George Hulse, Bill Sharp and Sam George: first tracks at Cortes Bank…for some. Photo: Larry Moore
In the wake of the giant northwest swell, that in December produced Santa Cruz hotshot Alo Slebir’s mammoth Maverick’s wave, I’ve been pondering a question. Not whether or not Slebir’s leviathan topped the 100-foot mark — existing footage and photos very obviously validate that claim. No, what I’ve been wondering about is just how big, during that same massive, long-interval swell, were the waves at Cortes Bank.
You remember Cortes Bank, don’t you? The seamount surf break located way out in international waters, approximately 100 miles west of San Diego, and not so very long ago considered to have produced the biggest waves ever ridden? Mike Parsons’ mind-boggling 77-footer during the vaulted “Project Neptune” mission in 2001? Or the monster Greg Long picked off during a crazy, mid-gale assault in 2008, estimated to be even bigger than Parsons’? I mean, I know that Nazaré, Peahi, Maverick’s and Mullaghmore have really been hogging the limelight, but am I the only one who’s been wondering what’s been going on out there lately? Or is is just because I happen to have a bit of personal history with that notorious offshore beast — and, unlike surfers like Long and Parsons, not the sort I can be particularly proud of.
The last time I made the long, open-water crossing to Cortes was in 2014. Putting out of Orange County’s Dana Point Harbor, our chartered, 115-foot power cruiser was weighed down with four skis, a brace of cameramen, drone team, safety and medical crew and a single surfer — Greg Long. I was on board to direct an episode of ESPN’s surf series “Big Wave Hellmen,” the narrative centered around Long’s first return to the wave that almost killed him. In fact, during a harrowing three-wave hold-down on a 50-foot day in 2012, Long did technically drown, only to be narrowly rescued and revived by a quick-acting safety team (Frank Quirarte, D.K. Walsh and Jon Walla, hellmen in their own right), and then air-lifted to a San Diego hospital.
Understandably shaken, Long’s return to Cortes had more than enough inherent drama to be a “BWH” highlight segment, and the 18-to-20 foot, eerily glassy conditions we encountered upon our dawn arrival were the perfect medium in which Long could be depicted getting “back up on the horse,” so to speak. Which he did, with his usual thoughtful, precise approach.
I, on the other hand, got bucked off the Cortes horse — and not for the first time (though I’ll get to that in a minute.) But on this occasion, when on the back of the redoubtable Frank Quirarte’s ski we blazed into the impact zone to retrieve Long’s board after a wipeout, I somehow got my foot stuck between the sled and the ski’s transom. With an approaching wall of Cortes whitewater necessitating a quick u-turn toward the shoulder, it was a sure recipe for a broken ankle. Naturally, Quirarte handled the situation with aplomb, deftly angling the ski to free my foot, but just the idea of the rescuer (not to mention the segment’s director) needing rescue was pretty humiliating, especially considering the crew I was with. Yet, not half as humiliating as what I experienced when, 22 years previous, I was a member of the team who made the very first trip out into international waters to ride the waves of Cortes Bank.
It was a very different sort of crew who, on a chilly December evening in 1990, put out from Newport Harbor, the bow of their chartered, rather pedestrian 29-foot Blackwatch cabin cruiser pointed southwest, where, at latitude 32.4°N, longitude 119.1° W, the ultimate unridden zone awaited. No Jet Skis, or film crews; no drone and safety teams, walkie-talkies, inflatable vests, nor even a particularly qualified skipper aboard this time, but only three Surfing magazine staffers — photo editor Larry “Flame” Moore, managing editor Bill Sharp, and myself — and San Clemente’s George Hulse, a journeyman pro and regular Flame photo subject. None of us having any idea what to expect, beyond having seen a single aerial reconnaissance photo taken by Flame earlier in the year, depicting what looked like a somewhat chaotic lineup, with a breaking wave estimated to be in the 20-to-30-foot range.
Serious stuff, so very unlike our respective qualifications as potential big wave hellmen, Bill, at least, was a talented Newport Beach kneeboarder with a reputation for charging big days at the Wedge, but George was better known for his Salt Creek exploits, and I, admittedly, approached any waves over 18 feet with a certain amount of trepidation. We had all brought only a single board each: Bill, his trusty Rusty knee-machine, George, a fellow Rusty rider, with a 7’4” pintail, and me pulling my biggest board out of my quiver, an 8’0” Styrofoam/epoxy gun shaped by John Bradbury. The topic of what we expected to do with said equipment if the waves actually did approach the big Sunset Beach/small Waimea-size range was off-limits at this point. All we knew, as we left the loom of the land behind and headed out into the open sea, is that we had embarked on a most remarkable adventure.
After surprisingly restful sleep tucked away in our below-deck cabin bunks, dawn found us surrounded by a vast bowl of blue, cleaving a sea so smooth and glassy that it perfectly mirrored the orange-magenta gradients of the sunrise. That Bill, rising first, had popped a Led Zeppelin tape into the cruiser’s sound system and was blasting “Kashmir,” may have had something to do with the psychedelic effect of that dreamlike passage, which, with its 360-degree horizon, provided no sensation of movement, but only a profound awareness of our existence in time and space. No sensation, until after about an hour of this trippiest of mornings, Bill, peering through a pair of binoculars, cried out, “Oh my god, look! Those are waves!”
Waves they were, breaking almost 100 miles from shore, at a point where the massive Cortes Bank seamount rose from its base of 1,000 fathoms (6,000 feet) to within a single fathom of the surface at an ancillary pinnacle known as Bishop Rock, the expedition’s planned-for destination. The only “landmark” being a tall, orange warning buoy, bobbing placidly, far inside what we could only imagine was the lineup.
Now, so far as the lineup was concerned, well, that’s where after an almost blissful voyage so far, things started to go terribly wrong — for me, at least. Pulling up next to the orange tower, stoked and chattering over each other, we eventually calmed ourselves enough to make a reasonable assessment of the nature of the breaking waves we’d be facing. A group estimate put the sets at 15-to-18 feet, watching as they steepened from out of the cobalt-blue surrounding depths, crested, crumbled a bit, then, as they swept off the shallows, disappeared back into the infinite. While board-wise we might have been woefully unprepared for big Sunset (let alone any Waimea), we felt confident enough to tackle Cortes at this relatively tame size.
We’d also anticipated the challenge of lining up in the open sea, there being absolutely nothing to line up on. To this end, we’d brought a collection of tall bamboo wands, which we topped with fluorescent tape, threaded through empty plastic milk containers for flotation, then affixed with monofilament line and lead fishing weights, the idea being to drop these crude-but-effective lineup markers around the lineup’s perimeter, so as to triangulate our positioning in relation to the breaking waves. And here’s where the trouble started.
Our intrepid skipper, more accustomed to day trips in the lee of Catalina Island than out in the Big Blue, was extremely reluctant to get anywhere even close to the lineup, only doing so after much coercion, and then only by backing into what he considered the danger zone stern-first, in case he had to pin the throttle at the approach of a rogue set. This meant that as we worked on the aft deck assembling our bamboo contraptions, the stern roiled and corkscrewed under our captain’s reaction to the wave’s side chop, nervously shifting gears between reverse and forward. Roiling and corkscrewing in a cloud of diesel exhaust, up, down, left right, no visible horizon, doing close work, tying knots, taping wands, threading monofilament; the greasy stink of diesel. Do I have to tell you where this story is headed?
Up to this point in my life I had never been seasick. Oh, I knew all about the agony of seasickness, having on previous seagoing excursions seen many of my friends, family and colleagues afflicted, and, much to my shame, having made a comic routine of its various stages: first the yawning, followed by a slow licking of the front teeth. Then the urgent need to brush the hair from one’s forehead, excessive swallowing, and finally the “giraffe stance,” leaning in the tripod position against the vessel’s gunwale, or any other convenient stanchion. Very funny — but oh my God, now it was happening to me!
I stumbled below, desperate to get off the boat before “giving way.” Who knew that putting on a wetsuit with your eyes closed could be such a trial? Staggering back up on deck, my head spinning every time I looked up, the team’s solicitude overlayed a subtle smugness I once knew, as when someone who isn’t seasick regards someone who is. This ironic role reversal may have been the worst part. Or so I thought at the time.
I quickly moved to the rail and dived overboard, plunging deep into the cool, comforting Pacific; just get off that f-cking boat, was my plan. George tossed in my board, so that when I came up it was floating on the surface next to me. Figured I’d quickly paddle over and wait on the smooth expanse of shoulder until I stopped licking my front teeth, then maybe catch the first wave of the trip. Yeah, right.
Put simply, seasickness occurs when the inner ear, eyes and brain receive conflicting signals about movement. Like when on a pitching, roiling boat. Which is why sufferers who find themselves in this circumstance are encouraged to focus on a steady horizon, or better yet, land. But what if you find yourself far out at sea, sitting on an eight-foot pintail, with no land in sight, and no steady horizon, but only a limitless world of heaving, open ocean swells, with absolutely nothing to focus on but your own misery?
I sat there, head down, eyes on the deck of my board, trying desperately to will away the dizziness and waves of nausea. Bill and George eventually paddled past me and into the lineup; George, it was, who caught the first wave at Cortes Bank. Long minutes passed. Occasionally the basso profondo roar of a breaking wave would have me looking up to see either Bill or George dropping into another sloping, triple-overhead peak, but then a fist would clench in my stomach and I’d start to retch.
Having read somewhere that adrenaline could sometimes offset seasickness, I slipped off my board and with a deep breath swam down as deep as I dared — deep enough to actually see where long stalks of leafy bronze kelp clung to the dark face of Bishop Rock. Then frantically stroking back to the surface, lungs bursting, adrenaline surging. No luck. I found myself hoping for a shark sighting, but no luck there, either. I could only sit on my board, head drooped in shame, listening to my friends experiencing what would have to be considered one of the most extraordinary sessions in surfing’s long history.
And do you want to know the worst part? My head and stomach did eventually settle down enough so that I could paddle over into the lineup with Bill and George. Cortes Bank locals now, they nevertheless generously offered me a spot at the head of the line for the next set. Which never materialized. That’s right — as if a switch had been flipped, the ocean inexplicably went flat as a pool table. Not another wave broke. We eventually paddled back to the boat.
The ride home to the coast was as smooth as the trip out. Of course, once underway I felt perfectly fine, no queasiness at all, and was genuinely stoked for my compatriots for having pulled off such a coup. But I also felt gratitude. Grateful, because I’d gone all the way to Cortes Bank, there were waves, and I’d been too seasick to ride them. A nadir, an absolute low point in my surfing life, had just been established.
Meaning it could only get better from there.
