Ghost Wave - Chris Dixon [71]
In 1975, a young third-generation Half Moon Bay local named Jeff Clark paddled out to Maverick’s for the first time. He was awed by the water’s godlike power and menacing emptiness. He tried to convince his friends to make the mile-long paddle out to surf with him. But no one else would dare take the drop. It was too damn scary.
On a cold boat ride back from the Cortes Bank in November 2010, I sat alongside a pair of rapt young hellmen named Greg Long and Mark Healey as Clark described his first ever paddle out in 1975.
“So I get out there and there were long lulls, and I see this set coming and I’m way too far inside. I just start scratching, just getting over these lefts that are bowling and breaking. And then I get way outside and I say, ‘Okay, here’s where the wave breaks. Here’s my landmarks.’ I got in position for the next set and paddled with it, trying to feel the energy and just trying to find that vein to get into a wave. Once I did that, it was like, okay, no looking back, you’re going. I felt like him today [points at Greg]. Only on a smaller scale. So I paddle into this thing and I just remember it humping up like our beachbreaks. I got to my feet and I just remember the shadow behind me. I’m just running straight, like, frickin’ don’t get me. ‘Cause you know the lip’s coming. And I made it. I rode five waves that day. Never had a wipeout. After that, it’s like, you can actually ride this wave, you know? I’d seen it on much bigger days, and I was just like, It’s on.”
For fifteen years, rumors of the wave and its mystical surfer ebbed and flowed. Through all those long winters, Jeff Clark surfed alone, accompanied only by whales, sea lions, curious otters, and big, toothy fishes. It wasn’t until January 22, 1990—a day after Brock Little and Brian Keaulana’s epiphanies at Waimea Bay and a day before Flame and Mike Castillo’s jaw-dropping first flight over the Cortes Bank—that Clark lured a pair of Santa Cruz buddies, Dave “Big Bird” Schmidt and Tom Powers down to Half Moon Bay. “I said, ‘You guys wanna see a perfect peak?’” Clark told Surfer’s Ben Marcus, “‘Come with me.’ We snuck off to Mav’s and walked to the top of the lookout. Schmidt was looking off going, ‘Where is it?’ and just then a set came through. Big Bird started pacing back and forth going, ‘Oh my God!’ Powers was going ‘What? What?’ And Schmidt said, ‘That’s Waimea.’”
But it wasn’t Waimea. It was something even scarier.
An aspiring journalist named Evan Slater, a pair of brash loudmouths named Peter Mel and Ken “Skindog” Collins, a tall, noisy oncologist from the Bay Area named Mark Renneker, and a quiet young man named Jay Moriarity became part of an expanding crew who took Clark up on his invitation and began sharing the waves. One cold and gusty morning in December 1994, Slater sat alongside Moriarity as he paddled for a solid 30-foot bomb. “As he started paddling for that wave, I just said, ‘Good night, Jay,’” Slater recalled.
Surfer lensman Bob Barbour’s motor drive clicked through a rapid-fire sequence. The instant Moriarty stood, his 10-foot 8-inch Pearson Arrow was lifted from beneath him, the offshore wind flicking him skyward like a speck of dust. The only part of Jay visible in the ensuing Surfer cover shot are his arms, flayed out and flapping hard, while his board is aimed directly skyward. He hovered, impossibly, almost majestically, in midair for an eternal second before being launched into a bone-crushing two-wave hold down. The horrible moment was dubbed “The Iron Cross.