“Maui. Be there for Jaws next few days” the subject line of my email beeped. “At a friends, going there by boat, will be shooting from the ski” Dan Merkel’s message continued. It was Monday night and the trickle of surfers and photographers that had been watching the low pressure develop across the Pacific were arriving in town.
Joel Tudor and Leila Hurst had been surfing Honolua Bay, Luke Egan and local Clay Marzo were at Windmills. Shane Dorian, not quite making it through the Pipeline Invitational joined Maui surfers Albee Layer, Matt Meola, Kai Lenny and Paige Alms in the line-up at the famed big wave surf break, Pe’ahi. Even Cornwall’s Tom Lowe came to the party and by 9am the muddy car park was almost full, 4WDs crammed into any space found between the reeds and coconut trees.
A break like Jaws doesn’t have the same atmosphere as other surf spots. There is no media tent or organised catering service, no sign to point you in its direction from the Hana Highway and there’s the feeling that surfing is what matters. Kids hang out on the tailgate of their parent’s trucks eating plate lunches. Albee Layer’s mum cycled from who-knows-where, clad in lycra, with binoculars pressed to her face making sure the ski is there to pick up her son when Jaws clamps her teeth.
The swell seems to be coming from two different directions and there’s a distinction between the outside peak providing lefts and rights and the inside bowl. The Skullbase water patrol run by the Walsh brothers is onto it. “I’ll call in the sets” is radioed from the trucks on the hill to the jet skis in the line up; their position on the cliff top gives an unspoiled view of the open ocean. The Maui Fire Department is on hand but one officer I talk to later tells me, “These guys rescue themselves, they’re great. We did do a rescue yesterday but really we’re just here to help with the aftermath.”
The crowd on the hill isn’t your regular surf scene. The old boys still carry the same bushy moustaches they had back in their heyday and the gossip isn’t about Julian Wilson’s latest air but the stunt doubles that have been helping film Point Break 2. They are all friends of the guys here. As a set approaches the chat stops momentarily, eyeballs are pushed into viewfinders and the click-click-click-click of telescopic lenses digitalises a slice of surfing history.
The difference between the speed of sound and speed of light becomes glowingly apparent when watching big waves. On those larger sets the second wave draws veins of white water from the previous spill making the wave look more like a mountain. There’s a moment of slow motion as the surfer is held at the top, scratching in, and it’s not until they are halfway down the face that we hear the explosion of tonnes of ocean breaking at once.
It’s not as big as Jaws could be, but it’s beautiful. It’s a painted picture of a windless ocean and the colour of 40 or so ten-foot gun surfboards litters the channel like the rainbows you see every day in Maui. There’s a dozen or so jetskis and three motor boats, one of them lingering dangerously close to the left peak. Most of the line-up are regular surfers, but there’s a few bodyboarders on the inside right and someone out there on a stand-up. “Yeah, there’s a few resident tiger sharks here” I hear one of the water patrol say, “But they’re nothing to worry about.”
Before leaving the house in the morning I sat with a friend and watched a detailed surf report for Jaws, on the regular news. That’s how much of a part of life surfing is here. National Australian newspapers cover daily swell size and wind direction, but this description was tailored to Pe’ahi. During the sports news a reporter spent a few minutes with Marty Thomas on the beach at Pipeline getting the lowdown on why the contest wasn’t running. The wrong direction. Waiting for better waves.
There’s competitive surfing for fame and glory and the word is passed around about how great it is these big wave surfers can now make some money from their sport. But in Maui, you get the feeling that’s only a bonus, and the guys who surf Jaws did it long before financial support was a reality. There’s ropes tied to trees to help you climb down the steep hill to the beach and leashes tied to roots to help pull you back up. Tied on by surfers who’ve trampled this muddy pine littered pathway all for the sake of surfing a huge wave.
It’s now 11:45 and surfers are starting to come in. The sets have slowed a little and the wind is threatening to blow. It looks like the hardest part of surfing Jaws is getting back in through the pounding shore break onto large rocks. I watch a guy get rag dolled over the boulders and his board is broken in two by the time he manages to stand up. He paddled it in in one piece.
Back in the car park I message a friend about surfing in the afternoon. Jaws is amazing, I tell her. She already knows. The pictures are already up online.
