Surf’s Up--Way Up--for This Sport’s New Wave

While most are soaking up the summer sun and sorry to see it setting so quickly, there are some who can’t wait for winter and the violent storms it’ll bring.

Bill Sharp is one such man. A surf journalist by trade but a promoter by habit, he’s spending his summer vigorously planning for winter.

It was Sharp who dreamed up the K2 Big Wave Contest, offering a hefty sum for the surfer riding the biggest wave of the El Nino winter of 1998-99. Critics predicted someone would die trying to cash in, but instead, Carlsbad’s Taylor Knox conquered a 52-foot wave off Ensenada and walked away $50,000 richer.

Sharp also helped organize last winter’s Swell XXL contest, and the historic expedition to Cortes Bank, a seamount 100 miles west of San Diego, where San Clemente’s Mike Parsons negotiated a 66-footer--and took home a Swell sum of $60,000.

Now the publisher of Surf News in Costa Mesa is trying to put a surfer atop a 100-foot wave, an accomplishment until recently considered unthinkable.

The elaborate expedition-style event, made official this week, is called the Billabong Odyssey. With corporate backing from the international surfwear company, Sharp has enlisted a logistics team and many of the world’s top big-wave riders to be part of a three-year global journey to places little-known or unknown.

“So far, the history of big-wave surfing has been written at a handful of spots around the world that are convenient,” Sharp said in a news release. “But we’re now realizing that the oceans are filled with breaks that regularly have bigger waves which no one has ever surfed before. Going after them is the ultimate man-against-the-sea adventure.”

The fairly recent advent of using jet-powered vessels to tow surfers on specialized boards into waves too big to paddle into has enabled surfers to conquer waves of incredible proportions. The Billabong Odyssey, undoubtedly, will be almost exclusively a jet-powered endeavor and involve an elite cast of characters.

They are Parsons, Kelly Slater, Shane Dorian, Peter Mel, Ken Collins, Brad Gerlach, Darryl Virostko, Laird Hamilton, Dave Kalama, Ken Bradshaw, Brock Little, Brian Keaulana, Tony Ray, Ross Clarke-Jones and Luke Egan. As of Wednesday, all but Hamilton had confirmed.

“These are the world’s best surfers and they’re all running around like 15-year-old grommets, they’re so excited,” Sharp said.

The Pacific Northwest will be targeted first, beginning this fall, and it is hoped the surfers will encounter waves even larger than those at Maverick’s, the notorious break off Half Moon Bay in Northern California.

“Although I’m not sure I want to see those waves,” joked Parsons.

Specific surf spots will remain secret--some might involve “guerrilla runs” in areas off limits--but a scouting mission to Washington during the final sizable storm of last winter revealed especially promising areas near the mouth of the Columbia River.

Three expeditions will take place each year: two in the Northern Hemisphere between October and March, and one in the Southern Hemisphere during its winter between June and August. Potential targets include remote islands within the Hawaiian chain, Chile, South Africa, Ireland, Tasmania, New Zealand and islands of the South Pacific.

The surfer riding the biggest wave each year will receive a cash prize of $1,000 per foot of wave-face height, and a “substantial” prize will be awarded “for any surfer successfully riding the legendary 100-footer.”

Said Parsons: “This isn’t about the prizes. Most of the surfers would probably pay to come along on something like this. The Billabong Odyssey is about going where no one has gone before. A thousand people have climbed to the top of Mt. Everest, but how many people have ridden an 80-foot wave? This is something special.”

North Vs. South

You’d be kicking yourself if you drove all the way to San Diego, climbed aboard an overnight boat and found yourself at the fishing grounds--off Los Angeles.

The way the albacore have been bouncing around, the San Diego captains aren’t sure which direction to travel.

Many went north Tuesday night, only to find Wednesday’s fishing spotty at best. They went south Thursday and posted good results. The Prowler, for example, reported Mexican (five-fish) limits of 12- to 25-pound albacore for all 17 anglers.

But they probably headed north again Thursday night, as word spread of much better fishing in U.S. waters, where there is no bag limit, just west of San Clemente Island.

Mike Conroy of the Aztec, which runs out of Pierpoint Landing in Long Beach, called in one of the best counts of the week: 157 albacore weighing 20 to 30 pounds, with a few close to 40.

Sorry, Charlie

When the Red Rooster III pulled into port at Lee Palm Sportfishing Sunday, on its deck were 29 bluefin tuna, 20 weighing more than 100 pounds.

That would have been thousands of dollars worth of sashimi, had it been caught commercially.

“The shame of it all is that since it’s sport-caught, it can’t be sold,” said Andy Cates, the vessel’s captain. “The shame of it all is that [the passengers] either traded it in for canned tuna or had it turned into fillets. But that’s really not what it’s about; it’s about the hunt.”

Indeed, finding bluefin tuna has been difficult enough for San Diego multiday boats. Getting them to bite has been even harder.

Cates’ passengers managed both in an area 200 miles south of Point Loma, after loading up on 20- to 30-pound albacore, then traveling west to an area with a sharp temperature break.

“The fish blew up on us really good--we threw bait on them and they were jumping all over the place,” Cates said. “We didn’t hook any at first and they moved on us, but then we hit them again, and hooked eight to 10 right out of the gate.

“The first few were small ones, 90 to 110 pounds. But the rest--the school stayed with us for three hours--were all over 120 pounds.”

Strong winds blew much of this week, stirring up the water and causing the bluefin to sink out of sight.

Down Periscope

Another gray whale migration is complete and results of the 2000-01 Gray Whale Census and Behavior Project are in. The most unusual sighting, by volunteers from atop Palos Verdes Peninsula: a submarine in April.

That was only one reason for the “late and very weird” description of the season by project director Alisa Schulman-Janiger.

Overall, observers counted 439 southbound and a record-low 752 northbound grays, compared to 500 southbound and 1,040 northbound the previous season.

The migration of an estimated 26,000 whales, from the Bering Sea to Baja California and back, started 2 1/2 weeks late, perhaps because of a late freeze in their home waters, which lessened the urgency to head south.

Schulman-Janiger said the late freeze, and more feeding time, also might have played a part in the whales appearing “robust rather than skinny” as in the previous two seasons.

The low counts were due at least in part to persistent fog hampering the viewing effort.

This isn’t to suggest that it wasn’t an exciting season for the 64 volunteers, who monitored the offshore migration from Dec. 1 and May 31. They identified between 16 and 18 other marine mammal species, including humpback whales, blue whales, minke whales, false killer whales, a fin whale, a sperm whale and, possibly, very rare northern right whale dolphins.

They were also surprised to see what was believed to be a great white shark measuring 13 feet.

Top volunteer was Joan Venette, who put in 944.5 hours during the season, upping her career totals to nearly 12,000 hours in 16 seasons.

Going With the Flow

The rafting season on free-flowing rivers is basically over, but dam-release rivers are still being run by outfitters, although some are being affected by the energy crisis.

An overview of the top prospects for the rest of July and August, courtesy of Whitewater Voyages: the Lower Kern (best conditions in California because of agricultural contracts requiring consistent releases); South Fork American River (increased flows through September, great for rafting); Middle Fork American (normal flows six days a week); Tuolumne (a poor May and June, but good flows expected through August).