Im curious to learn about the biggest beatings you have taken during your lives surfing. Mine was paddling out at big salt creek and getting caught inside. What's your story
Iv had a few pretty bad ones but the last bad one I had was in the fall I believe. The forecast was calling for chest high waves, and for some reason I confused the tides. So I thought it was high tide when it was low tide. Usually I bring two boards but this day I only brought the long board not expecting anything epic. I get there and it's bigger then forecasted and steep as eff. So I paddle out and made it out very easily, was feeling good even though I was on the wrong board, I'm comfortable on the LB. I paddle for my first wave, the wind held me up in the lip, I'm trying my hardest to get the nose going down the wave, but I wasn't going anywhere. Then I air drop. When I landed I must of exhaled. Next thing I know is there was a explosion of water and I was getting rag dolled. The hold down wasn't to long but I ran out of air real quick. When I came up my vision was blurry for a second then I was fine. Scared the crap out of me. I paddled outside and sat for a good 20 minutes regaining my composure then had a great session.
One of my worst was at my home break on LI. me and a buddy of mine went out. dark gloomy cold april afternoon. about chest high with good power behind it. my friend caught a wave and Im sitting out side when I notice a huge wave coming in... Its larger than any wave that we had seen all day and Im in the impact zone for this rogue beast. I start paddling my ass off towards it and I just barely, and I mean just barely got under it... I pop out from my desperate duck dive only to see its big brother on the way in and that one is out even further.... Im paddling now and starting to get nervous and I just barely make the duck the dive.... when I see yet another monster further out!!! I can't make it so I ditch the board.... the beatings go on for 3 more waves. Im barely getting back to the surface to gulp air before I have to go under in between every wave.... then no more waves like that came in. just back to the regular waves we had had all day. My buddy told me he got washed up to the shore and couldnt even see out to where I was over the white wash coming in. lol. I was def nervous during it.
One of my worst was at my home break on LI. One of my worst was at my home break on LI. One of my worst was at my home break on LI. One of my worst was at my home break on LI. ha, benny.
mine was memorable cause bad ....laniakea, the usual 4/6 ft stuff, i duckdived and got pushed down solid 20+ feet under....clutching my 7/6 so hard i palm-dented, over and over i rolled. eyes bugged open then blackness crept in from around the edges...held on to stick and was delivered topside...shaken; scared.
first off,that wave is not a 10ft set. ok my worst wipeout which im sure I said before in many other threads,nor'ida swell in November,dont remember what year,maybe 5 or 6 yrs ago.surfline did a swellstory on it but it no longer exists.anyway the waves were as big and epic as they could get in ny.maybe even 12ft sets.anyway I was surfing,blah blah,rode to the beach,did the jog back up to the jetty to get back out,start paddling backout all psyched,get over the first 3 waves,duckdived the next 2,when I thought I was on the outside a cleanup set rolls through.now I don't want to exaggerate or anything,u know when ur laying face down and a big set comes at u,like big,maybe 12-15ft,atleast 10ft,30 ft by the si standards,and I tried to paddle up it and I knew I wasn't going to make it,i ditched my board while I was in the lip,and down with the lip I went,i thought I was in deep water,but I hit the bottom so hard,and got tangled up in my leash,so when it finally let me up,i couldn't kick and I got sucked back out in a monster rip,that usually forms after a monster set,and im kicken but my legs aren't moving,i pulled the quik realese tab and pulled it off,and eventually got out of it.it was the first and only time I actualy yelled "help!!!!"but nobody helped.there were only maybe 6 other people out all scattered throughout the 2 jetties.I yelled help because I was hogtied btw,not because I was scared lol,even tho I was.but it was a true test of fitness and endurance,and I eventually paddled back in without catching a wave and I sat it out the rest of the day.this was at gilgo in ny,think that's what they call it,idk.somebody in rockaway actually died that day.it was heavy.im sure theres a few people on here that remember that swell,wasnt too long ago.and when I surfed the inlet during bill when there were solid 15-18ft sets,it wasn't even close to the heaviness of that day.
[video=vimeo;8189630]https://vimeo.com/8189630[/video] this is the only source I could find for the swell,at 42 seconds,u can see one of those clean up sets making its way in,it was doing that all day,and that's what I got blasted with.im sure most of u are like big deal that aint shyt,but im no worldclass surfer or heavy waterman.that was all the heaviness I could handle
Lets see... - Caught inside at the boneyard at Calafia, Mexico on a TOH day. 12ft at like 22second or something crazy like that. No way outta there. Thought I was gonna die that day. Made it back out in one piece and didn't take off on another wave for like an hour. Just kept backing off. Got another one, got confident and was fine after that. - La Fonda, Mex (yeah, sounds lame) but it was a solid 10-12 foot day. Looked perfect and WAAAAAY smaller from the cliff and the walk down. Broke a leash that day. Broke a board. I was the only guy out after the guy in front of me snapped a board and ended up below the campgrounds like 300 yards north... When my board broke, the current almost took me all the way around the point. It was sucking me out bad. I had to just let go and float for a while cause the ocean was just pulling me. Finally hit a non-rip and swam again.. Made it to shore. My wife was crying, screaming at me. Thought I was dead cause she saw the snapped board on the beach and didnt see me for about 20 minutes. - A few really sketchy times on Sunset Cliffs. I posted the story in another thread a few days ago. Wont relive the whole thing, but I broke a few toes and saw people just get mowed down... A mile out at sea, 15-20 second hold downs... At least that was on US soil where the coast guard choppers and lifeguard boats had our backs. They would have eventually found me floating out there. Hopefully still alive =) I could go on and on. But those were the few times where I was literally scared for my life. Like, sitting out in the ocean thinking, WTF am I doing here right now. At this moment, on this day, at this spot on this swell in a third world country... Is this how its gonna end? I guess thats just human instinct kicking in a reminded you that you are an idiot for doing what you do.
In 95 at Mata Palo Cr. Rock bottom point break. It was like a wave machine. each one breaking the same. Beautiful over head rights. Take off point(before the landslide) was by a house sized boulder. Was out for an hour and paddled back to take off point and a waves was pitching. punched thru and there was this giant already coming down. easy 18, 20'face. hit me in the back, pulled by trunks off and held me down for a while. I grabbed my trunks with my toes, then popped up to see another another coming down. then another. The last one landed outside of me and blew me up with the white water. And the next thing I realized, I was on the beach with my trunks still between my toes. After I got them on, I was looking for my wife cause I figgered she'd be freaking. She was walking away several hundred yards down the beach, which, back then, was only 6 to 8' wide. She stopped, peeped into the jungle, bolted into the water swinging a stick. she heard rustling, then a growl.
I was surfing a reef in la jolla on a day I should not have been out. Took one on the head as I was paddling out that just pushed me deeper and deeper. I thought I was gonna drown. It was only about 30 seconds, but getting rolled like that really makes it feel longer. I ended up climbing up my leash because I had no idea which way was up. The picture was from a different but similar size day, same spot.
Worst and scariest are two different things to me. Worst was probably being caught on the inside, hurricane swell, straight east at low tide, home break in MD. Just friggin unloading in 4 feet of water. Paddled for a wave saw the bottom drop out and pulled back. Too far in to get back outside and had an over head bomb land right on me, pick me up and dump me twice before I could get the heck out of there. One of those days that the water beachside is rushing like a river literally down hill into the suckout, uhhgg. Im shaken up just thinking about it. The scariest for me was at Punta Mango El Salvador. Perfect day with medium sized perfect waves. There were two swells running. The bigger sets where perfect but the smaller waves were breaking towards the rocks. I took an in between wave, kicked out and saw a set of mackers bearing down on me. Got hit my 5 walls of white water that drove me into barnacle, oyster shell encrusted rocks and tore my thigh up. It was scary because we were out of the way of any hospital and I wasn't looking forward to a trip to a Central American ER. One of my buddies nailed his head on a rock shortly into the session already. I sat wide the rest of the day and nailed the tails of some beauties and left the jacking outside waves to everyone else.
Man, I love that spot, especially summer...crazy, though. Was this a summer or winter swell? My scariest beatdown was at the Pemex Jetty a few clicks south of BM's, August of '84. Huge south swell, about TOH and a north current from hell. Surf breaking in front of the seawall was at least 15' and you could fit 3 VW Vans inside the tubes, easy. Sounded like a wrecking crew lighting off dynamite. Caught 1 wave and went in...said "eff that".
If thats a 10 foot set, then iv surfed 30 foot waves. Worst beating was probably 20 + waimea bay shore break because it dumps you directly into the sand . Worst hold down was out in La Selva Beach California 15 foot swell maybe Jersey during a hurricane as well
This thread is like a confessional catharsis of our tattered souls, never to be mentioned to the wives, gf's or mothers lest they prohibit our future charging. I like reading these threads but then part of me doesn't since it makes me relive some hard to forget instances of gnar. Too exhausted by now from the recovery to walk through it mentally once more but the lessons thankfully remain. Much, much more prudent now. But I also feel at times that the more you know the less you charge freely. Which can be a good thing when it comes to living to surf another day. Scobey makes me laugh when he talks about his hold down "only" being 30 seconds. Like that's some cake walk! You felt it brah, 30 is plenty. chich was mistaken for an aboriginal spear fisherman that day in CR frolicking the shore nekked. Question chich, you had the dexterity and ability to focus on catching your fleeting trunks with your toes? Amazing. I guess the only thing worse than getting purified by 18-20' of aqueous nature is having that happen and losing your trunks.
i remember one day in late summer a few yrs ago I was out right before the swell peaked so it was a rising swell and it kept getting bigger and breaking farther out.i remember a set of steamrollers rolled through and there was probably like 10-15 other guys out,and I seen it coming from far away so I started paddling before everyone else realized,and im going over these sets barely making it just focusing on getting over and by the time they washed through and I was safe,i realized everyone got washed to the beach and I was the only one left out there.i was scared lol out there by myself,i was thinkin how the hell am I gonna get in.everyone stayed out afterwards.i stayed out for like 10 minutes when a long lull came so I paddled in safely.i said to my boy,ur just gonna leave me out there and not say anything lol.I didn't get wiped out or anything crazy,but it was a scary experience being the only guy in the ocean during a rising swell
About 10 years ago at the pig farm in Costa Rica. Waves where not that big... Out of no where and unexpected a cleanup set -broke way far out - unbelievably far- by the time it got to me in the lineup it was 10 to 15ft of foam white water- went under and was pinned to the bottom forever and couldn't move or know which way was up... Out of breath and still pinned - I climbed my leash
october, 2006 I think. Biggest south swell in 10 years supposedly. An ex navy seal that I worked with who was mr. "Looking for bug wave guy" had always talked about chasing waves. One night he warned me about the swell and told me he wanted me to go down there. 2 am the next morning going he calls me... talking about going down there an hour later. I tell him to pick me up. Made it before sunrise. We cracked it. I remember standing at the hotel looking at it. It looked perfect as ****. Chris slapped 5 bucks in the Mexican hotel attendants hand, we suited up and walked down the back stairs. We paddled out in that little cove with mushrooms. Paddled the whole ways around the point which was crazy anyway. He told us we could not touch mushrooms. Don't even look at the guys. One of the only heavy things compared to surfing that crazy wave was the even craziest paddle back into the north mushroom cove spot. Underwater exposed rock bar/reefs. Catching a left into a right riding your board on your stomach trying to pull back left and not smash into the sea wall. Talk about needing a dosxx. Maybe there was an easier way in. But by crazy boy took me on an adventure. I was like man, don't ever Call me for that **** again man. It was too intense. No **** is was not the biggest wave I've ever surfed but it was hands down the nastiest. 15 foot top do bottom draining faces into a rocky exposed point I to a freight train wall into a bone yard. Popolta supposedly was really good before the median military dumped cement and rocks off the point and killed the wave. Always wanted to surf a lefty on that point. That sw swells delivered total carnage waves
I just was telling somebody in a thread about those lj reefs. I've been destroyed on a 5-6 foot day there u duck way under the wave and face and there is a secondary force that just rails you back over the reefs. Just when u think u r deep enough that second energy holds u down. It's so shallow there is no avoiding it. It's like getting body slammed right when u think u about to get a breath of air. It just spooks you and take u back down. The energy just sits on the reefs and hold there. No relief until the set is over.
