Ghost Wave - Chris Dixon [106]
Each wave was successively bigger—a nightmare stairway to heaven with no end in sight. Walla and Slater broke into a full sprint, trying to clear them before they broke. Slater watched Walla grab the edges of his board and sink it deep into the first wave, a move called a duckdive. He soon followed suit. Both managed to duck the next one, too. But it wasn’t enough. The ghosts of Kinkipar understood what was about to happen.
Out at the top of the point, Skindog hurled Peter Mel onto a massive roping wave that might connect all the way through to Larry’s Bowl and far beyond. Mel etched a series of fifty-yard-wide half-moon-shaped turns into the wave’s face, with Dana Brown’s cameraman following him closely. Slater and Walla saw Mel flying toward them. The wave reared up majestically on Larry’s Bowl, far outside of the paddling surfers. Mel was astonished to catch a glimpse of Walla far below and inside. Mel had time to think, “What the hell?” There was no way Walla was going to punch through. He ditched his board as a hillside crashed down on top of him. His fifteen-foot leash, a cord capable of supporting well over a hundred pounds, stretched like an Acme slingshot in a Road Runner cartoon and snapped. Walla was a ragdoll, but his experience was not even close to that of Slater. It’s not shown, or even mentioned, in the film Step into Liquid, but this remains the most terrifying moment of Evan Slater’s terrifying life.
“I remember watching John punch through the lip and ditch his board,” Evan says. “He was out beyond me, and there was nothing I could do but watch the wave explode. Top to bottom, it was probably a legitimate 40-foot face. [Actually, 50-foot, James Thompson says.] It was a big wave. And you know, I’ve never really panicked before in big waves—never felt like the end was going to happen. I’ve never felt so on my own, alone, nervous, scared in big waves as I did when that wave broke in front of me. You’re a hundred miles out, and there’s a hundred different reasons I can understand why I panicked, I guess. I just remember putting up my hand halfway and yelling as the wave’s coming. It was just like, ‘Heeellpp!’”
“I was praying for him,” says Thompson.
The wave enveloped Slater in a shockwave of almost unbelievable force. He doesn’t know how far down he was driven, but it was surely very deep. He had no idea that a concrete ship had once met its doom out here. He curled up in a ball and tried to relax as he was blasted southward. Had he been caught in a particularly bad downward shear, skin or his leash could have been easily snagged by reef, rebar, or worse, he might have been forever sandwiched between the seafloor and a broken slab of concrete. Instead, his leash snapped and he was carried far, far inside—perhaps an eighth of a mile underwater. What probably saved him—indeed, what saves many surfers in big wave wipeouts—is the fact that guys like Slater can hold their breath for at least two minutes, and the very water that threatens to dismember you also becomes an aerated cushion. Our bodies are around two-thirds water, so you sort of become one with the molecules. After being driven deep, Slater may have actually risen back up, traveling much of the distance above sea level, spinning and bouncing like a bingo ball in the white water. Or he may have been below. Only God knows for sure. Slater wondered about his life-insurance policy. Was it up to date? Did he have enough coverage? Would he ever see Jennifer and his six-month-old daughter, Peyton, again?
After maybe a half a minute alone with his thoughts, Slater emerged, gasping for air in a deep cappuccino foam that made breathing terribly difficult. Had the froth been any deeper, he would have been unable to inhale anything but bubbles, and he would have suffocated. Two more walls of white water swept over him, but he had now traveled so far that much of their force had dissipated. Slater was dizzy and lightheaded, but he had survived the worst.
A badly shaken John Walla swam over to Rob Brown’s catamaran. His board was