by Tony Harrington
Going surfing Down Under used to be easy and mostly fun: the casual stroll through Norfolk pines to the jump-off spot at Queensland’s Burleigh Heads; cruising along backcountry roads on the way to Angourie’s fabulous point break; the short jog across the sand from the parking lot to the tubes of Sydney’s North Narrabeen. Key phrase: used to be. Once a new generation of full-throttled Aussie surfers looked up from their sunny beaches to the outer realms of their Pacific and Indian Ocean shores, the monster wave discoveries came fast and furious. Mostly furious, as revealed by this expedition account in which an intrepid team of watermen confront a true Tasmanian devil.
The offshore wind had been picking up since dawn. The breeze was light enough in the beginning; the early arrivals reveled in some 12- to 15-foot morning glories before it turned punishing, forcing us back to the beach. We didn’t know what punishment was.
Jamie Mitchell and Billy Watson had just accomplished a mammoth driving task, towing their ski for twenty-four hours from the Gold Coast. I had picked up Bra Boy Richie “Vass” Vaculik and his mate, John “Bones” Dwyer, from Bronte, in Adelaide, the night before. This was Bones’s first real trip away from Sydney chasing bigger waves than he was used to, something of which Bungy, his friend from home, consummated when he sent a text to Bones en route exclaiming:
“Here are the three scenarios: Bones overestimates his ability and gets hammered by massive waves; Bones dies. Bones faces his worst fear in the cold southern Australian waters when he meets an 18-foot great white shark, and after a very brief struggle, Bones dies. Bones is exposed as the coward he is when he refuses to leave the boat the entire trip; Bones lives (although sadly, he later takes his own life when he realizes he’s been exposed as a soft cock).”
With a rumpus cackle from Vass and myself and a worried look on Bones’s face, we cruised through the night, finding ourselves at base camp at 1:00 a.m. Five hours later we are in the water for day 1 of the Search for the Bosenquet Bombie.
Shipsterns guardians Marti Paradisis and James Hollmer-Cross flew in later, along with Mark “the Shadow” Visser. We all regrouped at the dock to meet up with legendary fisho and surfer Jeff Schmucker, his seventeen-year-old son, Josiah, and Dave from Oregon, Jeff’s long-time surfing buddy, the two having first met years before at some exotic break overseas.
After loading the deck of the 22-meter prawn trawler with a seemingly endless supply of food, equipment, and Coopers, we transferred down to our bunks set up in the fish freezer room. It resembled a jail with all the caged enclosures but was clean as a whistle and smelled nothing of fish despite having thousands of tons of prawns dumped there over the last few years.
At 5:00 p.m. the wind backed down, and we decided to give it a shot. We blasted across the tricky bar and headed 30 miles out to an island that offered some protection from the weather should it turn heavy.
One thing my science teacher always told me, and one thing that has bitten me on the butt more times than I can poke a stick at, is never assume. Within an hour of setting sail, the winds kicked back up: 25-30-35-40-45-50 knots. Storm-force gusts beat down as darkness fell. We were towing three skis, had another on deck, plus the aluminum dinghy. It didn’t take long before the violent rocking started striking the team. Billy was the first to go puking, with everyone else feeling the effects in some form.
Our typical four-hour trip would obviously take much longer. I took watch of the towed skis, less for the machines and more because continued sitting meant upchucking for sure. Equally sickening was watching our skis getting smashed by swell and storm. They looked like corks thrashing around. I shudder to think what the captain saw as the trawler smashed through raging seas, but I didn’t dare claw into the stale wheelhouse. Instead, I braced against a bulkhead for six hours, staring into the maelstrom. Waves crashed over the bow, hosing three levels of the boat, cascading over to the stern just in front of me. Several times I saw my ski get picked up and dropped on top of the others, but there was simply nothing we could do. We couldn’t stop, couldn’t turn—just had to punch on. After three or four hours of this madness, had the tow ropes snapped, which seemed likely, I wouldn’t have minded. I was past the point of caring.
Jamie Mitchell’s take on the moment: “We were about four hours into the trip, and I remember going up into the captain’s quarters and checking out the conditions, and it was wild. It reminded me of The Perfect Storm. Then I told the cap that he must see conditions like this all the time, hey? He just looked at me and said, “Nah, mate, we stay at home when it’s like this,” and then just focused on punching through the swells.
At around 11:00 p.m. we pulled into somewhat calmer waters, but the wind and ocean still boiled. As we anchored up for the night, we noticed that Jeff’s ski was sinking. Billy dived into the dark and shark-ridden ocean at 1:00 a.m. to throw a rope around it so it could be retrieved. The ski was hauled out of the water and drained, and the engine fired first go.
With the first—and heaviest, we’d hoped—part of the journey over, we hankered for some shuteye. But a mad chorus of snoring made sleep impossible for some, so I dragged myself into the dining room and collapsed on the floor, finally copping some kip.
The second day of the journey once more awoke to a torrid ocean, but, being on the leeward side of the wind, at least it was offshore. We cruised around to a point break, which had been surfed before, but for the stiff offshore we needed skis slingshot onto the waves. Such a serene setting: a tranquil bay, reeling rights, ominous cliffs rearing in the background, separating a lost piece of land from the continent, and a sense of complete isolation—a desert in the middle of an ocean. Now this felt like home.
Toward dark, the point started to really fire. Vass was the standout, pulling into the longest and heaviest of pits, but not far behind was Josiah, a seventeen-year-old with a huge future on his plate. Billy and Jamie had engine trouble. They hauled their ski onto the deck, where a couple of gallons of saltwater were found in the fuel tank. How the hell that got in there we had no idea, but given the punishment of the tow-out, anything was possible.
With an abating wind at dusk and rising full moon on the horizon, the location turned surreal as a horde of pastels enveloped the sky and landscape. The sanctuary had been found. We retreated to the safer anchorage around the corner, cracked open the Coopers, and feasted on a few kilos of legendary Venus Bay prawns. It was a ritual that we’d repeat each afternoon of the trip.
We were expecting this to be the wildest weather of the trip. The deep low sitting several hundred kilometers below us was the strongest of the winter. The swell had certainly jumped, and if it weren’t for the blustering side-shore conditions, the 10- to 12-foot waves would have been epic. If it’s this big on the eastern side of the island, how big would it have to have been on the side open to the brunt of the storm?
Most of the day was spent siphoning the spoiled fuel in Billy’s ski from the tank, cleaning, resiphoning, and refueling again and again. Seeing the spontaneous stroke in his eyes when the ski roared to life and then the exasperation and disappointment when it died again was heartfelt by all. This happened several times in between the hours of tireless drudge work.
By the end of the day they believed it was running well enough to go surfing. We had a thirty-minute steam in the trawler to get to the point, so Billy and Jamie put trust in their handiwork and went ahead, battling a raging ocean to claim some waves before the rest of the crew arrived. As they charged forward, they disappeared in the ungodly looking ocean. We feared for their safety. If the ski broke down, they’d have been blown into the 400-foot-high cliffs and smashed to pieces, ski and bodies both.
We arrived at a windswept point, the wind not quite offshore enough to keep it from being epic. Ten- to twelve-foot lines poured down the rocky foreshore, but it was more a mercy surf for the sake of getting off the trawler. Still, a few fun waves went down, and the location showed the potential at a bigger size.
The weather was still up at 6:00 a.m. My heart sank. I’d known all along that this was the day we’d score—if at all. We still had another 10 miles to the reef Jeff had seen years ago while shark fishing. Given his surfing background, the hunch was more than enough to set up this mission. But at this point, I truly thought we had bitten off ten mouthfuls.
We pulled into a stretch of deep water near a bombora, an area where waves break over a submerged rock shelf, sand bank, or, in this case, a reef. A wave came through, and my heart hit rock bottom. It looked 6 to 8 feet and little more than mush. Jeff’s face lit up, saying, “No, it’s an easy 15 feet.”
Despite the thrashing the skis had received, mine was running perfectly, and it was time for a reconnaissance. With Billy and Jamie on the back, we motored around the impact zone. A solid 20-footer loomed, reeling off left and right. The ocean was still as raw as hell. Huge lumps appeared from the deep and belched over the reef, disappearing as they passed into the deeper water off the backside.
Finally knowing we weren’t in for a total skunking, we watched a behemoth lurch up and across the horizon. The next second we found ourselves drawing up the face of a 15-foot wall, the top half capping. I punched through the whitewater, narrowly escaping getting sucked back over the falls. Wow! Now it would be a case of just wait and see what the boys might get their fins into.
Jeff dragged Jamie into the first set wave, coming up short on speed and location, leaving Jamie teetering on the top of a 20-plus-foot crest peering down into the bowl. Next wave he’s in, and things looked good for the first part. Not for long, though, as it closed out. Jamie bailed, trying to punch through the wave and out the back. He was sucked up and over, the curl detonating like a bunker buster. Jamie got worked satisfactorily.
As the morning unfolded, the wind died off, and the sea calmed, though it still was a warbled mess out there. But at least the faces were smooth, helped out by the drawing of so much energy off the reef as each wave rolled through. Sometimes the ocean would go silent, and with no obvious markers to line up on, it was impossible to tell where we were until the next mountain shouldered up. Fortunately for Marti and James, I was in the right position to nail a couple of beauties.
Bones managed to contradict the text messages by staying entirely alive. The Bronte surfer who works on the docks had his first taste of big wave surfing.
Visser was dubbed “the Shadow” because he was never seen until it was time to surf. Even though the wave was a two-way peak, I concentrated on the right-hander, as that’s where the majority of the waves were ridden. We did see him drop into a lefty—apparently he scored a massive tube (so he says). Perhaps he did, as there were some solid ones out there.
Billy got a pit. Jamie’s take: “It was the second-to-last wave surfed of the day. It was the wave before the sick shot Harro got of Billy, and this one looked especially thick. As soon as I saw it, I remember whipping him in and being able to look over the shoulder; I just saw this thing drawing off the reef. I got the best view of him bottom turning, and the thing was so square and hollow, I swear you could have fit two kombis in it. I just remember thinking, ‘Fuck, man, you got to make it,’ ’cause I was scared when I saw what was behind him, and, yeah, he pulled it off. I’ll never forget it.”
The storm had passed, there was no wind, and the angst of wondering if we’d even score a new wave was gone. More Coopers were cracked, and the Venus Bay prawns were grilled. The five-hour journey back in was glorious. There was a soft, rolling ocean, a beautiful setting sun, and dolphins taking flight all around us.
At 5:30 a.m. the next morning, we were up again, charging 4WDs down the coastline and around dirt tracks to a hidden wave in the middle of nowhere. The swell was still pumping and the wind offshore—a blue-bird day. For the next few hours, the boys traded spiraling pits. It was the ultimate detox from the head-splitting dose of adrenaline and punishment of being thrown around the trawler twenty-four hours a day.
I spent eighteen hours driving home along the coastline of Australia, my mind now even further fueled by the possibilities available for the next trip. Crikey, could it get any better? I aim to find out.