South Bay big wave hunters [PHOTOS]

The Big Wave Challenge hopes to resurrect the South Bay’s reputation as a breeding ground for big wave riders.

Dawn this morning took on an added urgency for surfers hunting for waves. The South Bay Big Wave Challenge began today. At stake is $7,000 in prize money, plus bragging rights for catching the biggest wave of the 2011-12 winter.

Though today’s forecast calls for small surf, the low morning tide should at least allow the opportunity to test out new gear at the El Segundo jetty, the Redondo Breakwater and Indicator in Palos Verdes, the South Bay’s best big wave breaks, and all low tide lefts.

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The South Bay is  known for small, fast beach breaks, not big waves. But every winter half a dozen strong north swells sweep down from Alaska and light up local breaks with 10- to 20-foot waves. The waves don’t approach the size of Mavericks and Ghost Pines in northern California, or Todos Santos and Cortes Bank offshore of San Diego. But big South Bay surf poses its own challenge – wave selection. Most big wave spots have the benefit of predictability because of their stable rock or coral reef bottoms. South Bay waves break over constantly shifting sand bars. A big, makeable right one day may be a board-snapping close-out left the next day. The window when swell, wind, tide and bottom are all in alignment can last several days, but more often just a few hours.

Because of this, even though the Big Wave Challenge is open to riders from around the world, the favorites are locals. The boundaries for the contest, which runs through March 31, are Dockweiler in El Segundo on the north and Indicator in Palos Verdes on the south. Lunada Bay, arguably the South Bay’s best big wave break, was excluded in deference to the locals’ sense of entitlement.

Local pride

Last year’s inaugural Big Wave Challenge winner Matt Mohagen, 22, was just the type of local surfer that South Bay Boardriders Club co-founder Mike Balzer had in mind when he proposed the contest as a way to bring recognition to the South Bay’s crew of talented but largely unheralded surfers. Balzer borrowed the idea from his San Diego State surf teammate Bill Sharp, who, as editor of Surfing, established the K-2 Big Wave Challenge. The contest grew into what is now the $100,000 Billabong XXL.

Mohagen was a stand-out rider at El Segundo High before choosing to home school so he could compete full time on the National Scholastic Surfing Association Tour, and then the WQS (World Qualify Series).

At 16, Mohagen earned a spot on the U.S. National Surfing Team, which won a silver medal at the World Junior Championships in Tahiti. In 2008, he advanced to the quarter finals of the Pipeline Monster Energy Pro by beating three-time world champion Andy Irons. Since becoming a Los Angeles County Lifeguard four years ago, his name has twice been engraved on the Judge Taplin Bell as a paddler, which recognizes the top lifeguard medley teams.

But despite his surfing achievements and resemblance to Kelly Slater, with his long, thin body and shaved head, Mohagen was unsponsored last year. Body Glove supplied him with wetsuits, but he bought his own boards and paid his own travel and contest expenses with money from summer lifeguarding.

His award-winning wave was taken at the El Segundo Jetty on January 9, 2011 by Jeff Farsai, who shot from the water.

Big South Bay

“The benchmarks for the Big Wave Challenge,” said shaper and contest judge Pat Reardon, “are the waves Kip Jerger caught at Indicator in Palos Verdes and Chris Barela caught at the Redondo Breakwater on Big Wednesday in January 1983.”

Jerger, a Los Angeles County Lifeguard, had returned from Hawaii the previous month, and put his 6-foot-4 diamond-tail gun in the rafters of his garage. Then the Pineapple Express roared through, seven back-to-back storms triggered by El Nino.

“Indicator broke for 32 straight days. The day Jim Casmus got that picture of me was the biggest day,” recalled Jerger, a registrant in this year’s Big Wave Challenge.

“When I started down the cliff in my wetsuit that day one of the locals heckled me because they always go down the cliff in their clothes, with their wetsuits in backpacks. He yelled that my tail was too wide and I’d spin out.”

Jerger had retrieved his 6-foot-4 from the rafters and added a large middle fin to make sure that didn’t happen. Finger reefs jutting out from the bottom of the 300-foot cliff make Indicator one of the least accessible, but best shaped big waves in Southern California. Jerger said he was in the water for 20 minutes and had caught half a dozen solid size waves when the set of the day came through.

“Sal Ferraro was on my left when we both took off. I made the drop and was nursing a turn off the bottom because I had that 8-inch-wide tail, and then the wave closed out on both of us.”

The photo suggests a 30-foot face, arguably one of the biggest waves ever paddled into, anywhere, on a short board.

That same morning, a few miles north, a kitchen worker at the Chart House restaurant named Andy sat down in the dining room with a cup of coffee to watch the surf out front at the Breakwater. The restaurant rests on pilings and it’s not uncommon for waves to brush its underside. But on this day, the waves were washing up against the waterfront windows. Andy retreated from the dining room just in time to avoid a set wave that blew out the windows and slammed the tables and chairs against the back wall.

Barela was watching the Breakwater with Hawaiian pro Larry Blair, winner of the previous year’s Pipeline Masters.

“Larry was pretty impressed with our little spot,” Barela recalled.

Because even on modest swells, it’s difficult to paddle out through the impact zone at the Breakwater, surfers typically wait for a lull, then race out along the wall and scramble down the rocks to the water. But police had cordoned off the wall after waves cleared it and tossed around cars in the King Harbor Yacht Club parking lot.

“I told Larry to follow me and we paddled out next to the rocks were there is a rip,” Barela recalled in an interview this week. “Then the swell grew and nobody else could paddle out. So Larry and I had the Breakwater all to ourselves for four hours.”

A photo of the wave by Steve Sakamoto appeared the following month with an article titled “California Big Waves” by Mira Costa grad and History of Surfing author Matt Warshaw.

Barela told Warshaw, “Actually, I didn’t think we had a chance. I was riding a 7-foot-6 and Larry was riding a 7-foot-10, and we ended up making it out without getting caught inside – a minor miracle… It was definitely the biggest day I’ve surfed in California… I remember that wave, sure. It seemed like forever getting to the bottom and you have to get to the bottom before you turn…it was really lining up. I thought, ‘Am I going to go for this tube or straighten out?’ Straightening out just didn’t seem like the thing to do. I turned as hard as I could and trimmed high, and the whole thing threw out over me. A huge cylinder. I didn’t get deep, but I was gone. It just kept rolling down the beach and then I came out. One of the best waves I’ve ever had in California.”

The session ended, Barela said, when, “I finally went too far in on one of those bowling lefts and ended up on the inside were it was impossible to get out again.”

Big wave surfing is dead

Ironically, just months before Surfer published its “California Big Wave” issue, the magazine had published an article declaring that big wave riding was dead.

“Have surfers turned into candyasses? Is surfing now a viable alternative to general wimpdom?” Leonard Brady wrote in the magazine.

“What actually happened,” Warshaw writes in his History of Surfing, “is that big-wave riding simply fell out of style – another victim of the short board revolution.”

Warshaw traces the end of the first big wave riding era to the 35-foot wave Greg Noll caught at Makaha during the ‘Swell of ’69’.”

At the time, the Hermosa Beach board builder was surfing’s best known big wave rider. He had spent the previous decade on a quest to ride a 30-foot wave, the biggest wave thought possible to paddle into. On December 4, 1969, he paddled out alone at Makaha. The surf was 30-foot-plus. An hour passed and the photographers on the beach gave up waiting for him and left. Finally, a wave spectators estimated at 35 feet appeared.

“I thought to myself, ‘If I don’t to this, I’ll be 80 years old, banging my cane around, still pissed off that I’d gone chickenshit on the one day I’d worked for all my life.’ So I really didn’t have a choice,” he told Warshaw.

Noll made the drop to the bottom. Then as the wave closed out, he stepped off his board.

It was the last big wave “Da Bull” ever rode. The following year, he closed his Hermosa surfboard factory.

“You feel close to the small wave thing, and that’s great. But at some point the emphasis just begins to change. And what’s left is a big, damn terrorizing wave,” he told Surfer magazine.

Big wave surfing returns

Noll’s prediction that big wave surfing would be revived came true in the early 1990s with the discovery of Mavericks and the introduction of tow-in surfing. Mavericks, Warshaw points out, helped surfers realize that big waves could be found all over the world, not just in Hawaii. Tow-ins enabled surfers to ride waves well beyond the 35-foot physical limit that Noll had butted up against.

In 2005, former pro surfer Brad Gerlach, now a Manhattan Beach resident, won the Billabong XXL Big Wave contest and $68,000 after being towed by partner Mike Parsons into a 68-foot wave at Todos Santos. (The prize money is $1,000/foot)

“Confidence, positioning, communication with your tow partner, wave judgment, equipment and luck – all those are factors in big wave riding,” Gerlach said during an Easy Reader interview two years ago.

“But the biggest thing is conquering your fear. Some big wave riders are just fearless nut cases. They may not have the deftness of small wave riders, but they have huge balls and they just go for it. The rest of us need to conquer our fear. If you eat it, the consequences can be minor, or horrendous. If you picture the horrendous when you take off, you’ll tighten up. Relaxing lessens the danger,” he said.

Gerlach said he practices two techniques to deal with fear.

The first is visualization

“I imagine eating it badly. I try to get that feeling of fear, and then let it go. I do that over and over until it’s gone – until the monkey’s off my back,” he said.

Under the mentorship of 3rd degree Aikido black belt Laura McCormac, he said, he had also begun addressing his fears by “ACE-ing up” before paddling.

ACE-ing up is an Aikido discipline that involves “awareness of being centeredly extended.” Practitioners radiate their ki or energy from their core out to their limbs.

“You go to your center and pull out of your head because the head’s what imagines bad things,” he said.

Currently, the South Bay’s most prominent big wave rider is 26-year-old Palos Verdes High graduate Alex Gray. Last Fourth of July weekend, Gray flew to Teahupoo, Tahiti to surf what was forecast to be one of the biggest swells of the year. He arrived at 1 a.m., the day the swell hit. After four hours’ sleep, he was taken to the beach by Teahupoo master Raimana Van Bastoeler, who would be his tow-in driver.

“Raimana told me, ‘Buddy, it’s going to be really good. And sure enough, it was one of those days I dreamed of as a kid watching those crazy videos of a wave eating itself alive and spitting,” Gray recalled during a phone interview this week from Hawaii, where he is on call for the Quiksilver Eddie Aiku Big Wave Invitational surfing’s most prestigious big wave contest. Gray was invited this year to be an alternate.

The swell that day is thought to have been the biggest that’s ever been ridden at Teahupoo. What separates Teahupoo from other waves, Gray said, is that the face pitches out as far as the wave is tall.

One of his waves that day would earn him a nomination for Ride of the Year in this year’s Billabong big wave contest. Another wasn’t as kind.

“I ran the barrel into the close-out. I was wearing two life vests, one under my wetsuit and the other over it. The one over my suit ripped off. I was held under so long I had time to grab it, put it back on, and zip it back up,” he said.

Gray was washed over the reef and didn’t resurface until he reached the protected lagoon, to the great relief of Body Glove president Robbie Meistrell, who was watching the ride being streamed live.

“After watching that, I thought how horrible it would be if one of our athletes got hurt because we encouraged them to do stupid stuff. I sent Alex a text saying that said, ‘Congratulations. Now that you’ve got it out of your system, don’t do it again.’”

Gray’s Teahupoo triumph also prompted Meistrell to pull Body Glove’s sponsorship of the South Bay Big Wave Challenge. When Balzer called Meistrell for an explanation, he said he was concerned about being sued by a surfer who got hurt on a big wave after being egged on by the contest and photographers on the beach. Fortunately for the contest, Meistrell reconsidered his decision after organizers agreed to require entrants to sign liability wavers. They are available at Dive N’ Surf. There is no charge to the surfers and they get a Big Wave Challenge hat for signing up.

Former pro surfer Ted Robinson and Hammerland surfer Jim O’Brien are credited with being the first to do tow-in surfing in the South Bay. They rode 25-foot Tanker Reef waves, a mile off of El Segundo, in 2001.

“It’s a high risk, high reward sport,” Robinson told Easy Reader that year. In the short time he had been doing tow-ins, he had had the wind knocked out of him when he fell while being towed, and received a puncture wound from the jet ski when a wave broke over him while he was driving.

The prize

Locally, the renewed interest in big wave riding is reflected in the Big Wave Challenge’s $7,000 purse. Karmaky.com is putting up $5,000 for the winner. Realtor Sean Goodsell launched the site in September with a group of fellow surfers, including Body Glove team rider Matt Pagan and team manager Matt Chernega, Tavarua lifeguard and boat driver Jason Napolitano, Los Angeles County Lifeguard Spencer Parker and Camp Surf instructor Tommy Ostendorf. Its purpose is to encourage people to perform good deeds.

Body Glove will contribute $1,000 to the winner’s purse, and wetsuits to the five finalists. The winner will also receive a big wave board shaped by Jeff Stoner and glassed by Steve Mangiagli. The photographers for the five finalists will split $1,000 from Easy Reader.

For some of this year’s entrants, the approach to big wave surfing differs little from Greg Noll’s era half a decade ago.

Derek Levy, a Big Wave Challenge finalist last year, said he’ll be charging the Breakwater this year on the same red, 7-foot-6 Becker he’s been riding since he rode for the Becker team 25 years ago.

Fellow Breakwater surfer Randy Meistrell has ordered a new quiver of boards, ranging from 6-foot-6 to 8-foot-2, from Pat Rowson, a North Shore shaper who got his start in Pat Reardon’s Manhattan Beach garage during the first big wave era. Meistrell said he also has on hand a 10-foot-2 gun shaped by local shaper Angelo Ferraro as insurance against a day like he had two winters ago with Levy and friend Michael Lee. The three paddled out on a 20-foot day at Exiles in Palos Verdes, which was unrideable. So they paddled around to the Cove, a generally more forgiving wave. But on this day neither Meistrell nor Levy, who were on 7-foot-6 boards, could paddle fast enough to catch a wave. Only Lee, on his 12-foot Pat Reardon gun, was able to catch a wave, though despite the board’s three stringers, it snapped when the wave closed out.

This year Meistrell has also added to his arsenal a Surfline phone app, and he has his nephew and surf photographer Rickie Meistrell on speed dial.

One of the contest rules is that entries must be documented by still or video camera.

As a gesture toward leveling the playing field, Meistrell, whose family owns Body Glove and Dive N’ Surf, is stocking Dive N’ Surf’s board racks with two dozen new Rosen guns.

“When we had that big winter in 2010, none of the shops had guns in stock and by the time guys could get them made, the winter was over,” Meistrell said.

But then, to tilt the field back in his favor, or at least in his family’s favor, Meistrell has his son Matt and his nephews Tracy and Jamie entered in the contest.

Another surfing family, brothers Dane and Kelly Zaun, are taking local big wave riding into the modern age with tow-in boards and a Honda AquaTrax PWC (personal watercraft). Dane surfed for Mira Costa’s national championship team in 2009 and is now a Body Glove pro. Kelly was also on the championship team and is now a Mira Costa High senior, with sponsorship from Quiksilver.

Kelly said this week that his older brother has been practicing tow-ins in Kauai the past few winters. They hope to surf Tanker Reef off of El Segundo. Their Honda is a three-seater, which allows room for a driver, a surfer and a photographer.

Redondo High surfer Connor Beaty and Palos Verdes surfer Angelo Luhrson have also teamed up to do tow-ins. Angelo’s dad Michael, a contest judge if he doesn’t qualify as a finalist with a wave at his favorite spot (the Breakwater), said his son and Beaty have their eyes on Cable Car Reef, off Hermosa.

Balzer said the Boardriders Club decided to allow tow-ins because, “We thought, let’s push the boundaries. If it proves to be controversial, we can change the rule next year,” Balzer said.

It’s a controversy the club would like to have because the outer reefs only break when the surf is 20-foot-plus.

But it’s not a controversy that is likely to last. Big wave riding is about to undergo still another revolution.

“There’s a place and time for tow-ins. That day at Teahupoo you couldn’t paddle in,” Gray said. “But my advice for the Big Wave Challenge is to paddle in. That’s where big wave riding is going. People are getting 10-foot boards and paddling into waves at Jaws that they were towing into last year.” ER

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