Ride the wave, man!

Ok, so surfing is way cool. For some it is a way to spend a bit of leisure time; for the serious dudes it is a lifestyle. Man and ocean, a quest for the perfect wave. Waves are awesome. When you stand on the sea wall as a rough sea pounds it, you can really appreciate the power of the sea.

I recently watched a documentary where Eddie Vedder from the band Pearl Jam spent time discussing work and play with Laird Hamilton, a legendary big wave surfer. I have always been fascinated with surfing and so I thought I would look at what causes waves, surfing and the history of big wave surfing for my first post.

Waves are generated by a force disturbing the surface of the ocean. The type of force gives rise to different types of waves. There are 3 main types of wave:

Tidal waves
These are generated by the gravitational attraction of the earth, moon and sun and result in 2 tides per day at most locations.

Tsunami waves
These are often misnamed tidal waves and are generated by earthquakes and underwater landslides. In the middle of an ocean they are almost imperceptible but they travel outwards like ripples on a pond at speeds of up to 500mph. They have long wavelengths and so rarely break on the coast, rather running up the shore like the tide and travelling some distance inland.

Wind waves
We will focus on these waves for the purposes of this article on surfing. They are generated by wind moving across the surface of the ocean. The size of the waves depends on 3 factors:
1. The strength of the wind
2. How long the wind blows for
3. The distance (fetch) over which the wind blows in a straight line across the ocean.

The stronger the wind and the longer it blows across the fetch, the larger the sea will become.

Characteristics of waves

 

The diagram above shows the characteristics of different waves. The tip of a wave is called a crest and the distance between crests is called the wavelength. The base of a wave is called a trough and wave height is the vertical distance between the trough and the crest.

When a wave approaches the shore, the base of the wave slows down due to friction with the seabed and the crest carries on moving at the same pace - the crests start to jam up, shortening the wavelength. The waves get higher and eventually become top heavy and topple, breaking on the shore.

Surfing

Understanding waves is crucial to surfing because predictions can be made as to when the surf will be good based on the weather conditions. For example, if a wind has been blowing across an ocean with a large fetch for several days, then the waves will be good at the beach.

Surfing is the practice of 'catching' waves and riding the surface of the wave as the crest starts to become top heavy. As this happens, it creates a barrel or tube, which the surfer rides along as shown below.

The best beaches for surfing

The best surf occurs in Hawaii (particularly the North Shore area) because these islands are the most isolated landmass on earth, surrounded by huge open expanses of the Pacific Ocean providing a massive fetch for the winds to generate big waves which rear up as they hit the shallow offshore reefs. Hawaii is home to the surfing Mecca's called Jaws, Waimea Bay, Oahu and the Pipeline.

However, there are other beaches around the world which rival the waves found here such as Mavericks, California and Teahupoo, Tahiti (pronounced cho-pu and translates into English as "broken skulls").

A brief history of surfing

In 1777 Captain Cook encountered surfing in Hawaii and wrote "I could not help concluding that this man felt the most supreme pleasure while he was driven on so fast and so smoothly by the sea". Many aspects of surfing have changed since then but the essence and feeling of riding a wave is unaltered by the passage of time and remains a spiritual unification of man and the ocean.

Surfing is nowadays big business and professional surfers are icons for millions around the world due to the prowess on the waves and can earn millions as a result. Kelly Slater is the current World Champion surfer but it is the 'big guys', the big wave surfers who are the reason for this article.

Big waves are classed as those over 15 feet high and are actually quite rare. Eighty percent of all ocean waves are less than twelve feet high, and forty-five percent are smaller than four feet. The largest waves, those measuring over thirty-five feet, require anywhere from six to nine hundred miles of unobstructed ocean, or "fetch," to reach full size. By the time these waves hit a reef break or shore incline, they have become a powerful rolling mass of wind-borne energy moving through the water at speeds of thirty to fifty knots per hour and capable of exerting forces of more than three tons (that's six thousand pounds of pressure per square foot) as they finally curl up over themselves and break.

Surfing 'normal' waves is very difficult. Paddling out beyond the surf zone to wait for advancing waves is tiring enough, but to actually catch a wave requires that the board be moving at the same velocity as the oncoming swell, and it demands a simultaneous combination of spontaneity, speed, balance, and stamina.

The grandfather of big wave surfing is Greg Noll. Prior to 1957, no one had ever risked surfing the huge waves at Waimea Bay, Hawaii until he plucked up the courage and caught a wave there. His greatest feat however came in the winter of 1969 when one of the greatest swells of the twentieth century slammed into Hawaii, the result of three massive storms converging in the Pacific Ocean. As hundreds of people evacuated their homes in fear of the colossal waves that battered the coastline, Noll entered the water armed with a surfboard at Makaha beach on the North Shore. He spent two hours just sitting in the water absorbing the mind-blowing spectacle, four- and five-storey-high walls of water rising up one after the other before exploding down in front of him. Finally, he paddled into a gigantic thirty-five foot monster, riding its face to the bottom before being forced to jump off his board, as the mass of water seemed to detonate around him. He had managed to survive the largest wave ever ridden, a record that would not be beaten for two decades. Afterwards, Noll retired from surfing completely. "That day at big Makaha was like looking over the edge at a big, black pit," he said. "After that, there wasn't a hell of a lot more I could do."

To try and surf ever-larger waves and get close to Nolls' record, the problem of getting the board moving at the same velocity as the oncoming wave became a major problem. This problem was solved by the greatest big wave surfer of all time, Laird Hamilton.

In late 1992, Hamilton with some of his companions, such as Darrick Doerner and Buzzy Kerbox, started using inflatable boats to tow one another into waves which were too big to catch under paddle power alone. The technique became known as tow-in surfing and is now done using jet skis. Initially it was met with disdain form certain quarters of the surfing community who felt it was cheating but Hamilton maintained it was the only way of catching monstrous waves and it put a level of drama back into a sport preoccupied with the tricks which had become cliched in competitive surfing.

It was using this method that Hamilton beacme a legend when he dropped into what is widely considered to be the most dangerous wave ever ridden at Teahupoo, Tahiti on August 17 2000. Hamilton is now widely regarded as the best of the best at big wave surfing, regularly surfing swells of 35 feet (11 m) tall, and moving at speeds in excess of 30 mph (50 km/h) and successfully riding other waves of up to 70 feet high (22 m), at up to 50 mph (80 km/h).

The dangers of big wave surfing are incredible. Being caught in the falling lip of a wave can send surfers underwater so deep and so fast that the pressure change breaks their eardrums and the capillaries in their lungs. Once they stop spinning around, they have to quickly regain their equilibrium and figure out which way is up. They may have less than 20 seconds to get to the surface for a breath of air before the next wave hits them. Strong currents and water action at those depths can also slam a surfer into a reef or even the floor, which can result in dismemberment, fractures, or broken bones. One of the greatest dangers is the risk of being held down by two or more consecutive waves without the chance to reach the surface for air. Surviving a triple hold-down is extremely difficult.

Injuries are common - Laird Hamilton stopped counting his stitches after a thousand. Both of his feet are disfigured from broken arches. Derrik Doerner, another pioneer of tow-in surfing and the man who launched Hamilton into the infamous wave at Teahupoo with a jet ski, was once hit in the face by a surfboard underwater. Just before he went unconscious, he felt his cheek. "My hand went in, like, two inches," he says. "The next thing I knew, I was waking up in a helicopter. I had a broken jaw, broken cheekbone. I needed 123 stitches in all."

Despite these hazards, very few big-wave surfers have ever died in the practice of the sport, with the notable exceptions of Mark Foo, who died surfing Mavericks on December 23rd, 1994, Donnie Solomon, who died exactly a year later at Waimea Bay, and Todd Chesser who died at Alligator Rock on the North Shore of Oahu on February 14th, 1997.

The bottom line is that big wave surfers cannot resist the lure of the next big swell. Derrik Doerner says of his experience in the water, "It's meditation to me. I get back on land, I stub my toe, and I trip but out there, it's just perfect. All the elements come together, and there is no fear." While recalling his own mythical eighty-foot wave, Ken Bradshaw told an interviewer, "I guess it's an addiction because when you're not doing it, it torments and eats away at you. When it is happening . . . I guess it's like looking at life itself. For a moment, you've got it all. It's yours. You've gone to the very epitome of what you can do. How many people can say that in this world?"

Comments

[GeoDave]

A great start Richard! Look forward to reading some more...

[Lashers]

Really good! Informative and interestingly written! One day in the not too distant future I too will be a blogger!