This week, it seems like all I am seeing in the news is sports. Athletes, trained to the very pinnacle of human possibility, competing for money, fame, and above all, glory. For Americans, the centerpiece is the Super Bowl, which will scoop up more than four times more viewers than an average Winter Olympics day. For one day, a hundred million people will sit down and watch multimillionaire monsters crash into each other.
And why not? I like nachos and beer as much as the next guy. But on the all-important Erik’s-List-of-True-Athletes, football players rank a paltry 7 out of 10. Who’s at the top, you say? Among others, big wave surfers. You think a 300-lb runningback going 15 miles an hour is scary? Try a 40-foot water wall going 35.
Last Friday was the often-annual Mavericks Invitational big wave surfing contest in Half Moon Bay, California. I say “often-annual” because the legendary Mavericks monster waves don’t form every day. They don’t even form every year. During the winter months, they require just the right storm conditions out to sea to the southwest throwing a swell hundreds, maybe thousands of miles to a little point just south of San Francisco.
Okay, first the science. A wave is just the top part of a massive hydraulic loop, constantly spinning. The wave breaks when the top gets too fast for the bottom, which is dragging along a shallow ocean floor. It then topples like a wide receiver tripping over his own feet. Actually at Mavericks, in the right conditions, the waves jack up like a receiver tripping over a catapult.
Surfers call it “going off.”
How exactly this works, scientists are still trying to understand. One researcher at San Francisco State University even thinks Mavericks’ odd physics can help describe the existence of rogue or “monster” waves. These are waves that seem to spring up out of nowhere, three times higher than any others nearby. For hundreds of years they were thought to be a myth until the 1990s, when an offshore rig actually measured one. (A debate rages among ocean modelers as to whether they are created by random overlaps in a massive field of waves moving in similar directions or whether it’s related to tiny changes in the ocean floor. Tim Janssen, the researcher in question, suggested – gasp! – it’s a combination of the two.)
Okay. This is all fine and good. But let’s talk about the morons who actually ride these things. The Mavericks surf break was discovered when a group of blithering idiots with phenomenal balance noticed that the ocean seemed to be puking up 60-foot krakens a mile offshore from Pillar Point Harbor. Being witless fools, they decided the best thing to do was go out and ride on the monsters’ backs (and name the break after an equally foolish German Shepherd who momentarily considered surfing them too). Remember how I said that the wave is just the top of a big circle? Well, if you fall off the top, you have to take a trip all the way to the bottom and back – maybe 60 feet underwater. With sharp rocks and reefs at the bottom, such a trip can make Mavericks a lethal break (two world-class surfers have lost their lives there).
Today, the Mavericks Invitational surf competition is the most famous in the world, with the biggest prize money (I think – readers, correct me if I’m wrong). People with names like Flea and Twiggy (the 2014 champ) wait for the conditions to blossom and the flock to the site and compete to see who can ride the best wave. It’s the Super Bowl of surfing.
Which brings me back to the claim I made at the beginning. I’m not a surfer myself but watching these guys is a lesson in athletic perfection. Their skill, nerve, and pure ability is the stuff of gods. But that’s not why I rank them above football players on the athlete scale. No, that came one year when I paddled a kayak out to watch the show up close (although huge, the Maverick’s break is self-contained and a careful paddler can get 50 yards away from the action). Thanks to traffic and nasty ocean chop, I got out to the break too late, just as the TV cameras and fans were going home.
I was crestfallen. But as I came over that last swell, I saw the competitors were still out there. A group of professional athletes after a full day of punishing battles on waves the size of houses were still there. Not for the attention or the sponsorships or the prize money. They just wanted to surf. It was the purest sporting experience I’ve ever seen. Can you imagine the Lakers hanging out after a game to play a little pick up with the fans? Or a the Seahawks tossing the old pigskin around to wind down after the Super Bowl? No, these guys shower off, get in their 300,000-dollar cars and party with the groupies. Surfers have groupies too, they just don’t care. Not when Mavericks is going off.
That day, I saw one kid lose his balance and get hammered by a 35-foot wave that kept him underwater for nearly a minute. He popped up, a little woozy and a dude on a jet ski pulled him to the boat. He sat there for a bit, dazed, saying, “It’s okay, I just got my bell rung.” Then he shook it off and got back out on the waves. Mind you, all the cameras had gone home and it was getting dark by then.
That’s an athlete. Away from medals and advertisements and steroids and on-the-field brawls. Pure ability and love of the sport. Watching them work was magic, it’s as simple as that. After several hours, with the sun tossing its golden Pacific glow, the giant waves finally disappeared and the surfers packed it in.
Except for a couple guys waiting – hoping – for just one last ride.
Photo Credit: Erik Vance and Shutterstock
You don’t have your history right.
There was no “they” in “blithering idiots.” There was one guy who knew what he was capable of and his name is is Jeff Clark. He tried to convince many surfers to surf with him for fifteen years while he surfed the break by himself. However, all the “blithering idiots” did not believe him for 15 years until a few of them saw what he had been “blithering” about for 15 years.
The people I was referring to were Alex Matienzo, Jim Thompson, and Dick Knottmeyer – nearly ten years before. And, of course, Maverick the dog. Of course Clark is a huge part of the story, but he’s been written about and filmed quite a bit. And, yes, anyone who goes near those monsters is clearly crazy.
Ya but those “blithering idiots” deemed it too unsafe and surfed the white wash on the inside, which is not the same wave.
ASP surfers make way more money, up to $100,000 for fist place.
You should consider rewriting this and include the “blithering idiot” that paddled out in a sea kayak and got caught inside by the whitewash and snapped his paddle and had to be rescued by some of the other “blithering idiots.”
Oh wait, you did put it in, now I sound like a “blithering idiot.”
Agreed, those guys are some serious athletes. Speaking of morons and blithering idiots a buddy of mine invited me to go out to Mavericks and check out the action in kayaks. I responded with some unkind words regarding his capacity to make decisions and wished him well. If I can remember correctly he took a short-cut on his way back to shore, got pummeled by a wave and broke his paddle. He was towed in by a jet skier and lived to tell the tale (though the pummeling and broken paddle detail is apparently often left out). When he finished telling me about it he punctuated the story with wide eyes and the declaration that “those waves… Are powerful.” To which I responded “uh huh.” Rumor is he left the country in shame and now resides in Mexico City where he blends in like a local.
Ha! For those who follow me on Twitter, I recounted my ignomous first day at Maverick’s on a kayak in a series of tweets Monday, hashtaged #vancestory. The broken paddle was not left out (though I did leave out my attempts to explain to the company why I should get a new one). Let me just say this. If you ever meet this “Anonymous” in person, listen to him when he gives you a warning about powerful seas.
Also, it should be clear from my post that I have immense respect for blithering idiots of all stripes. Like the blithering idiots who strapped themselves to a rocket and went to the moon, the blithering idiots who first went to the South Pole, and the blithering idiots who mapped the Louisiana Purchase.