Mavericks

The northern Cali cold monsta

I stared at the screen at Sydney Airport, my eye's crusty and tired.  "LAX: 12:45pm."  Got time to kill.  The original plan was to fly to Hawaii and shoot the swell that was brewing in the North Pacific.  I'd tried to get on the Honolulu flight from Sydney the previous day but it was full, so I'd decided to try my luck and get to Honolulu through LA instead, seeing as there wasn't another flight from Sydney to Hawaii for a few days.  I wasn't looking forward to the 18 hours of flying, let alone dealing with LAX...shit!
I walked into the food court where I see Mark Visser and Justin "Jughead" Allport chilling.  Visser immediately says, "Holy shit!  What the hell are you doing here?  We were only just talking about you."  I told them I was on the LA flight, and asked what they were doing.  Visser's eyes lit up.  "We're going to Mavericks, it's gonna be huge!"  It took me barely a second to think about it.  "That sounds bullshit...let's go!"
"This trip was so random for me," remembers Visser.  "I'd just got home from a three-week stint in Hawaii.  I was over there to try and score a tow session at Jaws with Jughead.  No swells big enough had come through so we were back in Oz ready to head back over the moment it looked like Jaws would be on.  I get this call from Jug one morning saying, 'Fuck, Mavs is going to be pretty big.  Weather is suss but it could be unreal.'  After a few umms and ahhs and we just thought, fuck it, let's just go.  My bags were still packed from Hawaii, I just had to change my boardies and shirts for jackets and jumpers, and the only boards we were taking were tow boards.
We split LAX as soon as we could on a flight up to San Jose, and were met by Santa Cruz big-wave madman, Ryan Augenstein and his girl, Bethany.  "Here you go, boys," Ryan said as he handed us each a huge Acai smoothie, probably the best tonic after 18 hours of toxic airline food.
We started the trek up to Santa Cruz.  As you drove north into the Monterey Bay area the coast starts to back onto mountains and huge redwoods, an amazing backdrop to the raw, beautiful coastline.  The north coast of Cali is a huge contrast to the south - icy cold water that averages 14 degrees, 5 mm wetties, huge swells, an unforgiving rocky coastline, not to mention gnarly whites patrolling the area.  I hadn't even seen Mavericks break yet and I was already starting to get a little nervous.
You could tell it was gonna be a non-stop pisstake for the rest of the trip after Jughead pipes up to me, "I hope you get a 30 footer on the head."  "Yeah, whatever mate," I replied, "get out there and break a leg."  Jug just laughs.  The last time he was in town he'd broke his leg at Ghost Trees.  He'd pretty much jumped off the plane and got straight out there in some nuggets, scoring one of the bigger waves that came through and fading right in front of these death rocks, earning him instant respect.  One local was heard saying, "Don't tow him into another one, he's gonna kill himself!"  He didn't kill himself, but he did cop the beating of his life.  "Yeah, broke my leg in four places, spent the next few weeks staring at the hospital roof," remembered Jug painfully.  Even after all that, he remains crazy as fuck, and the local guys are still talking about Jug after his last trip.
We all posted up in Santa Cruz for the next few days, keeping ourselves busy amping on Mavs footage and constantly taking the piss out of each other.  I was dirty on Visser because he'd ended up with the only blow-up mattress that didn't leak.  While he wasn't looking I'd crack the seal so it would leak slowly...revenge is sweet.
We were hearing mixed reports on the conditions for the next morning, but the swell was looking huge - 20-to-25 feet.  The swell had already started to build and it was looking the goods for the morning.  The boys were nervously preparing their guns for the onslaught.  Ryan hooked Visser up with a 9'8", Viss standing there looking at it wondering how he was gonna get the thing down the face.  "Don't worry," says Ryan, "On a 40 foot face it's gonna feel like a shortboard."  Jug had picked up a 9'0" Stretch quad-fin that morning and was psyching all day on giving the bitch a good run.
We all slept pretty light that night, nervously waiting to see what the morning had in store for us.  When we woke the air was cold and crisp, stinging the nostrils as you breathed deep, and there was an ominous fog lining the coast along the drive north to Half Moon Bay.  As we got into the harbour the air was still, and everything had a dark feel to it, made worse by the foghorn booming off in the dark hazy sky.  A quick check and you could see the swell was solid, at least 20 foot.  The boys were out there.  The wave actually breaks right outside of the harbour on the headland, right in front of a death chunk of rocks.  It's up there with one of the gnarliest paddle waves in the world and I knew today I was going to see some crazy shit go down...and I didn't have to wait long.
"Talk about a spooky place," remembered Visser.  It was before first light when we began paddling out.  There was this foggy haze, the water was a brownie-black colour, there were choppers hovering and a constant foghorn siren going off.  I felt like an Aussie digger about to go into battle.  I ran down to paddle out and saw the boys had already got out through the harbour on the ski and a few crew had started to tow.  I was keen to get out there with my tow board so I strapped it to the leash of my 9'8" and started to drag it out through the 10-foot shorey.  I'd left my booties on the ski with Jug, so my feet were freezing.  there Were seals bobbing around the shore, and I knew this place was a part of the "red triangle" for great whites, which was kind of freaking me out.  The tow board was becoming a heavy bitch so I put my vest on and clipped the board to the back of my best, slung across my back like a rifle.  It was all good until I was paddling over a 10 foot shorey set and the lip pitched, catching the tow board and dragging me back over the falls.  I got absolutely smashed, lost my tow board and got another four sets on the head.  I nearly drowned and I hadn't even got past the shorey.  By the time I got out there I had been paddling for an hour straight, and all the boys were going, 'Where the hell have you been?'  The cold water really takes it out of ya.  I was rooted and both arms had started to cramp.  I remember seeing a 30 foot set come in, thinking, shit, this is real solid.  Come on arms, no time for cramping now!"
Jughead was out there with his froth beard on, copping two 25-footers on the head straight up before he'd even had a wave, after his partner in crime - and local hellman - Skindog Collins was yelling at him to go deeper on the bowl.  "Yeah, I wore two 25-foot waves on the head before I even caught one," laughs Jug.  "Skinny kept pointing to the bowl and telling me to get in there...easier said than done."  Luckily Flea Virostko was there to yank him out of the white water before he got pushed into the rocks.  "I kept on putting myself in position for the bowl," remembers Jug, "which meant I was at risk of wearing the bigger 25-footers on the head, which I did a dozen times.  But if you don't sit in there, you won't get waves.  I feel that only having a 9'0" stopped me from getting a few more that I paddled hard for." 
All the boys got some big bombs straight off the bat.  Ryan Augenstein took some nuggets, skipping sideways on one and just recovering.  Jug was getting the feel after some mean beatings, Peter Mel was taking off under the lip on some disgusting looking things, one wipeout holding him down for two waves.  As I watched his board tombstoning, he comes up unfazed; laughing at how much fun it was before paddling back out, swinging around under the lip of another bomb and getting driven.  And yes, he came up laughing again.  After 20 minutes or so I'd realised Visser was nowhere to be seen.  Jughead was yelling out to me on the ski on the way past, "Where's Visser?"  I shrugged.  I didn't know whether to worry or not but was relieved when he eventually showed up an hour later.
At one stage I thought I was going to see Jughead die when a rogue 30-footer came through with Jug being the deepest and only just managing to get over the thing.  I swear he was that close to being goner, and after I knew he was okay I had a laugh, remembering his comment to me earlier.  The set mercilessly cleaned up most of the pack on the peak.  There were boards and bodies everywhere.  It was carnage.  Two guys were stuck in the impact zone and copped the next one on the head as well.  Everyone was freaking, so I opted to jump off in the channel so my ski driver could pull a few guys out of the zone.  Skindog, with the only other ski, started pulling guys out of trouble.  We counted about half a dozen boards snapped and the heaviness of the place sunk in...rogue 30-footers, death rocks, freezing cold water and huge sharks.  After seeing it all first-hand total respect goes out to all the crew who charge here.  You're all freakin' nuts.
"At the end of the day I was happy with my first Mavs session," recalls Jug.  "We went back and drank a few brews with the Mavs crew at Half Moon Bay Brewery that afternoon.  All my heroes back there on the beer.  We then raced back to Skinny's to pick up some stuff and headed straight back to the airport.  Before I knew it we were back in Sydney and I was going straight to work the next day.  It was just a blur.  Only two days earlier we'd surfed the biggest, meanest paddle wave in the world.  But unlike last time I was home in one piece, and even better I can now tick off the number one thing on my list of shit to do."