Andy Carter charges waves that dwarf even him. Photo: Kadu Maia
Do you play basketball? How tall are you? What size shoe do you wear? Those are just a few of the dozens of questions I’m asked every day. I usually mess with people saying that I’m in the NBA or better yet a horse jockey. When I admit that I can barely do a layup let alone dunk, most people are baffled. My name is Andy Carter, I’m 6’9”, my shoes are size 16, and I’m the Dikembe Mutombo of surfing. Frankly, playing professional basketball might have been easier. Being one of the world’s tallest surfers has been both a blessing and a curse.
First thing’s first: if a novice my height even wanted to learn to surf, and eventually surf well, they would be confronted with a challenging path. Forget hand-me-downs borrowed from friends. If it’s not custom-made, it’s out of the question. I was lucky to get hooked on wave riding when I was a kid, before breaking the 6 foot mark at age 13. Shop employees weren’t sure how to outfit a child as skinny and tall as me. My first wetsuit worked for about 3 months before I outgrew it. Duct taping my ankles and wrists to keep it over my booties and gloves became a mandatory winter session pre-requisite.
Growing up in Ocean City, New Jersey, I spent every minute of summer daylight with my face covered in zinc oxide like a clown, lower lip usually burnt and blistered while boogie boarding. My dad, a solid surfer himself, pushed me from 360s and el rollos to standing up. I was happy to put my days of having my boogie thrown in trashcans and being dropped in on behind me. Standing on my board opened up a whole new challenge that fueled my ocean addiction.
A sizable problem has always been that wave reports and conditions don’t apply to me. Being freakishly tall, I tend to make even the largest waves look like dribblers. There is about as much of a chance of me fitting in a true stand up barrel as there is me fitting in the back seat of a Mini Cooper. That being said, the years of pulling into barrels on my belly played a huge roll in developing my “folding chair” or ”transformer” contortionist style. Because of it I can squeeze my gangly, nearly seven-foot frame into two-foot tubes. Regardless, I still get axed by the lip on even the most perfect overhead (over my head) days.
When I started traveling and chasing waves, it opened up a whole suitcase of issues. Flying, the exit row became the only place for me. Last ditch bribes of cash and/or free drinks, along with a little guilt tripping, are often required to coax tenants out of their unnecessarily spacious zones. From the Caribbean to Southeast Asia, local surfers spot me before I have a chance to get my board bag off the car. At the Soup Bowl in Barbados, a surfer who was 6’6”, known as “Tall Man” wasn’t used to looking up to anyone. He was kind enough to share waves and his nickname one winter. In Indonesia, where the average male height is 5’2”, I was frequently asked “your leg, why so long?” The entire village knew me as “Mr. Long ” or “Long Leg.”
Long Legs stands tall. Photo: Courtesy of Andy Carter
And there have been more substantive issues as well — like eating. While traveling through some of the more remote parts of Indo, food rationing became a necessity. This created a bit of hostility among the boys, as the big man always needed a little more. But what I took from my travel partners at the dinner table, I made up for in tricky travel situations. People would often go the extra mile for the clueless gentle giant, occasionally giving out secret surf spots. After scoring the waves of our lives, we laughed the whole way home at how easily I talked everyone’s way out of board bag fees and into exit row seating!
Ultimately, being tall has been a blessing that has helped me get comfortable in extra large surf. With what feels like an eleven-foot wingspan, I practically grab the sand below and pull the entire ocean behind me as I out paddle most every guy in the water. The stars have even aligned during for a few magic tubes over the years that allowed me to stand up straight.
As much as I look forward to these rare days I still froth out for every mushy grovel session with friends. All you tall kids should keep your heads up and keep charging!
Tall or small, a barrel is still a barrel. Photo: Russman
