Nic Lamb goes from El Porto to ‘Eddie’
El Porto surfer Nic Lamb places fifth in a Hawaiian contest only held in 30-foot-plus waves
by Kevin Cody
Nic Lamb knew at 12 he wanted to be a big wave surfer. He surfed Mavericks in Half Moon Bay at 14, the youngest person at the time, ever to paddle out at California’s cold, most feared surf break. In 2016, at age 27, he won the Titans of Mavericks championship. That same year the Santa Cruz native won his first World Surf League Big Wave Tour contest, the Punta Galea Challenge, in Spain, and repeated that win in 2017. Last February, Lamb finished second behind former Mira Costa High surf team star Cody Purcell (Class of 2018) in the inaugural Todos Santos Island Thriller at Killers. Todos Santos is an island known for big waves, 12 miles off of Ensenada, Mexico.
Of particular interest, at least to South Bay surfers, in 2017, Lamb won the International Surf Festival Surfing Championship at the Manhattan Beach pier. And in 2018 he won the South Bay Boardriders Spyder Surf King of the South Bay contest at the Manhattan pier.
Lamb moved to El Porto in Manhattan Beach eight years ago.
“I chose El Porto because it’s one of the most consistent beach breaks in Southern California, and it’s near an international airport,” Lamb said in an interview this week. El Porto is one of the few beach breaks that draws large, north swells that are ridable.
It’s also closer than Santa Cruz to Hollywood.
Lamb looks like a young Robert Redford. At 5-foot-10, he’s the same height as the actor, with the same slight build, and the same floppy, reddish-blond hair.
He has appeared in several films, and was the subject of the 2018 documentary, “The Risk,” about his quest for a repeat title at Mavericks.
The documentary shows him swaggering down the beach at Big Wave Tour stops, including Punta Galea and Nazaré, in Portugal, shouting out to fellow competitors about how perfect the menacing surf looks.
But in more private moments in the documentary he admits the swagger is for show, and to psych himself up.
“The ocean is very absolute. It’s the most intimidating, exciting, beautiful thing in the world. But big wave riding is a calculated risk. It’s high speed pattern recognition. It’s very warrior-like. One slip could be your last. I do it to face my biggest fear,” he says.
In 2017, Lamb suffered a concussion after falling on a 70-foot wave at Nazaré. He was rescued by one of the water safety crews, whom he describes as “the behind the scenes heroes.”
He used icepacks to relieve the post-concussion migraines without drugs, and subsequently developed the Ice Beanie. In 2021, Lamb went on Shark Tank and convinced Mavericks basketball team owner Mark Cuban to invest $50,000 in exchange for 25 percent of the company. Ice Beanies are now available in CVS and other pharmacies, nationwide.
Last October, Lamb was one of just nine non-Hawaiians among the 45 male surfers invited to compete in the 2024-25 Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational.
The Eddie is not a stop on the Big Wave Tour. It’s bigger than that.
Eddie Aikau was the first lifeguard assigned to the North Shore, Hawaii’s big wave mecca. He was also a professional surfer. In 1971 he won the Duke Kahanamoku Invitational.
In 1978, he crewed on the Hawaiian canoe Hokule’a in an attempt to retrace the historic, 2,500 migration route between Hawaii and Tahiti. The canoe capsized 12 miles off of Moloka’i. Aikau volunteered to paddle a surfboard to shore for help. The rest of the crew was rescued by a Coast Guard cutter. Aikau’s body was never found.
The Eddie is as much a cultural event as a contest. It’s held at Waimea Bay between December 14th and March 13th, but only if the surf forecast is for 30-foot waves, or larger. Since the first Eddie in 1984, the contest had only been held 10 times.
On Friday, December 6, a week prior to the start of the waiting period, Eddie invitees gathered with their boards in a circle on the beach at Waiamea Bay for a blessing, and then paddled out to meet the Hokule’a off shore.
On Thursday, December 19, Lamb and the other invitees received a 72 hour notice that the contest was on for that Sunday, December 22.
Lamb described walking onto the beach at Waiamea that Sunday as “like walking into an NFL Stadium. It was the best place in the world to be. I trained 20 years for that day.”
Lamb was accompanied by his El Porto neighbor, and photographer Ryan Versfelt. The two met surfing in El Porto. Versfelt attended Mira Costa (Class of 2005), and formerly worked at Spyder Surf and in video production. He now owns CAP Metal Roofing, but has stayed involved in photography.
Versfelt described Waimea Bay that morning as “chaos.”
“People had camped out all night. Kam Highway was jammed. Helicopters were overhead and water safety crews on PWCs were racing competitors out to the line-up.”
Lamb and Versfelt had spent the early morning in their rooms watching the surf cameras. The surf was a relatively small, 15 feet at 8 a.m. when the contest was to start. Organizers pushed the start time back an hour to give the swell time to build.
Lamb was in the fourth of the five morning heats. He spent the morning stretching and mentally preparing. They got to the beach shortly before Lamb’s 11 a.m. heat. His heat included Hawaiians Kai Lenny, Nathan Florence and Landon McNamara. Lenny won the 2020 Nazaré Tow-in Championship and is known for taunting giant waves with tricks. Florence is a multiple time nominee for the Red Bull Big Wave Awards, and brother to 2016 Eddie champion, current World Surf League champion John John Florence. McNamara is Hawaiian royalty. His dad, Liam, is the Eddie contest director. His uncle Garrett is recognized in the HBO documentary “100 Foot Wave,” as having popularized Nazaré, and as a result, raising big wave riding’s profile. McNamara is also a musician. He performed at the BeachLife Festival in Redondo Beach in 2022.
By the start of their 45-minute heat, the surf had increased in size to 30-feet to 40-feet. Lamb scored on three big waves, to finish second behind Florence. McNamara finished third, and Lenny fourth.
Lamb was third overall in points, close enough to win if he had a good second heat.
But Lamb had a problem.
“On his last wave, he hit a boil and his board banged him in his right knee. He was limping when he came up the beach,” Versfelt said.
“I made the drop. I did the hard part. But rounding the last section, the wave exploded. I thought it broke my leg. I didn’t know if I could walk,” Lamb said.
He didn’t seek medical attention. He was afraid if the organizers learned he was injured he’d lose his slot in the afternoon heat to one of the 20 hungry alternates.
“I told myself this was the opportunity of a lifetime. I might not have this opportunity again.
In my head, I was pretending I was okay,” he said.
Lamb went to his car, wrapped his knee in kinesiology tape, and rested. His second heat was the last heat of the day.
The surf had gotten bigger, and had a bump on it from the wind. The fast falling sun made the back-lit waves hard to read.
Both Nathan and John John Florence were in Lamb’s heat.
Versfeld said Lamb had trouble walking down the beach.
“I was a bit terrified,” Lamb later admitted. “I just put my head down and told myself my leg could heal later.”
Versfeld said Lamb reached a waiting PWC that was to take him out to the line up just as “a monster shorepound set came through.”
Rather than punch out through the set, the PWC driver raced back to the beach, crashing the ski.
Lamb hobbled down the beach until he found another PWC driver to take him out to the lineup.
He caught the maximum allowed four waves, including what Versfelt thought was the largest wave of the heat. He finished first in the heat, nine points ahead of John John Florence and 42 points ahead of Nathan Florence.
Combined with his second place score in the morning heat, Lamb reached the podium with a fifth place finish overall.
He was the only non-Hawaiian on the podium. McNamara, whom Lamb had beaten by 30 points in their morning heat, took first, on the strength of a perfect, 50 point score on an afternoon bomb. Mason Ho, Billy Kemper and Jamie O’Brien finished second, third and fourth.
“I was happy under the circumstances. But it wasn’t what I was hoping for,” Lamb said.
Lamb returned to El Porto just as the swell that brought 40 foot waves to Waiamea delivered 20-foot waves to the South Bay.
“El Porto was firing,” Lamb said. But he didn’t surf. The waiting period for the Nazaré Big Wave Tour contest had begun, and he wanted to give his knee time to heal. He said his goal this year is to break Hawaiian Aaron Gold’s record of 63-feet for a paddle-in wave, set at Nazaré in 2016. ER