Saturday, Jan. 12, 2008

Perfect winter storm sends surfers rushing to Half Moon Bay

Each winter, when huge, storm-generated swells batter the Northern California coast, the world's top big-wave riders are put on notice. Within a four-month window that typically begins in early December, contest organizers wait for ideal conditions before giving invitees little more than 24 hours to travel from wherever they are in the world to Half Moon Bay, about 20 miles south of San Francisco.

This year's call went out late Thursday. Banner was on his way to Oregon to compete in a tow-in surfing contest when his phone rang near Eureka. He turned the car around and started back.

"I've been trying to relax all day," he said Friday. "My heart's been pumping all morning."

Contest organizer Jeff Clark had been watching the weather all week, and saw his opportunity Thursday to get this year's contest going.

"With this storm lining up, coming at us from the International Dateline unobstructed, I wasn't going to let this one go by," said Clark, the surf pioneer who "discovered" Mavericks in 1975 and for about 15 years was the only one to surf it.

A big day at Mavericks requires a certain combination of meteorological events.

That began to play out Monday, when a storm with strong winds developed in the North Pacific, south of the Aleutian Islands. As it bulldozed across the ocean's surface, it generated a chain of moving swells that began marching in procession toward Maverick waves like the concentric ripples created by a stone tossed into a pond.

The swells are groomed into shape as they cross thousands of miles of deep, open ocean. If another storm gets in the way, or if the wind is blowing the wrong direction when they arrive -- the waves won't be right.

"It's a freak of nature for these multiple things to come into play simultaneously," said Mark Sponsler of Stormsurf.com, the forecasting service that helps organizers decide when to hold the contest.

Some winters, including last year, it never happens within the window of time set aside for the contest.

Today's will be the sixth contest since the Mavericks event was born in 1999.

The swells travel for five days before reaching the shallow waters of the Mavericks reef, about 1½ miles off Pillar Point.

What makes this break special is a small section of reef that juts out into deep water like a finger. This sudden change in depth forces the moving mass of water to heave upward as it rolls over the reef. Then gravity brings it crashing back down again.

The wave is so steep that Mavericks surfers and their boards often lose contact with the surface and free-fall down the face before hitting the water at high speeds as they try to outrun the powerful flood of whitewater churning at their heels.

If surfers lose their balance, they can be held underwater for what can seem like an eternity, pinned to the jagged reef, or pin-balled through the craggy rocks between the reef and the beach.

Over the years, Mavericks has claimed its share of broken boards and bloodied, humbled surfers. In 1994, Mark Foo, a seasoned big-wave surfer from Hawaii, died while surfing Mavericks.

The contest has become a lucrative event broadcast on network television and featured in magazines and newspapers. The winner earns $75,000.

Banner, 38, sees it as a chance to ride alongside some of the world's best watermen as the result of a lifetime of hard work and dedication.

"I don't surf a lot of contests," he said, "so it gives me a big rush. It's hard to sleep."