Cleanup sets bring hell and chaos no matter where you’re surfing. A decent day at your local beachbreak can be flipped upside down the moment a bigger-than-normal wave catches everybody off guard and flushes them all into the impact zone. But a cleanup set at Maverick’s is a totally different monster for some very obvious reasons. Size aside, the Half Moon Bay big wave spot features one of the world’s most dangerous and notorious impact zones, equipped with ungodly boulders that line the inside.
On April 22, 2022, later than the typical big wave season at Maverick’s will run, a little more than a dozen people were taken for a ride by an afternoon cleanup set. The wave broke well outside what had been typical for that day and, as cleanup sets do, it caught everybody off guard. Almost every single person in the lineup joined the ensuing yard sale. Boards became tombstones, and everybody on a Jet Ski sprung into action. The catch here, of course, is that there were clearly more people getting pushed toward the rocks than there appeared to be Jet Skis on hand to help them.
At different points you can see about a half-dozen people and or boards scrambling through the impact zone but Jet Ski driver Parker Guy estimated there were actually about 15 people caught in the melee. All of this in the zone where two-wave hold downs are a common occurence at Mavs.
“By the time they popped up, they were so exhausted (and) out of breath (they) couldn’t get on the sled,” Guy said after everything had settled down. He estimated that of the 15 people he saw swimming on the inside he saw “about three or four” without boards.
“That was one of the heaviest rescues I’ve ever seen.”
