Tow-In Surfing. A Mavericks Opinion

by Chris Dixon

The NYT Gets in on the Act.

Last February, I wrote an article for the New York Times on the tow-in surfing controversy at Mavericks. With the first northwest swells of the season reaching California, I figured I’d step out my role as an unbiased observer and throw an opinion or two in on the issue and where it might be going.

First of all, let me say that I’ve never surfed Mavericks. I’ve never driven up the PCH in the middle of the night amping on Minor Threat and shitty Circle K coffee with the very real thought in my head that I might die if things don’t go right. The biggest wave I’ve probably ever surfed was double-overhead Cottons or maybe a wintertime session at Honolua Bay when I certainly rode several waves far, far taller than me and gaped in wonder as the locals put themselves into places that had my heart in my throat. I don’t really have any big wave credentials, and I’m happy with that. I surf reasonably well, and a big day here in Southern Cal is enough to typically satisfy any jones I might have for a long drop-in.

I have been up-close to two big-wave contests in my life though. I once sat out in the boat at a Reef event at medium sized Todos Santos. A few weeks later, I watched a jaw-dropping Quiksilver event at Mavericks that was won by Flea Virostko.

The thing that struck me the most about being so close to waves like that was just how much more immeasurably powerful and fast they were than normal waves and how unbelievably ballsy anyone was who would try to catch them. Unless you've actually seen a wave like that in person, no magazine or video will ever do it justice. At the Quik event, I watched Grant Washburn put every bit of energy his huge windmill arms could generate into a macker that he barely caught – and wished he hadn’t. This was around the time that people first started tow-surfing at Mavs, and I remember saying to Rob Gilley, ‘damn, Washburn's wave was perfect, but there was no way he could ever have gotten the speed to make it past that bowl.’

How wrong I was.

Mike Parsons where no man has paddled before.

And that of course, is the gist of the whole tow-in thing. The physics of a little big man trying to get into a wave that’s just too damned big and fast. When I think of mild-mannered Evan Slater out there in the middle of the Pacific getting ragdolled by that monster he tried to paddle for at Cortez Banks, it still makes me shudder. Why the hell would he want to do that? I’m sure his beautiful wife wonders the same damned thing every day. Evan wanted to paddle for one of those Cortez waves, and paid dearly. Cleary, he found the forbidden zone for paddling, and just as clearly, the guys on jetskis blew that zone into oblivion.

There is no doubt that the jetski or personal watercraft has exploded every barrier we thought existed when it comes to getting into hairball waves. There's also no doubt that in the last few years, Mavericks has become a prime tow-in arena. But as you probably know, towing at Mavericks has come under serious scrutiny.

When I interviewed Mark Renneker on the subject, he likened tow-in surfing to the heinous old west practice of shooting Buffalo from a train. Jeff Clark likened it to looking back at the earth from the moon. Clark spent an hour with me railing against the hypocrites who have a problem with tow-surfing, but let their cars leak oil onto their driveways. "That’s a far worse source of ocean pollution than a jetski will ever be," he said. The eloquent Renneker went on for an equally long time on how tow-in surfing was an oxymoron: "You don’t have to paddle, you don’t’ have to catch the wave. More to the point – and what big wave surfing is all about -- you don’t deal with the drop. And the drop is where people fall, and get crushed, hurt and everything else. So when you eliminate those variables, it fundamentally is not really surfing. It’s some other water activity. It isn’t surfing as we understand it."

Consider the size of this paddle wave.

Renneker also claimed that the entire surf media has been co-opted by tow-in, citing in particular an infamous Indonesia article by my buddy Steve Barilotti that was attended by Peter Mel, Dave Kalama and Kelly Slater. The entire article revolved around towing – not into big waves, but medium-sized performance Indo waves. "That article was a phase shift," said Renneker.

I remember that there was a great deal of discussion about that article. I’m not going to point fingers or lay blame, but in my opinion, that piece crossed the line and gave credibility to tow-surfing in an essential wilderness, where the pursuit is completely inappropriate. Kind of like motocrossing in Yosemite.

Not long after that Indo article came out, I watched an idiot show up and tow a buddy into perfect, head-high waves at the pumphouse in Palm Beach, Florida. The water and air were full of blue chainsaw smoke, and the three or four guys out paddle-surfing were clearly pissed to have their session ruined. I asked a buddy of the skier taking pictures on the beach what gave him the right to blow the session for the three or four other guys out in the water, and he said, "that’s the future dude, didn’t you see that Indo article in Surfer?"

I’m not making this shit up.

Now Consider the Size of this Tow-In Wave. Which Issue of Surfer Would You Be More Likely to Buy?

Today, whether you realize it or not, a great many of the photos you see in modern surf magazines were taken after the surfer was towed into them. Even ones where he or she was made to look like he paddled for the wave. Is it wrong? Is it right? I don’t know, but it certainly creates a false impression, and turns surfing into skiing with a chairlift. It makes the photographer very happy too. He doesn’t have to wait for surfers to paddle back out anymore and gives him way more shots at the perfect photo.

But what the hell does Florida or Indo have to do with towing in at Mavericks? Well, I’ll parallel it to a comment Grant Washburn made. "The jetski is a guilty pleasure and I don’t like to be responsible for making a mess out here. We were out last night, it was a beautiful sunset, an amazing view. You could see the whales and the other animals, but at the same time, there’s this Daytona 500 mentality. I love it, but I hate it."

I think most of us feel the same way. When I see a jet-skier hovering outside of the lineup at Trestles, I fantasize about having a shoulder launched missile and blowing him sky-high. I’m sure the dolphins who were just frolicking outside the lineup feel the same way. When I see Flea, Pete Mel, Laird or Kalama carve a big, open faced turn on a macker, I’m just amazed.

But here’s the point where Mavericks is concerned. It doesn’t really matter how you or I feel. It doesn’t much matter if Jeff Clark loves it and Doc Renneker hates it. What will matter to the National Marine Fisheries Service, ultimately, is not passion, but science. And on that front, things don’t look too good for the tow-in crew.

The Late Great Jay Moriarty. How Big Would he have Gone in the New Millenium?

Here’s the rub. Personal watercraft are dirty. I may get bullshit emails from a few people saying that the new four-stroke models burn cleaner and blah-blah-blah. In October of 2002, that matters very little. Thanks to the boneheads in the PWC industry, who could have designed clean burning machines from the get-go, but put profit before responsibility, well over 90% of PWC’s in the water are horrendously polluting. Studies conducted on PWC’s built in the mid 1990’s found that the exhaust created by a two-stroke PWC running for seven hours was roughly equivalent to that created by 100,000 miles of driving in an average modern automobile with a four stroke engine.

Think about that for a second.

As of 2002, all PWC manufacturers have been legally mandated to switch to far cleaner four stroke engines, but it will be a long, long time before the hundreds of thousands of two-stroke PWC’s currently in use are gone.

I think it was Peter Mel who told me that his PWC used a four-stroke engine, and I’m sure that many towheads will be switching to them in the near future. But even if they burn more cleanly, that’s not the end of the problem. See, a whole lot of the coast up around here, Mavericks included, is a National Marine Sanctuary. This means that the ocean in these parts gets some of the highest protection in the country because it is full of whales, otters, dolphins, big sharks and scores of local and migratory birds – many of them endangered. When working on the NYT article, I spoke at length to officials with Surfrider and area Marine Sanctuaries, and they definitely feel that the science is behind a PWC ban.

Adam Repogle Discovering New Frontiers in His Own Backyard. Photo: Trefz.

So while exhaust pollution is a major concern, it’s not the only concern., All it takes is one kook to drive his PWC at high speed through a group of otters, to harass a flock of birds or to separate a mother seal from her pup. When this sort of thing happens, and someone on the shore or in the water sees or videotapes it, all PWC users suffer. Last January, a crew of guys towed in at Mitchell's Cove in Santa Cruz while the water was filled with paddle surfers. One of the tow-in surfers collided with a paddling surfer named Marc Thomas. This one incident subjected tow-in surfers to scrutiny like never before, and gave a great deal of ammunition to those who would shut PWC's down.

The National Marine Fisheries Service has reams of such incidents and scientific data to support a decision to ban PWC’s. They used such data two years ago to outlaw the machines in the vast Gulf of the Farallones Marine Sanctuary North of San Francisco. PWC’s are up for review along the 275 miles of coast in the Monterrey Bay Marine Sanctuary this year, an now is the time for those who ride the machines to get their shit together and come up with more than passion to boost their arguments.

Where Angels Fear to Tread, Hellmen Happily Go. Peter Mel, Photo: Trefz

In interviews, both Jeff Clark and Peter Mel made great arguments about the tiny percentage of the Monterrey Sanctuary they occupy when they tow-surf. They also made strong points about their own feelings as stewards of Mavericks and the negligible environmental impact they feel they have in that relatively small corner of the ocean – particularly compared to all the oily runoff from millions of Bay Area cars, and from dirty fishing boats in Half Moon Bay Harbor. Water rescue wonder woman Shawn Alladio and the Half Moon Bay Harbor folks also made great points about the safety factor of having jet skis in the water during code red conditions.

Among the several solutions discussed was a licensing system for tow-surfers. The liability issues with licensing are many, but it’s a solution that should be given serious consideration, and might go a long way toward creating a responsible image. The possibility of limiting PWC's to only to Mavericks only under certain conditions was discussed as well. While tow-in surfers may bristle at the thought of being restricted, they'll need to consider real regulation like this in the future.

If the Sanctuary Closes, Where Will We Find The Next Big Thing?

It seems to me that the bottom line is that someone in the Mavericks tow-surf community needs to step up and put their facts and some potential solutions together for the folks at the NMFS. Then they need to work for some sort of a compromise. Whether it’s Frank Quirarte, Shawn Alladio, Jeff Clark, Pete Mel the surf magazines or the companies like Quiksilver that benefit so enormously from the images they sell of Mavericks; someone needs to take the leadership role as the representative for tow-surfing. That representative will need to defend the tow crew’s point of view with facts and real-world proposals that will address the serious concerns paddle surfers and environmental groups have and allow you to keep towing. If emotion figures into your argument, you’re probably going to lose.

There are a lot of powerful and intelligent people out there who don’t like what you’re doing, and it’s up to you, the tow-in surfers to prove to those people that you can tow responsibly and within guidelines or limits. It’s not up to the regulators to come to you, it’s up to you to go to the regulators. You should also think twice about heckling speakers who disagree with your points of view, or threatening people over the Internet or elsewhere. The people who have a say in your surfing future are watching, and bad behavior counts.

I say all of these things at the risk of being heckled from both sides. But the bottom line is that in researching the story I wrote for the NYT, I found areas for compromise. The burden of proof, and the search for solutions however, lies on the shoulders of the tow-in surfers, because the most obvious solution is an outright ban. So it’s time for you guys to step up. If you don’t, then you and the very magazine that pays some of my bills will have to start looking elsewhere in the north Pacific for the Next Big Thing.

What do you think? Click here to post an opinion on the Bulletin Board.