Surf Sessions

We anchored the boat well outside the surf line as we watched the backs of six to eight foot waves peel perfectly, all the way to the beach. There were no other surfers or boats around. Perfect conditions, with no wind and nice sun, the ocean was like a sheet of glass. Everyone was excited to be surfing big waves with nobody else in the water. As we tidied up the boat and put our wetsuits on, Curt hesitated, looking towards the west. "Hey, did you guys see that? About a hundred yards out. I am pretty sure I saw a big dorsal fin", he said with a tone of certainty in his voice. Kevin said, "Where?" as he grabbed binoculars from their case under the boat's dashboard. We all carefully scanned the water towards the west in the bright midday sun. After ten minutes or so, nobody else saw anything. Curt continued to hesitate and sat down as the rest of us tossed our surfboards out of the boat, preparing to dive in. Kevin tried to tell Curt that he probably just imagined seeing the fin, but Curt insisted he saw the dorsal fin of a big shark. I knew Curt was serious, we all did. I said, "We surfing or what? It's perfect in there and if our number is up, it's up", as I stood on the deck of the bow untangling the anchor line from the boat's forward railing. Kevin and Curt jumped over the side and hopped on their boards to begin the 200 yard paddle towards shore to reach the peak. Bob asked me to hang out for a minute because he could not zip up his wetsuit by himself. The pull tab had broken off some time ago and he had a small piece of wire fed through the slot in the zipper slide. I was anxious to surf, but having everything in order on the boat before leaving was more important than missing a couple waves. Curt and Kevin had reached the peak by the time I was in the water and on my board. I was paddling fast toward them excited to surf perfect waves. I was less than 50 yards from the boat when I heard Bob shout out my name loudly. "GET BACK HERE! QUICK! HURRY!" He yelled as I saw a deep dark line towards the west, moving fast and getting bigger. It was a huge set of waves, at least twice as big as the biggest waves we had seen that day. We could hear Kevin and Curt yelling "HOLLY SHIT!" As they scrambled to paddle southward toward the channel and out to avoid the incoming set of towering waves. They had no hope of getting clear, they were 200 yards inside of the boat's position and the set was going to break way outside of where we were. I raced back to the boat as fast as I could paddle. Bob grabbed my arm and pulled me and my board into the boat. I ran up, stepping over the windshield, onto the bow and started pulling up the anchor as fast as I could. I began just throwing the line into the passenger area as fast as I could pull up the rock anchor. Bob had started the motor and as I stepped over the windshield with the anchor in hand he grabbed my free arm and punched the boat's throttle lever forward. I fell into the passenger seat as the Glasspar tri-hull launched out of the water, accelerating quickly towards the approaching walls of water. "I don't know if we're going to make it!" Bob yelled over the screaming 85 horsepower motor as we reached top speed. "Hit it straight on, we're going to get big air on this one!" I shouted as we both grabbed railing and safety handles near the front seats. It was like slow motion as the boat climbed the well over 30 feet of steep wave face. The wave's top was feathering in the light offshore winds and the massive lip was already starting to pitch out. We were near vertical as the bow of the boat pierced through the top of the wave. Bob and I both thought we were going to be sucked back over the wave backwards in the boat. We tucked low behind the windshield and dashboard as water sheeted over the entire boat. The boat barely had enough momentum to break through the lip, we were actually a submarine going through. Airborne, at least ten feet out the back, we landed on the water with the throttle still wide open, screaming to make it over the next five of a dozen or more set waves. Getting big air again at the top of the second wave, I thought that people on the beach in Hawaii could probably hear our hoots and hollers. We had plenty of distance now and turned a course to the south to get off to the side as we watched the backs of more 18 to 25 foot waves break so perfectly on the outside reef of St. Augustine's Point. We were well clear and outside the outermost peak. Bob insisted on motoring out another quarter mile before we anchored again. I thought this was overly paranoid at this point, but I had no say in it. It was his boat and our only way back to Gaviota Pier. It was going to be over half a mile to paddle in to the surf spot now, but it would be worth it. These were the biggest and most perfect waves any of us had ever seen in real life, much less surfed.