Petacalco”), it inspires a few hardy West and East Coast surfers to begin ordering 9-foot guns.
1974
The Smirnoff Pro-Am, then the most prestigious competitive event on the North Shore, goes off in giant Waimea Bay surf. In the biggest waves ever seen for a contest, Hawaii’s Reno Abellira just barely edges out Jeff Hakman for the $5,000 first-place check.
1975
Sixteen-year-old Jeff Clark, a surfer from Half Moon Bay, California, begins regularly riding a break outside the town’s harbor jetty. Named after a fishing captain’s dog, the spot is called “Mavericks.”
1977
North Shore standout James “Booby” Jones methodically attempts to ride the massive tube at Waimea Bay. His first completed ride, caught by photographer Dan Merkel, would be a feat that would not be repeated for another thirteen years.
1978
Big wave ace and pioneering North Shore lifeguard Eddie Aikau dies while attempting to rescue fellow crew members of the Polynesian voyaging canoe Hokulea, which foundered off the coast of Molokai. Neither Aikau’s body nor his board was ever recovered.
1983
With the sport’s focus shifting to exotic travel and the burgeoning pro tour, big wave riding takes a back seat. Surfer magazine addresses this issue with a major cover story entitled “Whatever Happened to Big Wave Riding?” The sport would find out soon enough.
1984
The Billabong Pro, ordinarily held at Sunset Beach, is moved to maxed-out Waimea Bay during a supersized swell. While a number of top-ranked pros refuse to even paddle out, the event is won by four-time world champion Mark Richards of Hawaii, ironically better known for his development of the small-wave, twin-fin design.
1984
The wave known as “Dungeons,” a four- to five-story peak located off South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, is surfed for the first time.
1985
The Quiksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau Memorial contest is held at Waimea Bay for the first time. Perhaps appropriately it’s won by Clyde Aikau riding one of this deceased older brother’s surfboards.
1986
Surfing magazine runs its cover story entitled “Big Time” featuring California stars Tom Curren, Dave Parmenter, and Mike Parsons riding 18- to 20-foot peaks at Baja’s Isla Todos Santos. Surfers the world over begin looking beyond Hawaii.
1990
The “Eddie,” as it’s more commonly known, is held again at Waimea Bay but this time in epic, 40- to 50-foot conditions with smooth offshore winds and eventually is won by Keone Downing, son of the legendary George Downing. Big wave performance takes a quantum leap, led most noticeably by young Haleiwa local Brock Little, who, though falling both times, successfully exits a humongous Waimea tube and takes off on one of the biggest waves ever attempted.
1991
Eschewing the Eddie at Waimea, along with all of its invitees, surf-ers Buzzy Kerbox, Laird Hamilton, and Darrick Doerner motor out to Backyard Sunset in Kerbox’s inflatable Zodiac, pulling each other into 20-foot waves at the end of a tow rope. Tow surfing is born.
1992
Hamilton and crew trade the Zodiac for PWCs and begin riding Peahi on Maui. The 60-foot wave mark is broken.
1992
Surfer magazine’s cover story “Cold Sweat” reveals the Waimea-sized waves of Mavericks—and the fact that until Jeff Clark lured a crew of Santa Cruz big wave riders up the coast, he had been riding it alone for fifteen years.
1994
Hawaiian big wave star Mark Foo drowns while surfing Mavericks for the first time. His death draws more mainstream attention to big wave riding than anything in the previous one hundred years.
1995
One year to the day after the death of Mark Foo, California surfer Donnie Solomon drowns while surfing a big day at Waimea Bay.
Big waves aren’t always tall: Set waves at Tahiti’s Teahupoo are measured by sheer mass and madness. Mark Healy, handling it all
PHOTO © JEREMY KLEIN
1997
Playing hooky from his stunt work on the Columbia Tri-Star big wave feature In God’s Hands, popular North Shore surfer Todd Chesser drowns while surfing an outer reef break. More big wave riders died during this three-year period than in the previous half-century.
1998
The Reef Brazil Big Wave Championship is held at Isla Todos Santos, won by Brazil’s Carlos Burle. The bigger paycheck, however, went to California’s Taylor Knox, who, as judged in the newly conceived K-2 Big Wave Challenge, rode the biggest wave of the year, taking home a nifty fifty grand for a nasty 52-footer.
1999
During the biggest, cleanest swell in decades, tow-in teams take to the North Shore’s outer reefs where big wave stalwart Ken Bradshaw pulls into a wave at Outside Log Cabins estimated to be just over 70 feet.
2000
Wedge local and surf impresario Bill Sharp, creator of the K-2 Challenge, introduces the Billabong XXL, a season-long event that rewards the biggest wave of the year with a dollar a foot. The 2000–01 award goes to Mike Parsons for his 60-foot giant caught at Cortes Bank, 100 miles off the coast of San Diego.
2000
On August 17 Laird Hamilton tows into what is now referred to as the “Millennium Wave,” an impossibly thick, unthinkably heavy tube at Tahiti’s Teahupoo, completely redefining the concept of rideable.
2001
Photos begin emerging from the antipodal island of Tasmania depicting Aussie surfers riding a giant, triple-up, surreal-looking danger wave breaking off a headland called “Shipstern Bluff.” Dubbed a “slab,” Shipsterns continues to redefine what is considered rideable. The worldwide hunt for slabs is on.
2002
Located off the eighteenth hole of Carmel’s famed Pebble Beach Golf Course, the break known as “Ghost Tree” is towed into at size by Santa Cruzers Peter Mel, Adam Replogle, and Shane Desmond. The rocky ledge break is considered as much a stunt as a wave.
Mike Parsons’s 2000 Billabong XXL Global Big Wave award–winning ride during the first-ever tow-in assault at Cortes Bank
PHOTO © AARON CHANG/BILLABONGXXL.COM
2003
French surfers Sebastian St. Jean and Fred Basse post video of themselves riding Belharra, a huge, heretofore-unseen peak breaking a half-mile off the Basque coast. One wave easily tops 60 feet but doesn’t win the Billabong XXL because the rider was deemed to have taken off too far out on the shoulder. It does, however, make the point: Atlantic surf gets huge.
2005
A giant, 50-plus-foot day at Monterey’s Ghost Tree cements the West Coast as one of the world’s top big wave riding destinations.
2005
A women’s division is added to the Billabong XXL Awards. It is won by Santa Cruz’s Jamiliah Starr, a regular in heavy lineups from Waimea Bay to Puerto Escondido.
2008
Mike Parsons returns to Cortes Bank, where during a terrific winter storm swell he tows into a wave that tops out at over 70 feet. He wins the XXL Biggest Wave Award for the second time.
2008
Goofy footers Keala Kennelly and Maya Gabeira tow into giant Teahupoo and score a pair of outrageous tubes.
2009
Shane Dorian and Mark Healey, two of the best big wave riders in any ocean, take off together on a massive Waimea Bay cloeseout set, announcing to the surfing world that bare-handed “paddle-in” is definitely back.
2009
Greg Long, cementing his reputation as perhaps the best all-around big wave rider in the world, wins the Eddie, just edging out then-nine-time world champion Kelly Slater. Held in epic conditions, the contest is an all-day big wave highlight reel.
2011
Shane Dorian, Danilo Couto, and Ian Walsh paddle surf big Peahi, riding some of the biggest waves ever caught by hand.
2011
During a big wave competition held at Mullaghmore, Ireland, surf-ers are faced with grinding 40-foot tubes. One particularly awesome barrel earns Benjamin Sanchis from France the first-place trophy and a 2011 Billabong XXL Ride of the Year award nomination.
2011
North Shore local charger Sion Milosky dies while surfing Mavericks. After dominating one of his first trans-Pacific sessions at the fearsome NorCal break, Milosky goes down on a monster set and is never seen alive again. His body is discovered floating almost a half-mile away from the lineup, reigniting controversy about a recent ban of PWCs at Mavericks, even for safety and lifeguard use.