Ian Walsh bottom turns into a Nor East kraken. Photo: Red Bull | Brian Nevins
Ian Walsh, Sam Hammer, and Mike Gleason recently made a trip with Redbull to a slab they named Atlantis, off the coast of the Northeast. The wave has been compared to a mini Cortes Bank, the mountain of a wave 100 miles off the coast of San Diego, coming out of deep water and breaking onto a reef. Taking a boat to the middle of nowhere to surf a phantom wave is a gamble that ended up paying off for the crew.
Anyway, we recently caught up with the Jersey Shore’s pride to get his perspective of the expedition.
Danny Nieves: Who told you about the wave?
Sam Hammer: A few local guys told us about it a few years ago, but we had never surfed it or seen it. It’s kind of like Sasquatch you know it’s out there, but you never get a chance to see it. You need a lot of elements to come together and it’s been on our radar, but it’s too cold in the winter so it’s been a waiting game.
How did Ian hear about it?
Nevins got lined up with Redbull who wanted to do it as a big project and we (Hammer, Gleason) got invited to go.
How was it getting out there with everyone?
It was pretty difficult, there was a boat and three skis plus 10 or 11 people along with another group of local guys who showed us everything. I didn’t have to do any of the organization; all Mike and I had to do was show up and be ready to go. Brian is the one that set it all up and did all the organizing. Mike and I slept in on the good day and we had to take the skis out because we missed the boat. We were about ten minutes away from missing our ride, that would have been horrifying.
What was it like sitting in the middle of the ocean?
It was my first time I’ve ever been that far out just in the middle of no where with nothing to line up with, nothing around you, you see the occasional seal here and there and that’s the worst thing you want to see out there. Just cause you know there are huge fish under you. It was just so unique plus surfing a wave that you’ve never surfed before it was awesome. The wave was incredible so when a set did come in you could see it coming but when it hit the reef there’s nothing to line up with and the current was taking you everywhere. It was an experience that’s for sure. It took us a little while to get acquainted with the way it was moving. The way it moved it was sucking off the reef so hard you almost wanted to catch it from behind the peak and backdoor it.
How was the left?
There were a few lefts, but the rights were better. Apparently the left gets good, but that day it wasn’t the way it was breaking it was clamping.
Was it everything you hoped it to be.
For New England it was as good as it gets. Brian, Mike, and myself we’ve been going up there forever and you’re always so close to getting great waves, but you’re not getting great waves all the time or you have like an hour and then it turns off. There’s always something because of the variables that are up there with the tide, wind, and swell direction. It’s like no other place; from New York on South there’s nothing that compares to it. Just because you’re dealing with reefs and deeper water, you’re having to deal with different circumstances that we don’t have to deal with on the East Coast that much. You have to fail a lot to learn a lot. In saying that, that swell was by far some of the best we’ve gotten, I think that was the heaviest wave I’ve ever surfed on the East Coast. My local beach breaks are insane they get so good, but this was heavier by a landslide. You’d be in the perfect spot on some of them and then get pushed right off of it just because of the way everything was moving. There were head high waves coming back at you sometimes, it was doing a full 180 around the reef and coming back at you. When they came together right it was incredible.
Do you think there are waves like that elsewhere?
I think that’s a pretty unique case. It’s a tough one because personally I think there’s a lot more waves like that, but I don’t know if it’s something I want to say to the public because I don’t want to ignite more people going out there. It’s not easy to navigate, it’s not easy to get around and when you think you’re right, you’re not and when you think you’re wrong you’re right. It’s a lot of luck and it’s very tricky.
What do you think the exposure is going to do for the East Coast?
I don’t think that people are going to travel for it. Everyone thinks you want hurricanes and those aren’t always our best swells. I think a lot of the swells are a little bit harder to predict over here especially for up there, we’ve been going up for 10 to 12 years and pretty consistently every time there’s a swell after we surf New Jersey we will drive up North. We’ve been skunked so many times it’s not even funny, you can have the perfect conditions laid out in front of you and not even surf. I don’t think you’re going to see a lot of people say hey I’m going to go surf 35-degree water with 10-degree wind chill and that’s when the best swells are. We don’t really have huge waves on the East Coast like they do everywhere else so I feel like it makes us a little bit more legitimate. The wave we surfed was a legit slab if Ian is claiming it breaks like The Right in Australia that guy knows a lot so I’m going to take his word on it.
Does this mean you’re going to go surf Jaws with Ian this winter?
Hell no! [Laughs.] I don’t like deep water I’d rather hit something and bounce up. It wasn’t huge there were some solid waves coming through but it was just how fast it was moving, the way it was standing up, the drop; just getting yourself in the right position. That stuff is fun and for the East Coast you don’t get to do that all the time. A lot of the time you’re surfing beach breaks and I’m not going to say it gets repetitive because the sand is always changing and on any given day it can be a different wave than what you surfed the day before. This was something new and exciting I think it definitely gives us a little more legitimacy.
Click herefor more pictures from Atlantis.
