My training was a do-it-yourself regime that made sense to me. I had no fitness trainer or surfing coach. I awoke in the dark and lifted weights under the covered patio behind the house.
Then I rode my mountain bike up Pūpū-kea Hill and to the heiau at the top of Pu’u-o-mahuka Road. Three hundred feet up a steep and winding one-lane track through the jungle sits the Pu’u-o-mahuka Heiau, the biggest heiau, or temple, on the North Shore. Once there were buildings here made of stone and coral, places where Hawaiians practiced their religion. After the death of Kamehameha the Great in 1819 the Hawaiian system of religion was outlawed by his son Liholiho, and the heiau was burned to the ground. All that remains is the huge rectangular foundation, outlined with boulders of lava, with a stupendous view of the yellow sands and milky green waters of Waimea Bay and Kam Highway snaking along beside it. When the waves were pumping you could see the swells marching in straight, blue corduroy. In the distance on a clear day you can see Kaua’i.
Once I reached the heiau I was winded and drenched with sweat. I read the informational plaques while I caught my breath. Four powerful Hawaiian gods were worshipped here: Kāne, the creator of all things; Kū, the god of war; Lono, the god of fertility; Kanaloa, the god of the ocean. All seemed auspicious. I would imagine I was marching around the heiau with them, receiving infusions of their mana, their power.
During the first weeks I thought I was going to give myself a heart attack. It was a mile up and a mile back. My legs ached as I stood on the pedals and crawled uphill. The air was heavy and humid and didn’t seem to want anything to do with my lungs. My head pounded from espresso withdrawals. I kept at it, and things got better. Titus had turned four that spring, and after a while he would ride up the hill with me, charging along on his little BMX bike.
Sunset Beach Elementary School, more or less directly across from Pipeline, on the other side of the highway, had a quarter-mile track where I ran after work. There were four benches along the long stretches. I’d do wind sprints between the benches, then sit down and hold my breath while doing sit-ups, push-ups, and dips. The point was to train myself to be comfortable with not being able to breathe during the beatings I would take after a wipeout. To surf the big waves you not only have to be in great shape, you also have to be able to feel relaxed during a hold-down.
Sixty-foot waves can hold you down for half a minute or more. It can seem like an eternity, but if you’re popped back out and not hurled upon reef or rocks, it’s probably not enough to kill you. The problem comes when the wave has also flung you down, say, forty feet. The interval between set waves can be as short as fifteen seconds. If you’re struggling in the dark far below the surface, unsure which way is up, you might not make it up between waves for a life-saving gulp of air.
Sometimes I’d run three or four times around the track, then do my breath exercise. I also went free diving and cave diving. In the summer, when the ocean is flat, there are also a few spots where you can run from rock to rock along the bottom. Shark’s Cove, at the Pūpū-kea state park, between Pipeline and Wai-mea, was the perfect spot. Eventually, I trained myself to hold my breath for four minutes and thirty-three seconds.
Whether lifting weights or riding my bike or running the track, I kept at the forefront of my mind the goals I set out for myself. I envisioned standing at the podium after I’d won the Eddie. Since the Jaws Tow-In contest had never run before, I couldn’t imagine myself after I’d triumphed. Instead, I put myself at the end of the towrope amid the wild, churning, deep ocean waves of Pe’ahi. My partner on the perfectly tuned-up jet-ski would slingshot me into the perfect spot on a massive dark blue behemoth and down I’d go, rocketing across the face, the roar of the wave crashing behind me. I’d have three perfect rides, then get barreled on the fourth.
I would always be having the time of my life.
Usually while I was training I’d listen to music and focus on my breathing. I was praying. I was focusing. I was manifesting. I was meditating. And always in a spirit of humility. I was realistic about my surfing ability. I did honestly think most everyone was better than me, but I trusted in this plan, and on my ability to see it through. And every day I thanked God in advance for the way he was going to bless me.
Pretty much everyone I knew thought I was crazy.
I hired a few people to help me at the store. When the waves were good I would be in the water at least three hours a day, sometimes as long as eight. Every morning I got up in the dark, long before Connie and the kids. Depending on the size and direction of the swell, I would either ride my bike to Wai-mea, or drive five minutes to Sunset. If it was pumping, I’d get in a short session before my workout. Otherwise, I’d train in the dark, then surf later in the day.
There’s nothing like paddling out while dawn is breaking to make you grateful for everything.
One day near the end of the year I paddled out at Lani’s. That underappreciated break is still one of my favorite rights. It was rarely breaking, but when it was on it offered one of the longest rides on the North Shore, with three possible barrel sections. You paddled outside at the point. Soon a long wave would roll up and offer the smoothest ride back to the beach. My shoulders felt good paddling out. I was breathing easy, clearheaded and at peace. The swells were maybe twelve feet; the wind onshore so the waves were a little mushy. I didn’t care. I felt grateful, even though the only thing that had changed was my intention. I still was tied to the shop, still had no money, still struggled with the urge to escape, but I could not have been happier.
That night when I got home there was a letter for me. A heavy, creamy envelope from Quiksilver inviting me to be an alternate in the 2001–2002 Eddie. I was number seven on the list.
JAWS
I LAY IN BED listening to the windows rattling. Middle of the night, pitch black, morning of January 7, 2002. Whenever the surf was huge the windows rattled with every set wave that crashed at Wai-mea. A low rattle signaled twenty-foot swells. Higher pitched, and I knew we were talking thirty plus. This meant sixty-foot faces. This meant macking waves big enough to make surfing and meteorological history.
I breathed deeply and worked on not getting too excited.
The energy I’d been putting out there since late August must have had a trickster vibe. In the first week of January a huge storm slammed into the islands, delivering mammoth swells to the northern shores of both O’ahu and Maui. Something I never counted on when I wrote my blueprint—that the Eddie and the Jaws World Cup would take place at the same time on the same day.
I’d found my tow-in partner for the Jaws contest only a month before. Rodrigo “Monster” Resende was a renowned Brazilian big-wave surfer who also rode for Bad Boy. He let it be known that he wanted to get into tow-in surfing, and since the contest was sponsored by Studio Mega/Brazil it made sense, strategically, to partner up. I knew that if I was towing in with a Brazilian my chances of being invited were that much better, and sure enough, our team received an invitation.
Rodrigo showed up on the North Shore around the first of December. A lot of Brazilian surfers have big personalities, are loud and outgoing, but Rodrigo was humble, quiet, and focused. He didn’t try to cover up the little detail that he had never driven a jet-ski before.
Okay.
First thing was to teach him how to simply drive the ’ski. We hooked the jet-ski trailer to the back of the Ford Taurus and drove to Hale-’iwa harbor. The surf was tiny that day, shoulder-high, dribbling in from the west. We backed the ’ski in the water. A family with two little children wearing neon pink life jackets stood and watched.
Just around the point, five minutes from the harbor, there was both a right and left breaking wave that had a short bowl section near the end. Jaws was a violent, racing right with a towering C-shaped bowl that could crush your skull during a bad wipeout, but with a bit of imagination—okay, a lot of imagination—this wave was Jaws-like. The small size worked to our advantage from a training perspective. On big days you’re riding down
this mountainous swell and you have some time to get situated. On little days the waves just pop up and you’ve got to act fast. It’s more difficult to tow-in properly to a small swell because there’s less wave face to work with, and you’ve only got one shot to get it right before the wave breaks.
We sat together on the ’ski, bobbing in the channel. I taught him how to steer the jet-ski, and how to gauge the thirty feet of rope so that he could place me right on the peak of the wave.
I slid onto my board, fed my feet into the straps, and picked up the towrope. A little crowd had gathered on the beach. I’m sure they wondered what on earth we were doing, towing into two-foot waves.
“Imagine this is Jaws!” I hollered.
Rodrigo turned around and looked at me, confused. “Ah, come on Garrett. What are you talking about?”
“Look! There’s the right and a little left, just like Jaws! Put me on the right!”
Rodrigo gunned the ’ski, dropped me on the wave as if he’d been doing it all his life, at the perfect place on the little bowl. He nailed it on the first try. We did it a few more times just to make sure he had the hang of it. “Amazing,” I said, “you’re a total natural.” He thanked me, but thought he should train more. At the event there would be a safety crew on call among the swells, so Rodrigo wouldn’t be responsible for saving my life, just getting me where I needed to be.
I felt confident.
Cut to: two weeks later.
At the end of December, the Jaws contest organizers put the competitors on forty-eight-hour standby notice. Surfers were traveling from all over the world, and this gave them time to get themselves and their equipment to Maui. Rodrigo and I grabbed a flight from Honolulu that afternoon.
Next morning we arrived in the predawn dark at Maliko Gulch to launch our jet-ski and saw immediately that the waves were junk, maybe twenty-five feet blown out from an onshore wind and barely breaking. As the sun came up we drove out through the channel into the open ocean. A wave breaks on an outer reef a half mile from shore and it’s fast. When Jaws is macking, the faces can be in the seventy-to-eighty-foot range, moving, conservatively, twenty miles an hour. The surfer is also moving down the wave at twenty miles per hour, which means he’s actually jetting along at thirty to forty, sometimes even fifty, miles an hour, depending on the wave.
This is much faster than the speed he might be going on an average overhead beach break wave.
Rodrigo gunned the jet-ski and dropped me on a medium-size wave to practice. He positioned me right at the peak. I took off, and just as I was making the drop the wave suddenly hollowed out, removing water from beneath my board. I face-planted and tumbled to the bottom.
I’d watched footage of guys surfing Jaws in the past and I always thought, What the hell are they doing on the shoulder? There’s a freakin’ barrel behind them and they’re lounging around waiting for what, exactly?
Now I knew. They were trying not to get killed. After that first wave, I could feel my heart banging with fear. I was scared shitless. My goal instantly readjusted itself from winning to just surviving. I didn’t know what I was going to do.
The contest was scratched. The junk waves blew out into ten-foot mush. Rodrigo and I flew back to O’ahu. I kept training. I wasn’t sure about winning the Jaws contest anymore. I tried to let go of my terror, but occasionally my prayers would include one that the three-month holding period for the Jaws contest would pass without another significant swell. I turned my focus to winning the Eddie. I knew I could win at Wai-mea. My own backyard. I could see the back of the wave from my front yard. I’d already broken my back there. I’d already eaten it on the biggest wave I’d ever encountered there. I’d surfed it so many times I felt as if I could do it with my eyes closed.
THEN CAME the first week in January and the window-rattling swell, and both contests called for the same day.
The night before I was up every hour calling to check on the buoy and wind readings. Every hour the forecast was updated, and throughout the night both the wind readings and the projected wave heights increased. I prayed that at Jaws the swells would ease off, peter out to nothing special. I lay down on the top of the covers. Closed my eyes and tried to breathe, then hopped up and checked again. I called out to Jesus, Buddha, Lightning Amen, Universe, whoever was up at that hour, to give me a sign. Meanwhile, the windows were rattling at a higher pitch. It was huge out there.
I was convinced I could win the Eddie, but there was a detail I kept conveniently overlooking. I was an alternate. The year before I had also been an alternate and had the depressing experience of being called in to compete, donning the neon bright jersey, paddling out to the lineup, nodding to the other six guys in the heat, then being called back in. The alternate on the list before me had been running late. I was devastated. What if that happened again? What if I passed on Jaws in lieu of the Eddie, then sat on the beach again? Also, what about Rodrigo? He’d come all this way, trusted me to take the lead on what was more or less my home turf. We were partners.
ONCE AGAIN we arrived just before dawn. Roy Patterson, my old mentor from the Wave Cave, had moved to Maui years earlier and let us borrow his ’ski for the contest. It was the Cadillac of jet-skis, with running lights and fishing rod holders and a nice sound system.
We turned off Hana Highway onto a winding, potholed road. It’s a dark tunnel of jungle foliage that runs alongside a river. The way is usually clear, but this time, as soon as we turn off the highway we hear cracking, scraping, clonking sounds of kukui nuts and debris hitting the undercarriage of the truck. In the headlights we can see all kinds of crap—plastic milk jugs and boat bumpers and big branches. The water had surged all the way up the road.
The air was heavy, funky smelling. Salt, mixed with the smell of the earth. Eerie.
A steep, busted-up concrete ramp lead to the water. You had to line the trailer up with the ramp just perfect. If you started down and a set wave rolled in, the ’ski would be pulled off like a toy. Lots of guys lost ’skis, and even vehicles, to the surf all the time. Big waves broke on the truck, on the trailer as we inched it down the ramp. We worked quickly, timing the waves and launching the ’ski without a problem. The lack of calamity put me in a good mood.
The contest began with a ritual blessing. We stood in a circle as dawn broke, put a hand on the shoulder of the surfer next to us as a local Maui holy man distributed ti leaves for luck, one for each of us and one for our ’ski. He said these waves were big and serious and that we must make it our goal to take care of one another out there. Rodrigo gave my shoulder a let’s-go pat, and we were off.
Out there it was wild and busy with jet-skis and sleds and photographers with their big waterproof-casing-enclosed cameras in little boats, and the safety crews with oxygen tanks and backboards in their larger boats, and helicopters overhead darting around like big tropical birds. The whirling blades drowned out by the roar of the waves.
There were two one-hour-long rounds. Each team had one hour to surf, switching places at the halfway point. Rodrigo surfed the first round and I surfed the second. The best three waves of each surfer would be scored and added to the best three of his partner. The team with the highest score would win.
Straightforward enough, but everyone knew that making six of these monsters in sixty minutes—that’s ten minutes per monster—meant making no serious mistakes. A noninjury wipeout would sap your energy and slow you down, and valuable minutes would be lost as your partner zipped over to where you’d be gulping down air and trying not to feel dizzy, and then you hauled yourself onto the sled and quickly got your shit together to try it all again. If your feet slipped out of the straps and you lost your board, good luck finding it. Oh wait, there it is, bashed against the rocks.
In the interest of general safety, I’d also made our flotation gear at home, cutting the “flotation” pieces out of life jackets and using wetsuit glue to secure them inside our suits, and then wore life jackets on top of that. We were ahead of the curve, but
obviously our DIY approach was no comparison to the custom Body Glove survival suit I wear today.
It was windy. The dark blue waves were raked with massive chops. Our plan was to play it safe and make our first three waves. If there was time left after that we would focus on catching another wave and pulling into the barrel.
I put him onto three perfect waves, maybe in the fifty-to sixty-foot range, and he surfs them flawlessly. I have no doubt they’ll be among the highest scored all day (I am right).
As I put him on the fourth one, he takes off and pulls in high but the barrel, which is usually perfectly round, takes on a weird oval shape and pinches shut, clamping down on him, and he’s sucked up and over the falls and disappears into the pounding, white water.
I watch from where I sit on the jet-ski just outside, looking for the tiny human head, a dark bead of color among the acres of aerated, foamy water.
He is under for a long time.
I spot him but have only seconds to rush in and grab him—a mountain of white water from the wave behind me is bearing down. I gun the ’ski, make it to where he’s bobbing around, and pull him onto the sled. I give the ’ski some gas, but nothing happens. I try again even though I know what’s happening—the ’ski cavitating in the foam; the impeller flooded with aerated water.
I’m a little panicked, mostly because I’m aware that this isn’t my jet-ski, but a ten-thousand-dollar Cadillac and prized possession that Roy was generous enough to let me borrow. I grit my teeth, gun the ’ski again. It goes nowhere.
When you’re in the foam it’s like being stuck in the mud with an avalanche coming right at you. The white water closes in all around us. Rodrigo is out of breath and completely exhausted, but being the selfless champion that he is, he slides off the sled and gives Roy’s ’ski a push, hoping to shove me out of harm’s way. But the wave eats him, then grabs me and tosses me twenty feet into the air. I now bless Roy Patterson for having a ’ski with all the bells and whistles—he’d also sprung for foot straps. High up in the air, I grip the handlebars and use my feet to keep myself attached to the ’ski. I can’t think of anything else to do, knowing that most likely I will fall over and, in this surf, it will be the end of me, and definitely the end of the ’ski.
Hound of the Sea Page 15
