Alice Gregory. Published in Issue 17 : The Evil Issue. Publication date Fall The air smells faintly of salt water, and strongly of bonfires, diesel fuel, and weed. Shadowy figures are perched in the beds of pickup trucks; they speak in low voices and occasionally take sips of coffee. An unusually steep, unusually deep Pliocene-epoch sedimentary reef rises half a mile offshore. Accomplished big-wave surfers β famous ones β have died here.
Some years β when tides and swells and winds and storms combine infelicitously β the waves here fail to break at anything above twenty feet, which means for Mavericks that they are hardly waves at all. When it does happen, the Mavericks Invitational is announced a few days ahead of time, and even in this case the plan is provisional at best.
The inconvenience is unavoidable; one elemental change can ruin the wave. They all know each other, and most surf together regularly. Compared with most professional athletes, these guys are ancient. Matt Ambrose of Pacifica is At 31, Shawn Dollar, also from Santa Cruz, is one of the youngest competitors.
He also holds the world record for the biggest wave ever paddled into sixty-one feet, a scale at which almost every other surfer would opt for tow-in. I ask Dollar why the surfers at Mavericks are so old. Put a year-old kid out there? When I ask Dollar to explain the sensation of almost drowning, his answer, and the way he holds his face as he says it, makes me feel that the question is an intrusive one.
It blinks in your mind and goes black. A swell was hitting Mavericks, and he wanted to arrive in time to catch it. Stoked but sleep-deprived, Foo paddled out and took off on a relatively innocent-looking twenty-foot wave. The ride was photographed from multiple angles, and pictures captured Foo wiping out near the base.
