Alex Wade - Amazing Surfing Stories: Tales of Incredible Waves & Remarkable Riders

2012 Alex Wade

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wade, Alex, 1966
Amazing surfing stories / Alex Wade.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-119-94254-2 (hardback)
1. SurfingAnecdotes. I. Title.
GV840.S8W28 2012
797.32dc23
2012024429

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-119-94254-2 (ebk) ISBN 978-1-118-33727-1 (ebk)
ISBN 978-1-118-34020-2 (ebk) ISBN 978-1-118-33736-3 (ebk)

Cover image: seandavey.com

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This book is dedicated to my surfing sons, Harry and Elliot, and to the man in the east, Neil Watson

PREFACE

This book aims to do what it says on the tin: it is a collection of amazing surfing stories. What, though, is an amazing surfing story?

In many cases, the stories are demonstrably amazing, as in the tale of Laird Hamilton's infamous Millennium Wave at Teahupoo on 17 August 2000, when he took surfing to a new level, or in two pieces which feature another Hawaiian hellman, Garrett McNamara. GMAC, as he is known, surfed what was subsequently ratified as a world record wave at Nazar, off the coast of Portugal, in November 2011 (it came in at a hefty 78ft and is recounted in Size Matters ), but perhaps even more astonishingly he has also surfed waves created by a calving glacier face. He described this outlandish Alaskan experience as being like sitting underneath the Empire State Building, waiting for it to come down on you (see Child's Play ).

Hamilton and McNamara join other exponents of extreme surfing featured in this book, who include Shane Dorian (see Hold Down ), Carlos Burle and Mark Visser. These men are well-known in the surfing community, and elsewhere Australian surfer Visser especially is making a name for himself beyond surfing, thanks to achievements like surfing the legendary Maui break of Jaws at night (see Surviving the Atom Blaster ). Other surfers and their stories may not be so embedded in the mass wave-riding consciousness, but are just as mind-boggling: witness English surfer Andrew Cotton's fearlessness in The White Zone , and unsung, underground hero Tony Butt's commitment to big wave surfing in Bare Hands and Bombs .

The quality of amazement may not arise from a single act of derring-do. It may be down to the way a life was lived, and the way it ended, as in the stories of part two Tragic Tales . Or it might flow from the spirit of a competition (see Higher Than a High Five ) or its aftermath ( Bad Boy Bobby and the New York Quiksilver Pro ). Travel opens the mind and if it might not engender jaw-dropping as profound as a shark attack (see Bethany Hamilton's tale in People in Car Crashes Don't Stop Driving ), a Rip Curl search in Sumatra led to some extraordinary moments in Seven Ghosts , while a South African surf trip by a Cornish photographer yielded two opposing sides of surf travel: on the one hand, words to treasure from surfing legend Miki Dora; on the other, the tragedy of a shark attack which ended in death.

Elsewhere, there are gentler stories that can legitimately wear the amazing tag. Did Agatha Christie really go on a surf trip when she famously disappeared for 11 days in December 1926? Read The Lady in the Emerald Green Bathing Dress to decide. There's an act of selflessness in a competitive world in A Debt at Dungeons , an obsessive nature to beat all others in The Daily Wavester , and wonderful examples of determination to surf despite adversity in Peg Leg Rik and Soldiers Get Stoked .

There's a mild Gonzo interlude, too. For me, Dave Rastovich's life is, quite simply, amazing take a look at Being Dave Rastovich to disappear, for a while, into his world. Other less than conventional surf stories appear in this part (called, funnily enough, Gonzo Interlude ) which is intended to create portraits rather than precision, rather like Tony Plant's painting of the last tree on earth, one viewed by Rasta, Dorian and Buttons Kaluhiokalani, among others, in Four Surfers and a Painting .

The stories end with inspirational tales. Colonel Mad Jack Churchill was the first man to ride the Severn Bore what a man he was, too. If ever there was one, Mad Jack's was a life well lived, as is Mark Cunningham's, the mesmerizingly good Oahu bodysurfer see OMG ( Take 2 ). Cunningham bodysurfs with the beauty of a dolphin; my own experience of surfing with them is recounted in Stoked .

Finally, the book's last story perhaps goes to show that this is a book of amazing surfing stories which does what it says on the tin with a caveat. For me, one of my most amazing surfing experiences came not thanks to a monster 30ft wave, or a near death experience, or a barrel to beat all barrels or the slickest, most radical off-the-lip ever performed still less by witnessing wave-riding genius or talking to any of the leviathans of the surf world but through surfing waist-to-shoulder high waves on a balmy summer's eve at a local secret spot, in the company of a person I barely know. The break should have been crowded, as it always is in the summer, but unaccountably there was barely anyone around. Dr Sarah and I shared benign and mellow waves whose memory will last us a lifetime that, for me, is the most amazing thing about surfing.