Ghost Wave - Chris Dixon [138]
After trying to scratch into a few himself, Davi realized that the only way to ride Ghost Tree today was towsurfing. He seemed amped up and agitated. If Pete Mel had been there, he would have instantly recognized why. Davi told his buddies Anthony Ruffo, Kelly Sorensen, and Randy Reyes, “I’m forty-five years old, and I want one of those fucking waves.”
Reyes towed Davi straight off a ski he was sitting atop and out onto what would be his first and only wave. It was no monster but still plenty tough to ride on an 8-foot 6-inch paddle surfboard. Ruffo was sure Davi would be pinched between white water and rocks, but Davi knew Pescadero Point like the back of his hand and rocketed safely around the corner. “Everything was cool,” Ruffo said. “We laughed about it.”
After the wave, Davi didn’t return to the lineup. Despite offers for a lift back to shore, he instead turned to make the nearly mile-long paddle back to Carmel’s Stillwater Cove, a deep, wide embayment of vicious currents and abrupt shelf rocks. He tried to catch a smallish wave into the cove by riding around the inside edge of Pescadero Point, but he went down and his ankle leash snapped, sending him onto the rocks. Without his board, he was left to swim alone toward the beach. After he had made it fairly far into the cove, a local saw him rise on a swell that was about to crash down onto a slab of reef.
An hour later, the news rippled through the lineup: Anthony Ruffo had stumbled on Davi’s body. A posse of Pete’s buddies formed a circle in deeper water off the wave’s edge and lowered their heads in Pete’s honor. Some surfers ignored the news altogether and went on blithely doing their damnedest to kill themselves—an act Davi’s friends considered a pinnacle of disrespect. After hearing the news, Parsons and Gerlach motored over into the deep water, badly shaken, and talked with several of their friends. Parsons in particular felt a painful déjà vu. Should they get out? Quit surfing? What was the best way to honor a guy they knew as a maniacal charger?
From the outside, it may be hard to fathom the reaction of the surfers that day, particularly those who didn’t even pause. Most of the other surfers, even after sending Davi their prayers, returned to surfing. Yes, the swell was a rare monster, but had big wave surfing reached such a manic, fever pitch that even death was skipped over like a boil at the bottom of a wave?
“We really talked about it,” Parsons said. “It was one of those situations where, we decided, if it happened to me, I want my friends to keep surfing. I mean, if it’s closing out at Waimea, and you decide to get out—where it’s just way too heavy for everyone—that’s one thing, but that wasn’t the case. It was huge, unbelievable, perfect. I know some people bailed who were really close to him, but everyone dealt with it in their own way. Most of the guys felt that the best way to honor Pete was to ride an even bigger wave. That’s what Brad and I decided—let’s ride one for Pete. I mean, when Andy Irons died in 2010, Greg, Shane Dorian, Mark Healey—we were all Andy’s close friends, but we still went to Cortes Bank. Andy wouldn’t want us to miss an insane day. Neither would Pete. They’d want us to pull in.”
By the time Skindog, Greg Long, and Mark Healey reached