Hound of the Sea

by Garrett McNamara

  For the first time in my life I felt fear.

  The surfers that I hung with at school were Chris Roberson, Chris Angel, Kimo Ukauka, Sean Wingate, Jason Majors, Alan Moepono, Rainos Hayes, Kip Orian, and others. We never talked about the future. Brock Little was in my class. He came from California like Liam and me. He was a loner, known for surfing the biggest waves the North Shore had to offer without a thought. Once, when I was coming home on the bus, I remember seeing him riding Wai-mea on his red board. He was out there charging twenty-foot waves all by himself.

  I’d developed my own obsession with the Bay. I surfed dawn patrol at Wai-mea most days, getting up in the dark, smoking a stomach-settling fatty, driving my Celica to the church parking lot across the highway, getting my board off my car, crosssing the highway, and wending my way through a narrow path cut through the thick bushes that lined the highway. I dug the neon colors of the time. Green wetsuit shorts or red wet-suit shorts and a tank top, usually a fluorescent green or hot pink. I’d stop in the bushes, wax my board, and smoke my fatty. Somebody might come along and I’d share some with him. Then we’d cross the sand and paddle straight out.

  Meanwhile, Liam and I had gained another sponsor, Randy Rarick of Surfers Alliance. Randy was one of the few guys who’d made the successful transition from professional surfer to organizer and impresario. He was a semifinalist in the 1970 World Surfing Championship, and a big name in North Shore surfing in the late sixties and early seventies. He was an all-around good guy, honest and fair, and wore all the surfing-related hats there were to wear: surfer, board shaper, promoter, event organizer, world traveler.

  It was fall 1984 and a year earlier Randy had created an event called the Triple Crown of Surfing. Not unlike the Triple Crown of horse racing, which features three grueling races only a few weeks apart, our Triple Crown rewarded the best surfer to dominate the North Shore’s gnarly, expert breaks. The contests were Pipeline Masters (Pipeline), the World Cup (Sunset), and the Hawaiian Pro (Hale-’iwa).

  Randy lived at Sunset and I practically lived in the Sunset lineup, surfing there up to four times a day. One day he paddled up to me and we started talking. He said Surfers Alliance wanted to sponsor me—back then that meant T-shirts and shorts—and that he wanted to put me in the Triple Crown.

  Liam and I had been entering the odd contest here and there for a few years. Most of them were little local affairs, where you signed up at a wobbly card table set up on the beach and first prize was a gift certificate to a local surf shop. Nowadays even the beginning heats on the opening day of major events are streamed online. Towering bleachers wrapped in the giant banners of Billabong, Vans, Hurley, Volcom, all the big names, are erected in front of the break, and traffic on Kam Highway is at a dead standstill on contest day.

  All the top Hawaiians were there: Tony Moniz, Hans Hedemann, Dane Kealoha, and contest winner Michael Ho. I was only seventeen and in awe of all the talent. There were six surfers in a heat, but Sunset is a huge playing field, so spread out you can easily find your own wave. Everyone else had so much more knowledge and experience competing than I did, but I was devoted to this break. I rarely surfed anywhere else those days. You could say I had the home court advantage. There are three takeoff spots—a little bit in, a little bit out, and a little bit north or west, and usually you have to hunt around for them. Since I was here every day I knew exactly where they broke and could get there before anyone else.

  I wasn’t surfing very well that day, and after my heat I left the beach, convinced I wouldn’t be moving forward. My mom was on the beach that day watching, and had to track me down at another break when my name was called to advance to the next round.

  At the end of the contest I wound up placing in the money round. I won $250! Back then, you could stock up on free T-shirts and surfboards, but the day you tucked cold hard prize money in the back pocket of your shorts you were considered a pro.

  My career had found me. I was going to be a professional surfer. I started going to class, raised my grades to Bs and Cs, and graduated in June with the class of 1985.

  MAKING THE MOST OF THE JAPANESE INVASION

  IN 1983 THE NORTH Shore became popular with Japanese people. Kooks and hard chargers alike showed up all winter long. The local heavies were not amused. The North Shore was already overcrowded with South Africans and Australians and Californians. Now this?

  Liam and I didn’t see it that way. We’d spent most of our lives being inconvenienced by the crazy ideas of others. We’d learned to set aside our feelings and see how we could work the situation to our advantage, turning what most people would view as a negative into a positive. Also, we’d made friends with a guy named Nick Nozaki, who’d moved to the North Shore to surf years earlier. He mentored us a little, by which I mean he let us come to his house on the afternoons there were no waves teaching us how to speak Japanese.

  So instead of sitting on our boards cussing at the dozens of Japanese guys who’d suddenly turned up in the lineup, we were friendly. Asked them their names and where they were from. Easy stuff. They taught us a bunch of dirty phrases that Nick never would. There are more ways to say masturbating in Japanese than you might think.

  We met Ken and Eito in the lineup at Wai-mea. They were in their early twenties and had quit their jobs in Tokyo to move to Hawaiʻi to devote their lives to surfing. They were looking for a place to rent. Liam went right home after the sesh and told our mom. Within a few days Liam and I had moved into one bedroom, our mom had given up her bedroom for the foldout couch, and we had two new roommates whose rent completely covered ours.

  We took Ken and Eito down to Hale-’iwa on a waist-high day to show them a wave they might find more fun, given their current abilities. We tried to explain about the etiquette, about how you couldn’t just take any wave that looked good to you even if you were in position to do so, that you had to be given permission from the heavies already in the lineup. We tried to explain how dropping in on someone else’s wave was a good way to get punched in the head, or chased down the beach and sent home. Who knew how much they understood, since a lot of this was sign language mixed with pidgin English and our rudimentary Japanese.

  We stood on the beach on a cold spring day and a huge set rolled in. Waves so big you could feel it in your molars when they closed out. “Go in, go in!” they said. “No go, no go!” I said. They sprinted across the beach, threw their boards in the water, and were immediately pounded. They dragged themselves out of the water, laughing.

  Out of gratitude for what they thought was our kindness (not realizing the McNamara brothers were experts at making the best of any situation) they liked to take us out to dinner in town, mostly to the restaurants in the big resorts, where they would buy us big steak dinners and blue cocktails with hunks of pineapple skewered on plastic swords. Then they would let us drive their rental car home.

  There was a house up the street from our apartment where some other Japanese guys lived. We introduced them to Ken and Eito and they would all surf together. Before school Liam or I would check the surf report and advise them on the good spots for the day. We felt as if it was part of our duty as landlords to show them the ropes.

  In Japan, word spread.

  More surfers showed up, and a lot of them were hard chargers, already famous in Japan.

  Takayuki Wakita showed up at Pipeline one winter. Liam knew him from Paskowitz Surf Camp, where “Takita” had worked a few years earlier. We learned through the coconut wireless that he was a hard charger at Shonan, ground zero for surfing in Japan, a long stretch of coast with a big variety of beach breaks, reef breaks, and river mouths, commuting distance from Tokyo. He was sixteen and had saved up money from a factory job to come and conquer Pipe.

  He couldn’t afford an air-conditioned rental car, and so got around on a yellow Stingray sized for a ten-year-old.

  Wakita wasn’t interested in any other break than Pipeline. He was mellow, laid-back, and polite, but determined to master that break. Li
ke everyone else he had to earn his place in the lineup. Even then my brother had a compulsion for taking people under his wing. Liam invited Wakita to live with him and taught him everything he knew. He literally sat Wakita down and said, “Grasshopper, here are the rules. Number one: Always wear a helmet. Number two: Go deep and sit near me. Number three: Don’t paddle out and say ’ho ho’ or anything else. Number four: Last but not least, never, and I mean never, pull back.”

  The takeoff spot for Pipe is small, and the lineup crowded. One day Liam showed Wakita a spot that he preferred, a little deeper and off the peak. It’s a gnarly little section of heavy wave between Backdoor and Off the Wall, thicker and even faster than Pipeline First Reef and Second Reef, a short perilous left in a choppy wave field of rights. Wakita took to surfing that section day after day. It became known as Wakita’s Bowl. If life was fair it would be known as Liam’s Bowl.

  Japanese photographers showed up along with the surfers. Denjiro Sato, who had documented my own first successful day at Pipeline, was one. Not long after that day he took Liam and me to California for a surfing/photo trip. Started at Ocean Beach near San Francisco and surfed all the way down to Swami’s in San Diego.

  Ken and Eito moved out, to be replaced by other Japanese surfers who’d heard back in Japan about Liam and me and our willingness to show them the ropes.

  For the next decade or so, my mom rented her extra rooms to Japanese surfers and photographers. Another time and place, our mom might have taken up with one of them, and one day without warning disappear to start a commune in some rural wooded Japanese valley where she would come up with some harebrained scheme to make ends meet. But by the time we moved to Sunset, she’d changed. She told us the North Shore was a fishbowl, and she worked hard to mind her own business and not start any scandals. She said her goal was to disappear into the middle class. She was still blond and tan, still had her figure and could still turn heads. She loved to tell a story about a guy who worked at the front desk at Turtle Bay Resort who mentioned to one of her friends that he’d like to go out with her. The friend laughed and said, “Oh no, she’s far too straight for you.”

  She’d also been hired to work for a local clothing designer who wanted Hawaiian flowers painted on things—skirts, coats, and bags. The designer had advertised in the newspaper for artists, and our mom got the job. She made good money, maybe $60 an hour. She went with the designer to craft fairs in Honolulu a couple of times a month, and she was happy. We all were.

  NAMI OKI (SURF’S UP)

  I TURNED EIGHTEEN IN August that year. My Triple Crown winnings were long gone. It was summer on the North Shore, ocean flat, tourists slowing down traffic on Kam Highway, staring out at the water hoping to see a monster wave rear up, justifying their drive across O’ahu. Liam and I were renting rooms to make ends meet. Bored by the lack of swell, we were puffing ten big fat joints a day. I would wake up, take a few first puffs from the roach from the night before, eat breakfast, then smoke a stomach settler. Called friends on the south shore to see if it was worth going there just to get wet. Either drive there or not. Smoked another one.

  At night we partied with our Japanese friends. Best thing you could say about that hot boring summer was that every day I had a chance to practice my Japanese. At night we’d find our way to Michael Willis’s little house at Sunset Beach, smoke some more, and feast on Bellina’s brown rice and vegetables. One day Michael called our apartment and asked my mom to send me over, very official.

  “Guess what?” he said as I walked through the front door. “We’re sending you to Japan.”

  As he explained it, the Willis Brothers had entered a partnership with a Japanese wet-suit manufacturer, and they were looking for a surfer to represent the brand. His voice was extra pumped. I had the sense that he was prepared for a discussion, for me to say no way, North Shore has the best waves on earth, look at all the Japanese surfers who come here, why would I want to go there. But even at that age I was never one to turn down an opportunity. Three days later I was on the plane to Tokyo.

  FOR THE next four years I spent my summers in Japan. I was off the rock! After the Willis Brothers set me up with Hotline Wetsuits, other companies asked to sign me. Peakaboo Clothing. Murasaki Sports.

  The first few times I went to Japan I went alone. Liam was only fifteen, still in high school, still somewhat unfocused, torn between baseball and surfing, and had also fallen for a beautiful, high maintenance, slightly older woman (who would go on to become Miss Hawaii).

  It was red carpet first class all the way. I’d never been treated this way in my life. I’d always been the barefoot kid in the raggedy surf shorts, the bicycle thief, the one flunking the class, the little stoner who didn’t apply himself.

  A first-class plane ticket would be Federal Expressed to me. At Tokyo Airport a driver would meet me holding a sign that said McNamara. Take me to the nice home of Shinzo Tanuma, Hotline’s CEO. He lived in Shonan, on Sagami Bay. Shinzo introduced me to the Sakino brothers, two of Japan’s top surfers at the time and they shared some of their favorite secret breaks with me and I fell in love with all of it. The country, the Japanese people—so humble, so hospitable—and working with Japanese companies that treated me with a level of respect I’d never known existed.

  After I arrived I usually had a few photo shoots with my sponsors. It took me a bit to adjust to the idea of using my face to advertise a pair of shorts or a light beer or even a surfboard. I still thought great shots of me surfing that appeared in an article about surfing were more important to sponsors. At one point there was an ad campaign that featured my mug on huge billboards throughout the city. That was a trip.

  I had a routine in Japan. I was determined to take this seriously and I did. First thing in the morning I’d get up and do my exercises. Sit-ups, push-ups, and a stretching program a trainer had devised for me. I’d call Mitsunobu, who lived nearby, and ask him to take me surfing.

  About thirty-five miles west of Yokohama are the Sakawa River mouth breaks. Both a right and a left, a fast and hollow eight-footer on a good day, the southern swell usually generated by a typhoon in the Philippine Sea. The right-hander reminded me of Off the Wall back home, but the water was milky and thick, probably because of the sandy bottom. Not the sparkling aquamarine glass I was used to.

  I was always the only gaijin, the only foreigner in the lineup. But Sakino was good friends with Eka, the gnarliest heavy who ruled the break, and no one bothered me. After our sesh we’d go back to Shinzo’s house and his wife would cook us dinner and we wouldn’t talk, not even to dissect the rides of the day. We would then go to his workshop, where they shaped boards and designed wet suits, and I would learn that part of the business.

  Typically I’d then fly to Niijima, a forty-minute flight from Tokyo. One of seven in the Izu Islands group in the Philippine Sea, Niijima is a tropical vacation spot for harried Tokyoites. Emerald green jungles in the center, volcanic cliffs overlooking white-sand beaches on the perimeter. It reminded me of Kaua’i. Habushiura, a long straight beach on the east side of the island, was the site of all the surf contests. The bottom was sandy and regular, producing A-frame waves with regular rights and lefts so perfect they appeared to come off some swell-producing assembly line. I thought of the break at Habushi as a very Japanese wave, beautiful and polite.

  Best and the worst times in Japan were had on Niijima. The guest houses were all on the same small street, and all the pros who’d shown up for the contest stayed there. Derek and Michael Ho and Ronnie Burns were regulars. We’d meet up at the same bar, a little place called the Red Velvet Bar that seated no more than ten of us. Brad Gerlach was there the first year. He’d just beat Tom Carroll in Australia’s Stubbies World Pro and was riding high. Carroll was one of the greats, a powerful carver who’d won the ASP (Association of Surfing Professionals, now the World Surf League) title in 1983 and 1984 (and would be the first millionaire surfer, having signed a humongous deal with Quiksilver in 1989). If surfing didn’t
work out, Gerlach could have been a comedian. He would get going on a story and before you knew it you were watching a first rate stand-up act. Sometimes I’d paddle out the next morning, my sides would be sore, and I’d wonder What the hell, and then realize it was from laughing at Gerlach for hours the night before.

  I never did well at Habushi, losing in the first or second heat. In my memory the waves were always too small for a contest, knee high or less. This can’t be right, but the waves were definitely a lot smaller than ten feet, measured Hawaiian, and I just had no interest in seeing how many turns I could carve into a little rolling beach break.

  Still, I hated not doing better, hated not winning. I kept my disappointment to myself. I knew I didn’t come off as being competitive. My reputation at that time was as Liam’s easygoing big brother.

  As was my way, I made the best of it. Turned the negative into a positive—my best habit among all the obvious bad ones. Niijima was on the world pro tour circuit. Sitting in the lineup day after day with the top pros was like going to the Harvard of surfing. I spent my days watching them working, learning from them, refining my approach.

  One guy I studied was Tom Curren. He had been one of the first surfers on my radar. Like the weather, like God looking down on me, the specter of Curren had been there since the beginning. He won his first junior contest in 1978, the year Liam and I arrived on the North Shore. In 1985 when I went pro, Curren was world champ. Every surfer coming up in the eighties tried to copy the Curren style. When he popped up he planted his feet and there they stayed for the duration of the ride. He’d drop down his back knee a little, and use his hips and knees to carve a flawless line across the face. One day, someday, I would surf like Tom Curren. That was my hope.