Ghost Wave - Chris Dixon [45]
“I regained consciousness in the murkiness of deep water, already instinctively swimming and fighting my way up through the darkness, until at last I could see daylight above, and struggled to break the surface. I gasped and coughed up water, my voice rasping in my throat as I sucked in air, when I was suddenly hurled down through the water with the force of a building falling on me, deeper and deeper into the dark depths, the pressure on my ears almost unbearable. My lungs bursting for air, I again fought upwards until I reached the foam and emerged, treading water, fighting for a few seconds of air.
“There was a film of oil on the water and debris everywhere in sight. If I could only find something to hang onto! Something knocked against my arm, and I grabbed blindly for it, grasping onto a six-inch-long piece of two by four lumber. For a fraction of a second, I appreciated the irony. With half a ship floating on the ocean, I find a matchstick…I tried to get my after-ski boots off. I had worn them for warmth, but now, waterlogged, they felt like lead on my feet. I tried to work the zippers down the front of them, but couldn’t get at them without putting my head underwater. It flashed through my mind that I needed to lose a few pounds. I had just given it up when another wall of water fell on me, and I was hurled headlong down into deep water.”
Anticipating a rescue, Cliff Miller had already staged the Whitney Olsen just off Jalisco’s bow. As near as Houtz can reckon, Kirkwood disappeared into the raging foam and was carried beneath the tug, the entire 120 feet from bow to stern. Mere feet separated the bottom of the tug from the top of Bishop Rock, yet Kirkwood passed safely not only between hull and reef but around two propellers. He boiled to the surface off the tug’s stern and miraculously managed to weakly lift his head. Ribeiro stripped off his shirt and prepared to leap in for a rescue. “Are you crazy?” a crewman asked.
Ribeiro had spent his entire fisherman’s life throwing lines. He instead heaved one out to Kirkwood with a skill Captain Miller compared to a big- league pitcher.
“No matter what you do, don’t let go,” Ribeiro yelled to Kirkwood, just before he was buried by another nightmarish wave. That guy is one tough son of a bitch, Ribeiro remembered thinking.
“I was flagging and knew I couldn’t hang on any longer,” Kirkwood wrote. “As one of the crewmen grabbed my hair and another my armpit, I blurted out, ‘Please help me fellows. I can’t help you.’ And the rope started slipping from my grip. In seconds more they poured me like a sack of potatoes onto the deck, where I lay in a soaken, oily heap, too spent to move and beyond caring about anything.”
Houtz looked around. Lesslie was gone, and he was all alone aboard the dying ship. He made sure his life jacket was secured tightly, clutched his gun, and stepped off the port rail before the next set of waves bore down on the ship. The current carried him toward the Whitney Olsen. He was plucked out of the water. Miraculously, so was Lesslie.
After several more sets of waves, the Jalisco’s entire superstructure tore completely free of the deck in a colossal mingling of water and steel. Anyone forward of it would have been crushed to powder.
Taken shortly after Joe Kirkwod’s last moments aboard his ship, this photo shows a massive wave breaking over the Jalisco in the take-off spot today preferred by surfers like Mike Parsons and Greg Long. The ship’s jagged, battered hull still rests below the surf break. The photo also shows that the ship’s three-story-tall superstructure has been obliterated. Both photos: Associated Press.
In the backyard of his Laguna Beach home, Houtz flashed back to Kirkwood’s last moment aboard Jalisco and shook his head. The pictures taken that day were shot by a former U.S. Marine combat photographer