QnA: Garrett McNamara on OJ Simpson, Nelscott Reef and the downward spiral of paddle surfing.

Helping the kids.

What exactly is a nickel surfboard all about?
The board is worth about $1 million dollars and was made by a designer named Mark Newton. He also designed the Qantas Airbus. He’s an artist, as well. He’s known for his design work and for being an inventor. He built this basic black metal table through this special metal process he has — that exact same process he used on the surfboards we rode — that sold for $750,000. The way I see it, the surfboard we used, the surfboard that’s going to be used as the showpiece/centerpiece of a movie, has got to be worth at least $1 million dollars.

Really? Are you going to sell this nickel surfboard when you’re done with it?
I’m keeping in it. I’m keeping it in my garage. They might think they’re getting it back, but I don’t think so. The things is wasted, but it looks cool. We hit everything with it. We hit Kealii Mamala (McNamara’s tow-in partner) in the head with it; it hit the reef in Chile, Japan and Tahiti. We hit jet-skis with it. We even lost it for two days in Tahiti, but it came back with one fin.

Big wave season is now upon us. How’s that all looking to you?
The waves are just starting to unload and I thin it’s going to go loony! It’s just going to go off, from here on out. We’ve got back to back to back low pressure zones lined-up with surf up to 30-feet high coming in right now.

Where is this place you speak of?
We’re going up to Nelscott Reef in Oregon for a tow in contest (Note: The 2006 Nelscott Reef Tow In Classic, scheduled for this Friday, December 8). Then we’ll either do Shark Park, Cortes or Maverick’s.

So these will be your three key points of interest this winter?
Yep, up north or down here. Every spot. I watch it all. But the weather has been really unpredictable. One day, the winds are perfect, the next day, they’re shitty. Right now the winds are shitty everywhere, except Maverick’s, so I’ll be at Maverick’s. Shark Park was favorable yesterday. Things are heating up now. It just did. It’s not going to stop for a couple of months.

We’re into the first week of December. So is this where you’ll base yourself for the winter season?
Mother Nature just makes my call. I go wherever I got to go. I could end up in Europe in a week. My life is an endless winter. All year, every year, I go to the southern hemisphere in the summertime, winter time is northern hemisphere. Everything is a hit and run and in and out, but this area — San Diego — is my hub to go either this way or that way. This is my home away from home. San Diego is my home away from home.

Garrett and Ikaika

If you had to look into a crystal ball, where do you see the biggest waves spooling-up this winter?
Right now I would say Maverick’s and Shark Park. Later, though, I think it’ll be Cortes Bank. Cortes is hard to predict. They don’t say how big the swell is going to be and there is nothing blocking the swell from hitting anything there, so it gets a lot bigger than they predict. The biggest wave ridden in the history of surfing, as soon as we get the right swell, will be at Cortes Bank. It’ll be, you know, 100, 150, 200-feet. But I’m calling, probably, 100-to-120-feet at the most. I have a wife and kids who don’t really have an interest in me riding a 200-foot wave, so I’ll keep it at 120-feet. No ifs, ands or buts about it.

If you were able to make one wish this winter, what one thing do you most want to achieve this season?
What would I achieve? Okay, what’s going on? What I’m focusing on now is the circuit that has been created for tow-in surfing. There’s an organization now backing it and it’s a very organized organization called the APT World Tow-In Surfing Circuit. (Note: A three event tour: The North Shore Tow-In Surfing Championship in Oahu, Hawaii; Red Bull El Gigante Viene Tow-In Surfing Championship in Puerto Escondido, Mexico; Iquique, Chili International Tow-In Surfing Championship in Iquique, Chile). It’s going to be just like the ASP. It’s going to be all the best of the best tow surfers in the world are going to be in this. Surfing is going to go down and tow surfing is going to go up. Exactly what we all saw coming is now here. Surfing is the roots and is traditional and I love traditional paddle surfing, but you know a guy in Idaho looks at what we do and has his mind blown.

As far as big waves go, in you opinion, what’s the heaviest of them all?
My heaviest spot is Jaws.

How come?
Because there’s so much time to think and there’s so much water moving and there’s way more power there than any other place that I’ve experienced. Tahiti is just really quick and smooth and beautiful and glassy and if you do things right, everything is fine. If you do things wrong, you get pounded — but you don’t get pounded underwater for too long. Jaws… You go underwater for three football fields. You can be under for over a minute. Then you come up and you’ve got another wave on your head. So that’s another football field and all of a sudden you’re on the rocks. The rocks aren’t a bad place to be as long as you’re awake. You can be like, “I’m going to be a crab!” and climb on up there. If it goes wrong, you drowned, but your partners has got to come get you. At Jaws you’re in aerated water. Everywhere you go at Jaws, right from the beginning of the crash of the wave, all the way to the beach, it’s aerated water so a flotation device doesn’t work. A flotation device only works in hard water with no air. It takes a long, long time for the water to get all that air out of it at Jaws.