Ghost Wave - Chris Dixon [128]
For instance, Jaws is not a spot that you would notice from the side of the winding Hana Highway. It’s well hidden. If Hamilton and Team Strapped had never identified the location of the wave where they refined towsurfing, Jaws might have remained in obscurity for who knows how long. Yet in 1996, Hamilton, Kalama, and their friends made and released the film Wake Up Call about towsurfing at Jaws. The same is true of the Cortes Bank: If Flame and Sean Collins had kept knowledge of it entirely within their inner circle, who would have found it? Of course, sooner or later, particularly in the age of satellites and Twitter, someone eventually would have discovered and documented these waves, but maybe not. There are numerous big waves at outside reefs in the Hawaiian Islands and off the California coast that 99 percent of surfers will never know about. Indeed, Ghost Tree, a mammoth that sits right off the Pebble Beach golf course, remained an unknown wave for several years after first being towsurfed by Peter Mel and Skindog in 2002. As such, doesn’t Laird feel like he’s also at least partly at fault by promoting towsurfing and advertising Jaws?
It was a question I asked him in 2008. “But there was no [financial] incentive for someone to go charging out there [at Jaws],” Laird said at the time, adding that Wake Up Call “was more of a documentation. What we were experiencing and what was going on. We felt that it should be shared. It was never our intention to try to monopolize the spot. The way that we portrayed it was always in awe, and in an inspired, respectful manner, is what I felt.
“It’s just that when you start promoting it in another way, then it changes the whole thing. When you start putting up bounties and stuff. Then you’re going to have guys make different decisions than you would if you’re in it just to ride it. If they’re just saying, ‘Hey, I want to go ride some giant ones,’ it seems like that mindset’s a little different than if you’re like, ‘Hey, I’m going to win this big prize.’
“It’s about your intentions,” Hamilton continued. “What are your objectives? Your reasons why? Not, ‘Oh I’ll get chicks, or it’s cool or I’ll get sponsored’—all the wrong ones. The only reason should be I love it. I have to get on it. I have to try to ride it…”
On a more pragmatic level, Hamilton added that one thing that really irked him was that—prior to the arrival of XXL-hungry crowds at Jaws—he and the Strapped crew had always been essentially a self-reliant team. With the arrival of so many upstarts, a Tragedy of the Commons scene was not only unleashed, but the Strapped crew even had to rescue surfers they didn’t know—frequently people who had no business being out at Jaws. However, he did concede that one good consequence of the XXL contests was that they would come to open up heaps of new waves across the world, perhaps taking at least a little pressure off his home break.
Still, even if the XXLs are responsible for much of the overcrowding, is there really any genuine difference between Hamilton and Kalama’s intentions and those of Bill Sharp? Aren’t both simply trying to make a living doing something they love?
“The difference between myself and a Bill Sharp is that I go out there and I risk,” Hamilton said. “He’s not going out there and risking. For me, at the end of the day, I feel like you shouldn’t really have much to say in the thing unless you’re willing to go out and put your butt on the line.
“For me, the whole thing has to do with sending the sheep into the wolves’ den. It’s like, line these guys up and send them out. A