“We are surfers now!” commented Jill after their first lesson. She went on to say, “Without a doubt today’s surf lesson with Ken Bradshaw was the highlight of our trip to Hawaii! Mr. Bradshaw was so helpful and truly insightful in directing. We can’t wait to come back to surf with Ken again!”

Post Surf Lesson Sunset

Chunns Reef Surf Lesson

Beginning Surf Lessons

Ken had the board glassed with several layers of six ounce cloth, and fitted it with toe and heel straps, under laid by deck grip, which he regards as essential for tow surfing. It had six test runs before January 28, mostly in regulation 15- to 20-foot surf at Backyards off Sunset Beach. The size, low rocker and flat bottom gave Ken a lot of confidence in the board’s ability to handle size, beyond that the proof is right here in front of you. Other details? Ken uses a leash, just a super light comp cord six feet long, strong enough to hold the board through easy situations, weak enough to snap under real pressure. And, unlike Timpone Jaws riders like Dave Kalama and others who use twin fins, he’s stuck to a tri-fin setup. “I still like that,” says Ken. “I’m not trying to achieve small wave surfing in big waves. I’m trying for these big, long, beautiful turns.”

By: SURFING MAGAZINE, SURF GUIDE, SPECIAL COLLECTORS SERIES ’98

The giant surf during the winter of 1969 was the benchmark for big-wave riding, and Noll is credited with catching the biggest wave of the epic swell. It was a quantum leap beyond “25-plus” at Waimea Bay.

These are “island scale” measurements; a combination of surfing lore and macho cool insists on cutting wave size in half. That’s just the way it is!

A three-foot Hawaiian wave is, in truth, head-high on a six-foot surfer. Using that yardstick, it is conceded by all who matter that Noll spun his 11-foot yellow gun around and paddled into a lumbering wave with a 60-foot-plus face.

In truth, Noll only reached the trough before being obliterated in an avalanche of whitewater. He almost drowned. But he made a statement on the largest wave ever attempted.

“Da Bull’s” big drop joined Armstrong’s small step in defining the outer limits of man’s achievement. During the past three decades, various paddle-in and tow-in efforts have challenged Nolls feat, but the gray mists above 30 feet are difficult to judge.

An act of God is hard to calibrate. Huge waves have been ridden on rare occasions, but none cleanly eclipsed that long-ago Makaha monster.

Until now.

On January 28 on the North Shore of Oahu, Ken Bradshaw of Sunset Beach used a tow-in assist to ride a wave estimated at “40-plus.” Go ahead and call it…an 80, maybe 90-foot face.

The 45-year-old Bradshaw made the surreal wave, pulling out unscathed as the whitewater backed off in a deep channel two miles off the beach.

Perhaps the most remarkable part of the ride is that it began in Houston.

Bradshaw was born in Houston and learned to surf during the summer of 1965 at Surfside Beach, Freeport. He attended Johnston Junior High and Westbury High before moving to Sunset Beach in 1972.

During the past 25 years, the Texan turned Hawaiian has been acknowledged as one of the premier big-wave surfers. Now, he is numero uno, the rider of the largest wave in the world.

What Bradshaw accomplished out…there was beyond comprehension. He caught the biggest wave ever ridden on the North Shore. You’d think that claim would trigger a furious debate, full of cynicism and outrage, but this time the vote seemed to be unanimous.

“The big wave was only one of many I got that day,” Bradshaw said in a recent telephone interview. “I knew it was huge but I didn’t realize how big until I saw some video that night. It was 10 times overhead and there was still plenty of water below the board.

“I signaled to go for the wave and my tow-in partner, Dan Moore, pulled me into position. When I let go, the drop took at least five or six seconds. I made a big bottom turn and the wave went absolutely vertical looking up, it was the most phenomenal thing I have ever seen.

“I climbed back up the face and made a cutback, then dropped back down and out onto the shoulder. Moore was right there to pick me up.”

No photographer was able to get a shot of the benchmark ride, but the wave was witnessed by other tow-in surfers plus numerous onlookers from various video vantages on the beach.

The one wave clearly was the largest, but Bradshaw and the others rode several waves in the 35-foot class.

“It was the most incredible session I’ve ever had,” he said. “The conditions were ideal�sunny, with moderate trade winds. I caught the big one about noon; we came in, then went back out and I nailed at least three others in the 35-foot range.”

“In that one day I rode the four largest waves of my life. I guess it was just my day.”

“Ken’s Day” occurred at a phantom reef known as Outside Log Cabins. The outside reef seldom breaks, and only on the biggest swells. It might show once every few winters.

“I’ve been watching ‘Logs’ for years,” said Bradshaw. “It broke in ’74, ’76, ’79, ’83, and twice in ’86. Back then, before tow-in surfing had evolved, it was basically unsurfable.

“But, I knew it would be the ultimate tow-in spot. Other tow-in spots like Jaws on Maui, and Mavericks in Northern California, have a shallow shelf that reaches out; when the surf gets over 30 feet, these places just overload.”

The North Shore has a series of reefs falling into deeper water and the outside reefs a mile or two off the beach will not close out even on the biggest swell.

“For ‘Logs’ to even show, the swell has to be huge. Just going out, you expect to ride bigger than ever before. ‘Logs’ starts to show at about 25 feet but really doesn’t break until 30, about the time that Waimea Bay closes out. It gets hollow at 35 and really goes off at 40. How much bigger? Who knows?”

Bradshaw is confident his board can handle a Size XXXXL upgrade. Surprisingly, not much has been made in the surfing media about the equipment used on the benchmark day.

Bradshaw, of Bradshaw Hawaii Surfboards, built the 7-10, 17-inch wide, 2-inch thick tow-in boards specifically for Log Cabins.

“It’s longer than the 7-4s and 7-6s most tow-in surfers are using, but I figured ‘Logs’ would be a new realm. The board worked really well; I believe I could have ridden at 5 or 10 feet bigger with no problem.”

Some traditionalists probably insist that an asterisk should be placed by Bradshaw’s big-wave mark. Using the assist of a personal watercraft (such as a Jet Ski) to intercept the incoming swell detracts from the pure one-on-one drama of a paddle-in take off.

The issue might be academic. “There is no way you can paddle into and successfully ride a 40-foot wave,” said the only man in the world with the first hand experience.

“For one thing, the playing field is huge like Sunset Beach expanded. Outside Log Cabins is almost impossible to line up; we tried paddling out back in the ’80s and caught a few smaller waves but almost always were out of position when a big set came through.”

“But, even if you were sitting in exactly the right spot, you cannot get moving fast enough from a dead stop to pick up the swell and make the drop ahead of the whitewater coming down. It’s too thick, too fast, too much water to overcome. Even if you made the drop, the whitewater hitting the flat is moving faster than the board can move, and it’ll bury you,”

Is that what happened when Noll got annihilated at Makaha?

“I believe that is exactly what happened. He did everything right and just got swallowed at the bottom. Beyond 35 feet, it can’t be done without a tow-in.”

The tow-in surfer uses the speed of the watercraft to get into position and to catch the peak of the fast moving swell before it jacks to break.

Once the rider is flying down the face, he drops the line and surfs the wave. He is at once alone, riding the thin line between glorious success and hideous failure that always has marked big-wave surfing.

The undeniable trump is the ability to make the drop and the initial turn before the Pacific Ocean falls out of the Sky. The tow-in capability expands the horizon of Surfing beyond the “cloud break” sets on the outside reefs.

The next giant swell, whenever it hits, may see Bradshaw’s mark broken. Or, maybe it won’t. A lot of things must go exactly right, and only a few big-wave watermen truly are qualified to attempt the outer realm.

It was fitting that Bradshaw was in position on “Big Wednesday” when the horizon started to tilt beyond conceptual limits on the outside reef. He has devoted his life to riding big waves.

“Even in the beginning, back in Texas, the bigger days were the ones that turned me on,” Bradshaw said in a prophetic 1984 interview. “When the surf would get five or six feet, we would walk out the Surfside Jetty and jump off the rocks.”

“The drop, the bottom turn, the pressure�that’s what I was always looking for. That feeling was developed in Texas but I had to move on to bigger things.”

The entire surfing world will agree he found them.

By: Joe Doggett Houston Chronicle 1998

Surfers wonders what future holds after North Shore’s biggest wave.

It’s a legend now. Surfers call it “Big Wednesday.” The day last winter when Ken Bradshaw took on the biggest wave ever ridden on the North Shore.

People watching from the hillsides of Pupukea say it was at least 45 feet, with a face 80 feet high. Stack one telephone pole on top of another, and Bradshaw’s wave still was taller.

Bradshaw’s surfing partner Dan Moore held up his arm and opened his hand. Imagine the face of the wave running all the way from the tips of his fingers to his elbow, Moore said. Than he pointed to a tiny spot below his wrist. “And there’s Ken,” Moore said. “It was like he was a cartoon.”

In the weeks that followed January 28, the wave that Bradshaw had been waiting for all his life somehow left him empty.

“I was complacent; I had lost some fire,” said Bradshaw, who is built like a middle linebacker but has a soft, sweet voice. “It was like, can you get that high again? How can you feel good again?’ ”

As the North Shore gets ready for another winter, Bradshaw isn’t sure what comes next.
Physical Peak

Bradshaw already was a legend on the North Shore, one of the elite among two-dozen surfers invited each year to the Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational.

In the last few years he has been trying to organize the infant “tow-in” side of surfing, where riders use the speed of Jet Skis and Waverunners to catch waves too powerful for mere paddling. After finishing one wave, they simply grab the tow rope and zip into the next one.

“At 46, Bradshaw may be just beyond his physical peak,” said Rick Grigg, another North Shore surf legend. But Bradshaw’s experience and cutting-edge knowledge of tow-in techniques keep him on top of the big wave world, Grigg said, adding, “I herald him as the No.1 guy.”

In 1958, Grigg was among the first to ride Waimea Bay, then considered a sure way to die. “Ken’s doing the same thing that we did, only a lot better,” Grigg said.

Five years ago, a handful of big wave riders began towing one another as much as two miles to the outer reefs, where the waves stand like giants. Bradshaw had been poking around the outer reefs for years, unknowingly preparing himself for Big Wednesday.

He paddled to Log Cabins in 1986, caught one 25-foot ride, then got mowed over by a 35-footer that broke his board. He had to swim two miles to get home. In 1988 he paddled out again and broke his leash. In 1991 he and Moore rode Moore’s ski boat through the waves as a precursor to tow-in surfing.

“Everything we did prior to January 28 was preparation for that day,” Bradshaw said. “We knew it was coming. We spent the time. We got beat up, broken boards, broken leashes. We had to swim in. That’s why we advocate (to other surfers), ‘Are you ready? Are you ready?’”

The last time the North Shore waves crashed so hard they “closed out” Walmea Bay, was 1983. Big Wednesday may have been bigger than even the Winter of ’69.
Last Option

Last January 28, hundreds of people lined the shore, staring at the water’s power. State officials closed Haleiwa Harbor. Organizers canceled the Eddie Aikau.

Bradshaw and Moore knew that Log Cabins and Kaena Point would have the only ridable waves on the North Shore. They grabbed Bradshaw’s Waverunner and fought through the channel between Phantoms and Backyards about a mile and a half out to reach Log Cabins.

They barely made it.

We zigzagged left, then zigzagged right, then left again,” Moore said. Bradshaw gunned the Waverunner over the top of 25-foot-plus waves. They hit one so hard Bradshaw flew off the seat and barely grabbed the throttle to make it over the crest.

At about 11:30 a.m., they reached Log Cabins. It’s usually choppy and wind-blown, but not on Big Wednesday. It was a scene of pure beauty.

“There was not a drop of water out of place,” Moore said. “It was velvet.” The smallest waves were 20 to 25 feet. The biggest 35 to 40.

They studied the waves for 45 minutes before Bradshaw strapped his feet into his board and raced into the first wave. Then he went into the 45-footer, bigger than anything they’d seen.

Bradshaw caught it perfectly. He dropped down for seven or eight seconds as if he were falling into a pit, then pulled to the right for a swooping turn.

It was over in 30 seconds. “I said, ‘Ken, that was nuts,’” Moore said. “‘ That was the biggest wave I’ve ever seen you on.’…I thought that was what it was going to be like all day. It turned out to be the only one.”

Bradshaw did catch at least 10 waves over 25 feet. Another four were 35 feet tall. And there was the lone monster of 45 feet.
What’s Left?

If they were prepared for Big Wednesday, Bradshaw and Moore were unprepared for what followed.

They surfed over the next few weeks, but it wasn’t the same. The waves were small in the outer reefs, and Sunset and Waimea were crowded with surfers from all over the world.

Moore fell into a funk that lasted two weeks. It was nothing compared to Bradshaw’s mood. “Ken really went into a weird depression,” Moore said.

“He’s lived on the North Shore for 25 years, and he basically waited 25 years for that day,” said Bradshaw’s girlfriend, 26-year-old world champion pro surfer Layne Beachley.

At 45, Bradshaw found himself living with a handful of surfing roommates in his house at Sunset Beach in front of Kammieland. His surfboard shaping business was slow because he was following Beachley around the world on tour. He wasn’t training as hard. Sponsors were telling him he was too old to get endorsements.

Bradshaw finally understood the nearly 30-year-old legend of Greg Noll. In 1969, Noll caught a wave at least 30 feet tall. At that point it was the biggest ever ridden at Makaha.

Noll stuffed his board in the car, drove away and never looked back.

“For years I could never, ever fathom what Greg Noll was feeling,” Bradshaw said. “For the first time in my life I felt it.”

But Bradshaw’s emotions these days blur with other thoughts. Such as the surfers who will try to top the legend of Big Wednesday. He remembers why he is trying to organize the 20 or so tow-in surfers into an association. Why he is pushing state officials to consider new regulations to prevent accidents:

* Five mandatory training courses: Coast Guard boating and seamanship; Red Cross CPR; Red Cross First-Aid; Red Cross lifesaving; the “Safety Awareness Virus Effects Strategy” — or SAVES — program started by Makaha big wave surfer and former lifeguard captain Brian Keaulana.

* If surfers in the area aren’t using thrill craft, tow-in teams must leave.
* Each thrill craft must carry a phone or radio.
* Tow-in surfers must rescue others in distress.
* No refueling on the beach.
* Tow-in surfing can be done only during high surf warnings.

Bradshaw’s efforts impress Grigg. “He’s going about it just right,” Grigg said. “He’s got serious people involved. He’s warning people who are out of their element not to go out there.”

But Carol She, boating regulation officer for the division of boating and ocean recreation, gave a slight laugh at Bradshaw’s last idea.

“Yeah, go out only when it’s rough,” she said. “Is there a liability issue there in requiring people to go out only in rough conditions? We really have to look at this.”

Overall, She appreciates Bradshaw’s concern. “He just wants to make it safe,” she said. “He’s seeing a lot of accidents waiting to happen.”

Bradshaw believes his old excitement will return eventually. And surfers around the world are waiting to see if Bradshaw can top the 30-second ride that guaranteed his place in the lore of the North Shore.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Bradshaw said. ” I really am.”

By: Dan Nakaso The Honolulu Advertiser November 2, 1998

The North Pacific, having taken a number of 15- to 18-foot hits through the middle of January, finally got it’s socks knocked off on January 28 when 35-foot waves hit first Hawaii then California. Most people considered it the largest swell of the decade.

By: Surfing Magazine, June, 1998, NO. 6, Pg. 28 & 29

On Wednesday, January 28, the Pacific Ocean put on a once in a lifetime show, and the North Shore was giant and perfect, as a swell that some were calling 40-feet arrived under flawless Hawaiian conditions: trade winds, blue skies, the works.

But it was a little too much of a good thing and paddle-in surfing was out of the question. Waimea Bay was a cauldron of froth from closeout sets. The one guy, who paddled out, Jason Majors, defied police, got a standing ovation from 2,000 spectators, and took two closeout sets on the head. The only wave riding that happened on the North Shore that day took place a mile out to sea as seven gasoline powered duos played crack the whip at Outside Log Cabins.

The same swell moved into California two days later, delivering some of the biggest surf in 15 years. Spots that get big were giant, and spots that never break were firing. Maverick’s was a surreal, virtually unrideable media circus. Rincon was so big that only a handful of guys could get out. Lunada Bay was so good even the locals were smiling. Black’s was a beautiful beast. And Northern Baja was a shocking array of mysto cloud breaks and dredging points.

Here, then, are 14 pages of photos and tales from a single, phenomenal swell. They stood on hillsides and rooftops, on top of their cars, anywhere they might get a better look at the most mind-blowing surf session ever witnessed on the North Shore. “I saw history today,” said Peter Mel, and like a lot of other great surfers, he saw it from the beach. January 28 was the day tow-in-surfing reached a new level and shattered the barriers of skepticism.

Over on Maui, it was business as usual. Laird Hamilton, Dave Kalama and the rest of the crew had all-time Jaws to themselves, the biggest day they’ve ever had. But this was the day the North Shore caught up. A day Ken Bradshaw will never forget�and a day Brock Little will never stop cursing.

Early that morning, the Quiksilver/Eddie Aikau big-wave contest had been postponed after three hours of excruciating anxiety. This was a swell with 35-foot sets, the biggest to hit Hawaii in at least 12 years, and Waimea Bay was a vision of death. The invitee list read like a tribute to living legends, but none of them even hit the water. “There’s only one place to surf today,” said Bradshaw, and for a half-dozen tow-in crews, that was the call; Outside Log Cabins, a place that doesn’t begin to break until the waves reach a Hawaiian-style 25-feet.

What Bradshaw accomplished out there, under a gorgeous blue sky with offshore winds, was beyond comprehension. At the age of 45, he caught the biggest wave ever ridden on the North Shore. You’d think that claim would trigger a furious debate, full of cynicism and outrage, but this time the vote seemed to be unanimous.

“I saw it with my own eyes,” said Lt. Pat Kelly, a North Shore lifeguard since 1979 and a 25-year resident. “I was up on the substation roof at Ke Waena, and this was definitely the biggest wave I’ve seen ridden. We were calling it 30 to 35-feet. Bradshaw was just a little dot on this massive wall. It wasn’t like a Waimea wave, with a bit of a wall and then into the channel. This thing was feathering for like 75 yards ahead of him. Unbelievable.”

Bill Ballard, maker of the surf videos Triple C and Side B, was among the few who captured Bradshaw’s wave on tape. Shot from an ideal vantage point on Ke Iki Road, the sequence is absolutely surreal as Bradshaw comes off the bottom, the wave looks at least l0 times overhead. He times his turn perfectly, power-drives up into the hook, pulls a cutback, then glides out the back of a softening shoulder. Thanks to the expert timing of 41-year-old Dan Moore, Bradshaw’s tow-in partner and one of the true underground heroes of outer-reef lore, there was no wasted motion. Bradshaw grabbed the towrope and was steaming back to the lineup at the instant he pulled out.

That’s how they’ve always done it at Jaws�using flawless team�work to rip giant waves�but nobody was making comparisons to Hamilton’s surfing or the biggest waves ridden on Maui. This was a North Shore thing. Historic Waimea performances by the likes of Pat Curren, Peter Cole, Jose Angel, Eddie Aikau, Mike Miller, Derrick Doerner and Little were suddenly in a separate category, as was Greg Noll’s epic farewell to surfing at 30-plus Makaha in 1969.

“This is Just the most impressive thing I’ve ever witnessed,” said Cole, one of the North Shore’s most confirmed traditionalists. “These waves are so much larger than what we rode, and they make it look so easy�fade, turn, carve. This tow-In-surfing has made regular surfing look like a Model T.”

Another hard-line observer, Randy Rarick, didn’t see Bradshaw’s wave, “but the claim is totally plausible. Just add it up; the tow-in guys are riding bigger waves than anyone ever dreamed of. This was the biggest swell of the tow-in era. And Ken got the biggest one. Bradshaw is the most dedicated and proficient of all the tow-in-surfers on the North Shore. So it makes sense that he’d be the one.” “And that big wake you saw behind Ken’s board?” said Bernie Baker. “That was from his balls draggin’.”

When I spoke with Bradshaw that night, he had no real sense of his accomplishment. “I just know I caught a really big wave, and I was trying to get out of it’s way,” he said. But as the days went on, he began hearing the comments. “Then I started thinking about it. I thought I’d gotten the waves of my life in 1995, when I rode Outside Backyards with Derrick and Laird (the day the Aikau contest was called off at the midway point). Well, that place was buried on Wednesday. Sections were falling for a quarter-mile; you couldn’t even find it. That’s when I realized how big it really was. The biggest I’ve seen since February of 1986.”

This was the ultimate Big Wednesday, and many others shared the glory. Noah Johnson got barreled�and came out�on a legitimate 25-footer. Cheyne Horan, Ross Clarke-Jones, Aaron Lambert, Shawn Briley, the Willis brothers and Troy Alotis, a North Shore electrician and outer-reef veteran, were all out there in full assault. Alec Cooke and Ron Barron were towing into outside Puaena Point, a spot off the Haleiwa Harbor that at times was closing out all the way over to Avalanche.

But where was Brock? Rewind the tape a little, back to the early-morning hours at Waimea.

“You know, I’d go out there,” Brock said as he surveyed the insane cauldron of heaving shorebreak and closeout sets. “But there’s only two ways you’d surf Waimea on a day like this on a dare, or for a contest. Otherwise, no way.”

In the wake of the tow-in-surfing phenomenon and the consider�able publicity over the K2 Challenge, the Aikau/Quiksilver people wanted a “go.” They wanted it badly. The atmosphere became a bit more festive as the sun got warmer, the texture improved and the cheery sounds of Willie K filled the sound system, but still, nobody wanted Waimea. Not Briley, not Richard Schmidt, not even Bradshaw. There were horrifying scenes; a 35-foot wave late, breaking far to the north, peeling across, then closing out hideously in the normal takeoff area. Two Jet Skis�one manned solo by (photographer) Hank, the other by Kenny Rust and Larry Haynes�barely scratched over a monster in the middle of the bay. Longtime Sunset master Ric Haas stunned the gathering by running across the grass and down to the corner, board in hand, but he just sat there, waiting for a window that never came. Redwings Whitford, a committed body-surfer since the mid ’70s in Hawaii, made a gutsy but futile attempt that saw him unable to penetrate the shore break. “Once I got toward the middle, I had to let it wash me in, ” he said. “If you get over there (the left corner, in front of the rocks), you will die.”

And then the bay was empty again. By 11a.m., contest director George Downing knew there was no chance. “Calling this thing off is the best thing that could have happened,” said Bodo Van Der Leeden, captain of the North Shore lifeguards. “Tomorrow’s another day. I’d rather have them all alive.”

“I honestly think we would have lost someone out there today,” said Rick Grigg, one of the great Waimea riders of the ’60s. “Maybe more than one.”

Once the Eddie got canceled, Brock headed for Haleiwa Harbor�the only remotely safe place to attempt a launch�with ocean safety mainstays Brian Keaulana, Terry Ahue and Mel Pu’u. Incredibly, they were not allowed access. They didn’t put up a fight, either. Keaulana stands for safety above all else, and if the State Harbors Division say no, then it’s time for some other spot.

Everyone at Outside Logs had launched from Phantoms, near Back-Yards. Stock’s crew could have headed back up there, but the wave-watching traffic was absurd�more than an hours crawl to make the five miles from Haleiwa to Waimea. “I’m so pissed right now,” Brock said at the time. He picked up a stick and slammed a nearby trash can with it. “I can’t get in the water! These days never happen. It’s here now, and I can’t f—ing surf!”

Keaulana was leaning heavily toward Makaha, where a dynamite session was going off with Titus Kinimaka, Schmidt, Jay Moriarity, Grigg, Rarick, Keoni Watson, Rusty Keaulana and many others in Gorgeous 12 to 15-foot point surf. Brock’s crew wound up driving to the Westside for a go at Kaena Point. But they stopped at a spot outside Makua Cave�a precious gem spinning off perfect rights at 15 to 18 feet.

“You don’t see conditions like that on the South Shore, because there’s always so much water moving around over there,” said Mark Cunningham, who life guarded the beach at Pipeline for some 20 years. “This was absolute glass. Not a single whitecap. Just deep Westside blue and calm, incredibly beautiful. And Brock just killed it.”

But Brock wasn’t satisfied. Not even close. Several days later, he said he was still “heartbroken” over missing the Outside Logs session. “Normally if I miss a big day, it means nothing to me,” he said. “But I feel like I’m back in high school, when something happens and you just can’t get over it. I haven’t seen the videos. I don’t even want to hear about ‘em. I’m just really bitter. I’m gonna be bitter for a long time.”

The action at Jaws, meanwhile, was so masterfully done it hardly seemed like news. But it was never the less historic. “When I saw Laird and Dave Kalama wearing flotation vests, I knew it was huge,” said Buzzy Kerbox. “I was there for the big Thanksgiving swell two years ago, but this was by far the biggest I’ve seen. Even Hallko (the launching spot) was closing out. I saw two guys preparing to go out when a big set just sucked them back full-blast up the river, and their ski got wrapped around a tree.”

The ones who reached Peahi were the very best; Hamilton, Kalama, Mike Waltze, Rush Randle, Pete Cabrinha, Mark Angulo, Kerbox and Victor Lopez. “There’s been a lot of talk from people threatening to come over,” said Kalama. “Funny how on the biggest days, it’s still the same people.”

How big was it? “You can’t even say at that size,” said Kalama. “After 25 feet it’s all just ridiculous anyway. Biggest I’ve even ridden out there, that’s for sure. And everybody made it out alive.”

It wasn’t the greatest session for Laird, who made one return trip to switch boards and then had one of his fins knocked off. “He kept surfing with two fins,” Kerbox marveled. “As if it wasn’t challenging enough with good equipment.”

Hamilton said it was a better day for everyone else; “Mike Waltze was on fire. Angulo ripped, Rush got some bombs. Our whole crew was really goin’ off. It made me feel good that they took some initiative and ran with it�as talented as they are, I’m not surprised. That wasn’t just a monster swell. It was also a very mean, aggressive one. It was hard to fully see it. That swell was hidden behind a mask of terror.”

The day did not pass without crisis. At Outside Log Cabins, the Willis brothers got mowed and had their ski washed to shore. Clarke-Jones and Ray tried to outrun a wave in the flats and found it impossible, at least with their equipment. “The wave just collected us and we both got smashed,” said Clarke-Jones. “I saw Tony take the next one on the head, 25 to 30 feet of whitewater.”

They wound up floating down toward Alligators with a damaged ski, and they got in through Haleiwa Harbor only with the generous help of Briley and Standt, who towed them in. With the harbor a constant threat to close out, and all four men screaming at the top of their lungs, Briley led a full-bore charge that got Ray, Clarke-Jones and their ski safely to shore.

Tributes to the swell just kept coming. Steve Thompson, state manager of Oahu’s small harbors, said “it was the biggest anyone could remember in 30 years.” Ocean Safety officials reported swells reaching 40-feet at Kaena Point. Johnson said that at times in his tow-in session, “it seemed like twice as big as anything I’d seen before.”

The most interesting perspective, however, came from Bill Sickler. Every serious surfer on the North Shore knows of this late-40s carpenter who spent more than 20 years riding every big swell at Waimea, Sunset and Pipeline (for most surfers one of those is plenty). Disgusted by publicity and photo shoots, he has remained in the underground, taking a detached viewpoint of the tow-in craze. But Sickler watched Wednesday’s action with Cole and Charlie Walker from his home on the hillside, and he was astounded.

“There’s no doubt in my mind it was the biggest surf that anyone’s ridden,” he said. “Not only that, they were surfing it better than people surf 10-foot Sunset. That’s what really blew my mind. I don’t know if it will happen again very soon. I hope it does, because they’re onto the next level. All of ‘em. Everybody out there was just phenomenal. These guys started following each other down into the pit of these waves, and within an hour there was this full circulation of guys just shredding 35-foot waves.”

For everyone involved, it was a day of high-fives and glances of intense admiration. Moore said he and Bradshaw must have shaken hands five times. “I said, Congratulations, Ken. Hands-down, you’re my hero. You’re 45 years old and you’ve still got it going on.”

For Bradshaw, it was beyond K2. He’d take that Wednesday over the $50,000, guaranteed, if he had the choice. When he looked at Moore, he simply said this, “You know what, Dan? We won.”

By: Bruce Jenkins SURFER MAGAZINE, JUNE ’98, VOL. 39, NO. 6

When The Beach Boys sang, “Catch a wave and you’re sitting on top of the world,” they were, of course, speaking metaphorically. Big-wave surfer Ken Bradshaw takes the notion literally. He’s sat on hundreds of waves with faces that measure upward of 50 feet, and last year he reached new heights when he tucked into an 85-foot curl and rode it to its finish. That’s the biggest wave anyone has ever surfed on the North Shore of Oahu…anyone, at least, who has ever lived to tell about it. Not bad for a 46-year-old from Houston.

Bradshaw had his first taste of what would become a lifelong obsession on the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico. “It’s a great place to learn to surf because the waves are small and forgiving,” he says.

At the tender age of 17, Bradshaw took off for California in search of bigger waves (“I ran away, if you want to know the truth”), then a few years later sought out the behemoths of Hawaii, where he’s been happily living and surfing ever since.

During the 1980s Bradshaw branded a name for himself on the competitive surfing circuit, but it was his out-of-competition rides on massive winter swells that made him famous. And even now, in an age when kids who navigate treacherous slopes on snowboards are a dime a dozen and grandmothers compete in grueling multi sport events, outmaneuvering a crashing wall of water is still considered among the most fantastic of feats. To Bradshaw, it’s all in a days work.

“People who surf big waves on a regular basis don’t consider it a death defying act. We don’t keep the danger in our minds at all,” he contends. “I’ve had 25 years of experience to achieve this level so, to me, it’s fun.”

He doesn’t deny, though, that big-wave surfing is extreme, and, in fact, Bradshaw can be seen (along with rock and ice climbers, skiers, snowboarders and windsurfers) in the IMAX film Extreme, due out this summer. Because the sport has few spectators�big waves generally break one to two miles off shore, beyond viewing distance�Extreme will be many people’s introduction to big-wave surfing. And thanks to the helicopter-ferried cameramen, the view will be spectacular.

Bradshaw, who has his own board shaping business, is glad to have the exposure but hopes it doesn’t result in a rash of novice thrill seekers heading out to famous big-wave breaks like Mavericks in Northern California and Outside Log Cabins, the spot in Hawaii where he nailed the 85-footer. By Bradshaw’s estimate, there are only 15 to 20 accomplished big-wave surfers, and all of them are well seasoned. Big-wave surfing may be inherently dangerous, but it’s even riskier if you’re not experienced or physically and mentally conditioned enough to take the punishment. And nobody knows it better than Bradshaw. He may be involved in a dangerous sport, but he doesn’t pursue it with reckless abandon.

“I’m totally into procedures and rules,” he says. “We run a tight ship in my group.”

Bradshaw works with the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Boating Division to help set guidelines and recommendations for tow-in surfing. For the last few years, much of big-wave surfing has become synonymous with tow-in surfing. Surfers partner up, then ride out to the waves on a personal watercraft (such as a Jet Ski) and take turns towing each other into the waves as they’re starting to break. Purists may scoff, but monster waves are fast, and the tow-in allows a surfer to get in position quicker than if he were depending on his paddling alone.

Even with the tow-in, catching big ones demands muscle and endurance.

“It also requires determination and good judgment,” says Bradshaw. “And that takes continuous involvement in the sport.”

Bradshaw also has an auxiliary routine, which involves simple calisthenics designed to increase upper-body strength (needed to paddle as well as push up from the board) and lower-body stamina (required to stay up and maneuver the board beneath his feet). During the summer, when big waves aren’t breaking, Bradshaw free dives to build the kind of aerobic endurance he’ll need in the event of a wipeout.

“We dive in and out of lava tubes and tunnels, staying under as long as 90 seconds,” he says.

You don’t have to be a surfer to take a page from Bradshaw’s training book. The calisthenics he does the push ups, abdominal crunches, and squats can help you stay fit for any sport. Having increased lungpower is also a plus for any water lover, and if you’re not comfortable free diving, you can do your aerobic conditioning in the pool. All told, Bradshaw’s regime is simple, yet effective. Do the calisthenics at least three times a week and the pool exercises whenever you’re in for a swim.

By: Aqua July ’99

But that was the 20th century. Here we are in the 21st, and times have changed. Surfers who once hurled epithets at Jet Skis are now hurling themselves into giant waves using personal watercraft — the proper, politically correct name for Jet Skis. Towing behind the PWCs like water-skiers, a handful of tow-in surfers today ride unimaginably huge waves — waves that through most of the 20th century were considered too big to ride, waves that defied puny human strength.

The progression of tow surfing has been long and slow, beginning in the early ’70s and only gaining widespread acceptance in the mid-’90s. The controversy and conflict haven’t entirely ended, however, and not all surfers are sold on the idea of two-stroke, 155hp engines infesting the lineup with their noise and stink. Local authorities in Hawaii and California are considering taking action against tow surfers. Dogs and cats are living together, and surfers have turned against surfers, as the purists look askance at their motorized brethren and wonder if nothing is sacred.

Father Fletcher
In the beginning, there was Herbie Fletcher. Imagine a young, skinny 17-year-old Fletcher daydreaming on the rocks at Honolua Bay. This was 1967, and according to Fletcher, there were about eight guys regularly surfing on Maui and lots and lots and lots of waves going by unridden at Honolua Bay. (Stop sobbing.) On the giant days, Fletcher watched perfect, 12- to 15-foot waves rolling through, big and beautiful and uncatchable. He fantasized about some kind of machine that would allow him to frolic with those waves: “I would dream about having my own hydrofoil,” Fletcher said. “I just wanted to go catch those beautiful waves without paddling.”

In the early ’70s, Fletcher’s daydreams began to take shape when Kawasaki came out with the very first Jet Ski, a stand-up version that cost around $1,000. He demoed prototypes, in more ways than one. “We took them out and destroyed them,” Fletcher said. “We broke them all. But when I saw that ski, I knew my dream was answered.”

Fletcher got his first Jet Ski in 1975 and made a nuisance of himself down at Trestles, jumping waves and going over the heads of Rabbit Bartholomew and Owl Chapman. He was a traitor, a surfer turned gearhead: “I murdered waves,” Fletcher boasted. “I didn’t surf them, I murdered them. I would rip them up and tear holes in them.”

In the early ’80s, Fletcher extended his nuisance to the Hawaiian Islands. Beginning in 1981, he probed his poor, defenseless Jet Ski into the outer reaches of the North Shore and Maui, riding perfect waves at Maalaea and giant waves at Waimea, Outside Pipeline and the Outer Reefs. “I was ahead of my time,” Fletcher said, immodestly but accurately. “I was the only one out there on a ski, riding giant waves at Outside Log Cabins and Second Reef Pipe. I would come in to the Lopez house when Laird and all those guys were hanging out, watching football or whatever. I’d say, ‘Let’s go ride some waves!’ and they’d say, ‘Are you crazy? It’s closed out there.’ I’d say, ‘I just rode a hundred waves at Logs,’ and they wouldn’t believe me. They caught on later.”

In 1986, Fletcher convinced Australian pros Martin Potter, Tom Carroll and Gary Elkerton to take up the rope. He towed them into some waves at Second Reef Pipe and gave the world a glimpse of the future.

“Those guys were into it,” said Fletcher, “especially Tom Carroll. He was like a little kid out there, all eager. Those guys got some big waves at Pipe. A lot of people saw it and other people began getting ideas.”
The Unridden Realm: 1950 to 1991

In the mid-’80s, surfers were still riding big waves the old-fashioned way, by paddling into them with big surfboards. Waimea was still the center of the big-wave surfing universe, as it had been since first being ridden in the ’50s. Big-wave surfing hadn’t changed much since guys like Woody Brown, Buzzy Trent, Wally Froiseth, Greg Noll and Pat Curren first began riding giant waves in Hawaii. Over the next several decades, the equipment became more refined, but the act remained essentially the same. It was all about human strength, courage and wit overcoming the massive forces of the ocean.

On January 15, 1985, Ken Bradshaw, Alec Cooke, J.P. Patterson, James Jones and Mark Foo were out challenging a giant day at Waimea Bay the old-fashioned way. Bradshaw surfed through midday by himself before losing his board and barely making it to shore. He watched from land as Foo, Jones, Cooke and Patterson were overwhelmed by a tremendous wave that was nearly twice as big as anything else seen that day. This “thing” as Mark Foo called it, swept over them like a tidal wave, breaking leashes and surfboards and sending the lifeguards scrambling. James Jones called the wave “48 feet” and Ken Bradshaw declared it “the largest wave anyone has ever had to deal with.” Cooke, Jones and Patterson lost their boards and accepted rides from the rescue helicopter. Foo tried to ride a wave in, took a terrible wipeout, broke his board and finally accepted the helicopter basket to shore.

Six years later, in a 1991 Surfer magazine article called “The Unridden Realm”, Foo worried publicly about waves like the “thing” that had confronted him at Waimea. To Foo, waves from 35 feet and up were too massive and powerful to be hunted down, caught and ridden by any one man — no matter how strong he was or how long his surfboard.

Toward the end of the article, Foo tossed off a sentence that would prove to be prophetic: “Now, we could cheat our way in. For example, you could be towed in by boat or Jet Ski. But is that surfing?”
Laird and Buzzy and the Zodiac

Buzzy Kerbox and Laird Hamilton are the Redford and Newman of the surfing world. They are watermen in every sense of the word: surfers, windsurfers, paddlers, kite surfers. Always looking for a new way to move across the water, they began exploring Hawaii’s outer reefs using Kerbox’s inflatable Zodiac boat, propelled by a 40hp motor. Their first session was at a Hawaiian outer reef called Phantoms. “We didn’t even tow that day,” Kerbox said. “We just went out in the boat and checked it out. Drove around, dropped into a 15-footer that almost caught us. It was a little creepy. If we’d been caught and flipped with the engine blazing, it could have been nasty.” Their exploration inspired some adrenaline and discovered one important thing: a 40hp engine was not enough. Kerbox and Hamilton weren’t discouraged. They just needed a bigger engine.

During the winter of 1991-’92 Kerbox and Hamilton came back with a rebuilt 60hp Mercury outboard and began to get their tow-in system wired. While thousands of surfers fought and squabbled for waves close to shore, Kerbox and Hamilton had the outer reefs to themselves. Riding standard big-wave equipment with no foot-straps (an innovation that would come later), the two friends towed each other into giant waves at Phantoms and Outside Backyards and a number of esoteric North Shore spots.

Almost out of sight of land, they worked on their driving and towing techniques and tapped into an endless supply of beautiful bluebirds, finding solitude and space not far from one of the most congested surf zones in the world.

Where a typical paddling surfer might catch one of these waves an hour, or maybe even one a day, Kerbox and Hamilton were catching a dozen waves an hour, scores of waves in a day. They were riding more 15- to 20-foot waves in one day than most surfers get in a season, a lifetime. They were taking off at Second Reef Backyards and hauling ass for hundreds of yards, dropping into the Main Peak at Sunset Beach at 30 mph, coming from out of nowhere and blowing the minds of all the conventional paddle surfers sitting like ducks at Sunset.

One of these surfers was Darrick Doerner, a North Shore lifeguard who saw the act from the beach and was intrigued. “I figured, shoots, Waimea was too crowded, Sunset Beach was too crowded and there were a lot of days when it was too big for Sunset and not big enough for Waimea, and there were 10 or 15 reefs popping off along the North Shore. So I took up the rope.”
On Maui: Velcro, Footstraps and Jaws

While Hamilton and Kerbox were experimenting with the Zodiac and tow ropes on Oahu, their friends back on Maui began testing other ways of playing around in the ocean. Mark Angullo attached some straps to a small-wave board and took it out on some small days. Dave Kalama remembered Angullo’s first experimentation: “He goes out with the footstraps and does this loop off the lip, like a carving 360 aerial loop. Boom, plugs it standing perfectly straight up in front of the wave in the flats, still on his board. He fell after that, but Brett Lickle and I were on the beach and just happened to look at the right place at the right time and went, ‘Oh my God. That’s it. That’s what I want to do.’”

Like Kerbox and Hamilton, the Maui guys are watermen — all contenders for the Incredible Mr. Limpet Award — because they are always looking for ways and means to get into the water. Kalama, Lickle, Mike Waltze, Pete Cabrinha and Rush Randle were surfers turned windsurfers who loved big waves wherever they could find them and however they could ride them. In 1993, they decided to have a go at a particularly giant and seemingly unsurfable spot that they’d been watching for the past 15 years.

“Gerry Lopez was the guy who showed it to me,” Waltze recalled. “He called it Domes and the fishermen called it Jaws. Finally we got tired of looking at it, and some of us decided to windsurf it. It was just incredible: double mast-high, triple mast-high. I don’t know how big the faces were. Thirty- to 40-foot faces that day. We found out that the valley and the stream and the point are called Peahi, which means ‘to beckon.’ Well, it was beckoning to us.

A few weeks after that first windsurfing session at Jaws, Kerbox and Hamilton came back to Maui. They met with their Maui buddies, threw everything into the calabash, stirred it all together, took a sip and came up with a new thing: riding giant waves on surfboards equipped with footstraps, using boats and Jet Skis to catch the buggers.
Refining the Equipment

Nowhere else in surfing is design as important as in tow surfing. The difference between a good board and a bad board in giant surf can mean the difference between life and death. As Mike Waltze put it: “We all knew from windsurfing speed trials that if you want to go fast, you have to expose less surface area to the water.” That meant riding smaller boards. Kalama remembers Hamilton coming back from Oahu with an 8’2″ shaped by Dick Brewer that showed everyone the potential. “We all took a look at this 8’2″ that was 16 inches wide, concave bottom, thruster and went, ‘No way. It’s too narrow.’ I think even Laird had some reservations about it. But we took it down the coast to this other place that was about 10 feet. Laird caught a couple of waves and then came in and said, ‘You’re not going to believe it. You’re not going to believe the speed you will get on this board.’ And I said, ‘Whatever.’ So it was my turn, and I got a wave that looked like it was going to close out on me. But two pumps later, I’m around this section and I’m going, ‘Holy shit.’ The board was incredible. It was so narrow and gunny, but it was super fast and you could cover a lot of ground. I’m not sure whose idea it was to make it that narrow. But I think you have to give credit to Dick Brewer for really going way outside the boundaries.”

Inspired by that 8’2″, the other members of Strapped Inc. began experimenting with boards to find the length and width that best suited them. Dave Kalama found that, contrary to usual surfboard design, heavier was better. A heavier surfboard would handle the chops and speed better and stay flatter on the wave. Kalama took to hammering pieces of lead into his surfboards, anything to increase weight and stability. This was a brave new world of big-wave surfboard design, where shorter, thinner and heavier was the call.
Wake-Up Call: Part I

By the winter of 1993-’94, the Maui guys had their skis and boards and tow-in techniques wired.

Their motorized quiver consisted of four Zodiacs, three Wave Runners and a ProJet — which is like a Zodiac with a hard bottom — and dozens of surfboards, each refined and equipped with footstraps. “We’re almost like a SEAL team or the America’s Cup or something,” Waltze told Surfer magazine. “We all work closely together, and we learn a lot from each other.”

The core group was Angullo, Cabrinha, Doerner, Hamilton, Kalama, Kerbox, Lopez, Waltze, Randle and Bob Haskins. They called themselves Strapped Inc. and combined their act to convince the rest of the surfing world to incorporate footstraps into their small- and big-wave surfing.

They surfed all over Maui, in small surf and large, but when it got big, Peahi was their object of desire.

On a huge day in December 1993, Pete Cabrinha and Hamilton were both towing behind one ski, on a double rope. They dropped in together on a big lump with Cabrinha in front, backside and Hamilton in back, frontside. As Cabrinha pulled up high and streaked through a cavernous tube, Hamilton did the unthinkable: he straightened out and took all of Jaws on his back. Hamilton is a sturdy lad, 6’3″ and 210 pounds, and he took a hit that most likely would have killed just about anyone else. “It was like getting hit by a dump truck,” he said later. “I couldn’t believe how hard the wave hit me, and I couldn’t believe I survived.”

A few months later, Hamilton’s wife, Maria, fell and nearly drowned. An experienced, gutsy bodyboarder, Maria had towed into waves at Jaws on her bodyboard, but wasn’t as experienced on a surfboard. Kalama was driving when Maria ate it, and he prowled in and out of the zone through four or five waves, catching glimpses of Maria’s head popping up for a few seconds, only to go under again for wave after wave. “We were like chickens with our heads cut off,” Kalama said. “What the hell do we do? Do we get her board or lose the ski? After five or six waves, we finally got her out, but for about 20 or 25 seconds before that, we all thought she was dead. It really hit home — this isn’t just a game anymore. This is the real deal.”

Maria later admitted to a women’s bodyboarding magazine that the wipeout might have caused a miscarriage. From that day on, the Maui crew worked to refine their rescue techniques. They attached sleds to the backs of the skis, which allowed a surfer to grab on for a quick trip out of the impact zone, and talked about employing inflatable vests and small bottles of oxygen.
Maverick’s in the Spotlight

There were other things going on in the big-wave world during the first half of the ’90s. While Hamilton, Kalama and friends were charging Peahi, a similarly dedicated crew of Northern California surfers were challenging a new big-wave reef called Maverick’s.

Although Half Moon Bay local Jeff Clark had ridden Maverick’s by himself since the mid-’70s, Maverick’s wasn’t exposed to the world until the early ’90s. A giant, mean, perfect wave breaking in cold, sharky waters, Maverick’s quickly established itself as a serious contender to Waimea Bay as the most challenging, dangerous big wave in the world.

The biggest days at Maverick’s were every bit as out of control and uncatchable as any Hawaiian outer reef. But for many reasons, tow surfing was slow to catch on there. “Basically, we were all just finding the limits of paddle surfing out there,” said Peter Mel, a Santa Cruz surfer who has become a legend at Maverick’s. “I was aware of tow surfing and so were a lot of others, but it just wasn’t cool at Maverick’s, at least not in the mid-’90s.”

In December of 1994, bellicose Santa Cruz surfer Vince Collier showed up in the lineup at Maverick’s on a Jet Ski. Jeff Clark had towed into a few waves behind a boat early in the decade, but no one had yet taken a ski out there and tried to catch waves. Collier and his partner-in-crime Zach Acker made a nuisance of themselves that day, driving through the lineup with little regard for all the guys bobbing like corks on their big-wave guns. Collier and Maverick’s pioneer Jeff Clark got into a heated argument, and Collier nearly got arrested. He never returned on his ski.

Maverick’s wasn’t the only place where surfer/ski vibes were boiling. By the winter of 1995-’96, there were as many as eight tow-in teams zooming around the North Shore of Oahu. The surfer/PWC wars started all over again, but this time it was surfers getting mad at other surfers who had been become believers in tow-in surfing. The Unridden Realm had become The Overwhelmed Realm. Where there once had been isolation and privacy, there now was Water World.

Thanksgiving Day 1995 was The Day it Officially Got Weird, with eight tow teams appearing at an Outer Reef that had been oh-so-lonely only the year before.

There were bad vibes between paddle-in and tow-in surfers. Brother turned against brother. Surfers had become gearheads and a few surfers asked out loud, “Is nothing sacred?”
Missing Eddie

In December of 1995, George Downing made a tentative call for the Quiksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau at Waimea Bay, the world’s most prestigious big-wave contest. Downing waffled a bit on the call in the morning, which sent invited surfers Darrick Doerner, Laird Hamilton and Ken Bradshaw down to Outside Backyards, thinking the contest was off. When Downing changed his mind and green-lighted the event, Mel Pu’u drove his ski from Waimea to Backyards to let the three know what was going on. The three surfers were torn between towing into giant, beautiful bluebirds at Backyards and honoring the Aikau family by making it to Waimea. Bradshaw went for Waimea. Hamilton and Doerner stayed at Backyards.

Even though he opted for the contest, that morning at Outside Backyards made a believer out of Ken Bradshaw.

“I saw Laird ride some beautiful waves that day,” Bradshaw said. “I was just in awe. He looked like a John Severson cartoon.”
Biggest Wednesday

There were a lot of superlatives being thrown around during the winter of 1997-’98. Meteorologists were calling for a nasty season of storms and swells in the North Pacific. Taylor Knox paddled into the biggest wave of the winter and won $50,000 at the K2 Big-Wave Challenge. And the boys at Maverick’s were pushing the limits that Mark Foo delineated in the ’80s.

But none of this compared to January 28, when Ken Bradshaw and Dan Moore teamed up with about eight surfers for an assault on a North Shore reef called Outer Log Cabins. This was a historic day, as one of the biggest winter swells in 30 years produced giant, perfect 35-foot surf. Bradshaw and Moore launched from Backyards, made it through a horrendous shorebreak and motored west a few miles to Outside Log Cabins. There they joined Cheyne Horan, Noah Johnson, Aaron Lambert, Shawn Briley, Troy Alotis, Tony Ray, Ross Clarke-Jones and Michael and Milton Willis in the biggest waves ever ridden.

One of the first waves of the session was one of the best. Driving a Yamaha 1100 WaveVenture, Moore whipped Bradshaw into a thick lump that transmogrified into an unthinkably humongous wall. It was almost without question the biggest wave ever ridden by a surfer. Unfortunately, the North Shore paparazzi got caught with their pants down, and only one guy, filmmaker Bill Ballard, caught a Zapruder-like image of Bradshaw’s wave with a video camera. The wave is easily 12 times over Bradshaw’s head. He called it a 45-foot wave with an 85-foot face. But Moore, who had the best view, was the most impressed. “Hey, that wave was behind Kenny and he couldn’t see it,” Moore said. “I was on the ski looking back at Kenny and I could not fricking believe how big that wave was. My God, I’d never seen anything like it. Good thing Kenny didn’t look back. He might have had a heart attack.”

The rest of the day was death or glory surfing. Bradshaw said he rode “in excess of 30 waves.” “At least three of them were 35 feet, but they were at least 20 feet smaller on the face than that biggest one.” One of those lower Richter scale waves was well-documented by photographer Brian “Hank” Stephen, and it became a poster titled, “The Biggest Day Ever Ridden.”

That same session, Tony Ray found, much to his alarm, that his Yamaha Wave Runner III 700 didn’t have enough juice to outrun a big wave, and he got swallowed up by a mountain of whitewater. Ray and his partner Ross Clarke-Jones spent the next two hours drifting a dead PWC down the coast in 30-foot open ocean swells. They were less afraid about dying than they were pissed that they were missing history.

Although not as well covered, January 28 was also historic at Jaws. Buzzy Kerbox gave witness: “Jaws was very, very heavy that Wednesday, but for some reason, it keeps getting forgotten. Although the swell direction wasn’t perfect, it was the biggest day ridden out there. Laird Hamilton, Dave Kalama and I all rode huge waves that raised the bar for big waves at Jaws forever. Ken Bradshaw did ride a monster on Oahu, but I believe that some waves at Jaws were just as big.”
Big Friday At Maverick’s

Peter Mel was in Hawaii for Biggest Wednesday, but he watched it all, in awe, from the roof of a house. “I’ve been around the ocean all my life, but I’d never seen it do what it was doing that day.” Two days later, Mel was back in California, waiting for that same swell to hit Maverick’s. The K2 Big-Wave Challenge was still going and the $50,000 was still up for grabs. That day at Maverick’s, there were $50,000 waves breaking every couple of minutes. Maverick’s was giant, offshore and perfect, but off-limits to all but the suicidal. Flea nearly drowned when he wiped out, got nailed by a 25-footer, then snagged his leash on a rock and was held fast as the Pacific Ocean pounded him. Later that morning, Mel was in position for an absolutely perfect 25-foot wave. Either he couldn’t get it or didn’t want to get it — or both — but a $50,000 wave passed between his legs. Maverick’s had entered the Unridden Realm.
Perry And Doug’s Big Adventure

That same Friday, after the wind had come up and most of the normal paddle surfers had given up, Santa Cruz surfers Perry Miller and Doug Hansen teamed up on a Yamaha WaveVenture 701 for a tow session out at Maverick’s. Ignoring grumbling from the more traditional paddle-in surfers, Hansen towed Miller into a couple of monster waves, both rides resulting in spectacular wipeouts.

A photographer from San Francisco named George Nikitin took photos of Miller’s rides and they appeared in newspapers all over the United States the next day. Once again the surfing world was set on its ear, and once again, controversy erupted. “I wasn’t happy because they wouldn’t even paddle in on a 10-foot day, yet they decided to tow on a 25-foot day,” said Jeff Clark. “I was afraid they would end up getting killed and then everyone would be banned. You have to respect the arena you’re playing in.”
Little Sister

The winter of 1998-’99 was a little sister to the previous winter. El Nino had been replaced by La Nina, and meteorologists were now predicting a clear, cold winter with lots of clean surf in the North Pacific. They were right. Mark Renneker, a meticulous man who keeps track of such things, recorded 82 notches, or days surfed at Maverick’s, during the La Nina winter — a record.

It wasn’t until the end of the season, though, when someone picked up where Miller and Hansen left off. On March 21, Ken Bradshaw flew to Half Moon Bay with his tow-in partner, Dan Moore. On a big but not huge day, they joined locals Peter Mel, Flea Virostko and Ken “Skindog” Collins to push the limits of Maverick’s with skis and ropes. Bradshaw and Moore were the more experienced drivers, and they teamed up once again to make history. This time, Bradshaw returned the favor and towed Moore into a whopping mother of a Maverick’s wave. With the 30 mph boost, Moore got into the wave early, pulled up into the hook and boldly went where few men had gone before, disappearing inside a cavernous tube and then getting blown out by the spit. “You should have seen what was going on behind Danny on that wave,” Bradshaw said. “It was like Jurassic Park.”

The wave was enough to convince the Maverick’s locals that they had some serious catching up to do. For the spring of 1999 and into the summer, Peter, Skindog, Flea and some of the other Santa Cruz guys practiced their driving and tow surfing at beachbreaks deep within Monterey Bay and along the reefs north of Santa Cruz.
Opening Day Surprise

The practice paid off on October 28, 1999 — opening day at Maverick’s for the 1999-2000 season. “The 28th was the day we had been training for,” Mel said. “We had been towing in for months; we were ready.” Mel, Collins, Flea and Clark calmly hotdogged 25-foot Maverick’s as if they were surfing 6-foot Pleasure Point: stalling, fading, doing giant carves and boldly going where few surfers had gone before. Mel was the stand-out surfer that day. Like Hamilton, he used his 6-foot-plus body frame and weight to handle all the speed and chop that Maverick’s put in his path. He caught more than a dozen waves, flying on all of them, doing 50-yard, mid-face carves and just generally hauling ass. One wave of Mel’s was particularly memorable. He stalled for a little too long behind the peak and found himself trapped at the bottom of a 20-foot, 50-yard section. He turned his board up the face a little bit, tapped into some of that abundant speed and power, and transformed a certain wipeout into a monster adrenaline rush. “When I came out, my heart was almost pounding out of my chest.”

There had been other tow incidents at Maverick’s going as far back as the early ’90s, but October 28 was a hallmark day. This was The Day They Got It Wired.

After that early start, the rest of the 1999-2000 winter was relatively slack for tow surfers at Maverick’s. January 31 and February 2 were tow days, the first one big and gray and gnarly, the second day big and blue and too offshore for paddlers. But the surfing on these two days was transcendental. Once again, the surfers were hotdogging monster Maverick’s, toying with it, fading and stalling and pulling into the barrel.

They did indeed look like “John Severson cartoons.”

All of a sudden, Maverick’s turned into a motocross track. On the good days there would be a half-dozen tow teams in the lineup, as paddle surfers scratched their heads and wondered if they should go out and spoil the show.

Meanwhile, in Hawaii, new teams of tow surfers were showing up at places like Phantoms, even on days that were well within the realm of paddle surfers. North Shore chargers like Shawn Briley, Noah Johnson, Tom Carroll and Troy Alotis were doing nonstop laps on days when they would have been happy to catch three or four waves an hour.

Not everyone was keen on the Wave Runners. Grant Washburn agreed to tow guys into waves but has yet to be towed into a wave himself. And Doc Renneker threatened to go to local authorities and have all PWC banned, as Maverick’s is within a national marine sanctuary.

The first winter of the new millennium ended with the Quiksilver Maverick’s Big Wave Event in early March. As the world’s best big-wave surfers stumbled and floundered into big, gnarly Maverick’s, the guys who had been tow surfing and the witnesses wondered about the future of their sport. The advantages of tow surfing were obvious to anyone who watched the elegant tow sessions of October 28, January 31 and February 2 and compared that with the over-the-falls flailing of the Maverick’s event. Would tow surfing eventually supercede paddle surfing? Was this a farewell to arms?

For such a fast sport, tow surfing has had a relatively slow progression. In 1972, Fletcher rode one of the first Jet Skis. In 1981, he took it to Hawaii. In 1991, Kerbox and Hamilton experimented behind a Zodiac on the North Shore. By 2000, Mel, Collins and Clark were toying with giant barrels at Maverick’s.

Who knows where tow surfing will be in 10 years, 20 years. As the sport of king’s motorized spin-off gets even more popular, and as the tow surfers themselves get better, they will ply their trade on newer, bigger, meaner waves. One such spot sits 100 miles off the Southern California coast, in open water — a shockingly perfect giant wave called Cortez Banks that may offer the biggest ridable surf in the North Pacific. Plans are already afoot to ride the place under the code name Project Neptune.

Mel, Kalama and others talk about the inevitability of a tow contest. Bradshaw has worked on it, as have others. There are enough tow teams in the world to make it viable, but a format and rules are needed. Beyond that, the ocean is the limit. Tow surfing has given surfers the ways and means to ride anything the ocean throws at them.

Mark Foo was one victim of this progression in big-wave surfing, but his question echoes: “Is it surfing?” If you ever find yourself in Northern California or Hawaii during a big winter swell, go sit in the channel at Jaws or Outside Alligators or Maverick’s, and try to have a conversation with that adrenaline-filled man who has just ridden a toothpick at 40 mph with an aquatic dinosaur snapping at his heels. If he can hear your question above the roar of the ocean and the mad beating of his own heart, here’s how he’ll answer: “Who cares?”

By: Swell.com

* Incredible passion for surfing and living life to it’s fullest!
* Fitness fanatic, strict vegetarian, drug and alcohol free.
* Inspirational spokesperson, ideal role model, humble, articulate.
* One of the highest profiled big wave surfers in the world.
* Ken’s “childlike” sense of humor and charming good looks have made him an extremely popular personality world wide. (A big kid in a big man’s body.)
* Always takes time to shake a hand and introduce himself, respects recognition and takes it in his stride.
* To date, has surfed the biggest wave on the North Shore of Oahu, standing at a record-breaking 85-feet plus! January 28, 1998.
* Pioneer of tow-in-surfing off the outer reefs of Oahu, Hawaii.
* Has amazing focus and sense of personal direction.
* Pioneer of paddle surfing off the outer reefs of Oahu.

Ken has achieved more in his short life span than most others would even dream about, let alone accomplish. Born and raised in Houston, Texas. Ken sacrificed a promising football career by choosing to follow his heart and soul and go surfing. At the ripe young age of 17, he ran away to Encinitas, California, in order to find the ultimate wave. Since then surfing has been his life.

He made a mark for himself in every line-up that he entered, but knew that all he really wanted to do was ride big waves. Three years later he moved to Hawaii and settled into Oahu’s North Shore. It didn’t take long for him to become accepted and respected for the big waves, which he excelled in instantly. He conquered 20-foot Waimea that is renowned as the “meanest” big wave sight in the world, 15-foot Sunset Beach, and numerous other outer-reef locations that no one in their right mind would even consider trying to paddle out. But, Ken did, he wanted it the most. He has the passion, the desire, and the incredible fearless attitude it takes to live his dreams.

The most amazing thing about this man is that he still possesses these qualities and more; Passion! Desire! Fearlessness! Focus! Determination! That is what it takes to put your life on the line each and every day, especially when your ultimate dream is to ride the biggest wave in the world and survive to tell the tale. On January 28, 1998, Ken’s dream of the past 25 years finally became reality. But, I’ll let him tell you that story as he has told hundreds of others. It was undoubtedly the “biggest” wave ever ridden! Surfed on an outer reef that has never been surfed at that size before. Dreamed about, but never surfed.

Some label him as a maniac, others think he is crazy, but everyone refers to him as a legend. Ken Bradshaw is a legend and a hero. But he is also just a human being who has so much passion, desire, and confidence that he will do what it takes to turn dreams into real life adventures. He is a true inspiration.

By: Layne Beachley