Riding Giants Storyville

This programme contains some strong language.

MUSIC: "Messe Solonelle: Sanctus" by The Orpheus Chamber Ensemble

MUSIC: "Don't Stay" by Linkin Park

MUSIC STOPS

The ancient Hawaiian sport of surfing can be traced back

as far as 1,000 years ago, as men, women, children

and Hawaii's great King Kamehameha enjoyed the thrill of riding waves.

In the earliest description of the sport by a visiting European,

Captain James Cook observed upon watching an Hawaiian surf rider

in the year of 1777:

"I could not help concluding

"that this man felt the most supreme pleasure

"while he was being driven on so fast and so smoothly by the sea."

Then in the 1800s,

the waves fell flat with the arrival of the Calvados missionaries.

Shocked and outraged by the state of undress

and the easy mixing of the sexes that surfing fostered,

the missionaries banned the sport.

The extinct Polynesian pastime

was then reintroduced in the early 20th century by Alexander Hume Ford,

a globetrotting promoter who set about reviving Island tourism

by romanticising surfing at Waikiki.

In 1912, came surfing's first international icon.

Waikiki beach boy and celebrated Olympic swimming champion,

Duke Kahanamoku.

The only surfer to ever appear on a US stamp.

While travelling the globe giving swimming demonstrations,

Duke became surfing's Johnny Appleseed,

introducing his favourite sport to far-flung places like California, New York and Australia.

One of the fans enthralled by the Duke

was a young Wisconsin swimming champion named Tom Blake.

Relocating to Hawaii, Blake would go on to become

one of the 20th-century's most influential surfers through his innovative surfboard design,

but most importantly, through his advocacy of surfing as a way of life.

By 1948, surfing had taken root along the California coast,

where a skinny, 10-year-old kid from Hermosa Beach named Greg Noll

found himself immersed in the emerging subculture.

Following in the footsteps of pioneers like Pete Peterson and Lorrin Harrison,

Noll eagerly joined the ranks of these eccentric sportsmen,

carving out an entirely new and free-spirited lifestyle.

Those guys were all gentlemanly.

It was a different era, a different time.

Something went to hell in the early '50s. It's like somebody threw a light switch.

When the lightweight longboard came in, something happened.

# Hey babe

# I don't feel like going to school no more

# Me neither. #

It was the introduction of lightweight balsawood

and the newly discovered aerospace material fibreglass

that suddenly cut the weight of surfboards in half,

and paved the way for a younger generation to begin picking up the offbeat support.

There was this great feeling

of individuality and freedom

from being able to ride this wave, and it made us feel free and I think maybe almost rebellious.

the ride itself is such a bitching deal. So rewarding.

It becomes so important to you that it becomes

the object around which you plan the rest of your life,

and everyone else is planning around money and acquisition of money.

And all of a sudden, a bunch of guys come along and go, "Screw the money,

"I'm having all the fun I could possibly have, girls are loving it,

"we're a bunch of scroungy surfers."

The shittier you dress and the funnier language you talk,

nobody understood half the stuff we were saying because it was surf jargon,

the more fun we were having, the more it would piss off society.

# Well you're sexy and 17

# My little rock a boat queen

# That's a little bit I seen

# Gotta let off a little steam. #

With a devotion to riding waves came the creation of a new lifestyle,

centred around all things beach.

# Shake it around your body, body, body. #

This emerging lifestyle went in direct opposition to mainstream values.

Surfers were often regarded as nothing more than beach bums.

My parents never saw me surf. They thought it was a disease.

They couldn't come to the game, they couldn't see the score up on the board,

and couldn't understand what good it did.

Greg Noll talks about his principal calling him into the office saying,

"What are you guys doing down there on the beach,

"what exactly are you doing?"

Not just going at the surf, what are you doing on the beach?

For the first time ever, they had a group of guys who didn't give a rat's ass

dropping out of the basketball team and football team, giving the whole thing the finger,

and going, I don't give a shit, I want to go surfing.

For this new generation of surfers,

surfing wasn't just something you did, but something you became.

Not just a sport, but a statement.

I think getting radical was part of the culture at that time.

After a while, it was expected of us and therefore we fulfilled those expectations.

Some guy's dad had got back from the war and had a closet full of Nazi stuff that he brought back,

and then they went over and took flexes and rode down a storm drain for a mile underneath Windansea.

And that was just, you know, having a good time, but people see it and go, "Oh, what's this all about?"

That behaviour was not mean-spirited. It was playful. It was like turning a hearse into a surf mobile.

Instead of dead bodies, it was all about living life to the full.

Amidst the mirth and mayhem of the fledgling surf scenes,

from Windansea to San Onofre to Malibu,

much homage was given to the sport's Polynesian roots,

with grass shacks, floral Aloha shirts and the playing of ukuleles.

But on a winter morning in 1953, another Hawaiian import

landed like a bomb on the front porch of California.

I can remember I was a 14-year-old paperboy

delivering papers in Santa Monica -

it was the Evening Outlook and I got to work that afternoon

I looked at the front page

and there was Buzzy Trent, George Downing and Wally Froiseth

coming down the face of what looked like a 30-foot wave.

This simple image sent shockwaves through California's emerging surf culture,

triggering the first migration of West Coast surfers

to the Hawaiian Islands and Oahu's Makaha Beach.

# Wind and wave and sand and sunshine... #

It was Makaha's combination of smooth,

crystal-blue warm water and large, gently-tapered waves

that helped create surfing's first accessible big-wave riding paradise.

# Just to ride Makaha waves... #

At Makaha, if we had ten guys on a good day, that was a lot.

You knew every one of them - they were there every time.

To us, that was a crowd at that time.

You'd be out there for about two, three hours.

And you'd only catch, like, five waves.

Cos you don't want to mess it up.

You don't have no leash and you were out there.

When you wipe out, there's nobody.

# And the surfers ride their high boards

# Toward the bright Makaha shore... #

In the early days, we lived on the beach. We had tents.

Then, later on, we all got together and rented quonset huts -

for 25-50 bucks - ten guys would be in the quonset hut.

You know, so it was cheap, that was an upgrade.

It was easygoing, no problems, no hassles.

You know, we used to leave our board on the beach there, go into Waikiki

for two days, come back - it'd still be there, nobody'd touch it.

# Let them love at old Makaha

# On the bright Makaha shore. #

The young Californians were mentored by Makaha's

first generation of big wave riders.

Surfers like Woody Brown, along with Wally Froiseth, George Downing and Buzzy Trent

had spent much of the previous decade challenging Makaha's giant surf.

They were the astronauts of their era,

conquering big waves that no-one had conquered before them.

To me, those guys were bigger than life before I went over there.

That trio of guys were the first really hardcore big wave riders

that set the blueprint for the next generation.

But it was 23-year-old George Downing who carved the mould

from which all other big wave riders were cast.

I think that George Downing in a sense is truly the original big-wave surfer.

Downing designed and built the first true big-wave surfboard.

It was instrumental in exploring many of Oahu's other big wave breaks.

They all wanted to ride more big waves

and Makaha doesn't get big that often.

We had heard these fabulous tales about this deep, dark,

foreboding place called the North Shore.

15 miles up the coast from Makaha was the North Shore -

a remote, 13-mile stretch of coastline backed up against

a patchwork of pineapple fields and taro farms.

I can remember coming out of the pineapple fields of Schofield,

and getting my first glimpse of the North Shore.

Here's this magical place laid out in front of you.

Suddenly they get to a place where all those dreams live.

Every time you'd go another couple of hundred yards, "Shit, there's another place! Look at this!"

At first, we didn't have a clue that we had stumbled on something

so fabulously magical and powerful.

Just taking the waves into consideration,

they must have thought that they'd found Nirvana.

The discovery of the North Shore was surfing's equivalent of Columbus reaching the New World.

Nowhere else on Earth would there be found

so many world-class big wave breaks in such close proximity.

What the Paris runways are to fashion,

is what the North Shore is to the world of surfing.

We're among the first groups of Californians to live out there

and just dedicate themselves to surfing.

MUSIC: "Rudy's Rock" by Bill Haley and The Comets

We were spending, eight, ten hours a day in the water,

doing nothing but surfing our guts out.

There wasn't any home life, so, you know,

we spent our days on the beach and that's what we did.

We surfed all day. Every day - no matter what.

In those days, we never saw girls.

And if you brought a date out

and sat her in the car while you surfed four or five hours, you never had that date again.

These guys came to surf, and it was kind of unheard of...

"You don't have a JOB? You spend a couple of months here to surf?"

No watch. No money. No car. No nothing.

Just shorts and a T-shirt.

There were no hotels - there was one place in Haleiwa that was a set of cubicles.

You'd have guys sharing the place and getting mattresses

from the Salvation Army and throwing 'em on the floor.

I mean, it was a scene to try to make ends meet.

There wasn't a lot of money, so if we wanted to eat, we had to go diving.

We'd dive every day and get fish and lobster - and turtle, in those days.

They'd go pick coconuts and papayas and go fishing -

in those days, you could live off the land.

Guys'd come over from the mainland, they'd patch our surfboards for us for a peanut butter sandwich.

Pat Curren and I, we'd get in a bit of trouble -

we'd steal chickens, or something like that.

MUSIC: "Parchman Farm" by John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers

I mean, the whole thing was waiting for waves.

You know, we would do anything to amuse ourselves and each other,

so somewhere I'd learned about how to put lighter fluid in your mouth

and torch it off!

Actually, I did set the side of that house on fire!

They're just spending their days living in the sun,

and living a life that's not the '50s men-in-a-grey-flannel-suit thing.

It's like an alternative thing the way Kerouac was

and bikers were, except they're having fun.

That was the counter-culture of its day.

You were bucking the system and you went to Hawaii and you rode waves.

They were the pioneers, not only of riding big waves, but of the culture of surfing.

They're the ones who set the pace, this free-and-easy lifestyle.

That really was a unique period in history.

They were doing something so unique in the 20th century.

The fact was, there was a handful of them - it wasn't like jazz,

where there was the Chicago scene and the New York scene, this was IT.

That tiny little epicentre - those two dozen intrepid men

and the women that went with them living that life.

It only lasted a few years.

What a remarkable time that must have been.

MUSIC: "Glass Off" by Bankok Starters

As these surfers rode more and more of the North Shore's fantastic waves,

the biggest wave of all still eluded them.

The spot? Waimea Bay, which began to break

when the rest of the North Shore was too big to surf.

But Waimea Bay was riddled with taboos and fears

as surfers of the '50s were haunted by the memory of Dickie Cross,

a young California surfer who in December of 1943

became trapped by a fast-rising storm swell while surfing Sunset Beach.

Unable to reach the shore, he and fellow surfer Woody Brown elected to paddle three miles south

to the safer, deep water at Waimea Bay.

But 50-foot waves were closing out the bay

and while attempting to reach the shore, both were caught

by mountains of white water and ripped from their boards.

Brown eventually washed up on shore naked,

while 17-year-old Cross was never seen again.

I mean, it spooked everybody. They were like, "You can't ride there. It's a killer.

"We're not going to go out there - you're going to die."

Along with the death of Dickie Cross, Waimea's reputation

was steeped in superstition and dread,

with tales that ranged from haunted houses on the Point

to human sacrifices at the heiau, or Hawaiian burial ground, overlooking the bay.

All of these things were whizzing around this place

like a bunch of ghouls and people really believed

that if you paddled out, there was going to be this goddamn vortex -

it'd be like flushing the toilet and there go the holidays for the season.

People thought you couldn't ride Waimea Bay - they watched,

looked at it and said, "Can't be done".

You'd look at Waimea and you'd wonder,

can the human body survive the wipeout?

But the lure of riding Waimea was unrelenting,

as during each big swell, surfers would find themselves

standing spellbound on the shore, transfixed by the sight

of these huge, perfectly-shaped waves, exploding off the point.

We'd go by there when it was breaking and go, "Jeez,

"that looks like a ride of a wave."

You could see that this had all of the potential of being a great surf spot.

And at some point, you just had to go, "To hell with it.

"We can do this thing."

On a fall day of October 1957, a handful of surfers

converged on Waimea as a 20-foot swell began lining up the bay.

MUSIC: "Rumble" by Link Wray

Sitting on the point, watching the huge empty waves with his buddy,

Mike Stang, 19-year-old Greg Noll had finally seen enough.

He unstrapped his board, and with Mike Stang in tow,

walked down to the water's edge.

Moments later, they were joined by fellow surfers

Pat Curren, Micky Munoz, Del Cannon,

Fred Van Dyke, Harry Schurch, Bing Copeland and Bob Bermell...

..who, together with Noll and Stang,

paddled out to attempt the impossible.

It was obvious where the waves were breaking and we'd all had

enough experience so that you knew pretty much where to paddle to.

I remember paddling into the line-up

and your balls were just in your stomach, you know?

Thinking that the bottom was going to fall out

and something was going to eat you alive.

I'm thinking to myself, I don't want to get wiped out,

cos I know there's sharks here and I'm not into swimming with sharks, exactly!

We got out there, it was a big surprise -

it's not an easy take-off.

I took off on a wave and went down the side and popped out the other end.

Went... "Shit! I'm still alive, nothing's happened."

After we got a couple of waves, that kind of took, you know,

"Hey, we can do this".

They broke the taboo - they went out and did it and once it was done,

opened up the floodgates, like, "OK, now, how far do we take it?"

MUSIC: "Pipeline" by Matter Music

The following year of 1958, Waimea Bay blew big wave surfing wide open

as another migration of ambitious surfers

came charging onto Hawaii's North Shore to campaign the huge surf.

These surfers were out to ride the biggest swells nature could produce,

so they built what came to be known as "guns" - long, narrow surfboards

designed exclusively for catching the fast-moving 25-foot waves of Waimea.

I rode an 11'6". It was first and foremost a wave-catching machine,

because if you can't catch a wave, nothing else matters.

Unlike the somewhat easy take-off of Makaha, Waimea was a fear-inducing

25-foot elevator drop, sometimes requiring more faith than skill.

It almost doesn't help sometimes to know what you're doing out there,

because if you know too much, it intimidates you.

Everything is moving, in flux.

Nothing is constant. It's so dynamic that you can't pre-plan it.

Not only are you riding down this mountain,

but this mountain is chasing you and you have to use all your skill

and all your ability to get away from this mountain,

but at the same time,

use it to your own benefit.

When you come down the face of a mountain,

you're on fire, your heart is exploding.

Endorphins are just busting out in your brain and you want to...

not just prove that you can do it,

but discover what you're made out of.

Apart from the challenge of learning to ride Waimea,

was the even greater challenge of surviving the horrifying wipe-outs.

You'd feel like a piece of lint in a washing machine,

because the force of nature that you're in the middle of

is so quantum beyond comprehension.

I can remember fracturing my neck at Waimea.

I went over the falls, I hit the water,

my neck went back in whiplash and fractured my neck.

Lost all feelings in my arms and legs.

I was like a seagull full of oil.

Just fluttering in the white water, out of control.

Some guys came over, helped me in. I'm lucky to be alive.

And I think every single big wave surfer

could tell you a story like that.

We didn't have flotation devices, we didn't have leashes,

we didn't have helicopters waiting to scoop you out.

So if you fucked up, you were on your own.

By 1959, Waimea had become the epicentre of big wave surfing,

fostering a new crew of big wave talents - Pat Curren, Peter Cole,

Ricky Grigg, Fred Van Dyke,

Jose Angel, Kealoha Kaio

and Greg Noll, whose big wave obsession

and even bigger wave personality

would forever link him with Waimea Bay.

MUSIC: "Sleep Walk" by Matter Music

Waimea was my gal. She was like...

I mean, I surfed with this beautiful woman

who allowed me to get away with shit

as long as I didn't act too outrageously towards her.

There were times when the surf would get perfect, you know,

and you'd go out and catch a wave...

just make this thing and have your adrenalin dripping out of your ears,

paddle back out and do it again.

You get a little too cocky, you'd get your ass slapped a little bit.

She'd let you know it but, for the most part,

it was just this full-on love affair that took place for 25 years.

Nicknamed the Bull for his charging style,

and clothing himself in loud, jailhouse-striped trunks,

Noll emerged as surfing's first big wave celebrity.

He had the perfect big wave persona. He looked like a big wave rider

with that big, thick neck,

and he had the black-and-white striped trunks, which was genius.

MUSIC: "Rumble in Brixton" by Stray Cats

Surfing needed Greg Noll.

Some of those surfers, they were a stoic bunch.

Greg Noll introduced flamboyance to it.

He introduced showmanship, he introduced that colourful aspect

that most people associated with Malibu. Not just the way he surfed,

but the spirit of it. He introduced that into big wave riding.

He wanted to ride the biggest wave anybody had ever ridden.

Greg made his reputation on taking off on the biggest wave, the heaviest wave.

He stuffed himself into positions nobody else would want. He'd sit over deeper,

he'd take off later, he'd spin around at the last minute.

He was surfing's first hell man.

He just liked confrontation. He sought it out.

In human terms and in big wave terms.

I was really a young, skinny kid

and I got my ass kicked from the time I can remember.

I went to school and had my ass kicked. I went to high school, I had my ass kicked.

And in some ways, maybe there was something there that drove me

to want to pursue big wave riding to make some kind of a statement.

I'm not a psychologist, I don't know.

All I know is, once you get into it, there's an adrenalin, a stoke

and that high is so addictive that, once you have a taste of it,

it's very difficult to not want more.

But for Greg Noll, big wave surfing became more than just an adrenalin fix.

It became his identity, his way of life and his business.

He was doing it to promote his surfboard business

and worked actively to promote himself.

Greg was a good hurdy gurdy man. He knew how to self-promote himself.

As well as being a successful surf film-maker,

the nickel and dime surfboard business Noll began in his parents' garage

had, by 1965, become a 20,000 square foot surfboard factory

built around his big wave image.

I had a big building, I had 67 employees,

I made 150 boards a week and, for the most part,

I was just turning money over because I'd sell them so cheap.

You know, we're all competing with each other.

He was a board designer, a really influential manufacturer.

He was the most complete surfer of the '50s and '60s. No-one else even came close.

Despite the dramatic exploits of Noll and the other Waimea-based surfers,

it was a naive 15-year-old girl from California

and her desire to join the Malibu surf set that launched surfing into mainstream America.

Surfing is out of this world!

You can't imagine the thrill of shooting the curl!

It positively surpasses every living emotion I've ever had!

Hey! This is the ultimate!

# She acts sort of teenage

# Just in-between age

# Looks about 4 foot 3... #

When you look at surfing's history from the '50s into the '60s,

everything has to be perceived as either pre-Gidget or post-Gidget.

-You can't mean...?

-I'm a surf bum.

You know, ride the waves, eat, sleep, not a care in the world.

From the movie Gidget coming out in '59, when there was fewer than 5,000 surfers,

to 1963, there was probably 2 million surfers.

So, in five years, it went from 5,000 to 2 or 3 million people doing it.

MUSIC: Miserlou by Dick Dale

Following the film release of Gidget,

surfing underwent a radical transformation.

Surf shops opened doors up and down America's west and east coasts.

John Severson's Surfer magazine began publication.

In 1962, surf music pioneer Dick Dale

sold 75,000 copies of his album Surfers' Choice in Southern California alone.

Suddenly, surfing was perceived as hip.

People assumed that surfers were in the know. Look at the life they were leading - living on the beach,

the sun, bikinis, that sort of aura of sex, beach blankets,

fires and then all that golden flesh in the sun.

Hollywood followed Gidget with a medley of surf exploitation films.

Then, in 1864, the Hollywood film Ride The Wild Surf

turned its lens on Hawaii's big wave surfers challenging Waimea Bay.

I've been hot to surf Waimea since I was 13!

But the question is, can we do it, without winding up in traction?

MUSIC: "Ride The Wild Surf" by Jan & Dean

The theme is always the same -

a bunch of chicks in bikinis wringing their hands that their boyfriends

are going to go out and risk their lives on some big wave and it just...

Man, it just makes me puke!

-Man, is he getting creamed.

-He's cooking gas!

They show the film of a guy sitting in a fish pond without a ripple...

Hey! It's coming!

..and then they cut to a 25-foot wave, guys all pouring down the face of the wave.

I mean, who can believe that shit?

Hollywood's always had a misconstrued view of surfing

so it's more or less offensive to the surfing community.

All the ancillary artistic pursuits that surrounded surfing,

they really did all come together in a rush and all of it happening from 1960 to 1965.

THUNDER CRASHES, WIND ROARS

SIREN WAILS

On December 4th 1969, big wave surfing was hit

with what would become known as the greatest swell of the 20th century.

A massive low pressure system metastasised

into one colossal storm system that consumed the North Pacific Ocean basin,

resulting in the largest waves ever recorded.

The super-size storm uprooted trees,

dislodged boats onto Oahu's Kam highway

and blew houses off their foundations.

Oahu's 13-mile stretch of stunning, world-class surf breaks

became a morass of turbulent, six-storey storm surf.

I was sitting at Waimea looking in disbelief at what I was seeing,

that it was breaking so big that Waimea was just full of white water.

So I decided to go round Kaena Point

and look at Makaha because that would be the last spot

that would still have some chance of holding out.

Noll set off west to Makaha, the birthplace of modern big-wave surfing,

thinking the huge swells slamming into the North Shore

would be tempered as they wrapped around the island's far western bend.

On the drive west,

he stopped briefly at Kaena Point to snap this picture

which Surfer magazine later claimed was the largest wave ever photographed.

When we got to Makaha, the cops were going around with their blare horns

on their cars telling people to evacuate their homes on the Point.

Makaha was the only big wave break on Oahu considered rideable,

as Noll and a handful of daring surfers attempted the huge swells.

As the morning progressed, the 100-year swell

surging out of the North Pacific

was giving rise to bigger and bigger waves.

Finally, everybody was out of the water, I was the only one left.

I was having a real hard time trying to gear myself for this

cos I knew that, basically, it was a situation

where your chances of surviving one of these waves was about 50/50.

I'm thinking to myself,

"Is it worth giving up the farm for a stupid wave?"

And I finally had to just paddle outside the line of 100 yards

and sit on my board with my head down and kind of go into another gear.

And the final decision was that I would never have forgiven myself

if I'd allowed this day to go by without at least trying for a wave.

Noll turned and paddled for what was then considered the biggest wave ever attempted.

No photographers were on hand to capture his wave.

Not a single shot or a single frame of footage exists.

All that remains are the memories of the handful of surfers

who were there that day to witness his momentous ride.

Greg Noll starts to paddle and we're all in our cars going,

"Oh, my God, look at this!" He's starting to paddle into the sea.

It's this huge, black, massive wall

and we watch him and he takes off, stands up.

He's this little speck on this gigantic wall.

And he drops in and he looks like a little tiny cartoon figure.

He gets that Greg Noll stance... "Rrrr, I'm going!"

And he drops down, drops down, drops down

and he gets to the bottom of the wave and the whole thing's already to come over the top of him.

And he just kind of stepped off the rail. There was nowhere to go, that was it.

The fact that he made the drop, got to the bottom of the wave

and it was like oblivion after that. The whole thing just...

Along with the birth of my sons and my daughter,

it was probably the most significant day of my life.

Even though it wasn't photographed

and even though people have argued since then, "How big was it?"

It doesn't matter. In our imaginations, it just was huge.

Because on that classic day of the biggest swell ever seen,

he essentially rode alone and he faced it when it came to him.

And that's what every surfer does in their own life. Everyone can relate to that.

As Greg Noll's giant wave broke and vanished,

so too did the popularity of big wave surfing at Waimea Bay

as it was broadsided by the late '60s shortboard revolution

where the longer, heavier, big guns were phased out

in favour of shorter and more manoeuvrable surfboards.

By the early '70s, the great Waimea had been usurped

by two spectacular, more performance-oriented North Shore breaks -

the Banzai Pipeline led by surfers like Gerry Lopez,

and at Sunset Beach by surfers like Jeff Hakman and Barry Kanaiaupuni.

All this changed in the mid-'80s,

first with the emergence of Ken Bradshaw and then Mark Foo,

two professional big wave riders determined to reintroduce

personality and showmanship to the challenge of riding giant Waimea.

Then came the Eddie, Quiksilver's big-wave riding contest at Waimea Bay

held in memory of the late, great, big wave rider Eddie Aikau.

Together, Ken Bradshaw, Mark Foo and the Eddie

wrenched the surfing world's attention back to Waimea Bay,

then still considered the Mount Everest of big wave surfing.

MUSIC: "Toccata and Fugue" by Christopher Herrick

Mavericks wasn't supposed to exist, it wasn't supposed to be there!

It was a mystery that it was just suddenly found in this area

about 20 miles from San Francisco.

In Half Moon Bay, formerly famous for its annual pumpkin festival!

It's as if they discovered Mount Everest behind Mount Whitney.

MUSIC: "Stay" by David Bowie

Teenage surfer Jeff Clark grew up along Half Moon Bay's secluded coast

riding home-made boards in the region's powerful rugged waves.

He carved out a frontier existence

far removed from surfing's mainstream.

I was a freshman in high school.

You could see this place exploding from out behind the building where we'd all congregate.

I was with my childhood friend and I said, "Brian! We've got to go check that out!"

We'd sit up on a cliff and watch this place go.

One day, it was like, "Brian, today's the day. Bring your board."

He's like, "There's no way I'm paddling half a mile offshore

"to a place I've never been."

So we sat here and he said, "I'll call the coastguard and tell them where I last saw you!"

The year was 1975

and the wave Clark intended to ride broke half a mile offshore

into a veritable graveyard of jagged rocks.

The wave was considered more a navigational hazard than a surf spot.

I just remember a wave jacking up, I'm in the vein and total commitment.

If I eat it, I eat it, but I'm going.

And I hit my feet

and I've never felt water pass across the bottom of a surfboard so fast.

Fastest I've ever gone!

And I made it. And I just thought, "I want another one of those!"

MUSIC: "Hayling" by FC Kahuna.

Jeff went out there for the first time and rode it by himself

and couldn't get anyone to go back out with him.

There just weren't any takers around here.

People just didn't believe me. They just thought,

"Oh, yeah, he's out of his mind, he doesn't know what he's talking about."

I said, "It's the best big wave you'll ever surf."

Jeff Clark was sitting out there, nobody in the bleachers,

no helicopters flying over, no cheering crowds.

Doing his shit by himself.

# Don't think about all those things you fear

# Just be glad to be here. #

He'd be like the equivalent of a mountain man

killing grizzly in the Rockies.

Doing a three-day battle and then sleeping inside the carcass

that night, not having anyone to tell about it.

My parents had no idea I was riding waves like this.

I believed in my ability to go out there and ride it.

It was my sanctuary. I could leave the shore and go out there

and be so focused and so in tune

and feel the ocean with every fibre in my body

and I was part of it.

Jeff Clark's greatest challenge was how he internalised

all that emotion and all that drama and all that adrenaline.

Surfing that place alone year after year after year.

Jeff Clark surfed Mavericks alone for 15 years.

Until finally in 1990, he was able to convince two Santa Cruz surfers,

Dave Schmidt and Tom Powers to join him.

They went back to Santa Cruz with these tales of these waves.

And the next time it broke, there were photographers,

there were ten guys.

Suddenly it's like, wait a minute, California is a big wave place.

MUSIC: "My Wave" by Soundgarden.

The discovery of this monstrous wave in Northern California

produced an entirely new breed of big wave surfer.

# Take, if you want a slice... #

Once Mavericks came about, it was like right in our backyard.

It took time to figure out what we had. It wasn't instantaneous.

Even though we knew it was heavy and gnarly,

it took time for me to conceptualise what we had.

It was taboo for us to say 20 feet.

It was like 20 foot waves only happen in Hawaii.

The thought was, it can't be as big as Waimea,

it can't be as gnarly as Waimea.

This can't be as hard as what they're doing there

when in fact, it was WAY harder.

It was way more fearsome and way gnarlier.

# Just keep it off my wave. #

Just so gnarly and rocky and...just violent and hateful. It's hateful.

I jumped in the water there and I had the worst ice cream headache

and within 30 seconds, I couldn't feel my hands or feet.

How are you supposed to ride 30, 40, 50 feet faces? I'm out of here.

-# Keep it off my wave.

-#

You've got sharks, you've got rocks,

you've got cold water, you've got huge surf.

Five millimetre wetsuits,

fog banks you can't see two feet in front of you.

Oversized boulders from the Land of the Lost.

They extend across the whole length of where the wave is breaking.

ONLOOKERS: Whoa! LAUGHTER

To reach the waves at Mavericks,

surfers must paddle over 45 minutes through a maze of rocks,

rip currents and frigid open ocean chop

until they finally reach the line-up.

The sacred thing in big wave surfing is, "What are the line-ups?"

Line-ups are a means of triangulating your position in the ocean

so you find two reference points on land at about 90 degrees.

Mainly what I use is positioning

on hillside. There's a big mountain behind and then a closer cliff

and there's a satellite dish you can line up.

You line them up so you know within a few feet

where you are in reference to the reef and the coastline.

If you just look at waves, you don't know if you're right.

It's very important to be in the right spot

at Mavericks because if you're too deep, you won't make it.

You're not just sitting there waiting for a wave.

The currents are so strong, you constantly paddle,

trying to maintain your opposition.

The worst thing that can happen out at Mavericks is getting caught inside.

There's sets that come that are on a regular basis.

And people get used to that, you know what I mean?

Sitting right where those come, then a sneak set will just come out of the blue.

It's literally just like in those beach blanket movies.

There's nothing happening, you're sitting on your board and sometimes,

corny though it may sound, someone actually yells, "Outside!"

And you turn and you go, oh, wow!

MUSIC: "Them Bones" by Alice in Chains.

Your adrenaline's running, everything is full RPM.

And you just want to stroke as hard as you can.

Your heart in your throat, paddling as if you're trying to catch a wave

-only you're trying to get out.

-It's just a total survival thing.

Nobody really cares about the other guy at that point,

you just want to get over it.

Each successive wave will be bigger than the one before.

And you pray that the one you just barely made it over

will get you to the next one.

The next one's twice as big as the wave you just saw and will land right on you.

Then... Oh, man, the sinking feeling.

I'm caught, and I'm not going to get away.

CAMERAMAN: Oh, that guy's in the impact zone.

# I feel so alone

# Gonna end up a big ol' pile of them bones. #

There's a point where it gets so critical

you have to either commit and you'll make it out the back

or you slide off your board and swim into a vertical face of water.

You feel like, "Oh, I made it," and then all of a sudden, you're getting

sucked back and the feeling of going over backwards is just horrifying.

It's the worst kind of beating.

Oh, shit.

There's a fiendish pleasure though

of watching one by one the people you started with, they get

picked off, they don't quite punch through right, and they're goners.

# I feel so alone

# Gonna end up a big ol' pile of them bones. #

Not only is the take-off the hardest part of big wave surfing,

it's the most fun.

It's entirely different to any kind of normal surf

because it's basically one burst of energy.

MUSIC: "Go" by Pearl Jam.

The wave comes out of deep water but it just stops

and that whole mass of that wave jacks up.

The bottom of the wave becomes the top in half a second.

It rears up and holds back and sucks up

and you really have to find your niche where you can be under that.

You thought you were paddling into something maybe 20 or 30 feet.

Now you're riding something that's 35, 40 feet tall.

You have to put everything you have into getting yourself as far

down the face as you can before it picks you up.

You have to jump off the cliff right when the thing's about to jump on you.

If you make haste in a take-off,

the odds of you making that wave are very low.

The whole aspect is really more mental than physical. You have to believe you'll make it.

I know when I'll make a wave or not before I even paddle for it.

I have to overcome that safety mechanism that wants to rise

up in me and to keep me from doing something that could kill me.

So this fear of the unknown becomes something

you absolutely have to confront.

Because there is no way to turn back your decision.

MUSIC: "Don't Give Up" by Basement Jaxx

I've just wiped out. I'm getting just worked.

Fluttering down the face getting sucked back over the face

then you basically become the lip.

Backflips front flips, big twists,

every which way underwater real fast over, like, a football field.

You don't know which direction is up or down or right or left.

It's black, it's dark, I can feel the pressure in my ears.

You're sure you're near the surface. Then what you perceived to be up is actually the bottom.

The leash is pulling hard on you. The board is tombstoning up there.

I realised if there's another wave coming, I'm finished.

At one point, it started to stop. I thought, "OK, I'm going to live."

And I started to swim up.

And the next wave hit.

Then it just started all over again, just every bit as bad as the first part.

THROBBING BASS

I remember feeling like going over a waterfall underwater.

Like literally getting sucked into a hole.

Here I am 30 feet down, it takes me another 15, 20 feet down.

I get slammed into the bottom down there.

You think, "Oh, my God, I'm deeper than anyone's ever been."

You get to a point when you're down there,

"OK, this is not happening any more."

You have to get to the surface to get air.

Finally when I come up to the surface

I remember it being so bright,

it was like being in a dream and all of a sudden...

WHOOSHING SOUND

..back to, "OK, this is real, this is live now."

PIANO PLAYS SOFTLY

THUNDER ROLLS

Almost every traumatic thing that can happen to you at Mavericks

is due to the leash.

I think leashes are one of the most dangerous things

in the line-up in any surf spot over 20 feet.

There's those few critical situations where leashes become

more of a hindrance than a help.

After going down on the first wave of the set,

Flea found himself on the wrong end of his leash.

When entangled in a crevice, the urethane cord held him in place

while he was repeatedly battered by incoming white-water.

The leash wrapped round the rocks and just...

I was stuck for, like, eight waves.

How come you couldn't get the leash of your foot?

Cos the water current was so strong.

It's like doing a sit-up with 200 pounds on your chest.

Flea eventually worked himself loose

but in an even more dramatic incident,

Jeff Clark was hurled into Mavericks' rocky boneyard

and was trapped when his leash became hooked onto Sail Rock.

I can't get the leash off my ankle and this broken half of my board

is dragging me right into the rocks and finally

I'm getting swirled around. I got my hands out and I feel the rock

and I'm hanging onto the side of this rock and I'm underwater

and the water starts to drain and I am high and dry.

Next thing I know, another wave came over the rock.

I'm underwater again, the tension from my leg rope relieved,

I climbed on the rock

and I got rid of that damn anchor that was around my leg.

It's so funny that the Mavericks surfers value their surfboards

more than their lives.

It's like a lifeline. If you get held down,

the only thing I know is at the end of this is something that floats a lot more than I do

so if I wait and hold onto it, that's up.

So I reach around and grab my leash

and climb it back to the top, back to the surface.

I know for sure in my personal experience, there are times

when if I didn't have a leash, I'm not sure I would've lived.

In May of 1992, two years after Clark shared his secret spot

with Powers and Schmidt, Surfer Magazine took Mavericks public

with a cover story titled "Cold Sweat".

MUSIC: "Babylon's Burning" by The Ruts.

As if to back up the front-page headline, in 1994,

California was bombarded by a series of epic north swells

announcing to surfing's big wave fraternity

that Mavericks was the real deal.

That's when the entire surf world kind of converged on Mavericks.

It was like, "OK, this place is legitimate,

"we'll see really what it's worth here."

On December 23, the sudden arrival of three of Hawaii's most famous

Waimea-based surfers - Ken Bradshaw, Brock Little and Mark Foo -

created the biggest stir and gave the impression

that something momentous was taking place.

# Babylon's burning, baby Can't you see?

# Babylon is burning with anxiety. #

That day was amazing.

To have the Hawaiians paddling out. Brock Little,

Mark Foo, Ken Bradshaw.

My gosh, I was like a proud parent or something like that.

Because they gave a spot that I'd surfed for so many years

the credibility to actually come and surf it.

Helicopters were hovering and photographers from all the mags were there.

It was just crazy, we knew it was, like, THE day.

One of the best days of surfing I ever had out there.

# Babylon's burning Babylon's burning

# Babylon is burning. #

Then at approximately 11:20 am,

during a beautiful medium-sized set, Mark Foo paddled, popped to his feet

and dropped into his second wave of the day.

# Babylon's burning. #

I went to lunch, I came back out to the point, I saw Brock

in the parking lot. And there was this guy,

"Have you seen Mark Foo?" And that was...

We were headed back in a boat toward the harbour

and I saw...it kinda looked like a big clump of something.

You know, as we were passing it.

I pointed it out and I said, "Hey, that looks like a body." You know?

And, sure enough, we stopped the boat

and just realised that it was...Mark Foo.

I dove off and grabbed him and just rushed to the harbour and...

It was a really eerie experience and just so chilling.

It went from the most pleasant, beautiful,

plate-glass sunshine day to...the clouds came in and it got dark,

the wind came up and it was just...

like we lost a great warrior.

One of our surfers, one of our own, was gone.

To have that winter when Mark Foo passed away,

that was a heavy hit to everybody.

What added to the shock of Foo's death were its circumstances -

an innocuous wipe-out on a less than death-defying wave

in the middle of a crowded line-up.

I think that he fell on his stomach, knocked the wind out of himself

and was fatigued from the flight the night before, you know?

I think he got caught on the bottom.

The reason I think his leg-rope got caught in the rocks is that

on the next wave, Brock Little and Mike Parsons wiped out.

Parsons comes up and Brock was behind him.

In later interviews, Parson said, "I felt Brock trying to get

"to the surface," but what he didn't realise at the time was Brock was up.

And it was Foo trying to get to the surface,

which kind of confirms that he was being held down by something.

I went and examined his body actually.

There really wasn't any discernible injury.

He had a slight scratch on his forehead.

His countenance actually was not that of one who had struggled

or who had been in anguish.

I felt surfing at Mavericks the years prior to that

that someone was going to die. I didn't think it would be Mark Foo.

I thought it would be somebody who didn't know what they were in for.

Mark Foo was this kind of guy who was larger than life to us,

more invincible than any of us, with more experience than any of us.

He's the guy that said, "To catch the ultimate thrill,

"you have to be willing to pay the ultimate price."

Everyone wanted to understand what killed him.

That was important because they were trying to assess

the risk in the face of their sudden mortality.

As it sunk in, I didn't think that could happen.

I literally didn't think it could.

I thought I was invincible.

I thought I could just huck myself over any ledge

and pop back up laughing, you know?

And I think a lot of big wave riders have that belief.

When it comes down to it, it's up to me whether I live or die.

It's up to me whether I go on a wave or not.

While an extravagant funeral was planned for Foo in Hawaii,

surfers from up and down the California coast

gathered at Mavericks for a quiet tribute to their fallen comrade.

It turned the clocks back to ten years before when I'm sitting

out there at the peak, by myself, with my own thoughts.

I wasn't sure I wanted to surf Mavericks after that

so when I went back out there, I wasn't sure if I'd be spooked or not

and I ended up, the wave came to me, and I was like, "Yes."

Mavericks said to me, "You want to be here. Here's your wave."

I caught a great one, everything was good.

It's the way I thought it was but I always knew it could kill me. It could kill anyone.

A year to the day after Foo's death

and during a memorial session held in Foo's honour at Waimea Bay,

California surfer Donnie Solomon was caught by a close-out set

and drowned.

Then in February of 1997, well-known big wave rider Todd Chesser

perished in 30-foot surf at a remote off-shore outer-reef break.

In 1968, in the thick of that era's short board revolution,

a fatherless 4-year-old boy named Laird Zerfas

accompanied his mother Joann on a chance visit to Hawaii's North Shore.

He couldn't have known it at the time but he would grow up to be

the greatest big-wave rider of his generation.

Perhaps the greatest the world has ever known.

After my dad left my mom, before I could even remember,

I was in search for a man, a masculine figure in my life

and my mom needed a husband but I needed a dad.

My friend Greg MacGillivray, who was like the father of the IMAX films,

was making a surfing movie at the time and I was helping him

make movies, so I was walking down the beach to see him

and here's this little kid playing around in the ocean.

I dove in, I said, "What's your name?" He said, "My name's Laird."

I said, "What are you doing?" He said, "I'm body surfing.

"You want to body surf?" I said, "Sure."

I said, "Why don't you hold onto my neck, we'll body surf."

It was love at first sight with him and I. We had this physical connection, instantly.

It was a physical, spiritual, mental, like, "I love this child."

It was just, "I love this child." And we were just like partners.

When we finished, he grabbed my hand and said,

"I want you to come up and meet my mom."

I don't know if he had a choice. I was like, "You're coming with me."

And there was his mother, beautiful brown-haird, brown-eyed gal,

and I went, "Oh, my God..."

Mom was like, who's this. I'm like, "This is Bill."

And I like give him the nudge, you know?

Shortly thereafter, Billy Hamilton, who was known

as one of the sport's most popular and stylish surfers, married Joann,

becoming Laird's adopted father and giving him his name.

I was known for being the kid who ran around saying,

"Hey, my dad's Bill Hamilton, you know who he is?"

And they'd be like, guys like Gerry Lopez, were like,

"Yeah, I see him every day!"

No, but do you know now it's MY dad?

They knew who he was but I wanted them to know, like, he was connected to me.

This is my dad. Because if you don't,

you might get like a soda can full of sand inside your head or...

The young Hamilton family set about making

a life for themselves in Hawaii where, despite the paradisiacal island setting,

the initial years took on a rough edge.

Being a blonde Caucasian, I kind of represented the stereotypical

person that destroyed the culture of Hawaii, so a lot of people

hated me, wanted to fight with me, just because of my skin colour.

The way he learned to fight, because he was so big and powerful,

was he'd slap an opponent so hard that it would shock them and embarrass them.

It wouldn't injure them but it would hurt them so bad mentally

and physically that he just won the fight right at that minute.

After a while, the reputation was there that

you don't muck around with Laird.

-He looked after you as well?

-Of course. I was his brother.

He took care of me. I mean, he was the only one giving me beatings!

Let's put it that way. It was a privilege deal.

He wanted to be Hawaiian.

He used to dream, he said, of wishing he had brown skin, to be Hawaiian.

Because, for him, that was what was sort of beautiful and strong,

because that's what was around him.

Couldn't get girlfriends, didn't have a lot of friends. What did he do?

He spent and put all that energy into the water.

In the face of this youthful alienation, Laird precociously

turned to an older generation for inspiration and camaraderie.

Laird Hamilton was around the legendary big-wave riders

of the '60s, who were moving through into the '70s,

his dad being one of them.

During that time, Pipeline Beach was the Mecca of surfing

and anybody who was anybody in surfing came to Pipeline and surfed Pipeline.

So I got to see all the guys.

His dad was making boards for Peter Cole,

Warren Harlow, Jose Angel, the pioneers of big-wave surfing,

and Laird was just this little sponge soaking all this stuff up.

I aspired to be like these pioneers of big-wave riding

because they were going out on days when people were evacuating.

Considering his pedigree, a traditional pro-surfing career

was Laird's for the taking but from a young age

his imagination was captured by the mythic canvas of riding giant waves.

I was young and impressionable in 1969

so I understood the volume of what was possible.

It was like, I understood that there was stuff out there

that hadn't been tapped and that the ocean was capable of producing places

and things that no-one had really done.

What Laird, and the other big-wave riders from as far back

as the '50s knew is that lying far beyond the traditional breaks

like Waimea were another set of remote off-shore reefs

capable of producing waves of unimaginable size.

Even before 1969, the amazing Third Reef Pipeline broke once

in 1963 as a result of a freak storm that awoke the sleeping giant.

It took Greg Noll and Mike Stang two hours to make the long paddle out.

They waited another two hours until Greg finally caught

one of the most epic rides in North Shore history.

Another ambitious attempt occurred 30 years later in 1993,

when North Shore surfer Alec Cooke, armed with an 11-foot board,

an emergency scuba tank and a helicopter, had himself

dropped in the path of a six-storey swell off Oahu's Kaena Point.

He made a valiant effort, actually making the drop on one massive wall before being swallowed.

Episodes like this made it clear that when it came to riding giant, outer-reef waves,

traditional paddle-in surfing had its limits.

When they talked about the limitations of big wave riding,

it wasn't riding the wave, it was catching the wave.

Because, as waves increase in size, they also increase in speed,

so the bigger the wave, the faster it's moving,

the faster you need to go in order to catch it.

Having already established himself as a dominant force in traditional

Hawaiian breaks, Laird Hamilton continued to explore the boundaries

of extreme ocean sports, developing into a world-class windsurfer.

Powered by the wind, Laird and his fellow sail-boarders discovered

the speed and mobility necessary to access the outer reefs and sailed

into waves previously impossible to catch by hand.

But then you had this sail and you weren't really surfing,

you were wind-surfing,

and it was so restrictive that you lost the freedom that surfing had.

I had just done a GQ shoot with Laird

and we both liked wind-surfing and surfing so we started hanging out.

Buzzy and I had been playing around in the Zodiac all summer

doing flat-water freeboarding and we were freeboarding in the summer

and there was a little swell and we were using swells for ramps

and all of a sudden we started like taking speed and catching waves

and that's when the light went off, one summer day, and we're like, "Oh, wow, we can catch waves."

"We might be able to ride bigger waves."

In December of 1992, Laird Hamilton, along with pro-surfer Buzzy Kerbox,

and legendary North Shore lifeguard and Waimea Bay rider Darrick Doerner

launched into the surf at Sunset Beach in a 16-foot inflatable Zodiac.

Neither of the three could have imagined that by the time

they got back to the beach that afternoon,

big wave surfing would be changed forever.

They weren't riding waves that were significantly bigger than guys had ridden.

It was how they were surfing the wave.

This radical new approach of being whipped into a wave

came to be called tow-in surfing.

You get the sling-shot from the tow rope, you let go of the rope

and there you are on this beautiful, giant wave with no-one near you,

on this big giant board,

there's no crowd there.

Bingo.

Progress came quick as the trio swapped the clumsy inflatable

for the faster and more agile jetski.

With the jetski, you can catch waves all day long and not even get your hair wet.

Back in 1987, North Shore veteran Herbie Fletcher,

who for years had been exploring the outer reefs on a jetski,

towed pro-surfer Martin Potter into a wave at Second Reef Pipeline.

An innovative idea that surprisingly failed to inspire others

until five years later, when Hamilton, Kerbox

and Doerner revealed tow-in surfing's true potential.

In traditional big wave surfing, the boards were very large

and the reason for the size of the board was to catch the wave.

Once you were in, you didn't need a big board. You were fine.

We didn't visualise what actually was going to take place

until we went snowboarding.

Bing!

And if we could ride these giant mountains on this tiny little board,

well, why couldn't we do that surfing?

Aided by renowned board builders Dick Brewer, Billy Hamilton

and Jerry Lopez, the trio chopped their boards by three feet,

then, drawing inspiration from windsurfing and snowboarding,

they strapped themselves to their boards, providing control

in the heightened speed and turbulence of riding waves over 30 feet.

The small board was really the big breakthrough.

That was where we really shifted gears.

All of a sudden, we had the speed.

The liberation of paddling by motor suddenly opened up

big wave surfing's next frontier.

Now it seemed that riding any wave, breaking anywhere,

at any size was possible.

Then came the idea of this thing on Maui, where Gerry sat down

with Laird and said, "I got something you might want to see."

When he understood what we had going, he was like, "Hey, young man.

"Come over here. I got something to show you."

MUSIC: "Jaws Main Theme" by John Williams

We knew that we had discovered the real unridden realm.

Located on Maui's remote north coast, and requiring a long,

dangerous approach by sea, is Peahi, also known as Jaws.

Peahi revealed itself as the big wave of the future

and within its awesome size and power, tow-in surfing came of age.

The biggest difference between this wave

and Waimea is that this was about five Waimeas.

You pick Makaha, Waimea, Sunset, Pipeline, Kaena Point, Mavericks,

put them all in a pot and mix them all together

and that's what you get, and more.

Like Waimea and Mavericks, Peahi featured its own crew

of ground-breaking pioneers.

In addition to Hamilton, Doerner and Kerbox were windsurfing champion Dave Kalama...

..then Mike Waltz, Pete Cabrinha, Mark Angulo,

Rush Randle and Brett Lickle.

Known as the Strap Crew,

these boys rewrote the rules of big wave surfing by riding

giant waves in a manner that was once the realm of sheer fantasy.

Things that previously we only dreamed of doing, things we

only saw in animation, suddenly, these surfers were doing it.

Now, you're riding waves with greater speed than you ever dreamed of.

I mean, it's like a dream.

"Oh, my God, I'm on a perfect wave, going 35 miles an hour",

it's just so fun.

Like, I better shut up.

Coming up on the ski and seeing plumes of water

going 100 feet in the air, and you can kind of hear the drone

of the skis in the distance and stuff and it looks like Waterworld

and you have things in your head, "What's going on?

"What waves are guys riding? How bad have wipe-outs been today?

"Like, is anyone dead yet?"

The first time I surfed at Peahi, I remember getting

so uptight on the way out, just going, "Oh, man," you know?

So much anxiety, that I was thinking,

"Jesus, I'm not going to be able to surf."

And I remember finally having to go,

"OK...

"Shit.

"I guess this is a good day to die."

Challenging waves in the 50 and 60 foot range obliterated the concept

of surfing as a solitary pursuit and rewired the rules of engagement.

You've got to have eyes in the back of your head and I've got eyes - Dave and Derrick.

They see what I need to see.

I'll just kind of balance right on the crest of the shoulder

so that I can see what Laird's doing and I can also see what's behind us.

It's a three-man operation - Laird and Kalama will be paired up,

I'll be in the channel for safety.

Performing as a team is the key to survival in 50-foot plus waves

where every wipeout becomes life-threatening.

When things go wrong, they go wrong real quick.

They're getting brutalised so severely.

You just don't know when it's going to end.

You're an insignificant little rag doll,

trying to keep your limbs in, so that nothing gets ripped off.

I mean, God almighty, anybody looks at that shit and says,

"How can that guy live through that?"

The single greatest threat is getting trapped in the impact zone

and held under water, as successive ten-storey waves explode overhead.

Out of sheer neccessity of survival, tow-in surfing

introduced the big wave rescue, with the ski driver ready and willing

to put himself in harm's way to come to the aid of his fallen partner.

I'm thinking about one thing - the next wave that's going to hit him

and how much time I have from where I am to get to him, get him on the ski and get out of there.

Sometimes you're not going to be able to come in and get him

immediately, and he might have to take two or three on the head.

You've got to dash in there

and hopefully the timing's right that the guy's going to pop up

just as you're coming by and you get him, otherwise you got to get

out of there and the guy's got to take another one on the head.

Because, you know, if you lose the ski then both of you are screwed.

You can rush into a situation where a person is drowning

and now there's two persons drowning.

In a rescue situation where you're really in peril and it's for real

and it's a real situation,

there's that connection

and you can see it in the eyes where,

"We need to do this and we need to do it right now.

"Nothing else matters."

But as soon as that moment passes, it's pure love. "Thank you, buddy.

"I love you. Thank you for getting me out of here."

If one of those guys go down, I will put myself on the line every time.

And each one of those guys,

they'll put themselves on the line for guys they don't even know,

or guys they might not even like, but it's part of their personality.

It's part of their nature, so when they go home at night,

they sleep well, because they don't think,

"I should have, I could have, why didn't I?" They do it.

When you're underwater and you know, "OK, I'm here by myself right now

"underwater but I know there's somebody up there

"who's doing everything they can to help me right now."

Even if he can't help you, the confidence that's instilled

by believing in that person buys you time.

It gives you confidence to just make it to the surface.

It really makes survival a whole different story than if you were

out there on your own, swimming around in the water, you know?

With no-one but yourself.

The experiences that you have there,

the friendships that are formed, going through those

experiences are ones that are very deep, cos there's times where

you call upon or experience the most deepest sense of who you are.

MUSIC: "Trois Gymnopedies" by Austin Peralta

There's something about riding a 60, 80 foot face wave,

that draws something out of you.

The wave commands so much focus and so much attention

that it's the only thing that matters for a few seconds,

and it's very purifying, because as far as you're concerned,

nothing else exists.

You're not doing this for your own glory, you're doing this

because you're caught up in this great act of nature, you know.

Ironically, the biggest challenge

facing these professional big wave riders is not the wave itself.

You can't just go get it on Sunday at 12 o'clock,

like you can most anything else.

When the ocean is not making

some of the waves available, Laird suffers.

Like a lot of the other guys do.

Oh, I get so depressed, it's like...

HE SIGHS DEEPLY

We get frustrated and depressed, and bitchy and grouchy, you know.

You really don't want to be around us when it's like that.

Laird was trying to explain to me what it was like

when there was no waves, and he said, "It would sort of be like,

"if you were a dragon slayer and there just were no more dragons.

"And then you wonder, who am I and what am I doing here?"

And I question that all year long, except when I'm out surfing.

Laird's the king out there.

I mean, he was the one that, like Greg at Waimea,

dragged the guys out there.

You just watch him surf,

there's no-one that comes close to his abilities.

He has the ability to actually slow himself down,

where everybody else just wants to run like hell.

The reason why I'm able to ride waves the way I do is because

I have partners like Dave and Eric.

I'm only arriving at this level

because I'm being driven by these guys to this level.

There's just no question that this guy

is the best big wave rider the world's ever seen.

In August of 2000,

Hamilton took another giant leap by riding a wave so treacherous

and so outrageous, that it affected the course

of big wave surfing history.

The wave broke 3,000 miles south of Maui

on the French Polynesian island of Tahiti.

At a reef pass known simply as Teahupo'o.

Who ever thought that a wave could suck so much water off the reef,

that a wave could be so powerful and cylindrical?

The wave Laird encountered at Teahupo'o

is a freak of hydrodynamics.

Unlike the deep water, big wave breaks of Waimea, Mavericks and Peahi,

Teahupo'o explodes laterally onto an extremely shallow, razor-sharp reef.

The result is an extraordinary wave, that while not as high as Peahi,

is almost unfathomable in its mass, power and ferocity.

Teahupo'o's reputation was already fearsome,

but neither Laird nor Derek could have imagined the once-in-a-lifetime wave

that eventually appeared on the horizon.

I towed him onto this wave,

and it was to the point where I almost said,

"Don't let go of the rope". When I looked back, he was gone.

I think it's the single heaviest thing I've ever seen in surfing.

What could be heavier than that?

Laird's wave at Teahupo'o was the single most significant ride in surfing history,

more than any other ride, because what it did is it completely restructured,

collectively, our entire perception of what was possible.

You go through a surf magazine, you've seen Waimea,

you've seen everything, and none of it has any impact.

But when that photo came out, it stopped everyone's heart,

and they went, "Where and what is that?!"

I remember picking up that magazine, looking at that magazine

and just going, "Man, that shit's impossible! You don't do that."

In my absolute prime, there is no way I could ride a wave like that.

Normally surfers are dragging this hand along the face.

Laird had to drag his back hand on the opposite side of his board,

to keep himself from getting sucked up in that hydraulic.

In the middle of that maelstrom, how did his mind say,

"This is what I have to do."

No-one had ever ridden as Laird rode on that wave before,

so it was the imagination of dealing with that unimaginable energy,

and coming up with the plan spontaneously. He couldn't practice!

I asked Laird, "Why do you ride waves like this?

"Why do you risk your life riding waves like this?"

And he looked at me.

This was a week after he did this, and he was kind of drained from the experience,

he was very mellow, and I think he was humbled by the experience.

And he goes, "Dad, I've trained my whole life for this.

"I don't want to miss an opportunity like that."

I don't want to not live because of my fear of what COULD happen.

It softened some hard corners in my life, I would say.

And I felt honoured to be awarded with something so...

..magnificent, that it just made me appreciate

what I've been able to have, experience, do.

MUSIC: "Ka Pua U'l" by Kahauana Lake Trio

One of the things I love about my work as a physician,

I work with cancer patients, and people with life-threatening illnesses,

is to see what often takes place, which is transformation, literally,

where they just begin to eliminate the bullshit.

And they begin to actually live, truly live, almost for the first time.

And those kind of life-changing events can come from illness,

they can come from revelation,

they can actually come, for me anyway, from big wave surfing.

That's the thing about that, it's that ultimate big wave that you ride,

that you remember for the rest of your time.

They're ingrained in your brain, just like your child being born.

I haven't missed a swell in 55 years,

I'm still as excited about surfing as I've ever been.

I mean, I literally run to the water with my board, hooting and laughing and giggling.

Centuries ago, a young Hawaiian stood up on his surfboard,

and slid gently across the face of a breaking wave.

That same wave has rolled through time, crossing many oceans,

bearing the giants of surfing.

From King Kamehameha to Duke Kahanamoku,

from George Downing to Greg Noll,

from Jeff Clark to Laird Hamilton,

sweeping them all toward that most supreme pleasure,

driven on so fast and smoothly by the sea.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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