“I cannot begin to imagine what being trashed by a 115 foot tall wave would feel like.
You mean, as it slammed you into the ocean floor and snapped your neck like a twig? If you felt anything at all before dying, I bet pain would be involved.”
It goes like this:
You are in extraordinarily good condition both physically and mentally and have thousands of hours in the water and a team that you can trust with your life. That team is one surfer who tows you into the wave, another waterman on a second ski in case of rescue, and a spotter on the cliff- all of whom practice together on smaller days.
A big day finally comes, everything is good to go, water is cold, you get towed into the wave and let go of the rope at about 30 mph. The wave is getting steeper so gravity pulls you faster, hopefully fast enough to not get clobbered by the lip, which is very thick and is falling in your direction fast. Also you contend with wind that is slowing you down and chunks of chop that want to chuck you off. If you make it you’ll never look at things the same. If you don’t make it, you’ll probably skip down the face a few bounces, get sucked up the wave’s face into the lip and launched over the falls, drilled through the ocean surface into the deep, dark place where people can’t breathe. Hopefully you don’t get held down too long. If you are wearing a survival suit and air tank (cumbersome and heavy in addition to the wetsuit) and are able to deploy one or both that’s good, but in either case you still need figure out which way to go to reach the surface (remember it’s dark and churned up down there), get to the surface, clear some foam away and hopefully get a breath before the next one drives you down again for another blind and speedy underwater tour. Hopefully you haven’t been hit by your board or tied up by your leash or smashed onto the local geological features so far. If you’re lucky you can catch some breaths and your rescue man finds you or before the rip current pulls you straight back out there to get hammered again. This experience you will never forget. You may or may not go again but you will look at things differently.
Some people need that kind of rush to have fun, but hey, if your jam is surfing waist high Waikiki that’s good too.
Thank you. What a great, detailed post.
A comment on FR's surfing-related posts:
For some reason I wound up knowing several people whose lives were dominated by surfing and bodysurfing. I just learned that one of them is named in Wikipedia's entry on bodysurfing. None of these people bore the slightest resemblance to idiot Jeff Spicoli in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." None of them said "Gnarly, dude!" None of them were stupid, and one was certainly a genius, able to talk at length about Schopenhauer before shifting to fluid dynamics. I bring this up because over the years I developed respect for surfers. Most seemed to have their lives together, and not just their social lives. In my opinion, surfers have a reputation they don't deserve.