Hound of the Sea

by Garrett McNamara

  MY BROTHER BECOMES THE ONE TO WATCH

  A FEW WEEKS BEFORE I turned twenty-two I quit smoking pot for good. It was August and I was in Japan doing my thing. One day after lunch I smoked my usual after-lunch joint and took a little nap that turned out to be a long nap, until late in the day. So late in the day that by the time I struggled awake, splashed some water on my face, grabbed my board, and drove to the beach, all the photographers who normally covered the break had packed up their tripods and had left for the day. It was just a normal small-wave day but it hit me then that it could have been a huge day. I could have missed some important opportunities. It could have been a day when someone snapped a shot of me that made the cover of one of the surf mags, a career-making shot that would have satisfied my sponsors for the rest of the year, perhaps even attracted new sponsors, and there I’d been, nodding off like an eighth-grade stoner.

  My career as a professional surfer relied on my being photographed. That was how the sponsor game was played. While it was good to win prestigious contests, good to score a high ASP ranking, it was even better to be photographed riding an epic wave. It was required. Cutting across the face of a deep blue monster, being spit out of a heavy aquamarine tube. Tiny man on a board, roaring giant white-lipped wave. Every year sponsors reviewed their allocation of sponsorship money. If you hadn’t been photographed dropping in on a monster wave in South Africa or getting deeply barreled in Tahiti or even grabbing some air on a neat little wave in Huntington Beach, there was always someone else who had.

  Recently, that someone else was my brother Liam.

  When I’d returned from my first trip to Japan in ’85 I’d sat him down and said, “You have got to get your shit together. There are some major opportunities here!” He was sixteen and more or less fully on his own. Up and down the North Shore were friends and associates whose couches he crashed on. Baseball was a distant memory. Surfing he loved, but mostly he preferred partying. While I was gone he’d wandered down a road well-traveled by a lot of surfers. Cocaine was huge on the North Shore, and he’d started dabbling (thankfully something he gave up long ago).

  Liam could be bullheaded. He didn’t like to be told what to do. But on the day I sat him down he heard me. Since we were little, he’s been quick to assess certain situations, whereas things dawn on me gradually. I told him about my trip, about the first-class plane tickets, the nice hotels, the days spent surfing and partying with the world’s top pros, the free boards and wet suits and wax and hats and T-shirts and shorts, the accolades, the sense of purpose and fulfillment, the way you could make an actual living surfing. Something lit a fire under him. Next time Pipeline was pumping he was one of the first ones of the day to paddle out.

  All of a sudden he was on it. He focused on surfing to the exclusion of everything else. He was done goofing off in the comparatively low-key breaks down the coast at Chun’s Reef, Lani’s, and Hale-’iwa, where we’d learned to surf years earlier. Where the lineup was more easygoing. He would only surf the breaks that attracted the top photographers. Go big or go home—that was Liam.

  So, Pipeline, Rocky Point, and Sunset. Movie-star waves. He was out there every day. Maybe it was because he’d been training to be a teenage drug kingpin, but the gnarly Hawaiians who ruled those lineups didn’t faze him. If there was one lesson we’d taken away from our childhood it was that no one was going to give you anything, and if you wanted something, you had to step up and work for it or do without. Had Liam waited for one of the locals to pass up a wave of distinction he’d probably still be sitting there.

  Instead, if he felt it was time he had a turn, he took off on the best waves, usually the third wave of a set, and always meant for the inner circle of locals. He would paddle behind the heavies, and drop in on anyone else, never caring about the cost.

  I think part of the reason Liam felt confident in stepping up his game was that over time we’d become friends with most of the heavies in the lineup. The Moepono brothers ruled V-land. Junior Boy weighed over three hundred pounds and surfed on the biggest board you’ve ever seen. Somehow he could still fit himself inside a tube, and his turns and cutback were WTF crazy good. When Junior hit the lip he would throw off so much spray you felt like you were being hit with a fire hose. He had three equally massive brothers. Alika, who weighed in at only 275, was a sweetheart, a gentle giant. Elliot was more outspoken and in your face. Alan was a year younger than I was and my best friend for a while.

  Once Junior was angry at Alan for something and pulled his big hand back to slap him, but Alan ducked. I took that openhanded smack in the side of the head. Three hundred plus pounds of Hawaiian god chief of V-land power—it was a miracle I didn’t walk away with a broken jaw.

  Perry Dane was a haole local who may have had a squirt of Hawaiian blood. He was all about crowd control, would let you surf or not depending on his mood. You piss him off, he’d send you back to the beach.

  The east side North Shore heavies were bigger, meaner, and more insular than any other locals at any other break on the island. They were mostly Hawaiians and Samoans, and if you were white, or not from the North Shore and at least on nodding terms with the regulars, every time you paddled out you risked getting slapped or sent in to the beach or both.

  Maybe it was because Liam and I had had to figure out how to get along with a lot of different kinds of people from the time we were little—the people who came and went at the commune, our dad’s friends and girlfriends and restaurant workers in Berkeley, Mad Bob and Luis and the various lunatics from the Christ Family—but even though we were haoles, we were accepted. We were V-land boys, the smallest white boys in the lineup, scrappy and willing to work for our waves. We were proud of our spot and our friends.

  ONE DAY at Pipe the swells were pumping from the northwest. Three to four feet Hawaiian, a few feet overhead. A good time, but not the huge waves I’d come to prefer. Wind offshore, respectable A-frame breaking at Backdoor. When this wave is breaking two surfers can take off at the same time: one takes the left, which is Pipeline proper; one takes the right, which is Backdoor. It’s the perfect wave for a regular-foot/goofy-foot brother duo. Regular-foot big brother Garrett takes off on the room-to-roam Backdoor right, goofy-foot little brother Liam takes off left and squeezes himself into barreling Pipeline left. Everybody wins. We’d done it so often our mom had painted a picture of that very scenario.

  Liam and I paddled out together. We sat on our boards a few yards from each other. Farther down the lineup the usual suspects scowled in our direction. A few grunts and nods. Liam had taken to wearing a white helmet with a dark retractable visor. This was the late eighties, early nineties. Not every kid rolling down a city sidewalk on a bike or board was helmeted, wrist-braced, knee-padded. It was smart to wear a helmet at Pipeline, but no one else did. The visor made it so you couldn’t see Liam’s eyes, couldn’t read him at all. The first wave of the next set gathered itself up and we let it pass, floated over the top a second before it broke at the peak. Second wave, same thing. Third wave came, bigger than the other two, but breaking a way that looked as if my right might be a longer ride, with Liam’s left closing out after only a few seconds.

  I nodded at him, angled my board right, and started paddling. Popped up and made my drop. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of red amid the steep curling turquoise face. At the last minute, he’d decided to go right after all.

  My brother. Catching all the best waves.

  No one charged harder than Liam. He wasn’t a stylist, didn’t have the sweeping elegance of Dane Kealoha or Tom Curren or the up-and-coming Sunny Garcia. Liam always looked as if he was working hard, but he attacked the wave with a seldom seen ferociousness, and people started paying attention.

  In a matter of months he was getting deeply barreled on First Reef Pipeline. First Reef Pipe jacks up the instant it hits the reef, so you’ve got maybe a second to figure out your strategy. Draw too high a line across the face and you’ll get pulled over the falls. Too
low a line and the lip will smash you onto the reef as it folds. Liam was able to carve the perfect line, as though he’d been born to it. Over at Rocky Point, he was working on aerial moves, practicing his ollies on a spacious left that rolled in during a west swell. He was doing it all, and I could only watch in amazement.

  THE THIRD summer I went to Japan, in 1987, Liam came with me. We stayed with Shinzo Tonuma and surfed with the Sakino brothers at Sagawa River Mouth, my usual routine. We flew to Niijima, drank with traveling pros at the Red Velvet Bar. We surfed in some contests. Liam rocketed past me, a fire in him that wasn’t in me. Peakaboo, my best sponsor, signed him before the trip was over.

  “Five K a month, brah. Not bad. Just like you said,” said Liam on the long flight home.

  I didn’t say anything. Peakaboo was paying me five hundred a month. I’ve never been much of a worrier, but since I’d injured my back I’d become one. Was my own brother going to snap up all my sponsors? What would that mean for me?

  SOMETHING BAD HAPPENS

  LIAM AND I DIDN’T have much to do with each other after that.

  I didn’t care to paddle out when Liam was in the water. He thought nothing about taking all the good waves when we were out together, and I wasn’t about to get into it with him. Knowing when something was worth the fight was, for all my failings, something I knew in my bones. There was nothing to be gained battling him head to head. Even though many of my sponsors were signing him to bigger, better deals, I wasn’t into aerial moves or obsessed with getting barreled at ten-foot Pipeline, his specialty. He continued to focus on Pipe and Rockies; I surfed Velzyland, Backdoor, Wai-mea, and Sunset. There was plenty of ocean for both of us.

  I dreamed of monster waves, the moving mountains of water that showed up a few times every winter at Wai-mea, and at Avalanche, an outer break southwest of Hale-’iwa. On the other side of the lineup the reef drops off into the abyss. When a huge swell hits, Avalanche morphs into a deep blue peak, black diamond run–steep. Dropping in feels like jumping off a cliff.

  I just let it go. I didn’t know what I was doing, didn’t have a scheme or a plan or a sense of what I might do in order to woo back all those sponsors. I just got up every day and paddled out and hoped that in time something would happen.

  I sought out less crowded lineups at Sunset and Lani’s. My old stomping ground, Hale-’iwa, where it was mellower, not too much gnarly energy, just Hale-’iwa boys having fun. Kerry Terukina, Marvin Foster, and Brock Little, my former high-school classmate. Brock was doing the stuff I dreamed of—in 1990 he came in second in the Eddie, getting barreled on a big, hollow twenty-footer.

  The Eddie is officially the Quiksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau. The event is celebrated internationally, and people travel from all over the world for the opening ceremony. A pure-blooded Hawaiian, Eddie was one of the most beloved surfers who ever called the Bay his home break, and also Wai-mea’s first official lifeguard. During his ten-year-long watch Eddie saved hundreds of people and never lost anyone, even during the most massive, churning storms, when people who should have known better should have stayed on the beach. He is said to have surfed every major Wai-mea swell during those years. In 1978 he volunteered to crew on Hōkūle’a, the double-hulled voyaging canoe bound for Tahiti by way of the ancient Polynesian route. A dozen miles south of Moloka’i, in rough seas, the canoe started taking on water. Eddie leaped on his surfboard as the canoe was capsizing and paddled in the direction of Lā-na’i, in search of help. Everyone was eventually rescued, but Eddie was never found.

  The first Eddie was held in 1984 at Sunset on a nothing-special eight-foot day. In 1985 the organizers moved it to Wai-mea, Eddie’s home turf, and decided the one-day tournament would only go on if the waves were the size that met with Eddie’s liking—minimum twenty feet Hawaiian, which means breaking wave faces of forty to fifty feet. Revered uncle of North Shore surfing George Downing calls the contest. Or, he says, he listens to the surf and the Bay calls the day. Every year the three-month holding period begins on December 1. If the twenty-footers fail to materialize before the end of February, the contest is scratched and it’s better luck next year. The twenty-foot wave is a strict requirement, so strict that the Eddie has been held only nine times in thirty-one years.

  The participants are chosen by a panel of experts—big-wave surfers, photographers, journalists, industry reps. Recommendations are forwarded to Quiksilver and the Aikau family, who make the final decision about who paddles out. Just to be invited is an honor and a dream come true.

  I was standing in line at Foodland on a January day in 1990 and heard the checker tell the person in line in front of me that the Eddie was on. Foodland is the only grocery store on the North Shore, not far from Shark’s Cove where Pūpū-kea Road meets Kam Highway. Every surfer who winds up on the North Shore, which is to say pretty much every big-name surfer in the world, finds himself or herself buying some orange juice or tortilla chips at Foodland now and then. The checkout clerks hear it all and they know everything. I left my groceries in the cart, jumped in a new-to-me VW Rabbit with a sunroof and crap transmission, sped down Kam Highway, parked on the beachside beneath the kiawe trees, and ran down to the sand. I could feel the crash of the waves in my teeth, in my chest. Surf was indeed up.

  The contest is invitation only. Some of the Hale-’iwa boys had been invited, including Brock. The swells were huge, but the offshore wind was stiff and the waves were holding up nicely and marching in so fast, the way Hawaiian waves do.

  The lineup was crowded. Regular contests are organized into heats where two or four—six at the most—surfers ride for a set length of time, usually an hour for big-wave contests. The judges take your top three rides from your two heats. You might get all three waves in one heat, or two in one heat and one in the other. Doesn’t matter. There were thirty-three surfers in the 1990 Eddie, and since it was and is a one day tournament, they surfed their heats eleven guys at a time.

  I arrived in time to catch Brock’s second heat. First wave was a slab, thick, and rolling in so fast. Fifty-foot face easy. He took off with confidence, the wave rising steep behind him. So much moving water, threads of whitewash sucked up the face, and then the heavy lip beginning to curl. His line looked good until he hit some serious chop, was airborne, and somersaulted all the way down. The crowd on the beach went “Ahhhohhhhhhh!” and the wave closed out on him.

  He popped up, retrieved his board, and paddled back out. Next wave. Same slab, same inconceivable amount of heavy open swell rearing up as it entered the Bay. Maybe he thought he took the wrong line before, because he took off deep, and lo and behold the wave pitched up and started to curl top to bottom. He shot into the tube and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. No one got barreled at Wai-mea. Pipeline, yes. Wai-mea, no. The wave wasn’t built for it. The human body wasn’t built for it. If you misread your line or couldn’t keep your rail dug into the face and wiped out and got smashed by the lip, you were just asking to be paralyzed for life. That was the thinking.

  Yet here was Brock shooting out of the barrel, foam ball spitting behind him. He tried to turn, but his gun couldn’t hold the edge and he fell off. It didn’t matter. Everyone on the beach was hollering and applauding, judges included.

  I’M NOT envious by nature but on that day I sure did envy Brock Little. I became obsessed. Getting barreled on a twenty-foot wave was all I thought about, from the moment I woke up in the morning until I closed my eyes at night. I could imagine the glassy tunnel spinning round me, so hollow, so roomy I could stand up. Fingertips running along the smooth face. Long seconds of silence. Teardrop of pale sky at the end. Big white foam ball chasing me until I popped out, a half second before the wave closed and was gone. I no longer cared about sponsors and contests and photographs and whether Liam was viewed as the hard charger and I was viewed as the brother of the hard charger. This was all I wanted, my lone desire.

  The week before Brock got barreled at the Eddie, I’d cracked my rib at Wai-mea.
It’s why I’d been lollygagging at Foodland in the middle of the day instead of in the water. I was trying to be smart, trying to take it easy and heal up.

  It was easy to control the impulse to paddle out when the waves were little. A week later, on January 28, 1990, Super Bowl Sunday, another low-pressure system in the Pacific sent giant waves rolling into the Bay, set after set. I squeezed into my two wet suits, tossed my board into the Rabbit, and drove to Wai-mea.

  I’m stoked. I’ve taken time off to heal and rest, spent three four five days out of the water. What more can anyone expect? I’m thinking I’m kind of invincible. Other guys paddle out injured; why not me? Liam’s not the only hard charger. I wasn’t showing enough respect for the ocean and her power, not respecting what she can do to the human body. But I wasn’t thinking about that because I was feeling invincible after my wipeout. I paddle into the first wave, come down, catch it perfectly. It’s fifteen to eighteen feet, not too big but really hollow. I’m roaring down the face, no boil this time. But the wave doubles up and jukes out midface, water streaked with foam and bubbles. I air-drop, make it. Come down and somehow another air-drop, make it. I get to the bottom and I look up and the barrel is there and it’s hollow and ready, and I punch my board as hard as I can. But the fin cavitates—air bubbles collect around it—and my board won’t turn. I fall on my face and the wave breaks on my head. I cannonball around in the darkness, come up, a couple more waves pound me, I come up again and I’m hungry for more. Yeah, right on! I climb up my leash and slide on my board and paddle back out for more. Exact same thing. Wave a little bigger, solid twenty-footer. Air-drop, make it, another air-drop, make it, get to the bottom, even bigger barrel, punch it, board goes straight, again fall on my face, again heavy twenty-footer breaks right on my back, square. Something bad happens. I think I’ve hit a finger of lava rock jutting up from the bottom, but it’s my own heel knocking me in the head. Wave after wave pounds me, but all this time underwater doesn’t matter: lack of air is nothing compared to this pain.