Chris Dixon - Ghost Wave: The Discovery Of Cortes Bank And The Biggest Wave On Earth

It was the only time I ever wrote
out a will before a surf trip.

Bill Sharp

In the predawn hours of a dead-still December morning in 1990, a Black Watch sportfisher, its deck loaded with provisions, thick wetsuits, and big wave surfboards, motored out of Newport Harbor in Newport Beach, just south of Los Angeles.

Clearing the lights at the end of the harbors long rock jetty, the skipper gave the boats twin Yanmars their first big huff of diesel and crackling dry Santa Ana air. He then pointed the bow toward an empty spot, a big blank patch of ocean a hundred miles offshore where a ghost wave was said to appear, a wave of massive proportions that came out of nowhere, rose like a monster, and then slid back into the depths without a sign of its passing. According to legend, several vessels had met disaster here and now lay on the bottom, and the few mariners who had been out there told the surfers they were crazy. Along their intended route, compasses were known to spin in random directions. It was a place where the impossible was postulated to be an occasional nightmare realitya breaking wave 100 feet high. They were headed for the Cortes Bank.

In addition to the captain, the boat contained four passengers: Surfing magazine editors Bill Sharp, Sam George, and Larry Flame Moore, along with a California pro surfer named George Hulse. Sharp, George, and Hulse were experienced big wave surfers, but in 1990, the world of monster swells was a far smaller and more mysterious place than it is today. The crucible of their sport still lay on Oahu at thundering tropical waves like Pipeline, Makaha, and Waimea Bay, and a relatively small group possessed the knowledge, skill, and guts to challenge them. Swell forecasting was still in its infancy; spots like Mavericks, Jaws, and Teahupoo lay far off the radar. Only recently, these three surfers had tested themselves on the first bona fide big wave find on the North American mainlandan icy, kelp-ringed giant off northern Bajas Todos Santos Island, appropriately named Killers. No one aboard had ever considered tying a water-ski rope to the stern of a Jet Ski and slingshotting a life-jacketed surfer onto a big wavethe pursuit today known as towsurfing. If you wanted to catch a big wave in 1990, you had to paddle like hell, pray, and never forget that if something went wrong, you were all alone.

Indeed, the surfers had gone to great lengths to ensure they were alone. This exploratory encounter with what they believed to be an unsurfed leviathan was the culmination of several years of painstaking, almost pathologically secretive detective work.

In December 1985, illuminated by the neon glow of a photographers light table, Larry Moore pointed a freckled finger at page L4 of the Chart Guide to Southern California. What about this spot? Theres gotta be waves out there.

Beside him stood Sam George and Bill Sharp, the newly minted young editors of Surfing magazine. They had been scouring the nooks and crannies on the map, looking for places where they might find surf.

If there was one thing that George and Sharp had come to realize, it was that Flame was obsessive about everything he did. You didnt get a grain of sand in his Ford pickup. You didnt miss a 4 A.M. roll call for a photo shoot. You didnt mess with any element atop his photo desk. And you sure as hell didnt talk about surf spots you were scouting out. That was the great privilege and maddening frustration of the job. Larry possessed an obsessive need to know about the waves that broke along the Pacific Coast and to be the first to document them. Inclusion among his tight circle of explorers made you a very fortunate person, but you had to keep your mouth shut until Flame was ready to reveal a discoverywhich might be never.

Flame was a fairly seasoned sailor. He had pored over his chart guides, studying coast and bathymetry from Vancouver Island to Cabo San Lucas. The same set of features that might sink a ship could also indicate a hidden wave. Lately, he had set his sights toward Todos Santos and San Clemente Island and now this weird shoal called Cortes Bank. He saw danger and opportunity. In fact, a mere month earlier, the