Ghost Wave - Chris Dixon [112]
These were the sorts of ultimate, soul-shaking encounters that surfing, particularly big wave surfing, was all about, and no one exemplified this more than Laird, who was towsurfing’s answer to Michael Jordan. His presence would be requisite for Sharp’s Odyssey project. Sharp met Hamilton and his agent, Jane Kachmer, in Los Angeles, but things didn’t go well. First, Hamilton’s sponsor, Oxbow clothing, was less than comfortable allowing their star to compete in an event so closely tied with Billabong, a competitor. This corporate anxiety could have perhaps been ironed out, but Sharp says the arrangement fell apart for a far simpler reason: With two of the bigger egos in surfing, each wanted more control over the project than the other was willing to cede.
In the years to come, Sharp and Hamilton would come to disagree over the role of towsurfing, the impact of contests and money—with the XXLs being the most obvious target—and indeed the very morality and purity of purpose that modern, hydrocarbon and horsepower-driven big wave hunting was somehow supposed to represent. Eventually their split over the XXLs in particular would grow into a mutual and at times extremely personal antagonism. Towsurfing was about to transmogrify into a Frankenstein’s monster that would threaten to ruin their favorite breaks—Jaws, Todos Santos, and Cortes Bank. Hamilton blamed Sharp for this, and when that happened, Sharp shot right back. Yet in the end, each was probably no more guilty than the other. For after seeing Parsons at Cortes, Hamilton at Teahupoo, and both surfers at Jaws, the mongrel hordes were coming whether anyone liked it or not.
Bill Sharp launched the first of just over a year’s worth of Odyssey missions in late 2001. While Sharp glibly proclaimed the Odyssey team the “Delta Force of Surfing,” he found that mobilizing those forces—Jet Skis, a quiver of tow and paddle boards, airline tickets, and all the related hardware needed for towsurfing—on a moment’s notice to be damned difficult. Further complicating things, despite all its satellite-assisted number-crunching, surf forecasting remained as much art as science.
Still, Sharp’s argonauts successfully chased down waves from Oregon to Chile to the South Pacific and had their share of near-death experiences. At a fearsome French beach break, Flea nearly snapped his neck after ducking under an iron curtain, while Sharp was almost decapitated by his drowned Jet Ski. Gerlach simply lost Parsons as daylight waned. “Mike was just gone,” Sharp says. “I’m going, ‘Oh my God, I just destroyed a six-thousand-dollar ski and killed Mike Parsons.’” Mike endured a relentless pummeling before Gerlach finally spotted his weak waving. Had Parsons not been wearing a life jacket, he surely would have died.
On an aerial recon off western Australia, Sharp spotted an azure mauler with an awful, spitting barrel—Teahupoo’s righthand twin. Parsons and Gerlach tentatively sketched into a few rampaging drainpipes that scared them to death. In honor of Homer, they named the one-eyed monster “Cyclops.”
When they tracked a forecasted swell at Todos Santos, they ran into John Walla. With all the excitement over Jaws, Maverick’s, and Cortes Bank, the focus of big wave surfing had largely shifted away from Todos. “We had been getting perfect glass, ceiling-high barrels to ourselves for years,” Walla says. “Then Bill and the Odyssey came out there. It wasn’t very big, but they wanted to ski. Bill wanted us out of the lineup. They’ve gotta make money—produce for Billabong. I’m like, ‘I ain’t getting out.’ Bill and I got in a huge argument.”
Walla was paddle surfing, and for reasons of basic safety and