Gripes 'n Wipes

Tuesday 5 November 2013 After the huge surf in Portugal, Simon SAYS that wiping out is an under appreciated skill (Laird) but hey at least Carlos Burle was able to have a relaxing break by sharing an underwater cuppa with uncle Davy Jones.

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So there we go, the gospel according to Laird. On the 28th of October 2013, Brazilian big wave surfer Carlos Burle was towed into a behemoth, some are calling close to 100 foot, at Praia do Norte, Nazaré, Portugal.

It’s probably best you watch the chilling video first. Carlos skids down the face, bleeds off speed in the flat section, and is eventually engulfed by an avalanche of aerated water. He promptly disappears and has a cuppa with Davy Jones.

Actually, his side-kick Maya Gabeira almost has a six course sit-down meal with ole Davy Jones, but that’s another story, equally laden with controversy and much professional grumbling. Thanks to Carlos, Maya was dragged to safety and some CPR on the beach.

Miss Gabeira survived her ordeal with a broken ankle, a somewhat silly looking smile and an obligatory 24 hour pit-stop in hospital. The usual congratulatory flurry of Facebooking followed, and no doubt much gleeful rubbing of hands by sponsors.

Poor Maya’s ordeal was soon consigned to a digital grave in the wake of a far more serious affair, rooted in honour and the unspoken rules of big wave riding, and perhaps the very notion of what constitutes surfing itself. As the ocean settled, and those cold fronts that looked like coils of razor wire began to unravel to more manageable conditions, another long fetch storm was brewing thousands of kilometres off.

All round waterman, big wave legend and SUP meister, Laird Hamilton, articulated a seemingly valid point in response to Burle’s mega-ride. In a CNN interview Laird said, ‘I’d say he (Burle) wiped out on the biggest wave ever ridden, but you can’t expect to ride the biggest wave ever ridden and not finish the ride.’ Traditionalists would agree. Initially I agreed, but hell, I start bleating and turn sheepish in anything nearing 6 feet. I’m no more than a very mortal arm chair critic when it comes to backing up my opinions about big wave surfing. In fact, in most instances, I tend to skim any big wave news, as the entire adventure is something beyond the mortal realms of my consciousness and the efficacy of my testosterone levels.

Nonetheless, I thought it prudent to approach an experienced big wave rider, and in turn, someone who would not be hesitant to add more petrol to the braai. Here’s what Justin Strong had to say, ‘In big wave riding, making the drop, then bottom turning or straightening out is simply enough, in my opinion, to claiming the ride’.

Strong believed there were no criteria or unwritten rules that dictated that the surfer had to necessarily kick out or make it to the safe-zone, where they would be towed to safety by a ski-buddy. OK, so there we have an opinion that’s diametrically opposed to Mr Hamilton’s take on the matter.

In Carlos’s brief exhortation of his ride (or wipe-out), he appears to be oblivious of Laird’s opinions, but beneath that cool Latin exterior one cannot help feeling an ounce of hesitation in terms of claiming the greatest ride of all time. In any event, the Nazaré conundrum continues to beg for some clarity in terms of whether his performance was no more than a glorified wipe-out.

At least, despite the online vitriol as a result of his response, Laird, has done what few surfers nowadays do, and that’s voice a strong opinion. Along with all the hurrahs, online yelps of amazement and constant deluge of Red Bull footage, the Nazaré affair seems somewhat surreal, almost sanitized, no doubt carefully curated by marketing gurus and sponsorship protocols.

In any event, the last time I rode a benign 3 footer and claimed a barrel, Orff’s ‘Carmina Burana’ didn’t accompany my brief cover-up, before I ungraciously flipped off the back of my board. Clearly, that’s not a ride, it’s a wipe-out, but then again there’s the niggling issue of a 97 foot difference between my 3 foot dribbler and Carlos’s 100 foot drop, which he actually made before being consumed by the whitewater!

For the most part, big wave surfing is not about whether Surfer X has titanium cojones or whether Surfer Y has stainless steel ovaries. This big wave anomaly is wrapped up in a complex package of ego, self-competition and the age-old human need to push the envelope of one’s mortality to the threshold of that ‘eternal sleep’.

For millennia, the need to test the limits of what’s physically possible has been a mostly male endeavour, limited to the battlefield, acts of supreme (and often foolish) athleticism and more recently so-called extreme sports. And for us mere mortals, the digital domain has coupled us to live feeds and onsite commentaries, essentially positioning us voyeurs, curiously fascinated by whether our heroes are about to make the drop or be consigned to the deep, permanently.

Laird makes the point most eloquently, ‘For those searching for something more than just the nor We lay it all down, including what others call insanity, for just a few moments on waves larger than life. We do this because we know there is still something greater than all of us. Something that inspires us spiritually. We start going down hill, when we stop taking risks.’

Psychologists are quick to join the fray, and add that pushing one’s body to the limits of endurance and placing ourselves in life-threatening situations are a very human response to our inevitable date with the grim reaper. Essentially, the sheer stupidity of claiming ascendency over nature is fundamentally flawed, and a dangerous path. Nature always wins, ask Maya Gabeira, although it appears she’s having none of it!

Nonetheless, I think the concept of surfing has changed so dramatically over the past decade that we’re still trying to play catch-up. Perhaps our sport has reached a critical mass of sorts, but then again, the recent stratospheric antics of John John Florence, the uncanny aerial abilities of Jordy, and big wave achievements of Carlos and our own Twiggy Baker are constantly re-defining our perception of surfing’s outer limits.

Surfing’s cosmos, much like the stellar cosmos, is continually expanding. The art of riding waves is being re-magined, and presented to us on a daily digital basis, to a point where every aerial experiment or big wave conquest becomes an iconoclastic act, threatening to pull down our mental scaffolding of ‘what is surfing’, until of course someone drowns, is maimed or seriously injured. Do we really care whether Carlos’s ride was legit or not? Surely the sheer impact of the spectacle is enough.

Perhaps last Monday’s events pose even more pertinent questions? So what’s next; a 120 foot or 150 foot wave, if it exists? It appears that our insatiable appetites for bigger, higher fixes are going to completely devour the pure pleasure of our lifestyle, to the point where all that matters is if we have shared or tweeted the latest footage of a some barely makeable slab, or yet another hellman’s brush with death?

It was almost 300 hundreds ago that Captain James Cooke noted the following while watching Polynesians riding waves, ‘I could not help concluding this man had the most supreme pleasure while he was driven so fast and so smoothly by the sea’.

Interestingly, Cooke’s records make no mention of wave height, whether the surfers had made the drop, or had managed to pull off some unimaginable aerial feat. Quite simply it was the pleasure they experienced that reigned supreme.