by Evan Slater
For fifty years surfers were bound by the 25-foot ceiling—no wave, however big, could be described as being bigger than 25 feet. No one is quite sure why this was so, but in the early part of this millennium, big wave riders cautiously began describing waves by their actual height. Once they did that, the sky became the limit. Former Surfer and Surfing editor Evan Slater, who has ridden more than a few 40-footers himself, examined this new obsession with size—more specifically, the concept of a rideable 100-foot wave. Anything approaching such magnitude was strictly tow-in fare, but the largest day in Mavericks history had some contemplating tow-in surfing’s “unridden realm.”
The world’s best big wave surfers have been scanning depth charts of the world’s oceans and speculating where the next tow-in frontier may be when all along they should have just asked Jeff Clark. The man who unveiled Mavericks to the world in 1990 knows that you don’t need maps, scouting missions, or passports to find the 100-foot wave. You head to Mavericks, where once-a-year mega-swells continue to rewrite the record books. And on Wednesday, November 21, 2001, Mavs added yet another chapter.
According to Sean Collins of Surfline.com, a “complex low” formed in the Aleutians (meaning a mother of all tempests with a few smaller storms circulating around it) and sent a one-two punch of northwest swell steamrolling toward the West Coast. Mavs was a 15- to 20-foot paddle-in gunfight on Tuesday, but when news of an Oregon buoy reading of 42 feet at 20 seconds surfaced midday, Clark knew the real showdown would be on Wednesday. “By my calculations, the brunt of the swell was going to start around ten or eleven,” said Clark. “So my partner, Jaws surfer Chuck Patterson, and me just kind of paced ourselves and waited for it to come.”
Others did not. Mike Parsons and Keith Malloy (who filled in for a North Shore-bound Brad Gerlach) were the first tow team on it, whipping into 20-footers before first light. Eight other teams soon followed, and Mavs’ first real tow session of the year was on.
The tow fun stopped at around eight with the arrival of the first paddle-in surfers, but most came prepared. While Malloy and Parsons packed it up and headed down to Todos Santos for another incredible tow session on Thanksgiving Day, Darryl “Flea” Virostko, Shawn “Barney” Barron, Josh Loya, Ken “Skindog” Collins, Matt Ambrose, and a handful of others gave it a go with their bare hands. Flea picked off a half-dozen huge ones, Ambrose pulled into a giant second bowl and was clipped on the way out, while Loya nabbed a set that some are calling one of the bigger Mavs waves ever paddled into. Right on schedule, the first 30-foot set arrived around 10:00 a.m.
“The second that monster came in,” said Skindog, “we knew it was tow time. We’d all broken our paddle-in boards, and it was just getting out of hand. You couldn’t even get near it paddling in.”
Meanwhile, Clark and Patterson skipped the paddle session and towed at Blackhand Reef, a shallow slab a half-mile south of Mavericks. “It was like Teahupoo in reverse,” said Clark. “I even had a two-wave hold-down on one—with a lifejacket. Chuck said, ‘I came in to save you, but you just weren’t there.’ ”
Unshaken by their Blackhand beatings, Clark and Patterson headed to Mavericks just as sets started breaking well beyond the bowl. Rain hammered down; winds howled from the south; boats were warned to head back to the harbor. Nevertheless, a handful of hellmen charged full throttle on the historic swell.
“I watched Alistair Craft going on pure adrenaline,” said Skindog. “On one wave, he faded, and the whitewater came close. On the next one, he faded a little more, and it got even closer. On the third one, it just mowed him.”
Surfers at Mavericks are now paddling into waves that were formerly considered “tow-in only.”
PHOTO © ROBERT BROWN
Craft’s partner, Vince Broglio, came in for the rescue, but by the time he got to him, Craft was far on the inside. Broglio ended up nailing a submerged rock and putting a pricey crack in the ski.
The building swell also caught up with Flea and Barney. After failing to emerge from a giant bowl, Barney was floating deep in the impact zone with a six-wave set bearing down. Skindog watched in horror from the channel in the moments that followed: “When Flea rushed in to pick him up, Barney tried to grab the sled. But the sled broke like kindling, and he ended up hanging onto the tow rope, which was basically like an anchor. When the first one hit ’em, I was like, ‘That’s it, Flea’s history.’ But he came flying out of the whitewater a couple of seconds later. And then another one came, and he somehow made it out of that, too. But Barney had to let go after that first wave, and he caught, like, six right on the head, went through the rocks, and just got beat.”
The warriors were falling, but Skindog/Loya (who filled in for Peter Mel, who was also on the North Shore), Clark/Patterson, and Brazilians Carlos Burle/Eraldo Gueiros held their ground. Chuck Patterson survived a barrel for the ages. Burle and Gueiros were riding waves that seemed as far out as the Farallons, and Skindog and Loya used every last note from October’s Billabong Odyssey training. “It was hands-down the biggest I’ve seen it out there,” said Skindog. “We’re talking waves 70, 80 feet on the face. And just nonstop.”
And it got only bigger, so big, in fact, that Skindog figured they’d brushed against the unridden realm for tow-in surfing. “Brock Little said there are no limits to tow surfing,” said Skindog. “But I’m not so sure now. On the biggest waves I rode, the ones that broke way beyond the bowl, I’d be going, like, 40 mph, the waves were moving way faster than they were at Cortes, and I was hitting these chops going sideways. I was feeling it in my legs halfway through the wave. Plus,” continued Skindog, “we got to see what Mavericks does at that size. The big ones completely missed the bowl, which means, I guess, that it was too big.”
But Skindog’s last wave didn’t miss the bowl. In fact, the humble 60-footer jacked up ahead of him, and the rest was his-tow-ry.
“I was on the way outside bowl,” said Skindog, “and I thought, ‘Cool, I’m way ahead of this thing.’ But then it hit the double-up and just started jacking and throwing. I had no choice. I was, like, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to have to do this.’ I pulled in way high, started driving, but I couldn’t see it bend. It looked like I was going to get swatted, but I kept angling down, down, down, and suddenly I was out. I was like, ‘Okay, that’s it. Quit. Stop. I never need to come back here again so long as I live.’ ”
“It was a buttery 30-foot barrel,” said Clark. “There was only one of them that really stayed open like that, and Skinny was right there for it.”
And while Clark agrees with Skinny that it was clearly the biggest day ever at Mavs, he’s not at all convinced they exceeded the size limit. “It wasn’t the size,” said Clark, “it was the conditions that held us back. I was, like, ‘Bring it on.’ ”
In fact, Mavericks did bring it on, in early afternoon, just as the last tow teams were counting their blessings in the harbor. According to psycho water rescuer Shawn Alladio, the mythical 100-foot set landed about a quarter-mile outside the Mavericks lineup at approximately 2:00 p.m.
“I rescued a few people who were swept off the jetty,” said Alladio. “I headed back out ’cause I didn’t want to miss seeing this amazing sight. I got more than I asked for—a rogue set of five waves all 100-plus feet on the face, closing out. I had 3-mile visibility, and this was a solid 3-mile-wide wall of water moving fast. My partner and I ran for our lives full throttle to get out of the impact zone. When we cleared the first wave, which I thought was all there was, there were four more stacked up, all much bigger and farther out. We had to blast on for the race of our life. It was terrifying. There were no safety zones. The speed was critical. I glanced down at my LCD display and saw the number 5. So we were racing in the open ocean straight into these waves at 50-plus mph in very rough conditions. The fall behind the wave was about 50 feet, straight down, then hit, bottom out, pull throttle, and do it again. An amazing experience.”