Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
[SEA GULLS SQUAWKING, WAVES CRASHING IN DISTANCE]
[SURF ROARING]
[♪♪]
[♪♪]
[SEA GULLS SQUAWKING]
[♪♪]
NEWSREEL NARRATOR: The ancient Hawaiian sport of surfing
can be traced back as far as 1000 years ago,
as men, women, children
and even 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:
MAN: "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."
NEWSREEL NARRATOR: Then, in the 1800s, the waves fell flat
with the arrival of the Calvinist missionaries.
Shocked and outraged by the state of undress
and the easy mixing of the sexes that surfing fostered,
the missionaries banned the sport.
[PEOPLE BOOING]
[♪♪]
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 romanticizing 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 U.S. stamp.
While traveling the globe giving swimming demonstrations,
Duke became surfing's Johnny Appleseed,
introducing his favorite 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.
NARRATOR: 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.
KNOLL: Those guys were all kind of 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 advent of the lightweight
longboard came in,
something happened.
♪ Hey, man ♪
♪ I don't feel like Going to school no more ♪
♪ Me neither ♪
NARRATOR: It was the introduction of lightweight balsa wood
and the newly discovered aerospace material, fiberglass,
that suddenly cut the weight of surfboards in half
and paved the way for a younger generation
to begin picking up the offbeat sport.
♪ All right ♪
BILLY HAMILTO: There was this great feeling
of individuality and freedm
from being able to ride this wave.
And it made us feel fre, and, I think,
maybe almost rebelliou.
PEZMAN: The ride itself
is such a bitchen 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 their life around money
and acquisition of money.
All of a sudden, a bunch of guys come along
and they go, "Screw the money," you know,
"I'm having all the fun I could possibly have.
Girls are loving it," you know,
because here we are, a bunch of scroungy surfers,
the shittier you dress and the funnier language you talk,
which nobody understood half the stuff we were saying
because it was all surf jargon.
The more fun we were having,
the more it would *** off society.
♪ Well, you're sexy and 17 ♪
♪ My little rock 'n' roll Queen ♪
♪ Acts a little bit obscene ♪
♪ Gotta let off A little steam ♪
NARRATOR: With the devotion to riding waves
came the creation of a new lifestyle
centered around all things beach.
♪ ...shake it around Your mind, mind, mind ♪
[GIRL SCREAMS]
This emerging lifestyle
ran in direct opposition to mainstream values,
as surfers were often regarded
as nothing more than beach bums.
My parents never saw me sur. They thought it was a disease.
You know, they couldn't come to the game,
they couldn't see the score up on the board, you know.
And-- And couldn't understand what good it did.
WARSHAW: Greg Noll talks about
his principal calling him into the office and saying,
"What-- What are you guys doing down there on the beach?
What-- What exacty are you doing?"
Not just riding, not just going out to surf.
But, "What are you doig on the beach?"
NOLL: For the first time ever,
they had a group of guys that didn't give a rat's ***,
dropping out of the basketball team and the football team
and just giving the whole thing the finger, going,
"I don't give a *** about that. I want to go surfing."
NARRATOR: 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, uh, fulfilled
those expectations.
NOLL: Some guy's dad
had gotten back from the war and he had a closet full
of Nazi stuff that he brought back.
And then they went over and took Flexies
and rode down a storm drain for a mile,
underneath the, uh, town of Windansea.
And that was just, you know, having a good time.
But people see it
and they go, "Whoa. What's this all about?"
PEZMAN: That kind of behavior was not mean-spirited,
it was playful.
It was like turning a heare into a surf-mobile.
Instead of dead bodies,
it was all about living life to the fullest.
NARRATOR: 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.
GRIGG: I can remember.
I was a 14-year-old paperby
delivering papers in Santa Monica.
It was the Evening Outlook.
And I got to work that afternoon,
I looked at the front pae and there it was:
Buzzy Trent, George Downing and Wally Froiseth
coming down the face of what looked like a 30-foot wave.
NARRATOR: This simple image sent shock waves
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 wavs that helped create
surfing's first accessible big-wave riding paradise.
♪ Just to ride Makaha waves ♪
HOFFMAN: At Makaha, if we had 10 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 maybe about two, three hours,
and you would only catch, like, five waves,
you know, because you don't want to mess up.
You don't have no leash, and you're way out there.
And when you get a wipeout, there's nobody.
♪ And the surfers Ride their high boards ♪
♪ Toward the bright Makaha shore ♪
HOFFMAN: In the early days, we lived on the beach. We had tents.
Then later on, we all got together
and rented a Quonset hut for 25, clear up to 50 bucks,
and 10 guys would be in the Quonset hut. You know,
so it was cheap. And then we up--
That was an upgrade.
It was easygoing, no problems,
no hassles, you know,
and we used to leave our board on the beach there,
go into Waikiki for two days, come back,
it'd still be there, nobody would touch it.
♪ Fell in love With old Makaha ♪
♪ On the bright Makaha shore ♪
NARRATOR: The young Californians were mentored
by Makaha's first generation of big-wave riders.
Surfers like *** Brown,
along with Wally Froiseth, George Downing and Buzzy Trent,
had spent much of the previous decade
challenging Makaha's giant surf.
RARICK: They were the astronauts
of their era.
They were conquering big waves
that no one had conquered before them.
CURREN: You know, to me,
those guys were bigger than life
before I went over there.
NOLL: That trio of guys were the first
really hardcore big-wave riders
that set the blueprint for the next generation.
NARRATOR: But it was 23-year-old George Downing who carved the mold
from which all other big-wave riders were cast.
I think that George Downing, in a sense,
is truly the original big-wave surfer.
NARRATOR: Downing designed and built the first true big-wave surfboard,
and was instrumental in exploring
many of Oahu's other big-wave breaks.
WARSHAW: They all wanted to ride
more big waves,
and Makaha doesn't get big that often.
NOLL: And we had heard these fabulous tales about, you know,
this deep, dark
foreboding place called the North Shore.
NARRATOR: Fifteen 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.
NOLL: 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.
GEORGE: Suddenly, they get to a place
where all those dreams live.
NOLL: Every time you'd go another couple of hundred yards,
"***, here's another place. Look at this."
GRIGG: 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.
[MAN SINGING IN HAWAIIAN]
NARRATOR: 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.
RARICK: What the Paris runways are to fashion
is what the North Shore is to the world of surfing.
MUNOZ: We were among the first groups of Californians
to live out there
and just dedicate themselves to surfing.
[♪♪]
NOLL: We were spending eight,
10 hours a day in the water,
doing nothing but surfing our guts out.
MUNOZ: There wasn't any home life,
so, you know, we'd spend our days on the beach.
I mean, that's what we did.
We surfed all day, every day, no matter what.
COLE: In those days, we never saw girls.
And if you brought a date out and sat her in the car
while you surfed for four or five hours,
you never had that date again.
RARICK: These guys came to surf.
I mean, and it was kind of unheard of.
You don't have a job, you're not--
You're gonna come spend a couple of months here to surf.
MUNOZ: No watch, no money, no car, no nothing.
Just shorts and a T-shir.
There were no hotels.
There was one place in Hale'iwa
that was a set of cubicles and...
COLE: You'd have guys sharing the place
and getting mattresses from the Salvation Army
and throwing them on the floor
and I mean, it was--
It was a scene to try to make ends meet.
NOLL: There wasn't a lot of money,
so if we wanted to eat, we had to go diving.
HOFFMAN: We'd dive every day and get fish and lobster,
and turtle, in those days.
You know, they would go pick coconuts and papayas,
and they'd go fishing.
In those days you could live off the land.
HOFFMAN: Guys would come over from the mainland,
they'd patch our surfboards for us
for a peanut-butter sandwich.
NOLL: Pat Curren and I, we'd get in a little bit of trouble.
We'd steal chickens or something like that.
♪ Well, I'm sitting over here On Parchman's Farm ♪
NOLL: I mean, the whole thing was waiting for waves.
MUNOZ: You know, we would do anything
to amuse ourselves and each other,
so somewhere I had 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.
WARSHAW: They're just spending their days living in the sun
and living a life that's not the '50s,
men-in-the-gray-flannel-suit thing.
It's, like, an alternative thing
the way Kerouac was and... And bikers were,
except they're having fun.
RARICK: That was the counterculture of its day.
You know, 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 that set the pace,
this kind of free-and-easy lifestyle.
GEORGE: That really was a unique period in history.
They were doing something so unique in the 20th century,
and 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 epicenter,
those two dozen intrepid men
and the women that went with them, living that life.
It only lasted a few year.
What a remarkable time that must have been.
[♪♪]
NARRATOR: 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 *** Brown
elected to paddle three miles south
to the safer, deep-water 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.
RARICK: I mean, it spooked everybody.
They were like, "You can't ride there.
"It's un-- You know, it's a killer.
We're not gonna go out there. You're gonna die."
NARRATOR: Along with the death of Dickie Cross,
Waimea's reputation was steepd 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 thins
were whizzing around this plae like a bunch of ghouls,
and people really believed that if you paddled out,
there was gonna be this *** vortex.
It'd be like flushing a toilt
and there go the haoles for the season.
RARICK: People thought you couldn't ride Waimea Bay.
They watched it, they looked at it
and they said, "Can't be done."
PEZMAN: You know, you'd lok 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.
MUNOZ: We'd go by thee when it was breaking
and you're going, "Jeez, tht looks like a rideable wave."
You could see that this had all 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."
NARRATOR: On a fall day in October of 1957,
a handful of surfers converged on Waimea
as a 20-foot swell began lighting up the bay.
[♪♪]
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 joind by fellow surfers
Pat Curren, Micky Munoz, Del Cannon, Fred Van ***,
Harry Church, Bing Copeland and Bob Bermel,
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 know, you knew pretty much where to paddle to.
NOLL: I remember paddling into the lineup, you know,
and your balls were just in your stomach, you know,
thinking that the bottom was gonna fall out
and something was gonna eat you alive.
MUNOZ: I'm thinking to mysel,
"I don't want to get wiped ot
"because I know there's sharks here
and I'm not into swimmig with sharks exactly."
CURREN: We got out ther,
it was a big surpris.
It's a-- You know, it's not an easy takeoff.
[♪♪]
NOLL: I took off on a wae
and went down the side and popped out the other end
and went, "***, I'm stil alive. Nothing's happened."
After we got a couple of wave, you know, that kind of took--
You know, we go, "Hey, we can do this," you know.
RARICK: They broke the taboo. They went out and did it.
And once it was done, opened up the floodgates
and it's like, "Okay, now how far do we take it?"
NARRATOR: 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.
NOLL: I rode an 11-.
It was first and foremot a wave-catching machine,
because if you can't catch a wave, nothing else matters.
NARRATOR: Unlike the somewhat easy takeoff of Makaha,
Waimea was a fear-inducing, 25-foot elevator drop,
sometimes requiring more faith than skill.
COLE: 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.
Everything is in flux, nothing is constant.
It's so dynamic that you can't preplan it.
BILLY HAMILTON: Not only are you riding down this mountain,
but this mountan is chasing you,
and you have to use all your skill and all your ability
to get away from this mountai,
but, at the same time, use it to your own benefit.
GRIGG: When you come don the face of a mountain,
you're on fir.
Your heart is explodin,
endorphins are just busting out in your brain
and you want to not jut prove that you can do it,
but discover what you're made out of.
NARRATOR: Apart from the challenge of learning to ride Waimea
was the even greater challenge
of surviving the horrifying wipeouts.
PEZMAN: You feel like a piee of lint in a washing machine
because the force of natue that you're in the middle of
is so quantum beyond comprehension.
I can remember fracturing my neck at Waimea.
I went over the fall, I hit the water
and my neck went bak in a whiplash
and fractured my nec.
Lost all feelings in my arms and legs.
I was like a seagul full of oil,
just fluttering in the white water, out of control.
And some guys came ovr and helped me in.
I'm lucky to be aliv.
And I think every single big-wave surfer
could tell you a story like that.
NOLL: We didn't have flotation devices.
We didn't have leashes.
We didn't have helicopters waiting to scoop you out.
So If you *** up, you were on your own.
[♪♪]
NARRATOR: By 1959, Waimea had become the epicenter of big-wave surfing,
fostering a new crew of big-wave talents:
Pat Curren, Peter Cole, Ricky Grigg,
Fred Van ***, Jose Angel,
Kealoha Kaio
and Greg Noll,
whose big-wave obsession and even bigger wave personality
would forever link him with Waimea Bay.
[SANTO AND JOHN FARINA'S "SLEEPWALK" PLAYING]
NOLL: Waimea was my gal, man.
She was like-. I mean, I surfed with this beautiful woman
who allowed me to get away with ***
as long as I didn't act too outrageously towards her.
There was times where the surf would get perfect, you know,
and you'd go out and catch a wave--
[MIMICS CRASHING WAVE]
You just make this thing
and just have your adrenaline dripping out of your ears.
Paddle back out, do it again.
You get a little too cocky,
you get your *** slapped a little bit,
she'd let you know it.
But, for the most part,
there was just this full-on love affair
that took place for 25 years, you know?
[THE STRAY CATS' "RUMBLE IN BRIGHTON" PLAYING]
NARRATOR: Nicknamed "The Bull" for his charging style,
and clothing himself
in a pair of loud jailhouse-striped trunks,
Noll emerged as surfing's first big-wave celebrity.
WARSHAW: 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.
♪ Well, there's Rockabilly cats ♪
♪ With their pomps real high ♪
♪ Wearing black drape coats All real gone guys ♪
GEORGE: Surfing needed Greg Noll.
When you look at some of those surfers,
they were a stoic bunch.
Greg Noll introduced flamboyance to it,
he introduced showmanship,
he introduced that colorful aspect
that most people associatd with hot-doggy Malibu.
Not just the way he surfed,
but just the spirit of i.
He introduced that into big-wave riding.
♪ There's a rumble In Brighton tonight ♪
LOPEZ: He wanted to rie the biggest wave
that anybody had ever ridden.
RARICK: Greg made his reputation
on taking off on the biggest wave, the heaviest wave.
He stuffed himself into positions
that no one else would want.
He'd sit over deepe. He'd take off later.
He'd spin around at the last minute to go.
I mean, he was surfing's, like, first hell man.
PEZMAN: He just liked confrontation.
He sought it out,
in human terms and in big-wave terms.
NOLL: I was really a young, skinny kid,
and I got my *** kicked from the time I can remember.
I went to school and had my *** kicked.
I went to high school and had my *** kicked.
And, in some ways, maybe there was something there
that, uh, drove me to want to pursue big-wave riding,
to make some kind of a statement.
You know, I'm not a psychologist, I don't know.
All I know is, once you get into it,
there's an adrenaline, a stoke,
and that high is so addictive
that once you have a taste of it,
it's very difficult to not want more.
NARRATOR: But for Greg Noll,
big-wave surfing became more than just an adrenaline fix.
It became his identity, his way of life, and his business.
PEZMAN: He was doing it to promote his surfboard business,
and worked actively to promote himself.
RARICK: Greg was a good hurdy-gurdy man.
He knew how to self-promote himself.
NARRATOR: As well as being a successful surf filmmaker,
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.
NOLL: 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 was selling them so cheap, you know?
We were all competing with each other.
GEORGE: And he was a board designer.
He was a really influential manufacturer.
He was the most complete surfer of the '50s and '60s, by far.
No one else could come close.
NARRATOR: Despite the dramatic exploits
of Noll and the other Waimea Bay surfers,
it was a naive 15-year-old gil from California
and her desire to join the Malibu surf set
that launched surfing into mainstream America.
Now, honest, surfing is out of this world!
You just can't imagine the thrill of shooting the curl.
Well, it positively surpasses
every living emotion I've ever had!
["GIDGET THEME" PLAYING]
GIDGET: Hey! This is the ultimate!
♪ She acts sort of teenage ♪
♪ Just in-between age ♪
♪ Looks about 4'3" ♪
GEORGE: When you look at surfing's history
from the '50s into the '60s,
everything has to be perceived
as either being pre- Gidge 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.
PEZMAN: From the movie Gidge coming out in '59,
when there was fewer than 5000 surfers,
to 1963, there was probaby 2 million surfers.
So in five yeas
it went from 5000 to 2 or 3 million people doing it.
[*** DALE'S "MISIRLOU" PLAYING]
NARRATOR: 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 Magazie began publication.
And in 1962, surf music pioneer *** Dale
sold 75,000 copies of his albm Surfers' Choice
in Southern California alone.
GEORGE: Suddenly surfig was perceived as hip.
People assumed that surfes were in the know.
Look at the life they were leading:
living on the beach, the sun, the bikinis,
that sort of aura of se, beach blankets and fires,
and then all that golden flesh in the sun.
♪ Hup, hup ♪
NARRATOR: Hollywood followed Gidget
with a medley of surf exploitation films.
Then, in 1964,
turned its lens on Hawaii's big-wave surfers
challenging Waimea Bay.
Man, I've been hot to surf Waimea since I was 13.
Ah, but the question is,
can we do it without winding up in traction?
♪ In Hawaii There's a place ♪
♪ Known as Waimea Bay ♪
NOLL: The theme is all the same.
There's a bunch of chicks in bikinis, wringing their hands
that their boyfriends are gonna, you know,
go out and risk his life for some big wave.
And it just-- Man, it just makes me puke.
Man, is he gettin' creamed.
Ah, he's takin' ga.
NOLL: They show the film,
and a guy's sitting there in a fish pond without a ripple.
Hey! A big flat-out's coming!
NOLL: Then they cut to a, you know, 25-foot wave,
guys are all pouring down the face of the wave.
♪ Gotta take That one last ride ♪
I mean, ***, man, who can believe that ***, you know?
[♪♪]
PEZMAN: Hollywood's always had
a misconstrued view of surfin,
and so it was more or less offensive
to the surfing communit.
GEORGE: All these sort of ancillary artistic pursuits
that surrounded surfing,
they really did all come together in a rush.
All of it happening from 1960 to 1965.
[THUNDER CRASHES, SIREN WAILING]
NARRATOR: On December 4, 1969,
big-wave surfing was hit
with what would become known
as the greatest swell of the 20th century.
A massive low pressure system
metastasized into one colossal storm system
that consumed the North Pacific Ocean basin,
resulting in the largest waves ever recorded.
The super-sized storm
uprooted trees, dislodged boas onto Oahu's Kam Highway,
and blew houses right off their foundations.
Oahu's 13-mile stretch
of stunning, world-class surf breaks
became a morass of turbulent six-story storm surf.
NOLL: At first light, I was sitting at Waimea
looking in disbelief at what I was seeing,
that it was breaking so big
that Waimea was just, uh,
full of white water.
So I decided to go around Ka'ena Point
and look at Makaha,
because that would be the last spot
that would still have some chance of holding up.
NARRATOR: 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 Ka'ena Point
to snap this picture,
which Surfer Magazine later claimed
was the largest wave ever photographed.
NOLL: When we got to Makaha,
the cops were going around with their blare horns on their cars,
telling people to evacuate the homes on the point.
NARRATOR: 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 hundred-year swell surging out of the North Pacific
was giving rise to bigger and bigger waves.
NOLL: Finally, everybody was out
of the water. I was the only one left
and I was having a real hard time
trying to gear myself for this thing,
because I knew that basically it was a situation
where your chances of surviving one of these waves
was about fifty-fifty.
And I'm thinking to myself, you know,
"Is it worth giving up the farm for a stupid wave?"
And I finally had to just paddle
outside the lineup a hundred 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 have allowed this day to go by
without at least trying for a wave.
NARRATOR: 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 nor 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.
RARICK: Greg Noll starts to paddle
and we're all in our cars
just going, "Oh, my God, look at this."
He's starting to paddle into this thing.
It's this huge, black, massive wall.
And we watch him and he takes off, stands up
and he's this little speck on this gigantic wall,
and you're going, "Oh, my God."
He drops in and he looks like a little tiny cartoon figure.
And he gets that Greg Noll stance
where he just gets into the thing
and he goes, "Rrrr! I'm going."
And he drops down, drops down, drops down.
He gets to the bottom of the wave
and the whole thing's already starting
to just come over on top of him.
And he just kind of, like, stepped off the rail.
I mean, 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...
[WAVES CRASH]
NOLL: Along with the birth of my sons and my daughter,
it was probably the most significant day of my life.
GEORGE: Even though it wasn't photographed
and even though peope have argued since then,
"Well, how big really was it?"
It doesn't matter.
In our imagination, it just was huge.
Because on that classic day of the biggest swell ever seen,
he essentially rode aloe
and he faced it when it came to him.
And that's what every surfer does.
Everyone can relate to that.
[♪♪]
NARRATOR: As Greg Noll's giant wave broke and vanished,
so too did the popularity
of traditional big-wave surfig at Waimea Bay
as it was broadsided
by the late '60s shortboard revolution,
where the longer, heavier big guns were phased out
in favor of shorter and more maneuverable surfboards.
By the early '70s,
the great Waimea had been usurped
by two spectacular, more performance-oriented
North Shore breaks: the Bonzai Pipeline,
led by surfers like Gerry Lopez,
and at Sunset Beach,
by surfers like Jeff Hackman 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 re-introduce 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.
[BACH'S "TOCCATA AND FUGUE IN D-MINOR" PLAYING]
GEORGE: Mavericks wasn't supposed to exist,
it wasn't supposed to be there.
WARSHAW: It was a mystery that it was just suddenly found
in this area that's 20-something miles away from San Francisco.
GEORGE: In Half Moon Bay,
who's, you know, formerly famous
for its annual pumpkin festival...
It's as if they discovered Mount Everest
out behind Mount Whitney.
[♪♪]
NARRATOR: Teenage surfer Jeff Clark
grew up along Half Moon Bay's secluded coast,
riding homemade boards
in the region's powerful, rugged waves,
where he carved out a frontier existence
far removed from surfing's mainstream.
CLARK: I was a freshman in high school.
You could see this place
exploding from out behind the building
where we'd all congregate in the morning.
I was with my childhood friend, and it's like I'd go,
"Brian, we've gotta 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."
I go, "Bring your board."
And he's like, "There's no way
"I'm paddling a half a mile offshore
to a place I've never been."
So we sat here at the end of the cliff and said,
"I'll call the Coast Guard,
tell them where I last saw you."
NARRATOR: The year was 1975, and the wave Clark intended to ride
broke a half a mile offshore
into a veritable graveyard of jagged rocks.
The wave was considered more a navigational hazard
than a surf spot.
CLARK: 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, the fastest I've ever gone.
And I made it.
And I just thought,
"Man, I want another one of those."
[FC KAHUNA'S "HAYLING" PLAYING]
WARSHAW: Jeff went out there for the first time
and rode it by himself,
and couldn't get anyone to go back out with him.
CLARK: There just weren't any takers around here.
People just didn't believe me.
They just thought, you know, "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."
NOLL: Jeff Clark was sitting out there,
nobody in the bleachers,
no helicopters flying over,
no cheering crowds,
doing his *** by himself.
♪ Don't think about All those things you fear ♪
♪ Just be glad to be here ♪
PEZMAN: He'd be like, uh, the equivalent of a mountain man
killing grizzly in the Rockie,
you know, and doing a three-day battle
and then sleeping inside the carcass that night,
and not have anyone to tell about it.
CLARK: 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 fiber in my body,
and I was part of it.
GEORGE: Jeff Clark's greatest challenge
was how he internalized all that emotion
and all that drama and all that adrenaline,
surfing that place alone year after year after year.
NARRATOR: Jeff Clark surfed Mavericks alone for 15 years.
[SOUNDGARDEN'S "MY WAVE" PLAYING]
Until finally, in 1990,
he was able to convince two Santa Cruz surfers,
Dave Schmidt and Tom Powers, to join him.
CLARK: They went back to Santa Cruz
with these tales of these waves.
And the next time it broke,
there were photographers, there were 10 guys.
GEORGE: Suddenly it's, like, "Wait a minute,
California is a big-wave place."
♪ Yeah ♪
NARRATOR: The discovery of this monstrous wave in Northern California
produced an entirely new breed of big-wave surfer.
♪ Take if you want a slice ♪
FLEA: Once Mavericks came about,
it was just, like, right in our backyard.
MEL: It really took time to figure out what we had.
It wasn't like an instantaneous thing,
even though we knew it was heavy and gnarly,
it took time for me to really conceptualize what we had.
It was taboo for us to say "20 feet."
And it was, it was like,
"20-foot waves only happen in Hawaii."
GEORGE: 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 it was way gnarlier.
♪ Just keep it off my wave ♪
PEZMAN: It's just so gnarly and rocky
and just violent and just hateful.
It's hateful.
DOERNER: 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- to 40- to 50-foot faces?
"I'm outta here."
♪ Keep it off my wave ♪
MEL: You got sharks,
you got rocks, you got cold water, you got huge surf.
EVAN SLATER: Five-millimeter wetsuits,
fog banks that, you know, you can't see
two feet in front of you,
oversized boulders from the Land of the Lost.
They extend acros the whole length
of where the wave is breaking.
NARRATOR: 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 lineup.
RENNEKER: The sacred thing in big-wave surfing is:
What are the lineups?
[♪♪]
WASHBURN: Lineups are
a means of triangulating your position in the ocean.
So you find two reference points on land at about 90 degrees.
MEL: Mainly what I use is this positioning on hillsides.
I mean, there's a big mountain behind
and then there's a closer cliff, and then kind of line up--
You know, there's a satellite dish you can line up.
You line them so that you know within a few feet where you are
in reference to the reef and the coastline.
If you're just looking at the waves,
you don't know if you're in the right spot or not.
It's very important to be in the right spot at Mavericks
because if you're too deep, you won't make it.
GERHARDT: You're not just sitting there waiting for a wave.
The currents are so strong you're constantly paddling,
trying to maintain your position.
CLARK: The worst thing that can happen out at Mavericks
is getting caught inside.
FLEA: There's sets that coe that are on a regular basis,
and people get used to that, you know what I mean?
And sitting right where those ones are coming,
and 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, my!"
♪ I ♪
♪ I ♪
CLARK: Your adrenaline's running,
everything is full rpm.
And you just want to stroe as hard as you can.
Heart in your throat, paddlig as if 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 wae
will be bigger than the one before.
CLARK: And you pray
that the one that you just barely made it over
is gonna get you to the next one.
The next one's twice as big as the wave you just saw,
and it's gonna land right on you.
WASHBURN: And then, oh, man, the sinking feeling,
"I'm caught, I'm caught,
and I'm not gonna get away."
SURFER: Oh, that guy's in the impact zone.
♪ I feel so alone ♪
♪ Gonna end up a big old pile Of them bones ♪
CLARK: 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.
FLEA: You feel like, "Oh, I made it,"
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.
SURFER: Oh, ***!
RENNEKER: There's a fiendish pleasure, though,
of watching sort of one by one
the people that 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 old pile of them bones ♪
Not only is the take off the hardest part
of big-wave surfing,
it's the most fun.
EVAN SLATER: It's entirely different
than any kind of normal surf,
because it's basically one burst of energy.
[PEARL JAM'S "GO" PLAYING]
CLARK: The wave comes out of deep water,
but it just stops and that whole mass of that wave jacks up.
WASHBURN: Essentially, the bottom of the wave
becomes the top in half a second.
It rears up and pulls bak and sucks up,
and you really kind of have to find your niche
where you can be under that.
GERHARDT: You thought you were paddling into something
that was maybe 20 or 30 feet,
and now you're riding something that's 35, 40 feet tall.
You've gotta put everything you have
into getting yourself as far down the face as you can
before it picks you back up.
WASHBURN: You have to basically jump off the cliff
when the thing is about to jump on you.
If you make haste in a take off,
your odds of you making that wave are very low.
EVAN SLATER: The whole aspect
is really more mentl than physical.
You have to believe you're gonna make it.
I know when I'm gonna make a wave
or I'm not gonna make a wave 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.
WASHBURN: So this fear of the unknown
becomes like something you absolutely have to confront,
because there is no way to turn back your decision.
[♪♪]
CLARK: I've just wiped out.
I'm getting just worked.
EVAN SLATER: Fluttering down the face,
getting sucked bak over the face,
then you basically becoe the lip.
FLEA: Back flips, front flips, McTwists,
every which way under water 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 that you're near the surface
and suddenly that what you have perceived to be up
is actually the bottom.
RENNEKER: And the leah is pulling *** you.
The board is tombstonig up there,
and I realize that if there ws another wave that was coming...
I'm finished.
At one point it started to stp
and I thought, "Okay, I'm gonna live," you know?
And I started to swim up-
And the next wave hit.
And then it just startd all over again,
just every bit as bad as the first part of it.
MEL: And I remember feeling underwater,
like going over a waterfall underwater,
like literally getting sucked into a hole.
Here I am 30 feet dow,
and now it takes me anothr 15, 20 feet down,
and I slam into the bottm down there.
And you thin,
"Oh, my God, I'm deeper than anyone's ever been."
You get to a point when you're down there,
like, okay, this is not happening anymore.
You've got to get to the surface to get air.
CLARK: 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, shhhooo,
back to, "Okay, this is real. This is live now."
[♪♪]
GEORGE: Almost every traumatic thing
that can happen to yu at Mavericks
is due to the leas.
LAIRD HAMILTON: I think leashes are one of the most dangerous things
in the lineup,
in any surf spot over 20 feet.
There's those few critical situations
where leashes become more of a hindrance than a help.
NARRATOR: 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 aroud the rocks
and I was stuck fo, like, eight waves.
PERALTA: How come you couldn't get the leash off your foot?
Because the water curret was so strong.
It's like doing a sit-up with 200 pounds on your chest.
NARRATOR: 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.
CLARK: 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
and 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 you know, another wave came over the rock
and 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.
GEORGE: It's so funny that the Mavericks surfers
value their surfboards more than their lives.
WASHBURN: It's like a lifeline.
If you get held down,
the only thing that 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.
WASHBURN: And I know for sure that in my personal experience
that there were times when, if I didn't have a leash,
I'm not sure I would have lived.
NARRATOR: 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."
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.
EVAN SLATER: That's when the entire, you know, surf world
kind of converged on Maverics as like,
"Okay, this plae is legitimate.
We're gonna really se what it's worth here."
NARRATOR: On December 23, the sudden arrival
of three of Hawaii's most famous Waimea Bay surfers,
Ken Bradshaw, Brock Little and Mark Foo,
created the biggest stir
and gave the impression
that something momentous was taking place.
♪ Babylon is burning, baby Can't you see? ♪
♪ Babylon is burning With anxiety ♪
CLARK: 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, you know,
because they gave the spot
that I've surfed for so many years
the credibility to actually come and surf it.
EVAN SLATER: Helicopters were hovering
and photographers from all the mags were there,
and it was just craz.
We knew it was like the da.
This was one of the best days of surfing I've ever had out there.
♪ Babylon is burning Babylon is burning ♪
♪ Babylon is burning ♪
NARRATOR: Then at approximately 11:20am,
during a beautiful medium-sized set,
Mark Foo paddled, hopped to his feet,
and dropped into his second wave of the day.
♪ Babylon is burning ♪
[SEA GULL SQUAWKING]
CLARK: I went to lunch, I came back out to the point.
I saw Brock in the parking lot,
and there was this guy, Greg, eerily:
"Have you seen Mark Foo?"
And that was just like...
EVAN SLATER: We were headed back in the boat toward the harbor,
and I saw some--
It kinda looked just like a bg clump of something, you know,
as we were, you kno, passing it.
And pointed it out and sai,
"Hey, that looks like a body" you know?
And, uh, you know, sure enoug, we stopped the boat
and just realized that it wa, you know, Mark Foo.
I dove off and grabbed hm
and just rushed to the harbor...
It was a..
It was a really eerie, eeri, you know, experience,
and just so chillin.
It went from the most pleasant
beautiful plate-glass sunshiny day
to the clouds moved in, it got dark, the wind came up,
and it was just, you know, like we'd lost a great warrior.
One of our surfers, one of our own, was gone.
MEL: To have that winter when Mark Foo passed away,
that was-- That was a heavy hit to everybody.
NARRATOR: What added to the shock of Foo's death
were its circumstances.
An innocuous wipeout on a less-than-death-defying wave,
in the middle of a crowded lineup.
FLEA: I just 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 caugt 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 wipe out.
Parsons comes up and Brock was behind him.
In later interviews, Parsons said,
"I felt Brock trying to get to the surface."
But what he didn't realize at the time,
Brock was up
and, you know, it was Foo trying to get to the surface,
which kind of, you know...
it kind of confirms that he was being held down by something.
RENNEKER: I went and examined his body, actually.
There really wasn't any discernable injury.
He had a slight scrath on his forehead.
His countenance, actuall,
was not that of one who hd sort of struggled,
or who had been in anguis.
WASHBURN: I felt, surfing at Mavericks the years prior to that,
that someone was gonna die.
I didn't think it was gonna be Mark Foo.
I thought it would be somebody
who didn't know what they were in for.
EVAN SLATER: Mark Foo was this kind of guy
who was larger than life to u, you know?
A guy who was more invincibe than any of us,
who had more experiene than any of us.
WASHBURN: He's the guy that said,
"Hey, to catch the ultimate thrill,
you got to be willing to pay the ultimate price."
PEZMAN: 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.
Like, I literally didn't think that that could happen.
EVAN SLATER: I thought I was invincible.
You know, I didn't think I could--
I thought I could just huck myself over any ledge
and pop back up laughin, you know?
And I think a lot of big-wae riders have that belief.
GERHARDT: 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.
NARRATOR: 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.
CLARK: It turned the clocks back to 10 years before
when I'm sitting out there at the peak by myself,
with my own thoughts.
WASHBURN: 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, hey, you know,
the wave came to me and it 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 that it could kill me.
That it can kill anyone.
NARRATOR: A year to the day after Foo's death,
and during a memorial tribute session
held in Foo's honor at Waimea Bay,
California surfer Donny 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 North Shore outer-reef break.
[♪♪]
In 1968, in the thick of that era's shortboard 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 at the time,
but he would grow up to become
the greatest big-wave rider of his generation.
Perhaps the greatest the world has ever known.
LAIRD HAMILTON: After my dad left my mom,
before I could even remember, you know,
I was in search for a man, a masculine figure in my life.
And my mom needed a husband, but I needed a dad.
BILLY HAMILTON: My friend Greg MacGillivray,
who is, like, the fathr of the IMAX films,
he was making a surfing move at the time,
and I was helping hm make movies,
so I was walking down the beah to see him.
And here's this little kd playing around the ocean.
So I dove in and I sai, "What's your name?"
"My name's Laird"
I said, "What are you doing"
He said, "I'm bodysurfin. You want to bodysurf?"
I said, "Sure."
I said, "Why don't you hang onto my neck? We'll bodysurf."
LAIRD HAMILTON: It was love at first sight with him and I.
We had this physical connection instantly.
BILLY HAMILTON: It was a physical, spiritual, mental...
It was, like, "I love this child" thing.
It was just, "I love this child."
And we were just like partner.
When we finished, he grabbed my hand,
he says, "I want you to come p and meet my mom."
I don't know if he had a choice. "You're coming home with me."
And there was his mothe,
beautiful brown-haire, brown-eyed gal.
I went, "Oh, my God"
Mom was like, "Oh, who's this?"
"This is Bill," like, you know,
give him the nudge, you know.
NARRATOR: 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.
LAIRD HAMILTON: I was known for, you know,
being the kid that, like, ran around and said,
"Hey, my dad's Bill Hamilton. You know who he is?"
And they'd be like--
Of course, these guys are guys like Gerry Lopez,
like, "Yeah, I know who your dad is. I see him every day."
I was like, "No, but do you know now it's my dad?"
Like, you know, they knew who he was,
but now I wanted them to know that he was connected to me.
Like, "This is my dad.
"Because if you don't,
"you might get a soda can full of sand
in the side of your head or..."
NARRATOR: The young Hamilton family
set about making a life for themselves in Hawaii,
where, despite the paradisiacl island setting,
the initial years took on a rough edge.
Being a blond 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 color.
PEZMAN: The way he learned to fight,
because he was so bg and powerful,
was he'd slap an opponet so hard
that it would shock thm and embarrass them.
It wouldn't injure the,
but it would hurt them so bd mentally and physically
that he just won the figt right at that minute.
After a while, the reputation was there that, you know,
you don't wanna f... around with Laird.
PERALTA: So he lookd after you as well?
Yeah, 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.
GABRIELLE REECE HAMILTO: He wanted to be Hawaiian.
He used to dream, he sai,
of wishing that he had bron skin, to be Hawaiian.
Because for hi,
that was what was sort of beautiful and strong.
Because that's wht 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.
NARRATOR: 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 period,
Pipeline Beach was the mecca of surfing,
and anybody who was anybody in surfing came to Pipeline,
and surfed Pipeline.
And so I got to see all the guys.
LOPEZ: His dad was making boards for Peter Cole,
Warren Harlow, Jose Ange,
the pioneers of big-wave surfing.
And Laird was jut this little sponge
soaking all this stuff u.
I aspired to be like these pioneers of big-wave riding
because they were going out on days
when people were evacuating.
NARRATOR: 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.
LAIRD HAMILTON: 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.
NARRATOR: 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 offshore reefs,
capable of producing waves of unimaginable size.
[♪♪]
Even before 1969,
the amazing third-reef Pipelie 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 Cook,
armed with an 11-foot board,
an emergency scuba tank and a helicopter,
had himself dropped in the pah of a six-story swell
off Oahu's Ka'ena 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.
Any time 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 be going in order to catch it.
NARRATOR: 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 sailboarders
discovered the speed and mobility necessary
to access the outer reefs
and sail into waves
that were previously impossibe to catch by hand.
LAIRD HAMILTON: But then you had this sail,
and you weren't really surfing, you were windsurfing,
and it was... It was so restrictive
that you lost the freedom that surfing had.
[♪♪]
KERBOX: I had just doe a GQ shoot with Laird,
and, you know, we both likd windsurfing and surfing,
and we kind of hit it of, so we started hanging out.
LAIRD HAMILTON: Buzzy and I
had been playing around in the Zodiac all summer,
doing flat-water freeboarding.
And we were freeboarding in the summer
and then there was a little swell
and we were using swells for ramps,
and then all of a sudden
we started, like, taking speed and catching waves,
and that's when the light went off one summer day.
And then we were like, "Oh, wow, we can catch waves.
Wow. We might be able to ride bigger waves."
[♪♪]
NARRATOR: In December of 1992,
Laird Hamilton, along with pro-surfer Buzzy Kerbox
and legendary North Shore lifeguard
and Waimea Bay rider Darrick Doerner,
launched to 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.
[♪♪]
GEORGE: It wasn't like they were riding waves
that were significantly bigger than guys had ridden,
it was how they were surfing the wave.
NARRATOR: This radical new approach of being whipped into a wave
came to be called "tow-in surfing."
DOERNER: You get the slingshot from the tow rope,
you let go of the rope
and there you are, on this beautiful giant wave
with no one anywhere near you, on this big giant board,
there's no crowd there.
Bingo.
NARRATOR: Progress came quick as the trio swapped the clumsy inflatable
for the faster and more agile Jet Ski.
With the Jet Ski you can catch waves all day long
and not even get your hair we.
NARRATOR: Back in 1987,
North Shore veteran Herbie Fletcher,
who for years had been exploring the outer reefs
on a Jet Ski,
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.
LAIRD HAMILTON: In traditional big-wave surfing,
the boards were very large,
and the reason for the size of the boards
was to catch the wave.
Once you were in, you didn't need a big board, you were fine.
We didn't visualize what actually was gonna 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?
NARRATOR: Aided by renowned board-builders
*** Brewer, Billy Hamilton and Gerry Lopez,
the trio chopped their boards by 3 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.
LAIRD HAMILTON: The small board was really the big breakthrough.
I think that's really where we shifted gears.
All of a sudden, now we really had the speed.
NARRATOR: 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," you know, "young man, come over here.
I got something to show you."
["JAWS" THEME PLAYING]
We knew that we had discovered the real unridden realm.
[♪♪]
NARRATOR: Located on Maui's remote North Coast,
and requiring a long, dangeros 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 this is about five Waimeas.
BRIAN KEAULANA: You take Makaha, Waimea, Sunset, Pipeline,
Ka'ena Point, Mavericks,
put 'em all together and mix 'em in a pot
and that's what you get and more.
NARRATOR: Like Waimea and Mavericks,
Peahi featured its own crew of groundbreaking pioneers.
In addition to Hamilton, Doerner and Kerbox
were windsurfing champion Dave Kalama...
then Mike Waltze, 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.
GEORGE: Things that previously they only dreamed of doing,
things we only saw in animation,
suddenly these surfers were doing it.
KERBOX: Now you're riding wavs with greater speed
than you ever dreamed of.
I mean, it's like a dream.
It's just like, "Oh, my God, I'm on the perfect wave.
I'm going 35 miles an hour."
It just--
It's so fun that it's just--
I-- I better shut up.
[LAUGHING]
KELLY SLATER: Coming up on the Ski
and seeing these plumes of water going 100 feet in the air,
and you can hear the drone of the Skis in the distance.
And it looks like Waterworld,
and you have all these things in your head, like,
"What's going on? What waves are guys riding?
"What have people done?
How bad have wipeouts been so far today?"
Like, "Is anyone dead yet?"
LOPEZ: The first time that I surfed at Peahi, I remember
getting so uptight on the way out, just going,
"Oh, man," you kno, so much anxiety,
that I was thinkin,
"Jesus, I'm just-- I'm not gonna be able to surf."
And I remembr
finally having to g,
"Okay..
"***..
I guess this is a good day to die."
NARRATOR: Challenging waves in the 50- and 60-foot range
obliterated the concept of surfing as a solitary pursuit
and rewired the rules of engagement.
LAIRD HAMILTON: You gotta have eyes in the back of your head,
and I got eyes, they're Dave and Darrick.
They see what I need to see.
KALAMA: 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.
DOERNER: It's a three-man operation.
Laird and Kalama will be paired up.
I'll be in the channel for safety.
NARRATOR: 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.
KERBOX: You're gettig brutalized so severely,
you just don't know when it's going to end.
KALAMA: You're an insignificant little rag doll
trying to keep your limbs in so that nothing gets ripped off.
NOLL: I mean, God Almighty, anybody who looks at that ***
goes, "How can that guy live through that," you know?
NARRATOR: The single greatest threat
is getting trapped in the impact zone
and held underwater
as successive 10-story waves explode overhead.
Out of sheer necessity 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.
LAIRD HAMILTON: I'm thinking about one thing:
the next wave that's gonna 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.
KINIMAKA: Sometimes you're not going to be able
to come in and get him immediately, and you--
He might have to take two or three on the head.
LOPEZ: You know, you've got to dash in there,
and, hopefully, the timing's right,
that the guy's gonna pop up just as you're coming by
and, you know, you get to get him.
Otherwise you gotta get out of there
and the guy's got to take another one on the head.
Because, you know, if you lose a Ski,
then both of you are screwed.
KEAULANA: You can rush into a situation
where a person is drowning, and you rush in,
now there's two persons drowning.
KALAMA: On a rescue situation where you're really in peril
and it's for real and it's a real situation,
there's that connection, 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.
It is pure love.
"Thank you, buddy. I love you.
Thank you for getting me out of here."
LAIRD HAMILTON: 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 that 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,
"Well, I should have, I could have, why didn't I?"
They do it.
[♪♪]
KALAMA: When you're underwater and you know,
"Okay, I'm here by myself right now, underwater,
"but I know there's somebody up there
that'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.
LOPEZ: It really makes survivl a whole different story
than if you were out thee on your own
swimming around in the wate, you know,
with no one but yoursel.
KALAMA: The experiences that you have there,
the friendships that are formed...
going through those experiences,
are ones that are very deep
because there's times where you...
you call upon
or you experience the most deepest sense of who you are.
[ERIK SATIE'S "GYMNOPEDIE NUMBER ONE" PLAYING]
There's something about riding a 60- or 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.
MILIUS: You're not doing ths for your own glory.
You're doing this because you're caught up
in this great act of natur, you know?
NARRATOR: Ironically, the biggest challenge
facing these professional big-wave riders
is not the wave itself.
LAIRD HAMILTON: You can't just go get it on Sunday at 12:00,
like you can most anything else.
GABRIELLE REECE HAMILTON: When the ocean is not making
some of the wavs available,
Laird suffers, like a lot of the other guys do.
Oh, I get so depressed. It's like--
[INHALES]
[EXHALES HEAVILY]
KINIMAKA: We get frustrated and depressed and ***
and grouchy and--
You know.
You really don't want to be around us when it's like that.
GABRIELLE REECE HAMILTO: Laird was trying to explain to me
what it was like when there was no waves.
And he said, you kno,
"It would sort of be like if you were a dragon slayer
"and there just wee no more dragons.
"And then you wonder, lik,
who am I, and what am I doing here?"
And I question that all year long,
except when it's 30 feet and I'm out surfing.
[♪♪]
LOPEZ: Laird's the king out there.
I mean, he was the one that,
like Greg at Waimea, you kno, dragged the guys out there.
DOERNER: You just watch him surf,
and 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 I'm able to ride waves the way I ride waves
and do what I do
is because I have partners like Dave and Darrick.
I'm only arriving at this level
because I'm being driven by these guys
to this level.
NOLL: There's just no question that this guy
is the best big-wave ridr the world's ever seen.
NARRATOR: In August of 2000,
Hamilton took another giant leap
by riding a wave so treacheros and so outrageous
that it affected the course of big-wave surfing history.
The wave broke 3000 miles south of Maui,
on the French Polynesian islad of Tahiti,
at a reef pass known simply as Teahupoo.
Whoever thought that a wave could suck so much water
off the reef that a wave could be so powerful and cylindrical?
NARRATOR: The wave Laird encountered at Teahupoo
is a freak of hydrodynamics.
Unlike the deep-water big-wave breaks
of Waimea, Mavericks and Peahi,
Teahupoo 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.
Teahupoo's reputation was already fearsome,
but neither Laird nor Darrick Doerner
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."
But when I looked back, he was gone.
MAN: Oh, God.
I think it's the single heaviest thing I've ever seen in surfing.
What could be heavir than that?
GEORGE: Laird's wave at Teahupoo
was the most amazing, single most significant ride
in surfing histor,
more than any other rid.
Because what it dd
is it completely restructurd collectively
our entire perceptin of what was possible.
PEZMAN: You go through a surf magazine,
you've seen Pipeline, you've seen Off the Wall,
you've seen Waimea, you've seen everything,
and none of t has any impact.
But when that photo came ou, it stopped everyone's heart,
and they went, "Where and what is that?"
NOLL: I remember picking up that magazine
and looking at that magazine
and just going, "Man, that ***'s impossible.
You don't do that"
In my absolute prim,
there is absolutely no way I could ride a wave like that.
Normally surfers are dragging this hand along the face.
Laird had to drag his right, his back hand,
on the opposite side of his board
to keep himself from getting sucked up in that hydraulic.
You know, 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,
and so it was the imagination
of dealing with that unimaginable energy
and coming up with the plan spontaneously.
He couldn't practice.
BILLY HAMILTON: I asked Laird.
I said, "Laird, why do you ride waves like this?
Why do you risk your lie riding waves like this?"
He looked at me-
This is a week after he did this,
and he was kind of draind from the experience.
He was very mellw and very--
I think he was humbled by the experience. And--
And he goes, "Dad, I've traind my whole life for this.
I don't want to miss an opportunity like that."
[MOBY'S "INSIDE" PLAYING]
LAIRD HAMILTON: 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, uh, honored
to be awarded with... With something so...
magnificent
that it just made me appreciate
what I've been able to have, experience, do.
[BIMA MOSSMAN'S "KA PUA U'I" PLAYING]
RENNEKER: One of the things I love
about my work as a physician,
and I work with cancer patients
and people with life-threatening illnesses,
is to see what often takes place,
which is transformatio, literally transformation,
where they just begin to sort of eliminate the ***.
And they begin to actually live, truly live,
almost for the first tim.
And those kind of life-changig events can come from illness
they can come from revelation.
They can actually come from,
for me, anywa,
uh, big-wave surfin.
COLE: That's the thig about it.
It's that ultimate big wae that you ride
that you remember for the rest of your life.
KALAMA: They're ingrained in your brain,
just like your child being born.
["KA PUA U'I" CONTINUES PLAYING]
MUNOZ: 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, you know.
NARRATOR: Centuries ago, a young Hawaiian stood up on his surfboard
and slid gently across the fae 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.
[THE WATERBOYS' "THIS IS THE SEA" PLAYING]
♪ These things you keep ♪
♪ You'd better Throw them away ♪
♪ You want to Turn your back ♪
♪ On your soulless days ♪
♪ Once you were tethered ♪
♪ And now you are free ♪
♪ Once you were tethered ♪
♪ Well, now you are free ♪
♪ That was the river ♪
♪ This is the sea ♪
Scene one, take on. Here we go.
I was in school and I was flunking French,
and my French teacher sai,
"What are you gonna o when you get out,
when you graduate school" you know?
"You have to pass thi.
What are you gonna do? Are you gonna go to college?"
And I says, "No, I'm gonna go surfing.
"I'm going to the North Shore.
"I'm gonna make my pilgrimae to the North Shore.
"I'm gonna ride big wave.
"And if I don't die, then I'll figure out what I do.
"This is a noble thig I'm doing.
I'm going there to ride big waves, to find out who I am."
The big waves are more fascinating to me
than all the other natural wonders in the world.
And I want to see the biggest swells every year.
PERALTA: Is this a natural wonder...
as much as, say, the Grand Canyon is?
Oh, to me, I mean, the Grand Canyon pales
compared to, like, Mavericks.
I mean, the Grand Canyn is just--
just this sort of erosion gully.
GRIGG: People accuse s of having ego,
but it's not all about ego.
It's-- It's too thrillig to be an egocentric thing.
[INAUDIBLE DIALOGUE]
♪ Now, you say You've got trouble ♪
♪ You say you've got pain ♪
♪ You say you've got ♪
♪ Nothing left to believe in ♪
♪ Nothing to hold onto ♪
♪ Nothing to trust ♪
♪ Nothing but chains ♪
Sam George, reel one.
If you applied the same amount of devotion
to a religious pursuit,
do you think anyone would call you a religious bum?
Probably not.
When you consider
that surfing really is more than anything else a faith,
and devotion to that faith is...
Becomes paramount in your life,
there's no such thing as a surf bum.
♪ This is the sea, yeah ♪
♪ Whoo ♪
♪ Now, I can see you wavering ♪
I can tell you, at Teahupoo, I had the little voice going,
"You should jump off right now.
"Just jump off. You're not gonna make this wave.
You should jump off."
And another side of me just going,
"Well, I can't make it unless I just stay on."
PERALTA: What is it inside him that lets him do that?
It was the third testice we had added at birth.
[MAN LAUGH]
Cut. Roll 'em.
Action.
♪ But that was the river ♪
♪ And this is the sea ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪
WASHBURN: The main thing is
that you need to be able to get rid of the leash
if you get wrapped up on the bottom or on somebody else.
So we've dealt with it with having a quick release.
Uh, before 1994, it wasn't really widely used.
After Mark Foo,
everybody out there has, uh, adapted to this,
and we all use leashes and we all have a quick release.
♪ Now, I hear there's a train ♪
♪ It's coming on Down the line ♪
NOLL: Even today when I go over there,
to Waimea, you know,
it just blows me away.
It's like, here she is, the same beautiful woman,
only now
she's snuggling up to the next generation
and the next generation.
The last time I went, I swear to God,
I looked out, man, and I could--
I think she winked at me.
You know, when one of them big sets came
and the sun was dancing off the, uh...
The face of that wave,
and, uh, the wind was blowing the top off,
some guy was streaking,
she kinda went, "Hey, Greg Noll. I remember you."
It makes me almost *** cry,
and I'm not a very emotional guy, you know?
♪ That was the river, River, river, river ♪
♪ River, river, river ♪
♪ And this is the sea ♪
♪ Ooh, ooh ♪
♪ The sea, yeah ♪
♪ Behold the sea ♪