Adventure #19 -- Mavericks

Adventure - Heather

Description: In which Heather and Marty hear the siren song of the waves, and scooter down to Half Moon Bay to watch the Mavericks big wave competition.

(If you don't know where Mavericks is, here's a map!)

(Marty's Report):

Well, I'm writing this in retrospect (it's June of 2010, and Mavericks was last year, I think in December. We got word that the contest was on (it is voted a go/no-go by the contestants, who have a 24 hour notice to fly in), and it happened to fall on a Saturday. We bought binoculars and headed down on the scooter--thinking, rightly, that the place would be packed with cars--and made it to Half-Moon bay only half frozen from the motorcycle chill, but quickly warmed up in the sunny blue morning. It had the feeling of a festival, with all the shops open, the cafe booming with business, and a melange of attendees from bikers to little kids to surfers to gawkers like us.

We headed out for the 3 mile initiatory walk to the top of the bluff, passing the cops and harried staff and emergency personnel (it's a BIG wave...), and found a spot amongst the crowds already smashing flat the ice plant and scrubby coast-side bushes. Unlike the waves coming down the coast, which looked monstrous to my little surfer eyes, the ocean almost seemed flat. In my mind, I was expecting huge waves pummeling the shore, but there was nothing like that. We had to scan our glasses around to find the spot--not really that hard, as it was where all the boats and helicopters were converging.

It's a BIG wave. I've gotten scared on little 4-5 foot waves at Ocean Beach, and these were around the 40 foot mark. But we watched a documentary once on Mavericks, and it apparently a particularly daunting wave because of the hellacious white water, and the way it will push you down and keep you down. Mark Foo, a famous surfer from Hawaii, drowned there in the 90's. They think his leash (which holds your foot to the board) got caught on a rock underneath, and that combined with exhaustion from flying in from Hawaii for the contest. They say that if there were the safety procedures taught now he might have lived.

So we spent about 2 hours there, trying to keep our glasses trained on the one big wave on the ocean, and frankly, it's a bit disappointing from that angle, a half-mile away from the spot. Probably from a boat close by, it looks amazing, but with the whole ocean and sky to contextualize it, the wave looks a little less than God-like. Still, seeing someone fall down that huge face, even from a difference, is quite a sight.

We headed back before the contest was over, and spent the afternoon back in our apartment watching the amateur, but remarkably competent, webcast from the event, which was actually, and ironically, more satisfying.

One thing we learned on return was that it was good to be on the bluff that day. Apparently down on the beach a wave had swept in and caught some people unaware, throwing a woman down and breaking her leg. I think she was the only injury from the whole competition.

(Heather's Report):

To me, Mavericks seems like a strange competition. Okay, maybe I would say kind of silly and dumb but extremely impressive