Ghost Wave - Chris Dixon [151]
When he kicked out, he was vibrating on another plane of existence. He shook uncontrollably and then promptly puked.
Today, Twiggy says, “That was probably the biggest wave ever ridden.”
Everyone nods.
Parsons readily concedes that Long’s wave was bigger than his—perhaps 80 to 85, maybe 90 feet. Not quite 100 feet, but damn close. The trouble is, with no photo, there is no way to objectively measure it. So, at the end of the day, at that year’s XXL awards, and in the history books, Parsons’s wave would stand as the biggest ride—ever.
A diminutive Mike Parsons on what today remains the largest ride ever documented, on January 5, 2008. This wave has been estimated to be around 80 feet high. The height of the exploding whitewater is anyone’s guess. Photo: Rob Brown.
The sun dropped low and clouds began to billow in from the west. The main surge of swell abated, allowing the surfers rare occasions to lay down a carve or edge into the temple of a gargantuan, spellbinding tube. Eventually, the wind stirred until it was putting a mild chop on the water. “I’m going, ‘Is the day over yet?’” says Gerlach. “Jesus. So far so good. Let’s get the fuck out of here.” The teams decided to return to the boat. But before they did, Long and Twiggy paused in the water, just watching and taking it all in.
“We watched one of those sets way, way up the reef,” Long says. “Easily 80 feet, just breaking in slow motion. I vividly remember how insignificant I felt—witnessing so much of nature’s energy converging on a single reef in the middle of the ocean. It was just one of the most humbling, majestic things I’ve ever experienced.”
Their day wasn’t over yet. Parsons strapped on a tiny headlamp and his orange drysuit and manned the Jet Ski for the ride home. The first winds of the next approaching storm began to rake the ocean. As Brown steered the catamaran away from Cortes Bank, with Parsons in his wake, it began pissing rain and the chop returned with a vengeance. The boys huddled in the tiny cabin to ogle photos. Matt Wybenga was completely delirious. The few rides he had filmed from his seasick perch were so woozy—seasickness-inducing themselves, really—that they were unusable for anything but home movies, and to this day, only a tiny handful of people have ever seen them. They are utterly terrifying.
Meanwhile, Parsons was enjoying a new round of torture. Now that night had fallen, Mike couldn’t see the swells he was battling until he rammed them head on with concussion-inducing force. “I’m saying, fuck, fuck, fuck, you guys, don’t lose me back here. And when it’s dark, you’re always thinking you’re going to hit something. I’m like, if I hit a whale, I’m just dead.”
Parsons waved his hand over the pathetic headlamp trying to signal the boat, but Brown was fixed on the bow, his only thought to get home, while everyone else looked over his photos and decompressed over a beer.
“It’s just wham, wham, wham, back there,” says Parsons. “I’m pinning it so hard, like, fuck, why won’t they slow down? Gerr’s probably telling them a bunch of shit and they’re all laughing.”
After twenty or so minutes, the crew finally thought to look back. Parsons was gone. They stopped and drifted around for several minutes, shining the Ocean Cat’s powerful spotlights into the wind and rain. Parsons finally emerged, bedraggled and pissed.
“Jesus,” he said. “Slow the fuck down.”
At 9 p.m., cell phone bars blinked into view off Catalina Island. Bob Parsons and Sean Collins had been phoning frantically. Collins was on the verge of calling the Coast Guard. Parsons jumped into the boat to call Tara. “We did it, baby,” he said.
If Parsons thought the ride home was bad, he was astonished when the team made Dana Point Harbor and the real gale roared in with gusts up to sixty miles an hour. He shuddered to think how bad that would have been out in the open ocean.
The reaction to the surf session, and to Parson’s wave, across both