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This programme contains some strong language. | 0:00:02 | 0:00:09 | |
MUSIC: "Messe Solonelle: Sanctus" by The Orpheus Chamber Ensemble | 0:00:12 | 0:00:16 | |
MUSIC: "Don't Stay" by Linkin Park | 0:00:50 | 0:00:52 | |
MUSIC STOPS | 0:01:11 | 0:01:13 | |
The ancient Hawaiian sport of surfing can be traced back | 0:01:40 | 0:01:44 | |
as far as 1,000 years ago, as men, women, children | 0:01:44 | 0:01:47 | |
and Hawaii's great King Kamehameha enjoyed the thrill of riding waves. | 0:01:47 | 0:01:52 | |
In the earliest description of the sport by a visiting European, | 0:01:54 | 0:01:58 | |
Captain James Cook observed upon watching an Hawaiian surf rider | 0:01:58 | 0:02:02 | |
in the year of 1777: | 0:02:02 | 0:02:04 | |
"I could not help concluding | 0:02:04 | 0:02:06 | |
"that this man felt the most supreme pleasure | 0:02:06 | 0:02:08 | |
"while he was being driven on so fast and so smoothly by the sea." | 0:02:08 | 0:02:14 | |
Then in the 1800s, | 0:02:14 | 0:02:16 | |
the waves fell flat with the arrival of the Calvados missionaries. | 0:02:16 | 0:02:21 | |
Shocked and outraged by the state of undress | 0:02:21 | 0:02:24 | |
and the easy mixing of the sexes that surfing fostered, | 0:02:24 | 0:02:27 | |
the missionaries banned the sport. | 0:02:27 | 0:02:29 | |
The extinct Polynesian pastime | 0:02:31 | 0:02:33 | |
was then reintroduced in the early 20th century by Alexander Hume Ford, | 0:02:33 | 0:02:37 | |
a globetrotting promoter who set about reviving Island tourism | 0:02:37 | 0:02:42 | |
by romanticising surfing at Waikiki. | 0:02:42 | 0:02:44 | |
In 1912, came surfing's first international icon. | 0:02:47 | 0:02:50 | |
Waikiki beach boy and celebrated Olympic swimming champion, | 0:02:50 | 0:02:54 | |
Duke Kahanamoku. | 0:02:54 | 0:02:56 | |
The only surfer to ever appear on a US stamp. | 0:02:56 | 0:02:59 | |
While travelling the globe giving swimming demonstrations, | 0:02:59 | 0:03:03 | |
Duke became surfing's Johnny Appleseed, | 0:03:03 | 0:03:06 | |
introducing his favourite sport to far-flung places like California, New York and Australia. | 0:03:06 | 0:03:11 | |
One of the fans enthralled by the Duke | 0:03:11 | 0:03:14 | |
was a young Wisconsin swimming champion named Tom Blake. | 0:03:14 | 0:03:18 | |
Relocating to Hawaii, Blake would go on to become | 0:03:18 | 0:03:21 | |
one of the 20th-century's most influential surfers through his innovative surfboard design, | 0:03:21 | 0:03:25 | |
but most importantly, through his advocacy of surfing as a way of life. | 0:03:25 | 0:03:30 | |
By 1948, surfing had taken root along the California coast, | 0:03:41 | 0:03:46 | |
where a skinny, 10-year-old kid from Hermosa Beach named Greg Noll | 0:03:46 | 0:03:50 | |
found himself immersed in the emerging subculture. | 0:03:50 | 0:03:54 | |
Following in the footsteps of pioneers like Pete Peterson and Lorrin Harrison, | 0:03:54 | 0:03:58 | |
Noll eagerly joined the ranks of these eccentric sportsmen, | 0:03:58 | 0:04:03 | |
carving out an entirely new and free-spirited lifestyle. | 0:04:03 | 0:04:06 | |
Those guys were all gentlemanly. | 0:04:06 | 0:04:07 | |
It was a different era, a different time. | 0:04:07 | 0:04:10 | |
Something went to hell in the early '50s. It's like somebody threw a light switch. | 0:04:10 | 0:04:14 | |
When the lightweight longboard came in, something happened. | 0:04:14 | 0:04:18 | |
# Hey babe | 0:04:19 | 0:04:21 | |
# I don't feel like going to school no more | 0:04:21 | 0:04:24 | |
# Me neither. # | 0:04:24 | 0:04:26 | |
It was the introduction of lightweight balsawood | 0:04:26 | 0:04:29 | |
and the newly discovered aerospace material fibreglass | 0:04:29 | 0:04:32 | |
that suddenly cut the weight of surfboards in half, | 0:04:32 | 0:04:34 | |
and paved the way for a younger generation to begin picking up the offbeat support. | 0:04:34 | 0:04:40 | |
There was this great feeling | 0:04:40 | 0:04:42 | |
of individuality and freedom | 0:04:42 | 0:04:44 | |
from being able to ride this wave, and it made us feel free and I think maybe almost rebellious. | 0:04:44 | 0:04:49 | |
the ride itself is such a bitching deal. So rewarding. | 0:04:49 | 0:04:53 | |
It becomes so important to you that it becomes | 0:04:53 | 0:04:56 | |
the object around which you plan the rest of your life, | 0:04:56 | 0:04:59 | |
and everyone else is planning around money and acquisition of money. | 0:04:59 | 0:05:02 | |
And all of a sudden, a bunch of guys come along and go, "Screw the money, | 0:05:02 | 0:05:06 | |
"I'm having all the fun I could possibly have, girls are loving it, | 0:05:06 | 0:05:10 | |
"we're a bunch of scroungy surfers." | 0:05:10 | 0:05:11 | |
The shittier you dress and the funnier language you talk, | 0:05:11 | 0:05:14 | |
nobody understood half the stuff we were saying because it was surf jargon, | 0:05:14 | 0:05:18 | |
the more fun we were having, the more it would piss off society. | 0:05:18 | 0:05:21 | |
# Well you're sexy and 17 | 0:05:21 | 0:05:24 | |
# My little rock a boat queen | 0:05:24 | 0:05:27 | |
# That's a little bit I seen | 0:05:27 | 0:05:29 | |
# Gotta let off a little steam. # | 0:05:29 | 0:05:31 | |
With a devotion to riding waves came the creation of a new lifestyle, | 0:05:31 | 0:05:35 | |
centred around all things beach. | 0:05:35 | 0:05:38 | |
# Shake it around your body, body, body. # | 0:05:38 | 0:05:42 | |
This emerging lifestyle went in direct opposition to mainstream values. | 0:05:50 | 0:05:54 | |
Surfers were often regarded as nothing more than beach bums. | 0:05:54 | 0:05:58 | |
My parents never saw me surf. They thought it was a disease. | 0:06:00 | 0:06:03 | |
They couldn't come to the game, they couldn't see the score up on the board, | 0:06:03 | 0:06:09 | |
and couldn't understand what good it did. | 0:06:09 | 0:06:11 | |
Greg Noll talks about his principal calling him into the office saying, | 0:06:11 | 0:06:15 | |
"What are you guys doing down there on the beach, | 0:06:15 | 0:06:17 | |
"what exactly are you doing?" | 0:06:17 | 0:06:19 | |
Not just going at the surf, what are you doing on the beach? | 0:06:19 | 0:06:23 | |
For the first time ever, they had a group of guys who didn't give a rat's ass | 0:06:23 | 0:06:27 | |
dropping out of the basketball team and football team, giving the whole thing the finger, | 0:06:27 | 0:06:31 | |
and going, I don't give a shit, I want to go surfing. | 0:06:31 | 0:06:34 | |
For this new generation of surfers, | 0:06:39 | 0:06:41 | |
surfing wasn't just something you did, but something you became. | 0:06:41 | 0:06:45 | |
Not just a sport, but a statement. | 0:06:45 | 0:06:48 | |
I think getting radical was part of the culture at that time. | 0:06:48 | 0:06:51 | |
After a while, it was expected of us and therefore we fulfilled those expectations. | 0:06:51 | 0:06:56 | |
Some guy's dad had got back from the war and had a closet full of Nazi stuff that he brought back, | 0:06:56 | 0:07:01 | |
and then they went over and took flexes and rode down a storm drain for a mile underneath Windansea. | 0:07:01 | 0:07:07 | |
And that was just, you know, having a good time, but people see it and go, "Oh, what's this all about?" | 0:07:26 | 0:07:32 | |
That behaviour was not mean-spirited. It was playful. It was like turning a hearse into a surf mobile. | 0:07:32 | 0:07:37 | |
Instead of dead bodies, it was all about living life to the full. | 0:07:37 | 0:07:41 | |
Amidst the mirth and mayhem of the fledgling surf scenes, | 0:07:41 | 0:07:44 | |
from Windansea to San Onofre to Malibu, | 0:07:44 | 0:07:46 | |
much homage was given to the sport's Polynesian roots, | 0:07:46 | 0:07:50 | |
with grass shacks, floral Aloha shirts and the playing of ukuleles. | 0:07:50 | 0:07:55 | |
But on a winter morning in 1953, another Hawaiian import | 0:07:59 | 0:08:03 | |
landed like a bomb on the front porch of California. | 0:08:03 | 0:08:07 | |
I can remember I was a 14-year-old paperboy | 0:08:07 | 0:08:10 | |
delivering papers in Santa Monica - | 0:08:10 | 0:08:12 | |
it was the Evening Outlook and I got to work that afternoon | 0:08:12 | 0:08:14 | |
I looked at the front page | 0:08:14 | 0:08:15 | |
and there was Buzzy Trent, George Downing and Wally Froiseth | 0:08:15 | 0:08:19 | |
coming down the face of what looked like a 30-foot wave. | 0:08:19 | 0:08:22 | |
This simple image sent shockwaves through California's emerging surf culture, | 0:08:27 | 0:08:31 | |
triggering the first migration of West Coast surfers | 0:08:31 | 0:08:34 | |
to the Hawaiian Islands and Oahu's Makaha Beach. | 0:08:34 | 0:08:38 | |
# Wind and wave and sand and sunshine... # | 0:08:38 | 0:08:44 | |
It was Makaha's combination of smooth, | 0:08:44 | 0:08:46 | |
crystal-blue warm water and large, gently-tapered waves | 0:08:46 | 0:08:50 | |
that helped create surfing's first accessible big-wave riding paradise. | 0:08:50 | 0:08:54 | |
# Just to ride Makaha waves... # | 0:08:54 | 0:08:59 | |
At Makaha, if we had ten guys on a good day, that was a lot. | 0:08:59 | 0:09:02 | |
You knew every one of them - they were there every time. | 0:09:02 | 0:09:05 | |
To us, that was a crowd at that time. | 0:09:05 | 0:09:06 | |
You'd be out there for about two, three hours. | 0:09:06 | 0:09:10 | |
And you'd only catch, like, five waves. | 0:09:10 | 0:09:12 | |
Cos you don't want to mess it up. | 0:09:12 | 0:09:15 | |
You don't have no leash and you were out there. | 0:09:15 | 0:09:18 | |
When you wipe out, there's nobody. | 0:09:18 | 0:09:21 | |
# And the surfers ride their high boards | 0:09:21 | 0:09:28 | |
# Toward the bright Makaha shore... # | 0:09:28 | 0:09:35 | |
In the early days, we lived on the beach. We had tents. | 0:09:35 | 0:09:38 | |
Then, later on, we all got together and rented quonset huts - | 0:09:38 | 0:09:42 | |
for 25-50 bucks - ten guys would be in the quonset hut. | 0:09:42 | 0:09:46 | |
You know, so it was cheap, that was an upgrade. | 0:09:46 | 0:09:49 | |
It was easygoing, no problems, no hassles. | 0:09:49 | 0:09:52 | |
You know, we used to leave our board on the beach there, go into Waikiki | 0:09:52 | 0:09:57 | |
for two days, come back - it'd still be there, nobody'd touch it. | 0:09:57 | 0:10:00 | |
# Let them love at old Makaha | 0:10:00 | 0:10:07 | |
# On the bright Makaha shore. # | 0:10:08 | 0:10:15 | |
The young Californians were mentored by Makaha's | 0:10:22 | 0:10:24 | |
first generation of big wave riders. | 0:10:24 | 0:10:26 | |
Surfers like Woody Brown, along with Wally Froiseth, George Downing and Buzzy Trent | 0:10:26 | 0:10:31 | |
had spent much of the previous decade challenging Makaha's giant surf. | 0:10:31 | 0:10:37 | |
They were the astronauts of their era, | 0:10:37 | 0:10:39 | |
conquering big waves that no-one had conquered before them. | 0:10:39 | 0:10:42 | |
To me, those guys were bigger than life before I went over there. | 0:10:42 | 0:10:45 | |
That trio of guys were the first really hardcore big wave riders | 0:10:45 | 0:10:51 | |
that set the blueprint for the next generation. | 0:10:51 | 0:10:55 | |
But it was 23-year-old George Downing who carved the mould | 0:10:55 | 0:10:59 | |
from which all other big wave riders were cast. | 0:10:59 | 0:11:01 | |
I think that George Downing in a sense is truly the original big-wave surfer. | 0:11:01 | 0:11:05 | |
Downing designed and built the first true big-wave surfboard. | 0:11:05 | 0:11:10 | |
It was instrumental in exploring many of Oahu's other big wave breaks. | 0:11:10 | 0:11:13 | |
They all wanted to ride more big waves | 0:11:13 | 0:11:16 | |
and Makaha doesn't get big that often. | 0:11:16 | 0:11:18 | |
We had heard these fabulous tales about this deep, dark, | 0:11:18 | 0:11:22 | |
foreboding place called the North Shore. | 0:11:22 | 0:11:25 | |
15 miles up the coast from Makaha was the North Shore - | 0:11:27 | 0:11:31 | |
a remote, 13-mile stretch of coastline backed up against | 0:11:31 | 0:11:34 | |
a patchwork of pineapple fields and taro farms. | 0:11:34 | 0:11:38 | |
I can remember coming out of the pineapple fields of Schofield, | 0:11:44 | 0:11:48 | |
and getting my first glimpse of the North Shore. | 0:11:48 | 0:11:51 | |
Here's this magical place laid out in front of you. | 0:11:51 | 0:11:55 | |
Suddenly they get to a place where all those dreams live. | 0:11:55 | 0:11:59 | |
Every time you'd go another couple of hundred yards, "Shit, there's another place! Look at this!" | 0:11:59 | 0:12:04 | |
At first, we didn't have a clue that we had stumbled on something | 0:12:04 | 0:12:07 | |
so fabulously magical and powerful. | 0:12:07 | 0:12:08 | |
Just taking the waves into consideration, | 0:12:08 | 0:12:10 | |
they must have thought that they'd found Nirvana. | 0:12:10 | 0:12:13 | |
The discovery of the North Shore was surfing's equivalent of Columbus reaching the New World. | 0:12:16 | 0:12:20 | |
Nowhere else on Earth would there be found | 0:12:20 | 0:12:23 | |
so many world-class big wave breaks in such close proximity. | 0:12:23 | 0:12:26 | |
What the Paris runways are to fashion, | 0:12:26 | 0:12:29 | |
is what the North Shore is to the world of surfing. | 0:12:29 | 0:12:32 | |
We're among the first groups of Californians to live out there | 0:12:32 | 0:12:36 | |
and just dedicate themselves to surfing. | 0:12:36 | 0:12:38 | |
MUSIC: "Rudy's Rock" by Bill Haley and The Comets | 0:12:38 | 0:12:42 | |
We were spending, eight, ten hours a day in the water, | 0:12:58 | 0:13:02 | |
doing nothing but surfing our guts out. | 0:13:02 | 0:13:04 | |
There wasn't any home life, so, you know, | 0:13:04 | 0:13:06 | |
we spent our days on the beach and that's what we did. | 0:13:06 | 0:13:08 | |
We surfed all day. Every day - no matter what. | 0:13:08 | 0:13:12 | |
In those days, we never saw girls. | 0:13:12 | 0:13:14 | |
And if you brought a date out | 0:13:14 | 0:13:16 | |
and sat her in the car while you surfed four or five hours, you never had that date again. | 0:13:16 | 0:13:20 | |
These guys came to surf, and it was kind of unheard of... | 0:13:24 | 0:13:28 | |
"You don't have a JOB? You spend a couple of months here to surf?" | 0:13:28 | 0:13:32 | |
No watch. No money. No car. No nothing. | 0:13:32 | 0:13:36 | |
Just shorts and a T-shirt. | 0:13:36 | 0:13:38 | |
There were no hotels - there was one place in Haleiwa that was a set of cubicles. | 0:13:38 | 0:13:42 | |
You'd have guys sharing the place and getting mattresses | 0:13:42 | 0:13:46 | |
from the Salvation Army and throwing 'em on the floor. | 0:13:46 | 0:13:49 | |
I mean, it was a scene to try to make ends meet. | 0:13:49 | 0:13:52 | |
There wasn't a lot of money, so if we wanted to eat, we had to go diving. | 0:13:52 | 0:13:56 | |
We'd dive every day and get fish and lobster - and turtle, in those days. | 0:13:56 | 0:14:01 | |
They'd go pick coconuts and papayas and go fishing - | 0:14:01 | 0:14:05 | |
in those days, you could live off the land. | 0:14:05 | 0:14:07 | |
Guys'd come over from the mainland, they'd patch our surfboards for us for a peanut butter sandwich. | 0:14:07 | 0:14:12 | |
Pat Curren and I, we'd get in a bit of trouble - | 0:14:12 | 0:14:15 | |
we'd steal chickens, or something like that. | 0:14:15 | 0:14:18 | |
MUSIC: "Parchman Farm" by John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers | 0:14:20 | 0:14:26 | |
I mean, the whole thing was waiting for waves. | 0:14:26 | 0:14:29 | |
You know, we would do anything to amuse ourselves and each other, | 0:14:29 | 0:14:31 | |
so somewhere I'd learned about how to put lighter fluid in your mouth | 0:14:31 | 0:14:36 | |
and torch it off! | 0:14:36 | 0:14:38 | |
Actually, I did set the side of that house on fire! | 0:14:38 | 0:14:42 | |
They're just spending their days living in the sun, | 0:14:43 | 0:14:47 | |
and living a life that's not the '50s men-in-a-grey-flannel-suit thing. | 0:14:47 | 0:14:51 | |
It's like an alternative thing the way Kerouac was | 0:14:51 | 0:14:54 | |
and bikers were, except they're having fun. | 0:14:54 | 0:14:57 | |
That was the counter-culture of its day. | 0:14:57 | 0:15:00 | |
You were bucking the system and you went to Hawaii and you rode waves. | 0:15:00 | 0:15:04 | |
They were the pioneers, not only of riding big waves, but of the culture of surfing. | 0:15:07 | 0:15:11 | |
They're the ones who set the pace, this free-and-easy lifestyle. | 0:15:11 | 0:15:15 | |
That really was a unique period in history. | 0:15:15 | 0:15:17 | |
They were doing something so unique in the 20th century. | 0:15:17 | 0:15:21 | |
The fact was, there was a handful of them - it wasn't like jazz, | 0:15:21 | 0:15:24 | |
where there was the Chicago scene and the New York scene, this was IT. | 0:15:24 | 0:15:27 | |
That tiny little epicentre - those two dozen intrepid men | 0:15:27 | 0:15:31 | |
and the women that went with them living that life. | 0:15:31 | 0:15:33 | |
It only lasted a few years. | 0:15:33 | 0:15:35 | |
What a remarkable time that must have been. | 0:15:35 | 0:15:37 | |
MUSIC: "Glass Off" by Bankok Starters | 0:15:37 | 0:15:41 | |
As these surfers rode more and more of the North Shore's fantastic waves, | 0:16:57 | 0:17:01 | |
the biggest wave of all still eluded them. | 0:17:01 | 0:17:04 | |
The spot? Waimea Bay, which began to break | 0:17:04 | 0:17:08 | |
when the rest of the North Shore was too big to surf. | 0:17:08 | 0:17:12 | |
But Waimea Bay was riddled with taboos and fears | 0:17:18 | 0:17:21 | |
as surfers of the '50s were haunted by the memory of Dickie Cross, | 0:17:21 | 0:17:25 | |
a young California surfer who in December of 1943 | 0:17:25 | 0:17:28 | |
became trapped by a fast-rising storm swell while surfing Sunset Beach. | 0:17:28 | 0:17:32 | |
Unable to reach the shore, he and fellow surfer Woody Brown elected to paddle three miles south | 0:17:34 | 0:17:39 | |
to the safer, deep water at Waimea Bay. | 0:17:39 | 0:17:43 | |
But 50-foot waves were closing out the bay | 0:17:43 | 0:17:46 | |
and while attempting to reach the shore, both were caught | 0:17:46 | 0:17:49 | |
by mountains of white water and ripped from their boards. | 0:17:49 | 0:17:52 | |
Brown eventually washed up on shore naked, | 0:17:52 | 0:17:54 | |
while 17-year-old Cross was never seen again. | 0:17:54 | 0:17:59 | |
I mean, it spooked everybody. They were like, "You can't ride there. It's a killer. | 0:17:59 | 0:18:03 | |
"We're not going to go out there - you're going to die." | 0:18:03 | 0:18:05 | |
Along with the death of Dickie Cross, Waimea's reputation | 0:18:05 | 0:18:09 | |
was steeped in superstition and dread, | 0:18:09 | 0:18:11 | |
with tales that ranged from haunted houses on the Point | 0:18:11 | 0:18:14 | |
to human sacrifices at the heiau, or Hawaiian burial ground, overlooking the bay. | 0:18:14 | 0:18:19 | |
All of these things were whizzing around this place | 0:18:19 | 0:18:23 | |
like a bunch of ghouls and people really believed | 0:18:23 | 0:18:25 | |
that if you paddled out, there was going to be this goddamn vortex - | 0:18:25 | 0:18:29 | |
it'd be like flushing the toilet and there go the holidays for the season. | 0:18:29 | 0:18:33 | |
People thought you couldn't ride Waimea Bay - they watched, | 0:18:33 | 0:18:36 | |
looked at it and said, "Can't be done". | 0:18:36 | 0:18:38 | |
You'd look at Waimea and you'd wonder, | 0:18:38 | 0:18:41 | |
can the human body survive the wipeout? | 0:18:41 | 0:18:43 | |
But the lure of riding Waimea was unrelenting, | 0:18:46 | 0:18:50 | |
as during each big swell, surfers would find themselves | 0:18:50 | 0:18:53 | |
standing spellbound on the shore, transfixed by the sight | 0:18:53 | 0:18:56 | |
of these huge, perfectly-shaped waves, exploding off the point. | 0:18:56 | 0:19:00 | |
We'd go by there when it was breaking and go, "Jeez, | 0:19:02 | 0:19:05 | |
"that looks like a ride of a wave." | 0:19:05 | 0:19:07 | |
You could see that this had all of the potential of being a great surf spot. | 0:19:07 | 0:19:11 | |
And at some point, you just had to go, "To hell with it. | 0:19:11 | 0:19:15 | |
"We can do this thing." | 0:19:15 | 0:19:17 | |
On a fall day of October 1957, a handful of surfers | 0:19:17 | 0:19:21 | |
converged on Waimea as a 20-foot swell began lining up the bay. | 0:19:21 | 0:19:25 | |
MUSIC: "Rumble" by Link Wray | 0:19:25 | 0:19:29 | |
Sitting on the point, watching the huge empty waves with his buddy, | 0:19:33 | 0:19:36 | |
Mike Stang, 19-year-old Greg Noll had finally seen enough. | 0:19:36 | 0:19:40 | |
He unstrapped his board, and with Mike Stang in tow, | 0:19:40 | 0:19:43 | |
walked down to the water's edge. | 0:19:43 | 0:19:45 | |
Moments later, they were joined by fellow surfers | 0:19:45 | 0:19:48 | |
Pat Curren, Micky Munoz, Del Cannon, | 0:19:48 | 0:19:51 | |
Fred Van Dyke, Harry Schurch, Bing Copeland and Bob Bermell... | 0:19:51 | 0:19:56 | |
..who, together with Noll and Stang, | 0:19:58 | 0:20:00 | |
paddled out to attempt the impossible. | 0:20:00 | 0:20:02 | |
It was obvious where the waves were breaking and we'd all had | 0:20:10 | 0:20:14 | |
enough experience so that you knew pretty much where to paddle to. | 0:20:14 | 0:20:18 | |
I remember paddling into the line-up | 0:20:18 | 0:20:21 | |
and your balls were just in your stomach, you know? | 0:20:21 | 0:20:23 | |
Thinking that the bottom was going to fall out | 0:20:23 | 0:20:25 | |
and something was going to eat you alive. | 0:20:25 | 0:20:28 | |
I'm thinking to myself, I don't want to get wiped out, | 0:20:29 | 0:20:33 | |
cos I know there's sharks here and I'm not into swimming with sharks, exactly! | 0:20:33 | 0:20:37 | |
We got out there, it was a big surprise - | 0:20:37 | 0:20:40 | |
it's not an easy take-off. | 0:20:40 | 0:20:42 | |
I took off on a wave and went down the side and popped out the other end. | 0:20:56 | 0:21:00 | |
Went... "Shit! I'm still alive, nothing's happened." | 0:21:00 | 0:21:03 | |
After we got a couple of waves, that kind of took, you know, | 0:21:03 | 0:21:07 | |
"Hey, we can do this". | 0:21:07 | 0:21:10 | |
They broke the taboo - they went out and did it and once it was done, | 0:21:10 | 0:21:13 | |
opened up the floodgates, like, "OK, now, how far do we take it?" | 0:21:13 | 0:21:17 | |
MUSIC: "Pipeline" by Matter Music | 0:21:17 | 0:21:20 | |
The following year of 1958, Waimea Bay blew big wave surfing wide open | 0:21:20 | 0:21:24 | |
as another migration of ambitious surfers | 0:21:24 | 0:21:27 | |
came charging onto Hawaii's North Shore to campaign the huge surf. | 0:21:27 | 0:21:32 | |
These surfers were out to ride the biggest swells nature could produce, | 0:21:35 | 0:21:38 | |
so they built what came to be known as "guns" - long, narrow surfboards | 0:21:38 | 0:21:42 | |
designed exclusively for catching the fast-moving 25-foot waves of Waimea. | 0:21:42 | 0:21:47 | |
I rode an 11'6". It was first and foremost a wave-catching machine, | 0:21:50 | 0:21:54 | |
because if you can't catch a wave, nothing else matters. | 0:21:54 | 0:21:58 | |
Unlike the somewhat easy take-off of Makaha, Waimea was a fear-inducing | 0:21:58 | 0:22:03 | |
25-foot elevator drop, sometimes requiring more faith than skill. | 0:22:03 | 0:22:09 | |
It almost doesn't help sometimes to know what you're doing out there, | 0:22:16 | 0:22:19 | |
because if you know too much, it intimidates you. | 0:22:19 | 0:22:22 | |
Everything is moving, in flux. | 0:22:22 | 0:22:24 | |
Nothing is constant. It's so dynamic that you can't pre-plan it. | 0:22:24 | 0:22:29 | |
Not only are you riding down this mountain, | 0:22:29 | 0:22:31 | |
but this mountain is chasing you and you have to use all your skill | 0:22:31 | 0:22:34 | |
and all your ability to get away from this mountain, | 0:22:34 | 0:22:36 | |
but at the same time, | 0:22:36 | 0:22:38 | |
use it to your own benefit. | 0:22:38 | 0:22:40 | |
When you come down the face of a mountain, | 0:22:40 | 0:22:43 | |
you're on fire, your heart is exploding. | 0:22:43 | 0:22:45 | |
Endorphins are just busting out in your brain and you want to... | 0:22:45 | 0:22:50 | |
not just prove that you can do it, | 0:22:50 | 0:22:52 | |
but discover what you're made out of. | 0:22:52 | 0:22:55 | |
Apart from the challenge of learning to ride Waimea, | 0:22:58 | 0:23:01 | |
was the even greater challenge of surviving the horrifying wipe-outs. | 0:23:01 | 0:23:05 | |
You'd feel like a piece of lint in a washing machine, | 0:23:05 | 0:23:09 | |
because the force of nature that you're in the middle of | 0:23:09 | 0:23:11 | |
is so quantum beyond comprehension. | 0:23:11 | 0:23:15 | |
I can remember fracturing my neck at Waimea. | 0:23:16 | 0:23:19 | |
I went over the falls, I hit the water, | 0:23:21 | 0:23:24 | |
my neck went back in whiplash and fractured my neck. | 0:23:24 | 0:23:27 | |
Lost all feelings in my arms and legs. | 0:23:27 | 0:23:30 | |
I was like a seagull full of oil. | 0:23:30 | 0:23:32 | |
Just fluttering in the white water, out of control. | 0:23:32 | 0:23:35 | |
Some guys came over, helped me in. I'm lucky to be alive. | 0:23:42 | 0:23:45 | |
And I think every single big wave surfer | 0:23:45 | 0:23:47 | |
could tell you a story like that. | 0:23:47 | 0:23:49 | |
We didn't have flotation devices, we didn't have leashes, | 0:23:53 | 0:23:56 | |
we didn't have helicopters waiting to scoop you out. | 0:23:56 | 0:23:59 | |
So if you fucked up, you were on your own. | 0:23:59 | 0:24:02 | |
By 1959, Waimea had become the epicentre of big wave surfing, | 0:24:18 | 0:24:21 | |
fostering a new crew of big wave talents - Pat Curren, Peter Cole, | 0:24:21 | 0:24:26 | |
Ricky Grigg, Fred Van Dyke, | 0:24:26 | 0:24:29 | |
Jose Angel, Kealoha Kaio | 0:24:29 | 0:24:31 | |
and Greg Noll, whose big wave obsession | 0:24:31 | 0:24:34 | |
and even bigger wave personality | 0:24:34 | 0:24:36 | |
would forever link him with Waimea Bay. | 0:24:36 | 0:24:39 | |
MUSIC: "Sleep Walk" by Matter Music | 0:24:39 | 0:24:42 | |
Waimea was my gal. She was like... | 0:24:48 | 0:24:52 | |
I mean, I surfed with this beautiful woman | 0:24:52 | 0:24:54 | |
who allowed me to get away with shit | 0:24:54 | 0:24:58 | |
as long as I didn't act too outrageously towards her. | 0:24:58 | 0:25:02 | |
There were times when the surf would get perfect, you know, | 0:25:15 | 0:25:20 | |
and you'd go out and catch a wave... | 0:25:20 | 0:25:23 | |
just make this thing and have your adrenalin dripping out of your ears, | 0:25:23 | 0:25:27 | |
paddle back out and do it again. | 0:25:27 | 0:25:30 | |
You get a little too cocky, you'd get your ass slapped a little bit. | 0:25:30 | 0:25:33 | |
She'd let you know it but, for the most part, | 0:25:33 | 0:25:36 | |
it was just this full-on love affair that took place for 25 years. | 0:25:36 | 0:25:41 | |
Nicknamed the Bull for his charging style, | 0:25:56 | 0:25:59 | |
and clothing himself in loud, jailhouse-striped trunks, | 0:25:59 | 0:26:03 | |
Noll emerged as surfing's first big wave celebrity. | 0:26:03 | 0:26:06 | |
He had the perfect big wave persona. He looked like a big wave rider | 0:26:06 | 0:26:09 | |
with that big, thick neck, | 0:26:09 | 0:26:11 | |
and he had the black-and-white striped trunks, which was genius. | 0:26:11 | 0:26:15 | |
MUSIC: "Rumble in Brixton" by Stray Cats | 0:26:15 | 0:26:18 | |
Surfing needed Greg Noll. | 0:26:18 | 0:26:21 | |
Some of those surfers, they were a stoic bunch. | 0:26:21 | 0:26:23 | |
Greg Noll introduced flamboyance to it. | 0:26:23 | 0:26:26 | |
He introduced showmanship, he introduced that colourful aspect | 0:26:26 | 0:26:29 | |
that most people associated with Malibu. Not just the way he surfed, | 0:26:29 | 0:26:33 | |
but the spirit of it. He introduced that into big wave riding. | 0:26:33 | 0:26:37 | |
He wanted to ride the biggest wave anybody had ever ridden. | 0:26:41 | 0:26:45 | |
Greg made his reputation on taking off on the biggest wave, the heaviest wave. | 0:26:45 | 0:26:49 | |
He stuffed himself into positions nobody else would want. He'd sit over deeper, | 0:26:49 | 0:26:53 | |
he'd take off later, he'd spin around at the last minute. | 0:26:53 | 0:26:56 | |
He was surfing's first hell man. | 0:26:56 | 0:26:58 | |
He just liked confrontation. He sought it out. | 0:27:03 | 0:27:06 | |
In human terms and in big wave terms. | 0:27:06 | 0:27:09 | |
I was really a young, skinny kid | 0:27:09 | 0:27:11 | |
and I got my ass kicked from the time I can remember. | 0:27:11 | 0:27:15 | |
I went to school and had my ass kicked. I went to high school, I had my ass kicked. | 0:27:15 | 0:27:19 | |
And in some ways, maybe there was something there that drove me | 0:27:19 | 0:27:24 | |
to want to pursue big wave riding to make some kind of a statement. | 0:27:24 | 0:27:27 | |
I'm not a psychologist, I don't know. | 0:27:27 | 0:27:30 | |
All I know is, once you get into it, there's an adrenalin, a stoke | 0:27:30 | 0:27:33 | |
and that high is so addictive that, once you have a taste of it, | 0:27:33 | 0:27:36 | |
it's very difficult to not want more. | 0:27:36 | 0:27:39 | |
But for Greg Noll, big wave surfing became more than just an adrenalin fix. | 0:27:40 | 0:27:45 | |
It became his identity, his way of life and his business. | 0:27:45 | 0:27:49 | |
He was doing it to promote his surfboard business | 0:27:49 | 0:27:51 | |
and worked actively to promote himself. | 0:27:51 | 0:27:54 | |
Greg was a good hurdy gurdy man. He knew how to self-promote himself. | 0:27:54 | 0:27:59 | |
As well as being a successful surf film-maker, | 0:27:59 | 0:28:01 | |
the nickel and dime surfboard business Noll began in his parents' garage | 0:28:01 | 0:28:05 | |
had, by 1965, become a 20,000 square foot surfboard factory | 0:28:05 | 0:28:10 | |
built around his big wave image. | 0:28:10 | 0:28:12 | |
I had a big building, I had 67 employees, | 0:28:12 | 0:28:14 | |
I made 150 boards a week and, for the most part, | 0:28:14 | 0:28:17 | |
I was just turning money over because I'd sell them so cheap. | 0:28:17 | 0:28:20 | |
You know, we're all competing with each other. | 0:28:20 | 0:28:24 | |
He was a board designer, a really influential manufacturer. | 0:28:24 | 0:28:28 | |
He was the most complete surfer of the '50s and '60s. No-one else even came close. | 0:28:28 | 0:28:32 | |
Despite the dramatic exploits of Noll and the other Waimea-based surfers, | 0:28:32 | 0:28:37 | |
it was a naive 15-year-old girl from California | 0:28:37 | 0:28:41 | |
and her desire to join the Malibu surf set that launched surfing into mainstream America. | 0:28:41 | 0:28:46 | |
Surfing is out of this world! | 0:28:46 | 0:28:48 | |
You can't imagine the thrill of shooting the curl! | 0:28:48 | 0:28:51 | |
It positively surpasses every living emotion I've ever had! | 0:28:51 | 0:28:54 | |
Hey! This is the ultimate! | 0:28:57 | 0:28:59 | |
# She acts sort of teenage | 0:28:59 | 0:29:01 | |
# Just in-between age | 0:29:01 | 0:29:02 | |
# Looks about 4 foot 3... # | 0:29:02 | 0:29:05 | |
When you look at surfing's history from the '50s into the '60s, | 0:29:05 | 0:29:08 | |
everything has to be perceived as either pre-Gidget or post-Gidget. | 0:29:08 | 0:29:13 | |
-You can't mean...? -I'm a surf bum. | 0:29:13 | 0:29:16 | |
You know, ride the waves, eat, sleep, not a care in the world. | 0:29:16 | 0:29:19 | |
From the movie Gidget coming out in '59, when there was fewer than 5,000 surfers, | 0:29:19 | 0:29:23 | |
to 1963, there was probably 2 million surfers. | 0:29:23 | 0:29:26 | |
So, in five years, it went from 5,000 to 2 or 3 million people doing it. | 0:29:26 | 0:29:30 | |
MUSIC: Miserlou by Dick Dale | 0:29:30 | 0:29:33 | |
Following the film release of Gidget, | 0:29:37 | 0:29:39 | |
surfing underwent a radical transformation. | 0:29:39 | 0:29:42 | |
Surf shops opened doors up and down America's west and east coasts. | 0:29:42 | 0:29:46 | |
John Severson's Surfer magazine began publication. | 0:29:46 | 0:29:50 | |
In 1962, surf music pioneer Dick Dale | 0:29:50 | 0:29:54 | |
sold 75,000 copies of his album Surfers' Choice in Southern California alone. | 0:29:54 | 0:29:59 | |
Suddenly, surfing was perceived as hip. | 0:30:08 | 0:30:11 | |
People assumed that surfers were in the know. Look at the life they were leading - living on the beach, | 0:30:11 | 0:30:16 | |
the sun, bikinis, that sort of aura of sex, beach blankets, | 0:30:16 | 0:30:20 | |
fires and then all that golden flesh in the sun. | 0:30:20 | 0:30:24 | |
Hollywood followed Gidget with a medley of surf exploitation films. | 0:30:27 | 0:30:31 | |
Then, in 1864, the Hollywood film Ride The Wild Surf | 0:30:31 | 0:30:36 | |
turned its lens on Hawaii's big wave surfers challenging Waimea Bay. | 0:30:36 | 0:30:41 | |
I've been hot to surf Waimea since I was 13! | 0:30:41 | 0:30:43 | |
But the question is, can we do it, without winding up in traction? | 0:30:43 | 0:30:48 | |
MUSIC: "Ride The Wild Surf" by Jan & Dean | 0:30:48 | 0:30:50 | |
The theme is always the same - | 0:30:50 | 0:30:52 | |
a bunch of chicks in bikinis wringing their hands that their boyfriends | 0:30:52 | 0:30:57 | |
are going to go out and risk their lives on some big wave and it just... | 0:30:57 | 0:31:01 | |
Man, it just makes me puke! | 0:31:01 | 0:31:04 | |
-Man, is he getting creamed. -He's cooking gas! | 0:31:04 | 0:31:06 | |
They show the film of a guy sitting in a fish pond without a ripple... | 0:31:06 | 0:31:12 | |
Hey! It's coming! | 0:31:12 | 0:31:14 | |
..and then they cut to a 25-foot wave, guys all pouring down the face of the wave. | 0:31:14 | 0:31:18 | |
I mean, who can believe that shit? | 0:31:21 | 0:31:24 | |
Hollywood's always had a misconstrued view of surfing | 0:31:27 | 0:31:30 | |
so it's more or less offensive to the surfing community. | 0:31:30 | 0:31:34 | |
All the ancillary artistic pursuits that surrounded surfing, | 0:31:34 | 0:31:37 | |
they really did all come together in a rush and all of it happening from 1960 to 1965. | 0:31:37 | 0:31:42 | |
THUNDER CRASHES, WIND ROARS | 0:31:48 | 0:31:50 | |
SIREN WAILS | 0:31:50 | 0:31:53 | |
On December 4th 1969, big wave surfing was hit | 0:32:00 | 0:32:03 | |
with what would become known as the greatest swell of the 20th century. | 0:32:03 | 0:32:07 | |
A massive low pressure system metastasised | 0:32:13 | 0:32:16 | |
into one colossal storm system that consumed the North Pacific Ocean basin, | 0:32:16 | 0:32:20 | |
resulting in the largest waves ever recorded. | 0:32:20 | 0:32:24 | |
The super-size storm uprooted trees, | 0:32:26 | 0:32:29 | |
dislodged boats onto Oahu's Kam highway | 0:32:29 | 0:32:32 | |
and blew houses off their foundations. | 0:32:32 | 0:32:34 | |
Oahu's 13-mile stretch of stunning, world-class surf breaks | 0:32:36 | 0:32:39 | |
became a morass of turbulent, six-storey storm surf. | 0:32:39 | 0:32:43 | |
I was sitting at Waimea looking in disbelief at what I was seeing, | 0:32:49 | 0:32:53 | |
that it was breaking so big that Waimea was just full of white water. | 0:32:53 | 0:32:58 | |
So I decided to go round Kaena Point | 0:33:01 | 0:33:03 | |
and look at Makaha because that would be the last spot | 0:33:03 | 0:33:06 | |
that would still have some chance of holding out. | 0:33:06 | 0:33:10 | |
Noll set off west to Makaha, the birthplace of modern big-wave surfing, | 0:33:12 | 0:33:16 | |
thinking the huge swells slamming into the North Shore | 0:33:16 | 0:33:19 | |
would be tempered as they wrapped around the island's far western bend. | 0:33:19 | 0:33:24 | |
On the drive west, | 0:33:24 | 0:33:26 | |
he stopped briefly at Kaena Point to snap this picture | 0:33:26 | 0:33:29 | |
which Surfer magazine later claimed was the largest wave ever photographed. | 0:33:29 | 0:33:34 | |
When we got to Makaha, the cops were going around with their blare horns | 0:33:37 | 0:33:41 | |
on their cars telling people to evacuate their homes on the Point. | 0:33:41 | 0:33:46 | |
Makaha was the only big wave break on Oahu considered rideable, | 0:33:46 | 0:33:50 | |
as Noll and a handful of daring surfers attempted the huge swells. | 0:33:50 | 0:33:54 | |
As the morning progressed, the 100-year swell | 0:33:56 | 0:33:59 | |
surging out of the North Pacific | 0:33:59 | 0:34:01 | |
was giving rise to bigger and bigger waves. | 0:34:01 | 0:34:05 | |
Finally, everybody was out of the water, I was the only one left. | 0:34:05 | 0:34:08 | |
I was having a real hard time trying to gear myself for this | 0:34:08 | 0:34:13 | |
cos I knew that, basically, it was a situation | 0:34:13 | 0:34:16 | |
where your chances of surviving one of these waves was about 50/50. | 0:34:16 | 0:34:19 | |
I'm thinking to myself, | 0:34:19 | 0:34:21 | |
"Is it worth giving up the farm for a stupid wave?" | 0:34:21 | 0:34:24 | |
And I finally had to just paddle outside the line of 100 yards | 0:34:24 | 0:34:30 | |
and sit on my board with my head down and kind of go into another gear. | 0:34:30 | 0:34:34 | |
And the final decision was that I would never have forgiven myself | 0:34:34 | 0:34:39 | |
if I'd allowed this day to go by without at least trying for a wave. | 0:34:39 | 0:34:45 | |
Noll turned and paddled for what was then considered the biggest wave ever attempted. | 0:34:45 | 0:34:50 | |
No photographers were on hand to capture his wave. | 0:34:52 | 0:34:55 | |
Not a single shot or a single frame of footage exists. | 0:34:55 | 0:34:58 | |
All that remains are the memories of the handful of surfers | 0:34:58 | 0:35:02 | |
who were there that day to witness his momentous ride. | 0:35:02 | 0:35:05 | |
Greg Noll starts to paddle and we're all in our cars going, | 0:35:05 | 0:35:09 | |
"Oh, my God, look at this!" He's starting to paddle into the sea. | 0:35:09 | 0:35:12 | |
It's this huge, black, massive wall | 0:35:12 | 0:35:14 | |
and we watch him and he takes off, stands up. | 0:35:14 | 0:35:17 | |
He's this little speck on this gigantic wall. | 0:35:17 | 0:35:20 | |
And he drops in and he looks like a little tiny cartoon figure. | 0:35:20 | 0:35:24 | |
He gets that Greg Noll stance... "Rrrr, I'm going!" | 0:35:24 | 0:35:27 | |
And he drops down, drops down, drops down | 0:35:27 | 0:35:29 | |
and he gets to the bottom of the wave and the whole thing's already to come over the top of him. | 0:35:29 | 0:35:34 | |
And he just kind of stepped off the rail. There was nowhere to go, that was it. | 0:35:34 | 0:35:38 | |
The fact that he made the drop, got to the bottom of the wave | 0:35:38 | 0:35:41 | |
and it was like oblivion after that. The whole thing just... | 0:35:41 | 0:35:44 | |
Along with the birth of my sons and my daughter, | 0:35:49 | 0:35:52 | |
it was probably the most significant day of my life. | 0:35:52 | 0:35:55 | |
Even though it wasn't photographed | 0:35:55 | 0:35:57 | |
and even though people have argued since then, "How big was it?" | 0:35:57 | 0:36:01 | |
It doesn't matter. In our imaginations, it just was huge. | 0:36:01 | 0:36:04 | |
Because on that classic day of the biggest swell ever seen, | 0:36:04 | 0:36:07 | |
he essentially rode alone and he faced it when it came to him. | 0:36:07 | 0:36:11 | |
And that's what every surfer does in their own life. Everyone can relate to that. | 0:36:11 | 0:36:15 | |
As Greg Noll's giant wave broke and vanished, | 0:36:25 | 0:36:27 | |
so too did the popularity of big wave surfing at Waimea Bay | 0:36:27 | 0:36:31 | |
as it was broadsided by the late '60s shortboard revolution | 0:36:31 | 0:36:35 | |
where the longer, heavier, big guns were phased out | 0:36:35 | 0:36:39 | |
in favour of shorter and more manoeuvrable surfboards. | 0:36:39 | 0:36:42 | |
By the early '70s, the great Waimea had been usurped | 0:36:42 | 0:36:45 | |
by two spectacular, more performance-oriented North Shore breaks - | 0:36:45 | 0:36:50 | |
the Banzai Pipeline led by surfers like Gerry Lopez, | 0:36:50 | 0:36:53 | |
and at Sunset Beach by surfers like Jeff Hakman and Barry Kanaiaupuni. | 0:36:53 | 0:36:58 | |
All this changed in the mid-'80s, | 0:37:00 | 0:37:02 | |
first with the emergence of Ken Bradshaw and then Mark Foo, | 0:37:02 | 0:37:06 | |
two professional big wave riders determined to reintroduce | 0:37:06 | 0:37:10 | |
personality and showmanship to the challenge of riding giant Waimea. | 0:37:10 | 0:37:14 | |
Then came the Eddie, Quiksilver's big-wave riding contest at Waimea Bay | 0:37:14 | 0:37:18 | |
held in memory of the late, great, big wave rider Eddie Aikau. | 0:37:18 | 0:37:23 | |
Together, Ken Bradshaw, Mark Foo and the Eddie | 0:37:24 | 0:37:27 | |
wrenched the surfing world's attention back to Waimea Bay, | 0:37:27 | 0:37:30 | |
then still considered the Mount Everest of big wave surfing. | 0:37:30 | 0:37:35 | |
MUSIC: "Toccata and Fugue" by Christopher Herrick | 0:37:43 | 0:37:48 | |
Mavericks wasn't supposed to exist, it wasn't supposed to be there! | 0:37:48 | 0:37:52 | |
It was a mystery that it was just suddenly found in this area | 0:37:58 | 0:38:01 | |
about 20 miles from San Francisco. | 0:38:01 | 0:38:04 | |
In Half Moon Bay, formerly famous for its annual pumpkin festival! | 0:38:10 | 0:38:14 | |
It's as if they discovered Mount Everest behind Mount Whitney. | 0:38:14 | 0:38:18 | |
MUSIC: "Stay" by David Bowie | 0:38:18 | 0:38:21 | |
Teenage surfer Jeff Clark grew up along Half Moon Bay's secluded coast | 0:38:24 | 0:38:28 | |
riding home-made boards in the region's powerful rugged waves. | 0:38:28 | 0:38:33 | |
He carved out a frontier existence | 0:38:33 | 0:38:35 | |
far removed from surfing's mainstream. | 0:38:35 | 0:38:38 | |
I was a freshman in high school. | 0:38:39 | 0:38:41 | |
You could see this place exploding from out behind the building where we'd all congregate. | 0:38:41 | 0:38:46 | |
I was with my childhood friend and I said, "Brian! We've got to go check that out!" | 0:38:46 | 0:38:53 | |
We'd sit up on a cliff and watch this place go. | 0:38:53 | 0:38:57 | |
One day, it was like, "Brian, today's the day. Bring your board." | 0:38:57 | 0:39:02 | |
He's like, "There's no way I'm paddling half a mile offshore | 0:39:02 | 0:39:07 | |
"to a place I've never been." | 0:39:07 | 0:39:08 | |
So we sat here and he said, "I'll call the coastguard and tell them where I last saw you!" | 0:39:08 | 0:39:13 | |
The year was 1975 | 0:39:16 | 0:39:18 | |
and the wave Clark intended to ride broke half a mile offshore | 0:39:18 | 0:39:22 | |
into a veritable graveyard of jagged rocks. | 0:39:22 | 0:39:25 | |
The wave was considered more a navigational hazard than a surf spot. | 0:39:27 | 0:39:31 | |
I just remember a wave jacking up, I'm in the vein and total commitment. | 0:39:32 | 0:39:38 | |
If I eat it, I eat it, but I'm going. | 0:39:38 | 0:39:40 | |
And I hit my feet | 0:39:43 | 0:39:44 | |
and I've never felt water pass across the bottom of a surfboard so fast. | 0:39:44 | 0:39:50 | |
Fastest I've ever gone! | 0:39:50 | 0:39:51 | |
And I made it. And I just thought, "I want another one of those!" | 0:39:52 | 0:39:57 | |
MUSIC: "Hayling" by FC Kahuna. | 0:40:02 | 0:40:05 | |
Jeff went out there for the first time and rode it by himself | 0:40:18 | 0:40:21 | |
and couldn't get anyone to go back out with him. | 0:40:21 | 0:40:24 | |
There just weren't any takers around here. | 0:40:26 | 0:40:29 | |
People just didn't believe me. They just thought, | 0:40:29 | 0:40:31 | |
"Oh, yeah, he's out of his mind, he doesn't know what he's talking about." | 0:40:31 | 0:40:35 | |
I said, "It's the best big wave you'll ever surf." | 0:40:35 | 0:40:38 | |
Jeff Clark was sitting out there, nobody in the bleachers, | 0:40:41 | 0:40:44 | |
no helicopters flying over, no cheering crowds. | 0:40:44 | 0:40:47 | |
Doing his shit by himself. | 0:40:47 | 0:40:50 | |
# Don't think about all those things you fear | 0:40:50 | 0:40:56 | |
# Just be glad to be here. # | 0:40:59 | 0:41:02 | |
He'd be like the equivalent of a mountain man | 0:41:05 | 0:41:07 | |
killing grizzly in the Rockies. | 0:41:07 | 0:41:09 | |
Doing a three-day battle and then sleeping inside the carcass | 0:41:09 | 0:41:12 | |
that night, not having anyone to tell about it. | 0:41:12 | 0:41:15 | |
My parents had no idea I was riding waves like this. | 0:41:17 | 0:41:20 | |
I believed in my ability to go out there and ride it. | 0:41:20 | 0:41:23 | |
It was my sanctuary. I could leave the shore and go out there | 0:41:23 | 0:41:28 | |
and be so focused and so in tune | 0:41:28 | 0:41:31 | |
and feel the ocean with every fibre in my body | 0:41:31 | 0:41:36 | |
and I was part of it. | 0:41:36 | 0:41:37 | |
Jeff Clark's greatest challenge was how he internalised | 0:41:41 | 0:41:44 | |
all that emotion and all that drama and all that adrenaline. | 0:41:44 | 0:41:48 | |
Surfing that place alone year after year after year. | 0:41:48 | 0:41:53 | |
Jeff Clark surfed Mavericks alone for 15 years. | 0:41:53 | 0:41:56 | |
Until finally in 1990, he was able to convince two Santa Cruz surfers, | 0:41:58 | 0:42:02 | |
Dave Schmidt and Tom Powers to join him. | 0:42:02 | 0:42:05 | |
They went back to Santa Cruz with these tales of these waves. | 0:42:05 | 0:42:10 | |
And the next time it broke, there were photographers, | 0:42:10 | 0:42:14 | |
there were ten guys. | 0:42:14 | 0:42:15 | |
Suddenly it's like, wait a minute, California is a big wave place. | 0:42:15 | 0:42:18 | |
MUSIC: "My Wave" by Soundgarden. | 0:42:18 | 0:42:23 | |
The discovery of this monstrous wave in Northern California | 0:42:23 | 0:42:27 | |
produced an entirely new breed of big wave surfer. | 0:42:27 | 0:42:29 | |
# Take, if you want a slice... # | 0:42:29 | 0:42:33 | |
Once Mavericks came about, it was like right in our backyard. | 0:42:33 | 0:42:36 | |
It took time to figure out what we had. It wasn't instantaneous. | 0:42:36 | 0:42:40 | |
Even though we knew it was heavy and gnarly, | 0:42:40 | 0:42:42 | |
it took time for me to conceptualise what we had. | 0:42:42 | 0:42:45 | |
It was taboo for us to say 20 feet. | 0:42:45 | 0:42:47 | |
It was like 20 foot waves only happen in Hawaii. | 0:42:47 | 0:42:50 | |
The thought was, it can't be as big as Waimea, | 0:42:50 | 0:42:53 | |
it can't be as gnarly as Waimea. | 0:42:53 | 0:42:55 | |
This can't be as hard as what they're doing there | 0:42:55 | 0:42:58 | |
when in fact, it was WAY harder. | 0:42:58 | 0:43:00 | |
It was way more fearsome and way gnarlier. | 0:43:00 | 0:43:02 | |
# Just keep it off my wave. # | 0:43:02 | 0:43:06 | |
Just so gnarly and rocky and...just violent and hateful. It's hateful. | 0:43:06 | 0:43:11 | |
I jumped in the water there and I had the worst ice cream headache | 0:43:11 | 0:43:14 | |
and within 30 seconds, I couldn't feel my hands or feet. | 0:43:14 | 0:43:17 | |
How are you supposed to ride 30, 40, 50 feet faces? I'm out of here. | 0:43:17 | 0:43:22 | |
-# Keep it off my wave. -# | 0:43:22 | 0:43:24 | |
You've got sharks, you've got rocks, | 0:43:24 | 0:43:26 | |
you've got cold water, you've got huge surf. | 0:43:26 | 0:43:29 | |
Five millimetre wetsuits, | 0:43:29 | 0:43:31 | |
fog banks you can't see two feet in front of you. | 0:43:31 | 0:43:34 | |
Oversized boulders from the Land of the Lost. | 0:43:34 | 0:43:39 | |
They extend across the whole length of where the wave is breaking. | 0:43:39 | 0:43:43 | |
ONLOOKERS: Whoa! LAUGHTER | 0:43:47 | 0:43:48 | |
To reach the waves at Mavericks, | 0:43:50 | 0:43:52 | |
surfers must paddle over 45 minutes through a maze of rocks, | 0:43:52 | 0:43:56 | |
rip currents and frigid open ocean chop | 0:43:56 | 0:43:58 | |
until they finally reach the line-up. | 0:43:58 | 0:44:01 | |
The sacred thing in big wave surfing is, "What are the line-ups?" | 0:44:03 | 0:44:07 | |
Line-ups are a means of triangulating your position in the ocean | 0:44:09 | 0:44:13 | |
so you find two reference points on land at about 90 degrees. | 0:44:13 | 0:44:18 | |
Mainly what I use is positioning | 0:44:18 | 0:44:21 | |
on hillside. There's a big mountain behind and then a closer cliff | 0:44:21 | 0:44:24 | |
and there's a satellite dish you can line up. | 0:44:24 | 0:44:27 | |
You line them up so you know within a few feet | 0:44:27 | 0:44:29 | |
where you are in reference to the reef and the coastline. | 0:44:29 | 0:44:32 | |
If you just look at waves, you don't know if you're right. | 0:44:32 | 0:44:35 | |
It's very important to be in the right spot | 0:44:35 | 0:44:37 | |
at Mavericks because if you're too deep, you won't make it. | 0:44:37 | 0:44:40 | |
You're not just sitting there waiting for a wave. | 0:44:40 | 0:44:43 | |
The currents are so strong, you constantly paddle, | 0:44:43 | 0:44:46 | |
trying to maintain your opposition. | 0:44:46 | 0:44:48 | |
The worst thing that can happen out at Mavericks is getting caught inside. | 0:44:48 | 0:44:52 | |
There's sets that come that are on a regular basis. | 0:44:55 | 0:44:58 | |
And people get used to that, you know what I mean? | 0:44:58 | 0:45:01 | |
Sitting right where those come, then a sneak set will just come out of the blue. | 0:45:01 | 0:45:05 | |
It's literally just like in those beach blanket movies. | 0:45:05 | 0:45:07 | |
There's nothing happening, you're sitting on your board and sometimes, | 0:45:07 | 0:45:11 | |
corny though it may sound, someone actually yells, "Outside!" | 0:45:11 | 0:45:15 | |
And you turn and you go, oh, wow! | 0:45:15 | 0:45:17 | |
MUSIC: "Them Bones" by Alice in Chains. | 0:45:17 | 0:45:20 | |
Your adrenaline's running, everything is full RPM. | 0:45:20 | 0:45:24 | |
And you just want to stroke as hard as you can. | 0:45:24 | 0:45:26 | |
Your heart in your throat, paddling as if you're trying to catch a wave | 0:45:28 | 0:45:31 | |
-only you're trying to get out. -It's just a total survival thing. | 0:45:31 | 0:45:35 | |
Nobody really cares about the other guy at that point, | 0:45:35 | 0:45:39 | |
you just want to get over it. | 0:45:39 | 0:45:40 | |
Each successive wave will be bigger than the one before. | 0:45:43 | 0:45:47 | |
And you pray that the one you just barely made it over | 0:45:47 | 0:45:50 | |
will get you to the next one. | 0:45:50 | 0:45:52 | |
The next one's twice as big as the wave you just saw and will land right on you. | 0:45:52 | 0:45:56 | |
Then... Oh, man, the sinking feeling. | 0:45:56 | 0:45:58 | |
I'm caught, and I'm not going to get away. | 0:45:58 | 0:46:00 | |
CAMERAMAN: Oh, that guy's in the impact zone. | 0:46:00 | 0:46:03 | |
# I feel so alone | 0:46:03 | 0:46:04 | |
# Gonna end up a big ol' pile of them bones. # | 0:46:04 | 0:46:08 | |
There's a point where it gets so critical | 0:46:11 | 0:46:13 | |
you have to either commit and you'll make it out the back | 0:46:13 | 0:46:17 | |
or you slide off your board and swim into a vertical face of water. | 0:46:17 | 0:46:22 | |
You feel like, "Oh, I made it," and then all of a sudden, you're getting | 0:46:22 | 0:46:26 | |
sucked back and the feeling of going over backwards is just horrifying. | 0:46:26 | 0:46:31 | |
It's the worst kind of beating. | 0:46:31 | 0:46:32 | |
Oh, shit. | 0:46:32 | 0:46:33 | |
There's a fiendish pleasure though | 0:46:35 | 0:46:37 | |
of watching one by one the people you started with, they get | 0:46:37 | 0:46:41 | |
picked off, they don't quite punch through right, and they're goners. | 0:46:41 | 0:46:44 | |
# I feel so alone | 0:46:44 | 0:46:47 | |
# Gonna end up a big ol' pile of them bones. # | 0:46:47 | 0:46:51 | |
Not only is the take-off the hardest part of big wave surfing, | 0:46:59 | 0:47:04 | |
it's the most fun. | 0:47:04 | 0:47:05 | |
It's entirely different to any kind of normal surf | 0:47:05 | 0:47:09 | |
because it's basically one burst of energy. | 0:47:09 | 0:47:12 | |
MUSIC: "Go" by Pearl Jam. | 0:47:12 | 0:47:17 | |
The wave comes out of deep water but it just stops | 0:47:22 | 0:47:26 | |
and that whole mass of that wave jacks up. | 0:47:26 | 0:47:28 | |
The bottom of the wave becomes the top in half a second. | 0:47:28 | 0:47:32 | |
It rears up and holds back and sucks up | 0:47:32 | 0:47:34 | |
and you really have to find your niche where you can be under that. | 0:47:34 | 0:47:38 | |
You thought you were paddling into something maybe 20 or 30 feet. | 0:47:39 | 0:47:43 | |
Now you're riding something that's 35, 40 feet tall. | 0:47:43 | 0:47:45 | |
You have to put everything you have into getting yourself as far | 0:47:45 | 0:47:49 | |
down the face as you can before it picks you up. | 0:47:49 | 0:47:51 | |
You have to jump off the cliff right when the thing's about to jump on you. | 0:47:51 | 0:47:56 | |
If you make haste in a take-off, | 0:48:06 | 0:48:08 | |
the odds of you making that wave are very low. | 0:48:08 | 0:48:11 | |
The whole aspect is really more mental than physical. You have to believe you'll make it. | 0:48:13 | 0:48:18 | |
I know when I'll make a wave or not before I even paddle for it. | 0:48:18 | 0:48:22 | |
I have to overcome that safety mechanism that wants to rise | 0:48:22 | 0:48:26 | |
up in me and to keep me from doing something that could kill me. | 0:48:26 | 0:48:29 | |
So this fear of the unknown becomes something | 0:48:29 | 0:48:32 | |
you absolutely have to confront. | 0:48:32 | 0:48:34 | |
Because there is no way to turn back your decision. | 0:48:34 | 0:48:37 | |
MUSIC: "Don't Give Up" by Basement Jaxx | 0:48:41 | 0:48:44 | |
I've just wiped out. I'm getting just worked. | 0:48:44 | 0:48:48 | |
Fluttering down the face getting sucked back over the face | 0:48:49 | 0:48:53 | |
then you basically become the lip. | 0:48:53 | 0:48:55 | |
Backflips front flips, big twists, | 0:49:00 | 0:49:04 | |
every which way underwater real fast over, like, a football field. | 0:49:04 | 0:49:08 | |
You don't know which direction is up or down or right or left. | 0:49:08 | 0:49:12 | |
It's black, it's dark, I can feel the pressure in my ears. | 0:49:12 | 0:49:15 | |
You're sure you're near the surface. Then what you perceived to be up is actually the bottom. | 0:49:15 | 0:49:20 | |
The leash is pulling hard on you. The board is tombstoning up there. | 0:49:20 | 0:49:24 | |
I realised if there's another wave coming, I'm finished. | 0:49:24 | 0:49:29 | |
At one point, it started to stop. I thought, "OK, I'm going to live." | 0:49:29 | 0:49:33 | |
And I started to swim up. | 0:49:33 | 0:49:35 | |
And the next wave hit. | 0:49:35 | 0:49:36 | |
Then it just started all over again, just every bit as bad as the first part. | 0:49:36 | 0:49:40 | |
THROBBING BASS | 0:49:40 | 0:49:43 | |
I remember feeling like going over a waterfall underwater. | 0:49:43 | 0:49:47 | |
Like literally getting sucked into a hole. | 0:49:47 | 0:49:50 | |
Here I am 30 feet down, it takes me another 15, 20 feet down. | 0:49:50 | 0:49:52 | |
I get slammed into the bottom down there. | 0:49:52 | 0:49:55 | |
You think, "Oh, my God, I'm deeper than anyone's ever been." | 0:49:55 | 0:49:58 | |
You get to a point when you're down there, | 0:50:01 | 0:50:03 | |
"OK, this is not happening any more." | 0:50:03 | 0:50:06 | |
You have to get to the surface to get air. | 0:50:06 | 0:50:09 | |
Finally when I come up to the surface | 0:50:09 | 0:50:11 | |
I remember it being so bright, | 0:50:11 | 0:50:14 | |
it was like being in a dream and all of a sudden... | 0:50:14 | 0:50:17 | |
WHOOSHING SOUND | 0:50:17 | 0:50:19 | |
..back to, "OK, this is real, this is live now." | 0:50:19 | 0:50:22 | |
PIANO PLAYS SOFTLY | 0:50:23 | 0:50:25 | |
THUNDER ROLLS | 0:50:27 | 0:50:30 | |
Almost every traumatic thing that can happen to you at Mavericks | 0:50:46 | 0:50:50 | |
is due to the leash. | 0:50:50 | 0:50:51 | |
I think leashes are one of the most dangerous things | 0:50:51 | 0:50:54 | |
in the line-up in any surf spot over 20 feet. | 0:50:54 | 0:50:57 | |
There's those few critical situations where leashes become | 0:50:57 | 0:51:00 | |
more of a hindrance than a help. | 0:51:00 | 0:51:02 | |
After going down on the first wave of the set, | 0:51:02 | 0:51:04 | |
Flea found himself on the wrong end of his leash. | 0:51:04 | 0:51:07 | |
When entangled in a crevice, the urethane cord held him in place | 0:51:07 | 0:51:11 | |
while he was repeatedly battered by incoming white-water. | 0:51:11 | 0:51:14 | |
The leash wrapped round the rocks and just... | 0:51:14 | 0:51:17 | |
I was stuck for, like, eight waves. | 0:51:17 | 0:51:19 | |
How come you couldn't get the leash of your foot? | 0:51:19 | 0:51:21 | |
Cos the water current was so strong. | 0:51:21 | 0:51:23 | |
It's like doing a sit-up with 200 pounds on your chest. | 0:51:23 | 0:51:27 | |
Flea eventually worked himself loose | 0:51:38 | 0:51:40 | |
but in an even more dramatic incident, | 0:51:40 | 0:51:43 | |
Jeff Clark was hurled into Mavericks' rocky boneyard | 0:51:43 | 0:51:46 | |
and was trapped when his leash became hooked onto Sail Rock. | 0:51:46 | 0:51:50 | |
I can't get the leash off my ankle and this broken half of my board | 0:51:50 | 0:51:53 | |
is dragging me right into the rocks and finally | 0:51:53 | 0:51:56 | |
I'm getting swirled around. I got my hands out and I feel the rock | 0:51:56 | 0:52:00 | |
and I'm hanging onto the side of this rock and I'm underwater | 0:52:00 | 0:52:03 | |
and the water starts to drain and I am high and dry. | 0:52:03 | 0:52:06 | |
Next thing I know, another wave came over the rock. | 0:52:08 | 0:52:11 | |
I'm underwater again, the tension from my leg rope relieved, | 0:52:11 | 0:52:15 | |
I climbed on the rock | 0:52:15 | 0:52:16 | |
and I got rid of that damn anchor that was around my leg. | 0:52:16 | 0:52:19 | |
It's so funny that the Mavericks surfers value their surfboards | 0:52:20 | 0:52:23 | |
more than their lives. | 0:52:23 | 0:52:25 | |
It's like a lifeline. If you get held down, | 0:52:25 | 0:52:28 | |
the only thing I know is at the end of this is something that floats a lot more than I do | 0:52:28 | 0:52:32 | |
so if I wait and hold onto it, that's up. | 0:52:32 | 0:52:35 | |
So I reach around and grab my leash | 0:52:35 | 0:52:36 | |
and climb it back to the top, back to the surface. | 0:52:36 | 0:52:39 | |
I know for sure in my personal experience, there are times | 0:52:39 | 0:52:42 | |
when if I didn't have a leash, I'm not sure I would've lived. | 0:52:42 | 0:52:47 | |
In May of 1992, two years after Clark shared his secret spot | 0:52:47 | 0:52:52 | |
with Powers and Schmidt, Surfer Magazine took Mavericks public | 0:52:52 | 0:52:55 | |
with a cover story titled "Cold Sweat". | 0:52:55 | 0:52:57 | |
MUSIC: "Babylon's Burning" by The Ruts. | 0:52:57 | 0:53:01 | |
As if to back up the front-page headline, in 1994, | 0:53:01 | 0:53:04 | |
California was bombarded by a series of epic north swells | 0:53:04 | 0:53:07 | |
announcing to surfing's big wave fraternity | 0:53:07 | 0:53:10 | |
that Mavericks was the real deal. | 0:53:10 | 0:53:12 | |
That's when the entire surf world kind of converged on Mavericks. | 0:53:12 | 0:53:16 | |
It was like, "OK, this place is legitimate, | 0:53:16 | 0:53:19 | |
"we'll see really what it's worth here." | 0:53:19 | 0:53:21 | |
On December 23, the sudden arrival of three of Hawaii's most famous | 0:53:24 | 0:53:28 | |
Waimea-based surfers - Ken Bradshaw, Brock Little and Mark Foo - | 0:53:28 | 0:53:32 | |
created the biggest stir and gave the impression | 0:53:32 | 0:53:35 | |
that something momentous was taking place. | 0:53:35 | 0:53:37 | |
# Babylon's burning, baby Can't you see? | 0:53:37 | 0:53:40 | |
# Babylon is burning with anxiety. # | 0:53:40 | 0:53:43 | |
That day was amazing. | 0:53:43 | 0:53:45 | |
To have the Hawaiians paddling out. Brock Little, | 0:53:45 | 0:53:48 | |
Mark Foo, Ken Bradshaw. | 0:53:48 | 0:53:50 | |
My gosh, I was like a proud parent or something like that. | 0:53:50 | 0:53:54 | |
Because they gave a spot that I'd surfed for so many years | 0:53:54 | 0:53:58 | |
the credibility to actually come and surf it. | 0:53:58 | 0:54:01 | |
Helicopters were hovering and photographers from all the mags were there. | 0:54:01 | 0:54:05 | |
It was just crazy, we knew it was, like, THE day. | 0:54:05 | 0:54:08 | |
One of the best days of surfing I ever had out there. | 0:54:08 | 0:54:10 | |
# Babylon's burning Babylon's burning | 0:54:15 | 0:54:18 | |
# Babylon is burning. # | 0:54:18 | 0:54:21 | |
Then at approximately 11:20 am, | 0:54:21 | 0:54:23 | |
during a beautiful medium-sized set, Mark Foo paddled, popped to his feet | 0:54:23 | 0:54:27 | |
and dropped into his second wave of the day. | 0:54:27 | 0:54:30 | |
# Babylon's burning. # | 0:54:30 | 0:54:31 | |
I went to lunch, I came back out to the point, I saw Brock | 0:54:51 | 0:54:54 | |
in the parking lot. And there was this guy, | 0:54:54 | 0:54:58 | |
"Have you seen Mark Foo?" And that was... | 0:54:58 | 0:55:01 | |
We were headed back in a boat toward the harbour | 0:55:07 | 0:55:10 | |
and I saw...it kinda looked like a big clump of something. | 0:55:10 | 0:55:15 | |
You know, as we were passing it. | 0:55:15 | 0:55:17 | |
I pointed it out and I said, "Hey, that looks like a body." You know? | 0:55:17 | 0:55:23 | |
And, sure enough, we stopped the boat | 0:55:23 | 0:55:26 | |
and just realised that it was...Mark Foo. | 0:55:26 | 0:55:31 | |
I dove off and grabbed him and just rushed to the harbour and... | 0:55:36 | 0:55:42 | |
It was a really eerie experience and just so chilling. | 0:55:43 | 0:55:49 | |
It went from the most pleasant, beautiful, | 0:55:54 | 0:55:56 | |
plate-glass sunshine day to...the clouds came in and it got dark, | 0:55:56 | 0:56:01 | |
the wind came up and it was just... | 0:56:01 | 0:56:05 | |
like we lost a great warrior. | 0:56:05 | 0:56:07 | |
One of our surfers, one of our own, was gone. | 0:56:07 | 0:56:11 | |
To have that winter when Mark Foo passed away, | 0:56:14 | 0:56:16 | |
that was a heavy hit to everybody. | 0:56:16 | 0:56:18 | |
What added to the shock of Foo's death were its circumstances - | 0:56:22 | 0:56:25 | |
an innocuous wipe-out on a less than death-defying wave | 0:56:25 | 0:56:28 | |
in the middle of a crowded line-up. | 0:56:28 | 0:56:30 | |
I think that he fell on his stomach, knocked the wind out of himself | 0:56:30 | 0:56:34 | |
and was fatigued from the flight the night before, you know? | 0:56:34 | 0:56:37 | |
I think he got caught on the bottom. | 0:56:37 | 0:56:40 | |
The reason I think his leg-rope got caught in the rocks is that | 0:56:40 | 0:56:43 | |
on the next wave, Brock Little and Mike Parsons wiped out. | 0:56:43 | 0:56:48 | |
Parsons comes up and Brock was behind him. | 0:56:53 | 0:56:57 | |
In later interviews, Parson said, "I felt Brock trying to get | 0:56:57 | 0:57:02 | |
"to the surface," but what he didn't realise at the time was Brock was up. | 0:57:02 | 0:57:08 | |
And it was Foo trying to get to the surface, | 0:57:08 | 0:57:11 | |
which kind of confirms that he was being held down by something. | 0:57:11 | 0:57:17 | |
I went and examined his body actually. | 0:57:21 | 0:57:24 | |
There really wasn't any discernible injury. | 0:57:24 | 0:57:26 | |
He had a slight scratch on his forehead. | 0:57:26 | 0:57:29 | |
His countenance actually was not that of one who had struggled | 0:57:31 | 0:57:37 | |
or who had been in anguish. | 0:57:37 | 0:57:39 | |
I felt surfing at Mavericks the years prior to that | 0:57:41 | 0:57:45 | |
that someone was going to die. I didn't think it would be Mark Foo. | 0:57:45 | 0:57:48 | |
I thought it would be somebody who didn't know what they were in for. | 0:57:48 | 0:57:51 | |
Mark Foo was this kind of guy who was larger than life to us, | 0:57:51 | 0:57:55 | |
more invincible than any of us, with more experience than any of us. | 0:57:55 | 0:58:00 | |
He's the guy that said, "To catch the ultimate thrill, | 0:58:00 | 0:58:03 | |
"you have to be willing to pay the ultimate price." | 0:58:03 | 0:58:05 | |
Everyone wanted to understand what killed him. | 0:58:05 | 0:58:08 | |
That was important because they were trying to assess | 0:58:08 | 0:58:11 | |
the risk in the face of their sudden mortality. | 0:58:11 | 0:58:14 | |
As it sunk in, I didn't think that could happen. | 0:58:14 | 0:58:17 | |
I literally didn't think it could. | 0:58:17 | 0:58:19 | |
I thought I was invincible. | 0:58:19 | 0:58:21 | |
I thought I could just huck myself over any ledge | 0:58:21 | 0:58:25 | |
and pop back up laughing, you know? | 0:58:25 | 0:58:27 | |
And I think a lot of big wave riders have that belief. | 0:58:27 | 0:58:31 | |
When it comes down to it, it's up to me whether I live or die. | 0:58:31 | 0:58:34 | |
It's up to me whether I go on a wave or not. | 0:58:34 | 0:58:37 | |
While an extravagant funeral was planned for Foo in Hawaii, | 0:58:38 | 0:58:41 | |
surfers from up and down the California coast | 0:58:41 | 0:58:44 | |
gathered at Mavericks for a quiet tribute to their fallen comrade. | 0:58:44 | 0:58:47 | |
It turned the clocks back to ten years before when I'm sitting | 0:58:57 | 0:59:00 | |
out there at the peak, by myself, with my own thoughts. | 0:59:00 | 0:59:06 | |
I wasn't sure I wanted to surf Mavericks after that | 0:59:10 | 0:59:13 | |
so when I went back out there, I wasn't sure if I'd be spooked or not | 0:59:13 | 0:59:16 | |
and I ended up, the wave came to me, and I was like, "Yes." | 0:59:16 | 0:59:18 | |
Mavericks said to me, "You want to be here. Here's your wave." | 0:59:18 | 0:59:22 | |
I caught a great one, everything was good. | 0:59:22 | 0:59:24 | |
It's the way I thought it was but I always knew it could kill me. It could kill anyone. | 0:59:24 | 0:59:28 | |
A year to the day after Foo's death | 0:59:40 | 0:59:42 | |
and during a memorial session held in Foo's honour at Waimea Bay, | 0:59:42 | 0:59:46 | |
California surfer Donnie Solomon was caught by a close-out set | 0:59:46 | 0:59:50 | |
and drowned. | 0:59:50 | 0:59:51 | |
Then in February of 1997, well-known big wave rider Todd Chesser | 0:59:53 | 0:59:58 | |
perished in 30-foot surf at a remote off-shore outer-reef break. | 0:59:58 | 1:00:02 | |
In 1968, in the thick of that era's short board revolution, | 1:00:15 | 1:00:18 | |
a fatherless 4-year-old boy named Laird Zerfas | 1:00:18 | 1:00:22 | |
accompanied his mother Joann on a chance visit to Hawaii's North Shore. | 1:00:22 | 1:00:27 | |
He couldn't have known it at the time but he would grow up to be | 1:00:29 | 1:00:32 | |
the greatest big-wave rider of his generation. | 1:00:32 | 1:00:35 | |
Perhaps the greatest the world has ever known. | 1:00:35 | 1:00:37 | |
After my dad left my mom, before I could even remember, | 1:00:39 | 1:00:43 | |
I was in search for a man, a masculine figure in my life | 1:00:43 | 1:00:47 | |
and my mom needed a husband but I needed a dad. | 1:00:47 | 1:00:52 | |
My friend Greg MacGillivray, who was like the father of the IMAX films, | 1:00:52 | 1:00:55 | |
was making a surfing movie at the time and I was helping him | 1:00:55 | 1:00:59 | |
make movies, so I was walking down the beach to see him | 1:00:59 | 1:01:02 | |
and here's this little kid playing around in the ocean. | 1:01:02 | 1:01:06 | |
I dove in, I said, "What's your name?" He said, "My name's Laird." | 1:01:06 | 1:01:10 | |
I said, "What are you doing?" He said, "I'm body surfing. | 1:01:10 | 1:01:13 | |
"You want to body surf?" I said, "Sure." | 1:01:13 | 1:01:16 | |
I said, "Why don't you hold onto my neck, we'll body surf." | 1:01:16 | 1:01:20 | |
It was love at first sight with him and I. We had this physical connection, instantly. | 1:01:20 | 1:01:24 | |
It was a physical, spiritual, mental, like, "I love this child." | 1:01:24 | 1:01:31 | |
It was just, "I love this child." And we were just like partners. | 1:01:31 | 1:01:35 | |
When we finished, he grabbed my hand and said, | 1:01:36 | 1:01:39 | |
"I want you to come up and meet my mom." | 1:01:39 | 1:01:41 | |
I don't know if he had a choice. I was like, "You're coming with me." | 1:01:41 | 1:01:44 | |
And there was his mother, beautiful brown-haird, brown-eyed gal, | 1:01:44 | 1:01:47 | |
and I went, "Oh, my God..." | 1:01:47 | 1:01:51 | |
Mom was like, who's this. I'm like, "This is Bill." | 1:01:51 | 1:01:54 | |
And I like give him the nudge, you know? | 1:01:54 | 1:01:56 | |
Shortly thereafter, Billy Hamilton, who was known | 1:01:56 | 1:01:59 | |
as one of the sport's most popular and stylish surfers, married Joann, | 1:01:59 | 1:02:03 | |
becoming Laird's adopted father and giving him his name. | 1:02:03 | 1:02:07 | |
I was known for being the kid who ran around saying, | 1:02:08 | 1:02:12 | |
"Hey, my dad's Bill Hamilton, you know who he is?" | 1:02:12 | 1:02:15 | |
And they'd be like, guys like Gerry Lopez, were like, | 1:02:15 | 1:02:18 | |
"Yeah, I see him every day!" | 1:02:18 | 1:02:19 | |
No, but do you know now it's MY dad? | 1:02:19 | 1:02:21 | |
They knew who he was but I wanted them to know, like, he was connected to me. | 1:02:21 | 1:02:27 | |
This is my dad. Because if you don't, | 1:02:27 | 1:02:29 | |
you might get like a soda can full of sand inside your head or... | 1:02:29 | 1:02:32 | |
The young Hamilton family set about making | 1:02:34 | 1:02:36 | |
a life for themselves in Hawaii where, despite the paradisiacal island setting, | 1:02:36 | 1:02:40 | |
the initial years took on a rough edge. | 1:02:40 | 1:02:44 | |
Being a blonde Caucasian, I kind of represented the stereotypical | 1:02:44 | 1:02:50 | |
person that destroyed the culture of Hawaii, so a lot of people | 1:02:50 | 1:02:53 | |
hated me, wanted to fight with me, just because of my skin colour. | 1:02:53 | 1:02:56 | |
The way he learned to fight, because he was so big and powerful, | 1:02:56 | 1:03:01 | |
was he'd slap an opponent so hard that it would shock them and embarrass them. | 1:03:01 | 1:03:05 | |
It wouldn't injure them but it would hurt them so bad mentally | 1:03:05 | 1:03:08 | |
and physically that he just won the fight right at that minute. | 1:03:08 | 1:03:11 | |
After a while, the reputation was there that | 1:03:11 | 1:03:14 | |
you don't muck around with Laird. | 1:03:14 | 1:03:16 | |
-He looked after you as well? -Of course. I was his brother. | 1:03:16 | 1:03:18 | |
He took care of me. I mean, he was the only one giving me beatings! | 1:03:18 | 1:03:22 | |
Let's put it that way. It was a privilege deal. | 1:03:22 | 1:03:26 | |
He wanted to be Hawaiian. | 1:03:29 | 1:03:31 | |
He used to dream, he said, of wishing he had brown skin, to be Hawaiian. | 1:03:31 | 1:03:36 | |
Because, for him, that was what was sort of beautiful and strong, | 1:03:36 | 1:03:40 | |
because that's what was around him. | 1:03:40 | 1:03:42 | |
Couldn't get girlfriends, didn't have a lot of friends. What did he do? | 1:03:45 | 1:03:50 | |
He spent and put all that energy into the water. | 1:03:50 | 1:03:54 | |
In the face of this youthful alienation, Laird precociously | 1:03:56 | 1:03:59 | |
turned to an older generation for inspiration and camaraderie. | 1:03:59 | 1:04:03 | |
Laird Hamilton was around the legendary big-wave riders | 1:04:03 | 1:04:06 | |
of the '60s, who were moving through into the '70s, | 1:04:06 | 1:04:10 | |
his dad being one of them. | 1:04:10 | 1:04:11 | |
During that time, Pipeline Beach was the Mecca of surfing | 1:04:11 | 1:04:14 | |
and anybody who was anybody in surfing came to Pipeline and surfed Pipeline. | 1:04:14 | 1:04:19 | |
So I got to see all the guys. | 1:04:19 | 1:04:21 | |
His dad was making boards for Peter Cole, | 1:04:21 | 1:04:24 | |
Warren Harlow, Jose Angel, the pioneers of big-wave surfing, | 1:04:24 | 1:04:29 | |
and Laird was just this little sponge soaking all this stuff up. | 1:04:29 | 1:04:34 | |
I aspired to be like these pioneers of big-wave riding | 1:04:34 | 1:04:38 | |
because they were going out on days when people were evacuating. | 1:04:38 | 1:04:41 | |
Considering his pedigree, a traditional pro-surfing career | 1:04:41 | 1:04:44 | |
was Laird's for the taking but from a young age | 1:04:44 | 1:04:47 | |
his imagination was captured by the mythic canvas of riding giant waves. | 1:04:47 | 1:04:52 | |
I was young and impressionable in 1969 | 1:04:52 | 1:04:55 | |
so I understood the volume of what was possible. | 1:04:55 | 1:04:58 | |
It was like, I understood that there was stuff out there | 1:04:58 | 1:05:01 | |
that hadn't been tapped and that the ocean was capable of producing places | 1:05:01 | 1:05:04 | |
and things that no-one had really done. | 1:05:04 | 1:05:07 | |
What Laird, and the other big-wave riders from as far back | 1:05:07 | 1:05:11 | |
as the '50s knew is that lying far beyond the traditional breaks | 1:05:11 | 1:05:14 | |
like Waimea were another set of remote off-shore reefs | 1:05:14 | 1:05:18 | |
capable of producing waves of unimaginable size. | 1:05:18 | 1:05:22 | |
Even before 1969, the amazing Third Reef Pipeline broke once | 1:05:24 | 1:05:28 | |
in 1963 as a result of a freak storm that awoke the sleeping giant. | 1:05:28 | 1:05:33 | |
It took Greg Noll and Mike Stang two hours to make the long paddle out. | 1:05:35 | 1:05:39 | |
They waited another two hours until Greg finally caught | 1:05:39 | 1:05:43 | |
one of the most epic rides in North Shore history. | 1:05:43 | 1:05:45 | |
Another ambitious attempt occurred 30 years later in 1993, | 1:06:04 | 1:06:08 | |
when North Shore surfer Alec Cooke, armed with an 11-foot board, | 1:06:08 | 1:06:13 | |
an emergency scuba tank and a helicopter, had himself | 1:06:13 | 1:06:16 | |
dropped in the path of a six-storey swell off Oahu's Kaena Point. | 1:06:16 | 1:06:20 | |
He made a valiant effort, actually making the drop on one massive wall before being swallowed. | 1:06:21 | 1:06:26 | |
Episodes like this made it clear that when it came to riding giant, outer-reef waves, | 1:06:27 | 1:06:32 | |
traditional paddle-in surfing had its limits. | 1:06:32 | 1:06:35 | |
When they talked about the limitations of big wave riding, | 1:06:35 | 1:06:38 | |
it wasn't riding the wave, it was catching the wave. | 1:06:38 | 1:06:40 | |
Because, as waves increase in size, they also increase in speed, | 1:06:40 | 1:06:46 | |
so the bigger the wave, the faster it's moving, | 1:06:46 | 1:06:48 | |
the faster you need to go in order to catch it. | 1:06:48 | 1:06:51 | |
Having already established himself as a dominant force in traditional | 1:06:51 | 1:06:54 | |
Hawaiian breaks, Laird Hamilton continued to explore the boundaries | 1:06:54 | 1:06:57 | |
of extreme ocean sports, developing into a world-class windsurfer. | 1:06:57 | 1:07:02 | |
Powered by the wind, Laird and his fellow sail-boarders discovered | 1:07:02 | 1:07:06 | |
the speed and mobility necessary to access the outer reefs and sailed | 1:07:06 | 1:07:11 | |
into waves previously impossible to catch by hand. | 1:07:11 | 1:07:13 | |
But then you had this sail and you weren't really surfing, | 1:07:13 | 1:07:16 | |
you were wind-surfing, | 1:07:16 | 1:07:17 | |
and it was so restrictive that you lost the freedom that surfing had. | 1:07:17 | 1:07:21 | |
I had just done a GQ shoot with Laird | 1:07:30 | 1:07:33 | |
and we both liked wind-surfing and surfing so we started hanging out. | 1:07:33 | 1:07:37 | |
Buzzy and I had been playing around in the Zodiac all summer | 1:07:39 | 1:07:42 | |
doing flat-water freeboarding and we were freeboarding in the summer | 1:07:42 | 1:07:45 | |
and there was a little swell and we were using swells for ramps | 1:07:45 | 1:07:49 | |
and all of a sudden we started like taking speed and catching waves | 1:07:49 | 1:07:52 | |
and that's when the light went off, one summer day, and we're like, "Oh, wow, we can catch waves." | 1:07:52 | 1:07:56 | |
"We might be able to ride bigger waves." | 1:07:56 | 1:07:59 | |
In December of 1992, Laird Hamilton, along with pro-surfer Buzzy Kerbox, | 1:08:21 | 1:08:27 | |
and legendary North Shore lifeguard and Waimea Bay rider Darrick Doerner | 1:08:27 | 1:08:31 | |
launched into the surf at Sunset Beach in a 16-foot inflatable Zodiac. | 1:08:31 | 1:08:36 | |
Neither of the three could have imagined that by the time | 1:08:36 | 1:08:38 | |
they got back to the beach that afternoon, | 1:08:38 | 1:08:41 | |
big wave surfing would be changed forever. | 1:08:41 | 1:08:43 | |
They weren't riding waves that were significantly bigger than guys had ridden. | 1:09:15 | 1:09:19 | |
It was how they were surfing the wave. | 1:09:19 | 1:09:21 | |
This radical new approach of being whipped into a wave | 1:09:21 | 1:09:24 | |
came to be called tow-in surfing. | 1:09:24 | 1:09:26 | |
You get the sling-shot from the tow rope, you let go of the rope | 1:09:26 | 1:09:29 | |
and there you are on this beautiful, giant wave with no-one near you, | 1:09:29 | 1:09:33 | |
on this big giant board, | 1:09:33 | 1:09:35 | |
there's no crowd there. | 1:09:35 | 1:09:36 | |
Bingo. | 1:09:37 | 1:09:38 | |
Progress came quick as the trio swapped the clumsy inflatable | 1:09:41 | 1:09:44 | |
for the faster and more agile jetski. | 1:09:44 | 1:09:47 | |
With the jetski, you can catch waves all day long and not even get your hair wet. | 1:09:49 | 1:09:53 | |
Back in 1987, North Shore veteran Herbie Fletcher, | 1:09:53 | 1:09:56 | |
who for years had been exploring the outer reefs on a jetski, | 1:09:56 | 1:09:59 | |
towed pro-surfer Martin Potter into a wave at Second Reef Pipeline. | 1:09:59 | 1:10:03 | |
An innovative idea that surprisingly failed to inspire others | 1:10:05 | 1:10:08 | |
until five years later, when Hamilton, Kerbox | 1:10:08 | 1:10:11 | |
and Doerner revealed tow-in surfing's true potential. | 1:10:11 | 1:10:15 | |
In traditional big wave surfing, the boards were very large | 1:10:16 | 1:10:20 | |
and the reason for the size of the board was to catch the wave. | 1:10:20 | 1:10:24 | |
Once you were in, you didn't need a big board. You were fine. | 1:10:24 | 1:10:27 | |
We didn't visualise what actually was going to take place | 1:10:27 | 1:10:31 | |
until we went snowboarding. | 1:10:31 | 1:10:33 | |
Bing! | 1:10:34 | 1:10:35 | |
And if we could ride these giant mountains on this tiny little board, | 1:10:35 | 1:10:40 | |
well, why couldn't we do that surfing? | 1:10:40 | 1:10:43 | |
Aided by renowned board builders Dick Brewer, Billy Hamilton | 1:10:44 | 1:10:48 | |
and Jerry Lopez, the trio chopped their boards by three feet, | 1:10:48 | 1:10:52 | |
then, drawing inspiration from windsurfing and snowboarding, | 1:10:52 | 1:10:55 | |
they strapped themselves to their boards, providing control | 1:10:55 | 1:10:57 | |
in the heightened speed and turbulence of riding waves over 30 feet. | 1:10:57 | 1:11:01 | |
The small board was really the big breakthrough. | 1:11:04 | 1:11:07 | |
That was where we really shifted gears. | 1:11:07 | 1:11:09 | |
All of a sudden, we had the speed. | 1:11:09 | 1:11:11 | |
The liberation of paddling by motor suddenly opened up | 1:11:11 | 1:11:14 | |
big wave surfing's next frontier. | 1:11:14 | 1:11:16 | |
Now it seemed that riding any wave, breaking anywhere, | 1:11:16 | 1:11:20 | |
at any size was possible. | 1:11:20 | 1:11:23 | |
Then came the idea of this thing on Maui, where Gerry sat down | 1:11:23 | 1:11:28 | |
with Laird and said, "I got something you might want to see." | 1:11:28 | 1:11:32 | |
When he understood what we had going, he was like, "Hey, young man. | 1:11:32 | 1:11:37 | |
"Come over here. I got something to show you." | 1:11:37 | 1:11:40 | |
MUSIC: "Jaws Main Theme" by John Williams | 1:11:40 | 1:11:43 | |
We knew that we had discovered the real unridden realm. | 1:12:23 | 1:12:28 | |
Located on Maui's remote north coast, and requiring a long, | 1:12:40 | 1:12:44 | |
dangerous approach by sea, is Peahi, also known as Jaws. | 1:12:44 | 1:12:49 | |
Peahi revealed itself as the big wave of the future | 1:12:52 | 1:12:55 | |
and within its awesome size and power, tow-in surfing came of age. | 1:12:55 | 1:13:00 | |
The biggest difference between this wave | 1:13:13 | 1:13:15 | |
and Waimea is that this was about five Waimeas. | 1:13:15 | 1:13:18 | |
You pick Makaha, Waimea, Sunset, Pipeline, Kaena Point, Mavericks, | 1:13:18 | 1:13:22 | |
put them all in a pot and mix them all together | 1:13:22 | 1:13:24 | |
and that's what you get, and more. | 1:13:24 | 1:13:27 | |
Like Waimea and Mavericks, Peahi featured its own crew | 1:13:28 | 1:13:31 | |
of ground-breaking pioneers. | 1:13:31 | 1:13:34 | |
In addition to Hamilton, Doerner and Kerbox were windsurfing champion Dave Kalama... | 1:13:34 | 1:13:38 | |
..then Mike Waltz, Pete Cabrinha, Mark Angulo, | 1:13:41 | 1:13:44 | |
Rush Randle and Brett Lickle. | 1:13:44 | 1:13:47 | |
Known as the Strap Crew, | 1:13:47 | 1:13:48 | |
these boys rewrote the rules of big wave surfing by riding | 1:13:48 | 1:13:51 | |
giant waves in a manner that was once the realm of sheer fantasy. | 1:13:51 | 1:13:54 | |
Things that previously we only dreamed of doing, things we | 1:14:03 | 1:14:06 | |
only saw in animation, suddenly, these surfers were doing it. | 1:14:06 | 1:14:09 | |
Now, you're riding waves with greater speed than you ever dreamed of. | 1:14:09 | 1:14:13 | |
I mean, it's like a dream. | 1:14:13 | 1:14:15 | |
"Oh, my God, I'm on a perfect wave, going 35 miles an hour", | 1:14:15 | 1:14:18 | |
it's just so fun. | 1:14:18 | 1:14:20 | |
Like, I better shut up. | 1:14:22 | 1:14:25 | |
Coming up on the ski and seeing plumes of water | 1:14:29 | 1:14:31 | |
going 100 feet in the air, and you can kind of hear the drone | 1:14:31 | 1:14:34 | |
of the skis in the distance and stuff and it looks like Waterworld | 1:14:34 | 1:14:37 | |
and you have things in your head, "What's going on? | 1:14:37 | 1:14:40 | |
"What waves are guys riding? How bad have wipe-outs been today? | 1:14:40 | 1:14:42 | |
"Like, is anyone dead yet?" | 1:14:42 | 1:14:44 | |
The first time I surfed at Peahi, I remember getting | 1:14:44 | 1:14:49 | |
so uptight on the way out, just going, "Oh, man," you know? | 1:14:49 | 1:14:52 | |
So much anxiety, that I was thinking, | 1:14:52 | 1:14:57 | |
"Jesus, I'm not going to be able to surf." | 1:14:57 | 1:15:00 | |
And I remember finally having to go, | 1:15:00 | 1:15:03 | |
"OK... | 1:15:03 | 1:15:05 | |
"Shit. | 1:15:05 | 1:15:07 | |
"I guess this is a good day to die." | 1:15:07 | 1:15:09 | |
Challenging waves in the 50 and 60 foot range obliterated the concept | 1:15:11 | 1:15:15 | |
of surfing as a solitary pursuit and rewired the rules of engagement. | 1:15:15 | 1:15:18 | |
You've got to have eyes in the back of your head and I've got eyes - Dave and Derrick. | 1:15:18 | 1:15:22 | |
They see what I need to see. | 1:15:22 | 1:15:24 | |
I'll just kind of balance right on the crest of the shoulder | 1:15:24 | 1:15:27 | |
so that I can see what Laird's doing and I can also see what's behind us. | 1:15:27 | 1:15:31 | |
It's a three-man operation - Laird and Kalama will be paired up, | 1:15:32 | 1:15:36 | |
I'll be in the channel for safety. | 1:15:36 | 1:15:38 | |
Performing as a team is the key to survival in 50-foot plus waves | 1:15:39 | 1:15:42 | |
where every wipeout becomes life-threatening. | 1:15:42 | 1:15:46 | |
When things go wrong, they go wrong real quick. | 1:15:50 | 1:15:53 | |
They're getting brutalised so severely. | 1:15:55 | 1:15:57 | |
You just don't know when it's going to end. | 1:15:57 | 1:15:59 | |
You're an insignificant little rag doll, | 1:15:59 | 1:16:02 | |
trying to keep your limbs in, so that nothing gets ripped off. | 1:16:02 | 1:16:06 | |
I mean, God almighty, anybody looks at that shit and says, | 1:16:06 | 1:16:10 | |
"How can that guy live through that?" | 1:16:10 | 1:16:12 | |
The single greatest threat is getting trapped in the impact zone | 1:16:18 | 1:16:22 | |
and held under water, as successive ten-storey waves explode overhead. | 1:16:22 | 1:16:26 | |
Out of sheer neccessity of survival, tow-in surfing | 1:16:28 | 1:16:30 | |
introduced the big wave rescue, with the ski driver ready and willing | 1:16:30 | 1:16:34 | |
to put himself in harm's way to come to the aid of his fallen partner. | 1:16:34 | 1:16:38 | |
I'm thinking about one thing - the next wave that's going to hit him | 1:16:40 | 1:16:44 | |
and how much time I have from where I am to get to him, get him on the ski and get out of there. | 1:16:44 | 1:16:49 | |
Sometimes you're not going to be able to come in and get him | 1:16:49 | 1:16:52 | |
immediately, and he might have to take two or three on the head. | 1:16:52 | 1:16:56 | |
You've got to dash in there | 1:17:01 | 1:17:02 | |
and hopefully the timing's right that the guy's going to pop up | 1:17:02 | 1:17:06 | |
just as you're coming by and you get him, otherwise you got to get | 1:17:06 | 1:17:09 | |
out of there and the guy's got to take another one on the head. | 1:17:09 | 1:17:13 | |
Because, you know, if you lose the ski then both of you are screwed. | 1:17:16 | 1:17:19 | |
You can rush into a situation where a person is drowning | 1:17:19 | 1:17:22 | |
and now there's two persons drowning. | 1:17:22 | 1:17:24 | |
In a rescue situation where you're really in peril and it's for real | 1:17:35 | 1:17:39 | |
and it's a real situation, | 1:17:39 | 1:17:40 | |
there's that connection | 1:17:40 | 1:17:42 | |
and you can see it in the eyes where, | 1:17:42 | 1:17:44 | |
"We need to do this and we need to do it right now. | 1:17:44 | 1:17:46 | |
"Nothing else matters." | 1:17:46 | 1:17:48 | |
But as soon as that moment passes, it's pure love. "Thank you, buddy. | 1:18:01 | 1:18:07 | |
"I love you. Thank you for getting me out of here." | 1:18:07 | 1:18:10 | |
If one of those guys go down, I will put myself on the line every time. | 1:18:11 | 1:18:17 | |
And each one of those guys, | 1:18:17 | 1:18:19 | |
they'll put themselves on the line for guys they don't even know, | 1:18:19 | 1:18:22 | |
or guys they might not even like, but it's part of their personality. | 1:18:22 | 1:18:26 | |
It's part of their nature, so when they go home at night, | 1:18:26 | 1:18:28 | |
they sleep well, because they don't think, | 1:18:28 | 1:18:31 | |
"I should have, I could have, why didn't I?" They do it. | 1:18:31 | 1:18:33 | |
When you're underwater and you know, "OK, I'm here by myself right now | 1:18:44 | 1:18:48 | |
"underwater but I know there's somebody up there | 1:18:48 | 1:18:51 | |
"who's doing everything they can to help me right now." | 1:18:51 | 1:18:54 | |
Even if he can't help you, the confidence that's instilled | 1:18:54 | 1:18:58 | |
by believing in that person buys you time. | 1:18:58 | 1:19:02 | |
It gives you confidence to just make it to the surface. | 1:19:02 | 1:19:05 | |
It really makes survival a whole different story than if you were | 1:19:05 | 1:19:11 | |
out there on your own, swimming around in the water, you know? | 1:19:11 | 1:19:15 | |
With no-one but yourself. | 1:19:15 | 1:19:16 | |
The experiences that you have there, | 1:19:25 | 1:19:28 | |
the friendships that are formed, going through those | 1:19:28 | 1:19:32 | |
experiences are ones that are very deep, cos there's times where | 1:19:32 | 1:19:38 | |
you call upon or experience the most deepest sense of who you are. | 1:19:38 | 1:19:44 | |
MUSIC: "Trois Gymnopedies" by Austin Peralta | 1:19:44 | 1:19:48 | |
There's something about riding a 60, 80 foot face wave, | 1:20:10 | 1:20:14 | |
that draws something out of you. | 1:20:14 | 1:20:17 | |
The wave commands so much focus and so much attention | 1:20:17 | 1:20:20 | |
that it's the only thing that matters for a few seconds, | 1:20:20 | 1:20:23 | |
and it's very purifying, because as far as you're concerned, | 1:20:23 | 1:20:26 | |
nothing else exists. | 1:20:26 | 1:20:29 | |
You're not doing this for your own glory, you're doing this | 1:20:40 | 1:20:43 | |
because you're caught up in this great act of nature, you know. | 1:20:43 | 1:20:47 | |
Ironically, the biggest challenge | 1:20:58 | 1:21:00 | |
facing these professional big wave riders is not the wave itself. | 1:21:00 | 1:21:04 | |
You can't just go get it on Sunday at 12 o'clock, | 1:21:09 | 1:21:12 | |
like you can most anything else. | 1:21:12 | 1:21:15 | |
When the ocean is not making | 1:21:15 | 1:21:16 | |
some of the waves available, Laird suffers. | 1:21:16 | 1:21:20 | |
Like a lot of the other guys do. | 1:21:20 | 1:21:22 | |
Oh, I get so depressed, it's like... | 1:21:22 | 1:21:24 | |
HE SIGHS DEEPLY | 1:21:24 | 1:21:26 | |
We get frustrated and depressed, and bitchy and grouchy, you know. | 1:21:28 | 1:21:34 | |
You really don't want to be around us when it's like that. | 1:21:34 | 1:21:37 | |
Laird was trying to explain to me what it was like | 1:21:37 | 1:21:41 | |
when there was no waves, and he said, "It would sort of be like, | 1:21:41 | 1:21:44 | |
"if you were a dragon slayer and there just were no more dragons. | 1:21:44 | 1:21:47 | |
"And then you wonder, who am I and what am I doing here?" | 1:21:47 | 1:21:50 | |
And I question that all year long, except when I'm out surfing. | 1:21:50 | 1:21:55 | |
Laird's the king out there. | 1:22:26 | 1:22:27 | |
I mean, he was the one that, like Greg at Waimea, | 1:22:27 | 1:22:31 | |
dragged the guys out there. | 1:22:31 | 1:22:33 | |
You just watch him surf, | 1:22:46 | 1:22:48 | |
there's no-one that comes close to his abilities. | 1:22:48 | 1:22:51 | |
He has the ability to actually slow himself down, | 1:22:55 | 1:22:58 | |
where everybody else just wants to run like hell. | 1:22:58 | 1:23:00 | |
The reason why I'm able to ride waves the way I do is because | 1:23:11 | 1:23:14 | |
I have partners like Dave and Eric. | 1:23:14 | 1:23:16 | |
I'm only arriving at this level | 1:23:16 | 1:23:18 | |
because I'm being driven by these guys to this level. | 1:23:18 | 1:23:21 | |
There's just no question that this guy | 1:23:27 | 1:23:30 | |
is the best big wave rider the world's ever seen. | 1:23:30 | 1:23:32 | |
In August of 2000, | 1:23:38 | 1:23:40 | |
Hamilton took another giant leap by riding a wave so treacherous | 1:23:40 | 1:23:44 | |
and so outrageous, that it affected the course | 1:23:44 | 1:23:47 | |
of big wave surfing history. | 1:23:47 | 1:23:50 | |
The wave broke 3,000 miles south of Maui | 1:23:50 | 1:23:52 | |
on the French Polynesian island of Tahiti. | 1:23:52 | 1:23:56 | |
At a reef pass known simply as Teahupo'o. | 1:23:56 | 1:23:59 | |
Who ever thought that a wave could suck so much water off the reef, | 1:24:10 | 1:24:13 | |
that a wave could be so powerful and cylindrical? | 1:24:13 | 1:24:16 | |
The wave Laird encountered at Teahupo'o | 1:24:18 | 1:24:20 | |
is a freak of hydrodynamics. | 1:24:20 | 1:24:23 | |
Unlike the deep water, big wave breaks of Waimea, Mavericks and Peahi, | 1:24:23 | 1:24:27 | |
Teahupo'o explodes laterally onto an extremely shallow, razor-sharp reef. | 1:24:27 | 1:24:32 | |
The result is an extraordinary wave, that while not as high as Peahi, | 1:24:36 | 1:24:40 | |
is almost unfathomable in its mass, power and ferocity. | 1:24:40 | 1:24:46 | |
Teahupo'o's reputation was already fearsome, | 1:24:56 | 1:24:59 | |
but neither Laird nor Derek could have imagined the once-in-a-lifetime wave | 1:24:59 | 1:25:04 | |
that eventually appeared on the horizon. | 1:25:04 | 1:25:06 | |
I towed him onto this wave, | 1:25:06 | 1:25:10 | |
and it was to the point where I almost said, | 1:25:10 | 1:25:13 | |
"Don't let go of the rope". When I looked back, he was gone. | 1:25:13 | 1:25:16 | |
I think it's the single heaviest thing I've ever seen in surfing. | 1:25:39 | 1:25:44 | |
What could be heavier than that? | 1:25:44 | 1:25:45 | |
Laird's wave at Teahupo'o was the single most significant ride in surfing history, | 1:25:47 | 1:25:53 | |
more than any other ride, because what it did is it completely restructured, | 1:25:53 | 1:25:57 | |
collectively, our entire perception of what was possible. | 1:25:57 | 1:26:01 | |
You go through a surf magazine, you've seen Waimea, | 1:26:01 | 1:26:05 | |
you've seen everything, and none of it has any impact. | 1:26:05 | 1:26:08 | |
But when that photo came out, it stopped everyone's heart, | 1:26:08 | 1:26:12 | |
and they went, "Where and what is that?!" | 1:26:12 | 1:26:15 | |
I remember picking up that magazine, looking at that magazine | 1:26:15 | 1:26:19 | |
and just going, "Man, that shit's impossible! You don't do that." | 1:26:19 | 1:26:25 | |
In my absolute prime, there is no way I could ride a wave like that. | 1:26:25 | 1:26:30 | |
Normally surfers are dragging this hand along the face. | 1:26:30 | 1:26:33 | |
Laird had to drag his back hand on the opposite side of his board, | 1:26:33 | 1:26:38 | |
to keep himself from getting sucked up in that hydraulic. | 1:26:38 | 1:26:43 | |
In the middle of that maelstrom, how did his mind say, | 1:26:43 | 1:26:46 | |
"This is what I have to do." | 1:26:46 | 1:26:48 | |
No-one had ever ridden as Laird rode on that wave before, | 1:26:48 | 1:26:51 | |
so it was the imagination of dealing with that unimaginable energy, | 1:26:51 | 1:26:55 | |
and coming up with the plan spontaneously. He couldn't practice! | 1:26:55 | 1:26:59 | |
I asked Laird, "Why do you ride waves like this? | 1:27:04 | 1:27:08 | |
"Why do you risk your life riding waves like this?" | 1:27:08 | 1:27:11 | |
And he looked at me. | 1:27:11 | 1:27:12 | |
This was a week after he did this, and he was kind of drained from the experience, | 1:27:12 | 1:27:16 | |
he was very mellow, and I think he was humbled by the experience. | 1:27:16 | 1:27:20 | |
And he goes, "Dad, I've trained my whole life for this. | 1:27:20 | 1:27:23 | |
"I don't want to miss an opportunity like that." | 1:27:23 | 1:27:26 | |
I don't want to not live because of my fear of what COULD happen. | 1:27:38 | 1:27:42 | |
It softened some hard corners in my life, I would say. | 1:27:51 | 1:27:54 | |
And I felt honoured to be awarded with something so... | 1:27:54 | 1:28:00 | |
..magnificent, that it just made me appreciate | 1:28:02 | 1:28:05 | |
what I've been able to have, experience, do. | 1:28:05 | 1:28:08 | |
MUSIC: "Ka Pua U'l" by Kahauana Lake Trio | 1:28:20 | 1:28:23 | |
One of the things I love about my work as a physician, | 1:28:49 | 1:28:53 | |
I work with cancer patients, and people with life-threatening illnesses, | 1:28:53 | 1:28:58 | |
is to see what often takes place, which is transformation, literally, | 1:28:58 | 1:29:03 | |
where they just begin to eliminate the bullshit. | 1:29:03 | 1:29:05 | |
And they begin to actually live, truly live, almost for the first time. | 1:29:07 | 1:29:11 | |
And those kind of life-changing events can come from illness, | 1:29:11 | 1:29:17 | |
they can come from revelation, | 1:29:17 | 1:29:19 | |
they can actually come, for me anyway, from big wave surfing. | 1:29:19 | 1:29:24 | |
That's the thing about that, it's that ultimate big wave that you ride, | 1:29:24 | 1:29:28 | |
that you remember for the rest of your time. | 1:29:28 | 1:29:31 | |
They're ingrained in your brain, just like your child being born. | 1:29:31 | 1:29:35 | |
I haven't missed a swell in 55 years, | 1:29:42 | 1:29:45 | |
I'm still as excited about surfing as I've ever been. | 1:29:45 | 1:29:48 | |
I mean, I literally run to the water with my board, hooting and laughing and giggling. | 1:29:48 | 1:29:53 | |
Centuries ago, a young Hawaiian stood up on his surfboard, | 1:29:58 | 1:30:01 | |
and slid gently across the face of a breaking wave. | 1:30:01 | 1:30:04 | |
That same wave has rolled through time, crossing many oceans, | 1:30:05 | 1:30:10 | |
bearing the giants of surfing. | 1:30:10 | 1:30:12 | |
From King Kamehameha to Duke Kahanamoku, | 1:30:12 | 1:30:15 | |
from George Downing to Greg Noll, | 1:30:15 | 1:30:18 | |
from Jeff Clark to Laird Hamilton, | 1:30:18 | 1:30:22 | |
sweeping them all toward that most supreme pleasure, | 1:30:22 | 1:30:25 | |
driven on so fast and smoothly by the sea. | 1:30:25 | 1:30:29 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 1:30:59 | 1:31:02 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 1:31:02 | 1:31:06 |