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:: "The Psychos Project" - words and images by Greg Huglin // DolphinFoto.com |
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Prelude
January 27, 1998. 8:30 PM Paia, Maui
The NW Hawaii buoy is only reading 10' by 12 seconds and I'm on the phone to
Jack on Oahu. "Looks like the big swell hasn't hit the buoy yet, so
there's no need for you to fly over tomorrow. I know that it takes about
8-10 hours for the waves to reach us after they've hit the buoy so nothing
is happening for the next morning. The forecasters are wrong again.
Ten minutes later, my friend Dave Terry calls me and tells me he's online
and the buoy has jumped to 25' x 20 seconds, the biggest any of us have ever
heard. I call Jack and ask him to be on the early early flight to Kahului.
January 28, 1998. 6:00 AM "Big Wednesday"
Jack and I are attempting to haul 200 pounds of camera gear down the cliff
at Peahi. We can't see much of anything but we can hear the huge sets
breaking in the darkness. We're already filthy dirty and very aware that one
small mistake and we're over the edge and falling.
Dan Merkel and Eric Ippel are not far behind us, grunting and cursing as we
all try and see the narrow path that leads down to the best spot to film
from, which unfortunately this day happens to be at the bottom of the
cliff.
Jack and I tie our tripods to tree trunks and start frantically loading the
35mm film mags inside the black bag even though is still pretty dark.
At first light we see huge lines stretching to the horizon and the crew of
towsurfers slowly arriving. Laird catches a wave, is dwarfed by it, and
finally we get an idea of the size of the sets. It's huge, giant, hardly
comprehensible in size. It looks like those drawings we all used to make on
our schools notebooks. Huge waves, small surfer, but this is real. Laird
and the others catch the smaller waves, kind of the the shoulder because the
bigger sets look like a reverse Ala Moana, snowball and all, except they
appear to be over 70' high.
Jack and I alternate loading the mags and filming. We're so busy we can't
even use the still cameras we brought. By sunset we're completely wasted,
dehydrated, and have just barely managed to hump all of the gear to the top
of the cliff. We've shot 45 minutes of 35mm movie film and have seen waves
we never knew could be so big and so perfect. I'm thinking to myself that
there must be other waves this big closer to home. I just need to find a
spot where they'll break.
December 21, 2000.
The Point Conception buoy is 20' by 20 seconds and the satellite gif is
showing bright red on the outer edge of the Channel Islands.
I'm waiting at Santa Barbara airport for the 2 seater R-44 helicopter to
arrive from Los Angeles. I've asked for a pilot who has more than 5,000
hours and is experienced in flying a photographer. When the heli lands, out
pops a kid who looks like Richie Cunningham and appears to be about 12 years
old.
Seeing my skeptical look, he tells me he is 25, has 7,500 hours in a heli
and was a UN pilot on Cyprus when he was 18 and is also the mechanic for
this particular aircraft. So, off we go.
There's a sandbar a mile from an island that rises to within 20 feet of the
surface that we're aiming to check out. Many years ago I got a shot there of
3 sealions getting barreled on a 15' wave. It's a spooky place to be in a
boat and that was on a very small day.
From the chopper, the entire sandbar is a mass of conflicting swells
breaking in all directions, definitely no sign of a surfable wave.
As we come around the backside of the island, I see large sets breaking
outside of the spot I used to sport dive abalone many years ago. I've never
heard of waves breaking there, it's usually just about flat. Now, it looks
like 15-20' faces that are breaking far out to sea, but still unsurfable. My
pilot starts getting a bit nervous and asks me what I suggest if we have a
mechanical problem. I joke that we should try and make it to the kelp beds
and if we get out, we'll tie ourselves to the kelp and perhaps someone will
find us. He seems to think that's a good idea but I know that would be
hopeless. There's no way we could swim in thru the shorebreak and the water
is cold enough to kill us in a few hours. And for sure there will be no
fishermen in the area, they're all at Santa Barbara harbor over 50 miles
away.
In the distance I see some ruler edge lines breaking off a point of land is
right in the worst foul area I know of. As we get closer and drop down to 50
feet above the water, my sense of scale suddenly goes haywire. I can't tell
how big these waves are. There's a pyramid shaped rock inside the lineup
that looks like it's about 10 feet high. Much later I find out it's closer
to 20-30 feet high.
The sets are breaking outside the rock and are about half a mile long,
looking vaguely like Bells Beach but going left instead of right.
The wave is a bright Hawaii blue and I notice that after the sets break, the
whitewater is above the horizon. The wind is side-offshore at about 20 knots
and I'm thinking that I have some friends who are crazy enough (and
experienced from sailing big Jalama) to windsurf this wave, but only if we
can get out there by boat and safely return.
The pilot soon tells me we have only enough fuel to stick around for 20
minutes so I motor drive as many rolls as I can. I'm shaking like a leaf,
thinking about an engine failure and wondering why I'm spending $2,000 on
taking photos no magazine wants.
On the way back to Santa Barbara the pilot casually informs me that we may
have only 5 minutes of fuel left when we get to the airport and I tell him
to set the chopper down at Rincon if he's worried about it.
Better to lose it on the beach than going for a swim.
As we approach the runway, running on fumes, I'm thinking about what would
be an appropriate name for this spot. Only a nutcase would attempt it. It
can't be paddle-surfed and I'm not even sure that a windsurfer or towsurfer
could outrun that wave. So, I call it Psychos, and the attempt we'll make
will be called "The Psychos Project."
Four years later, Jack Johnson has gone on to bigger and better things and I've
teamed up with photographer/cinematographer David Puu. We've built special high-speed movie waterproof movie cameras that can shoot
safely from a jetski and we're getting ready.
Stay tuned.
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The Psychos Project