For Some, Surfing Not Just a Day at the Beach

It’s a little past noon and Derek Ho is drying off after a brief surf session in six-foot, blown-out slop at Ehukai Beach Park, just up from the world-famous Banzai Pipeline.

It wasn’t his most enjoyable outing. The ocean has been muddied by weeks of torrential rain, whipped into a choppy mess by strong, northerly winds.

“The rivers flowing down from the pig farms have brought down the chicken manure and all that other stuff,” Ho says, shaking his head in disgust. “See that blue ocean way out there? Maybe soon it will come back in and take over again.”

Such is the hope of all who have made the seasonal pilgrimage to Oahu’s North Shore, and they number in the thousands, from the world’s top wave riders to photographers to contest organizers and event sponsors.

The Red Dog Triple Crown of Surfing is in its second leg here at Sunset and will culminate with a season-ending, bone-crushing crescendo beginning next week at Pipeline. With any luck, a new swell will hit, the offshore trade winds will replace the cross-wind northerlies, and the waves will thunder over the reefs the way they usually do: cleanly, powerfully.

Ho, 32, a world-class surfer who for the last 14 years has been competing on a circuit that has him traveling nearly nine months a year, doesn’t mind playing the waiting game--not with his two-acre spread just up the hill.

For the “outsiders,” living cramped in rented homes and condos, Ho has no sympathy, just as they probably had none for him while he was on their turf.

“You can see them running around like little chickens without their heads, like little mice looking for the cheese,” he says with a smile.

Like his brother Michael before him, Ho is a big cheese both here and abroad. He last won the world title in 1993 but has regularly placed among the top 22.

The nearly $500,000 he has earned in contests puts him among the top money winners, but he says the real money is made through sponsorships and endorsements.

“Oh, geez, some of these guys, they’re pulling in $30,000-$40,000 monthly checks, OK?” he says, as though even he can’t believe it. “But there’s only a handful doing that. Some of the other guys are all . . . well, you can add it up and they’re probably pulling in $100,000.

“We don’t get paid nearly half as much as those in the top professional sports get, but if you look back, we’ve come a long way.”

A long way indeed.

Randy Rarick, 49, executive director of the Triple Crown, remembers when winning a contest meant getting rewarded with a tin cup and a kiss on the cheek. Whatever prize money was awarded usually was spent that night in the local pub or, in some instances, went to the local pusher.

“These guys today know this is a job, not just a lifestyle,” Rarick says. “You can’t be stoned and a space case like the old days. Twenty years ago . . . a lot of these guys would either be in jail by now or flippin’ burgers somewhere because there was no opportunity for them in surfing.”

Ho, married with two children, does not take this opportunity for granted. He is up every morning by 5 and in bed every night by 10.

Asked whether he believes surfing has become too homogenized with too much emphasis on the business end, Ho looks out at the breakers, pauses for a moment, then shakes his head.

“It can be both a business and a lifestyle,” he says. “You see those 60-year-old men out there surfing? They’re just the forefathers that paved the way for us. Without them, I wouldn’t have made what I made in the last 15 years, and I acknowledge that fact.

“As long as these kids making the big money are respectful, then sure, let’s have it as a business. But you can’t forget the love of the sport, which is why it all started in the first place.”

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Today’s professional surfers couldn’t have accomplished what they have without photographers who splash pictures of them--in their sponsors’ apparel, of course--on the pages of magazines that are read by millions.

But while the surfers get the glory, the photographers get . . . mostly headaches.

“Competition is brutal,” says Bernie Baker, senior staff photographer for Surfer magazine. “There was a time when I genuinely made a living shooting, but it doesn’t work that way anymore.”

Baker, 45, who doubles as contest director for the Triple Crown, was asked about the nature of his business after a shoot during women’s competition at the OP Pro at Haleiwa, the first leg of the Triple Crown.

“I’ve only been severely slammed on the bottom once,” he says. “I dove down at Pipeline to go under a big wave and discovered that I was only in four feet of water--and the whole lip was crashing down on me. It hit me squarely between my shoulder blades and my back--boom!

“It blew off both swim fins and my [camera] housing. I came up with both elbows bleeding, both kneecaps bleeding, my swim fins were already down at Ehukai, and the water housing was in the current, drifting the same way. We got everything back, but I basically bled all day.”