High Surf by Tim Baker

Author:Tim Baker [TIM BAKER]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780730449829
Publisher: HarperSports

‘The timing that is necessary to turn up at the right place on the right day at the right time to experience that really great ride, that timing goes with them, helps them ride the waves wherever they are, the energy waves, to be in synchronicity with them.’

JOHN PECK, PIPELINE PIONEER, FROM THE FILM RIDING WAVES

SURF LESSON #67

Actions have consequences

I have a screwdriver at my throat and a large, angry Hawaiian man performing his own North Pacific version of the Haka inches from my face, issuing graphic descriptions of my imminent, bloody demise.

Welcome to the exciting world of surf journalism.

Up until that moment, the surf magazine game had been a merry lark, a spectacular magic-carpet ride through the rarified world of my boyhood heroes and dream-like surf spots. Sure, we’d occasionally offended people with an irreverent and ribald editorial tone, but the worst threat I’d faced was a surf label pulling their ads or a piqued pro surfer refusing to grant an interview. This was all part of the game. But it still felt like just that—a game. As a kid from Melbourne’s eastern suburbs it was hard to fathom that anything I could do or say or write might have any real, tangible repercussions out there in the heady world of pro surfing. I felt like a spectator to it all, a kid watching TV or playing a video game. My Hawaiian high noon shook me abruptly out of that illusion.

Only the day before, I’d been cheering Johnny Boy Gomes on in the final of the Pipeline Masters, the world’s most prestigious surfing contest. I sensed some kind of spontaneous, public healing for the enraged Hawaiian surfing warrior as he blazed to glorious victory in the Banzai Pipeline’s death-defying tubes and the crowd roared its support. ‘We love you, Johnny,’ one American woman bawled, as he was chaired triumphantly up the beach.

It seemed a unanimous sentiment. Everyone knew Johnny’s gritty story of growing up tough on the rugged westside of Oahu, losing his mother to cancer when he was just thirteen, never really knowing his dad, drifting from neighbour to distant relative, scrounging for stray surfboards in the Makaha shorebreak because he couldn’t afford his own. Little wonder then, in later life, that he’d snap and snarl at the oppressive crowds that clogged his home waters every Hawaiian winter. That he’d become one of the great surfing talents of his time was a heart-warming achievement. I felt truly happy for him, awed once more by surfing’s redeeming powers, certain this glory and validation would soothe his infamous rage and bury our trifling old rift.

In recent years, Johnny had earned a fearsome reputation as a ruthless power surfer and a blood-curdling hothead with a hair-trigger temper. He once hit a female pro surfer, Western Australia’s Jodie Cooper, for daring to object to his hassling in the surf. He could cast a hush upon a surf break simply by paddling out. Non-Hawaiians crossed his line of sight at their peril.

I’d made

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