Ghost Wave - Chris Dixon [77]
One day in early 2000, as Bill Sharp thumbed through a batch of impossible paddle and towsurfing shots, another lightbulb went off. Perhaps this towsurfing could provide the tools and horsepower for a successful return to a place most surfers in the world had never even heard of. He imagined a serious, high-dollar expedition to the Bank. Four teams of the best towsurfers in the world, a five-thousand-dollar contribution per sponsor, a small fleet of skis, a hundred-foot yacht for a base camp, and major coverage in the mainstream media from CNN to the New York Times.
Sharp brought the idea to Flame and Surfing publisher Bob Mignona. Both men liked what they heard.
Sharp typed up a press release in his prototypically glib, hyperbolic style—something to drum up a sponsor’s interest:
PROJECT NEPTUNE!
COMING TO A SURF SPOT…FAR FROM YOU!
Remember the K2 Big Wave Challenge? It was the year of the El Niño, when the waves were good and the water was warm. The K2BWC issued a challenge…One wave, one ride, biggest wave of the winter that was successfully ridden in the North Pacific wins a huge cash prize. That was possibly the sport of surfing’s most publicized media event, which resulted in plenty of ink & air-time for the sponsoring K2 Corp…
OK, now for the sequel to the K2 Big Wave Challenge. It’s called: Project Neptune. From the brain trust of William ‘Bill’ Sharp, a.k.a. Dr. Evil, comes yet another surfing challenge the world has never seen, or imagined.
A journey into the unknown, the abyss…
Chapter 8:
THE
PRISONERS
“Who ain’t a slave? Tell me that.”
—Ishmael, from Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, 1851
In some way or another, every serious big wave Surfer alive today is a walking ghost. Each one I’ve met has been absolutely sure at some point that he—or she—was going to drown. Most remember the experience vividly, from the panicked groping for the surface right down to the eerily peaceful point when a hypoxic cloud darkened their vision. Not even a water-safety guru like Brian Keaulana is immune. This is how he described a near drowning after voluntarily paddling into huge surf at Sunset Beach, wiping out, being folded across the rail of his surfboard by the downward force of the wave, and having nearly every molecule of air driven from his lungs: “There’s this feeling of black velvet being drawn. Like black drapes in front of your eyes—but your eyes are wide open. Then you start going through twitches and convulsions. Your body’s just going through this eruption—and you have no control over it. I was thinking of past, present, future—how I would be buried—and my ashes being spread in the ocean.”
Had Keaulana actually blacked out, his larynx would have, in all likelihood, relaxed, and he would have inhaled better than a liter of ocean. The bronchial immersion would have rinsed the thin layer of gas-transporting surfactant from his lungs. So even if he had bobbed to the surface and been rescued, recharging his blood with oxygen would have proven most difficult. As it was, though, the reality of actually dying shocked him with adrenaline, and vision and control briefly returned. He squeaked to the surface and gasped the sweetest breath in his life.
Despite regular moments like these, big wave surfing is, statistically speaking, a relatively safe endeavor compared to other extreme sports. Not counting those who have died of freak accidents like breaking a neck in smaller, near-shore surf, you could count on one hand the number of surfers who have died in truly giant waves during the last two decades. In contrast, and relatively speaking, high-altitude mountain climbers and motocross riders are killed or paralyzed with sobering frequency.
Back in 2002, I interviewed a young hellion named Travis Pastrana for the New York Times. By the age of eighteen, Pastrana was well on his way to becoming a sort of Kelly Slater of motocross. Yet while Kelly has endured cuts, contusions, sprains, and the occasional concussion during