as told by Greg Noll
It’s one of surfing’s greatest tales and one that big wave legend Greg Noll has told often enough: the epic day during the Swell of ’69 when Noll, out alone in gigantic Makaha Point Surf, took off on what until only recently was considered the biggest wave ever ridden. But in the many magazines, books, and movies that have chronicled this epoch-ending event, the story almost always stops with Noll catching “the Wave,” seldom examining the ride itself and, for the man who rode it, its life-altering consequences.
Once I made the decision to go for “the Wave,” I just put my head down and paddled. When I surfed big waves, I had the ability to dump all the side chatter and just go. People have always asked, “Why’d you paddle for that wave when you knew you were never going to make it?” But I always believed when you paddle for a big wave, if you start wondering, Am I gonna make it? Am I gonna do this? Am I in the right spot? Am I blah, blah, blah? that you tend to hesitate, to stall out and get caught in the top of the wave. And then you’re done. So the moment I decided to go, I turned everything off, put my head down, and just went for it.
On these epic waves, once you commit you forget about everything else. You put the nose of the board down, and if the fucking thing’s breaking 2 miles in front of you, that’s immaterial. You focus everything on catching the wave and getting down the thing. And if you’re lucky enough to get down it, to pull your bottom turn and to make it, that’s okay. And if you don’t, that’s okay, too. Except this wave was different.
I can only speak for myself, but that bomb at Makaha was the biggest wave I ever caught, at least 10 feet bigger than anything I’d ever ridden at Waimea Bay or anywhere else. And it scared the shit out of me. You should understand that Makaha’s a whole different ball game—it’s like no other big wave out there. Waves like Waimea and Mavericks and Jaws are all concentrated peaks that jump up out of nowhere and grab you. But at Makaha—I’m talking giant Makaha Point Surf—you have to sit there like a god-damned deer in the headlights and watch these monsters come charging down the coast and around Kaena Point. It’s intimidating, you know?
Everybody else had already gone in, so I’m sitting out there alone, watching this huge set breaking from Yokohama, all the way down the line. They were like—well, you could easily have stacked two sixteen-wheeler tractor-trailers inside each barrel as they were dropping sections 3 blocks long. And as each wave broke, the concussion made the water droplets dance on the deck of my board. That’s power right there.
I’d never, never been in a situation like that. It wasn’t like the normal big surf emotion, where I’d go, Goddamn, this is huge! then grit my teeth and paddle on through. It was more a mixture of fear and anguish: the fear that I might let this opportunity pass me by because I was a chicken shit. So as the set rolls closer I just put my head down and paddled into what I thought was the channel. And I remember thinking, Do I really wanna do this shit? Do I really want to find out what’s on the other side of the cliff, especially if it means not being able to get back? And the answer wasn’t heroic. It was probably nothing more than picturing myself as some old shit in a wheelchair, lashing the ground with my cane and saying, “You chicken shit, motherfucker. Why didn’t you go for it?” I wouldn’t be able to live with that, so when the set hit the point, I shut everything else off and started paddling. Hard.
I got into the wave pretty early, but then the bottom dropped out, and I could see the Bowl lining up all the way to goddamned Waianae. I remember thinking, Just don’t pearl! That would mean cartwheeling onto my ass and not penetrating the face. Really, my only hope was to get to the bottom on my feet and then look for a place to punch a hole and penetrate. Which is what I did: I got to the bottom and dove off the rail, trying to get as deep as I could while the thing detonated above me. And for a second it was so quiet, I thought I had it made. But this wave was so much thicker, had so much more mass than anything I’d ever experienced, that when the lip finally folded and exploded, I just got pummeled. It swept me along like a leaf. And this wasn’t Waimea, where you get drilled hard but bounce down and then ricochet up again. This wave just kept rolling and rolling with me tumbling around inside—I must’ve been underwater for 100 yards or more when I started to worry a little bit.
When we first started surfing big waves, we’d come busting to the surface after what we thought was a bad wipeout—like when we’d almost be out of breath—and think, Oh God, I almost drowned. But the waves kept coming, and we kept riding and getting all this experience, so maybe a year later, say, we’d get held down so long we were seeing stars, and we’d finally burst up to the light and say, “Christ, I almost drowned.” Then a couple more years and a couple thousand more big waves, and we got washed out past regular stars and started seeing red stars. And we’d say, “Jesus Christ, I almost drowned.” And this last time we were right.
Of course, we were experiencing the progressive stages of oxygen deprivation and learning to deal with heavier and heavier wipeouts and in the process getting better at surviving hypoxia. Toward the end of my big wave career, if I got held down long enough I could anticipate the different stages. I could almost see what was coming and deal with it. Like, Okay, here’s the thrashing-around stage. And Here come the stars, and then Hello, red stars. But under that wave at Makaha, I shot right past the red stars and actually saw blue. Dark blue stars. And I remember thinking, Uh-oh, I don’t want to know what’s behind blue. Because I got a glimpse, and all I saw was darkness. And luckily it was right at that point that I struggled back up into daylight, back into reality.
Problem was I was still getting the shit beat out of me by the rest of this giant set. I got washed all the way down past Klausmeyers to the east end of the beach at Makaha. I tell you, I barely made it through the thing. Buffalo [Keaulana] was following me in the lifeguard Jeep, as far as he could drive. I could see him off to my left, but there was nothing I could do because the current and the shorepound were ripping sideways so bad I could hardly swim against them. Finally, I staggered out onto the sand about 20 yards from the start of the lava rocks. Had I not gotten out there I’d have been totally screwed. The next sandy beach is 3 miles down the coast, and I never could have made it. Then Buff comes up and stuffs a beer in my hand and says, “Good ting you make ’em, brudduh, cuz no way I was comin’ in afta you.”
So it was a hairball deal start to finish. And you know, that morning, when I went in the water, I thought, Boy, I’m gonna be surfing until my arms fall off. This is the only life for me! But that night, after the mist slowly settled, everything in my life settled down as well. I woke up the next day and felt like I could finally go surfing for fun and enjoy my family and eventually go fishing. The monkey was off my back so far as proving anything. I’d ridden a wave at least 10 feet bigger than anything I’d ever ridden before. And I realized I didn’t want to know what was way, way out there, beyond the blue. So that’s where I left off.