Aloha,
Tomorrow I will be in Las Vegas to do TV and Radio PR interviews for a charity event sponsored by Surfrider and Make a Difference Las Vegas at the Green Valley Resort. They will feature the Out There surf movie and concert. So if you can make it to, or are in Las Vegas on the evening of Aug 23rd don’t miss it. Kealii and I will be there signing posters. If you can make it you will be the first to see scenes from our mind boggling movie “Glacier Surfing”For more information click below.
Then the MAGIC men’s apparel Trade Show runs from the 25th to the 28th. I’ve been held down at Jaws and Teahupoo and Mavericks and a lot of other places so I guess I can handle a week in Las Vegas. I hear they have a wave pool there with 40 foot faces! Nah only a joke, ha ha ha…
Well the fun family days of summer and travels to the Southern Hemi, chasing the endless winter, are coming to an end. The ocean is starting to growl in the Northern Hemi. Already there was a early storm system that moved through the North Pacific - and today there is some surf on the North Shore, with most of the crowd still in town.
The ocean has been on the bubble in the Southern Hemisphere. I saw some photos of the session at Dungeons and I was thinking: Looked fun!!!. Would have loved to be invited to that Red Bull event! Still trying to figure out what how get in.
Right now on the cusp between summer and winter I have been taking care of home and the ohana, clearing decks for when the sleeping giant wakes up. We moved up Pupukea road so I am remodeling our house and putting two new homes on our lot. It’s a good feeling to build your own houses.
After that I will spend a month or two in Malibu doing RND on Stand Up Paddle Boards for all conditions, racing boards and paddles as well. Then I have to get down to San Diego for the final edit on our documentary about surfing glaciers. Coming soon to a theater near you!! First we have to have it ready by September 22 to enter it in the Sundance Film Festival.
While all of this is going on I will have my eye on the North Pacific for the first big winter swell, and the southern Pacific for the Chile tow contest. Also the first SUP tube riding contest, which will be at Puerto Escondido from September 19th - 22nd. Only 16 surfers from the world are invited, and I am very honored to be one of them.
Oh yeah, the Brazil contest is on hold as well. It is being held in Sam Paulo at Marisia’s, a fun beach break. The so called Brazilian Puerto?
Right now I am in vegas with my brother Mike and My son Titus. We are going to the fight Rampage and Forest I pic Rampage in the second. I will get pics and send them tomorrow.
Alaska is incredible. So big, so green, the air is so clean!!! The great unknown. Kealii and I went up to find out where we might find the 120 foot wave. We put a couple Sea Doos there, secure boats, planes helicopters and test the waters. We succeeded mightily and will be back there this winter. Stay tuned to find out if we succeeded.
Daniel, Jim, Nathan, Alex, and I had a dinner great at Chez Jays before going to Tahiti.
I have been tracking the swell for a week now. The first day I saw it and I got butterflies, and I never get Butterflies:) It still looks really good, solid 15 feet and no wind. I am a little concerned with the way it turns away from Tahiti. It has me worried that it won’t be as big as I am expecting.
In any case, I booked my ticket and Kealii is flying in in 2 hours. Get this: I lost my Passport while moving and I told my self if I can get a Passport in 2 days then it is a sign to go. Guess what? I am picking it up at 9:00 am and picking Kealii up at 9:40. Thanks to my buddy Mike Willison, AKA Malibu Mike, our West coast man we will pick the Passport up and then Kealii in his wave hunter equiptment van. Thanks Mike!!!
Garrett
PANDA here… I have been recently blessed with the opportunity to travel around the states with Oahu’s premier surf/street-wear clothing brand B-WARE. B-WARE has been in the works for over a decade. In 2007 B-WARE business partners: Jonathan Boalware and Jim Dicarlo brought the idea from a lifestyle to a brand.
For weeks B-WARE has been making it’s mark all over the East Coast. My role on this mission has been to take photos of anything and everything. Basically I am an outspoken East Coaster with a solid respect for culture and travel.
A few plane rides and several rental cars later, The B-WARE CREW ( Jonathan, Jim, Panda, and Lydia ) arrived in San Diego, CA. Currently B-WARE is in Pacific Beach, CA. Thanks to the kindness of Ryan Casey (Deepwater Films), his roommates, and Garrett, B-WARE has had a solid place to stay in PB.
Thanks to the courtesy of David Oster of the San Diego Storm, Garrett got hooked up tickets to the Padres Vs. Rockies game. The game was sick right up until the 9th inning. San Diego got crushed in the 9th.
April 18th, Today was a “get shit done” work day. Garrett spent the morning emailing people and checking weather reports. During the afternoon Jim and Katlyn got a chance to spend some time out in the water. Garrett sat cliffside filming the two for later feedback on their riding and life choices.
A few hours later Alex, The Glacier Project Editor, showed up to interview Garrett for The Glacier Project.
In a Top Secret… do not tell anyone kind of way, The Glacier Project is going to be insane. The footage Ryan and Garrett have is intense.
Later this week… Garrett and B-WARE are going to be heading North towards LA County. Be on the lookout for more pics and happenings.
Garrett describes his Teahupoo wipeout behind Ramaiina in this featured in this years Billabong XXL Awards:
“Surfing is so personal: 1 man 1 wave, especially when it is big life and death!!! Being able to share a monster with a friend is very special. The view of Raimana was incredible, words can not describe it. As I went for the wave I thought, OK, I have been out here for a while now, rode two junk waves, broke my board and now I am finally going to get a good wave. Then I saw Laird and Raimana tracking it in front of us I thought Raimana has had a million good waves out here he will let me go, and even if he goes I am going, I don’t mind riding behind people there because there is so much room in those barrels.
As I let go of the rope and dropped down the wave, Coby, who was towing me in, barely got out. He explained to me later, that Raimana was right where he needed to be to get out. So he did his best to get out and not hit Raimana. This caused the ski to spray a fire hose like blast into my eyes. I was thinking, “oh no where do I go”. As I got the bottom I could finally see again and picked my line full speed ahead. I saw Raimana and thought to myself “all right I am finally where I always wanted to be, where I imagine being.”
Then the wake from their ski and Raimanas track combined caused a white wash foam ball that engulfed me and I thought “oh I’m done but kept driving”. To my surprise I got through it, and my eyes cleared again, and there was Raimana. I was like “yeah, I am making it, come on come on!” as a monster wave from the exploding lip came backwards and took me out. I could no longer see Raimana and went for the ride after the ride praying the whole time, “please god help me!!!” Sure enough I got hit by 10 waves on the head, and finally here comes Coby. I was so amped, so stoked I got on the ski and yelled “yeah Coby that is what I live for, I feel alive!!!” He looked at me like, “this guy is nuts!!!”
After Surfing the swell at Waimea, Garrett and Kealii flew to Mavericks to ride the same swell. They scored monster waves at Mavericks, and then drove all night to catch Todos.
Yesterday evening Garrett and Liam shared the wave of the day right before dark. Unfortunately Liam had to straighten out, but G-Mac got his first SUP barrel at the pipeline.
Video from Free Wave Challenge:
Garrett flew down to Tahiti to catch the south swell at Teahupoo on November 1,2007.
According to Tim Mckenna, who got some great shots: “11h30: Garrett McNamara was dropped off super deep on a bomb, so deep that he was swallowed by the foam ball while watching Raimana riding the same wave and making it to safety a few metres ahead of him. ”
Garrett McNamara STAND UP PADDLE SURFING Mav’s???
Kealii Mamala charging BOMBS!!!
Whether its winning this year’s biggest paddle wave, and best overall
performance in the Billabong XXL Awards, tow surfing holding a 16 mm
cam in death defying Chope’s, being towed into waves by a helicopter,
or enduring death defying glacier tsunami waves in Alaska,
G MAC and “The Hawaiian” Kealii Malama are in a league of their own.
You tend to wonder whats next???
Well, believe it or not Garrett rode his Stand Up Paddle Surf Hawaii board
through a crowded of at least 50 surfer at Mavericks.
Then two days later it was even bigger…
That day Kealii rode so many waves it looked
like he had been surfing Mavs his whole life.
Garrett was going deep and went over the falls on a monster. He got a beating that pounded him so hard he was coughing up blood, but just kept on surfing.
Quotes from later at the boat ramp:
A local boat captain “Kealii surfed incredible The
best style I have ever seen, and he rode one of the biggest waves of
the day!!!
Grant Washburn “Kealii Mamama is like no one I
have ever seen, comes from warm Hawaii, paddles out to cold Mavs and
surfed like he was right at home catching more waves then anyone.”
Garrett said “I Watched Kealii catch anything he wanted. He looked so comfortable
and confident. Hawaiian style.
We just like to have fun and let me tell you it was a BLAST!”.
Kealii said this: “Where ever we are Garrett is pushing the limits. That’s why it
didn’t surprise me when the Mad Man paddled out and surfed Mavs on his
stand up board. Our passion is new experiences, and this was one of them!!!”
Garrett tells us more about his experience glacier surfing on Surfline.com.
Except from the article: “Me and Ryan Casey from Deep Water Films were filming an Imax movie and he came to me one day going, “Oh my God, I can’t believe I didn’t think about this: we went to Alaska for the last Imax movie in ‘95 and when we were there shooting the glaciers calving, I saw this wave and I can’t believe it. You guys gotta look at it and tell me what you think.”
He showed me the wave and I said, “Let’s do this.” We went up last June, scouted to make sure it was doable — and I went and looked at it all and I was totally in !. You can read the entire article here on surfline.com
Garrett fresh off the plane from Alaska: He had this to say: “It’s like the Empire State Building about to come down on top of your head, I’m glad to be home. That was the heaviest thing I’ve ever done in my life.” Garrett
GLACIER TSUNAMI TOW-SURFING SUCCESS
Hawaii’s McNamara and Mamala First Surfers to Ride Alaskan Glacier
Tsunami Waves
Honolulu - (August 15, 2007) - Hawaii tow-in surfing team Garrett
McNamara and Kealii Mamala have just returned from Alaska where they
became the first - and possibly last - surfers to successfully ride
glacier-generated tsunami waves of up to 25 feet. Their tsunami surfing
experience took place at Child’s Glacier on the Copper River, in
South-Central Alaska, located near the town of Cordova, Alaska.
Sheer ice faces of over 400 feet calved away from Child’s Glacier,
crashing into the waters below and setting off left- and right-breaking
waves that peeled across a pebble-bottom river bank for more than 300
yards, offering rides of up to one minute long. In order to catch them,
the surfers would wait up to several hours in the icy water for a
glacier to fall, then chase down the ensuing wave on their jetski and
attempt to ride with being injured or killed by ice and rock debris.
Despite years of towing into waves of up to 70 feet, and a prior scout
of the glacier last month, the experience turned out to be an
overwhelming one, almost sending the pair home after a series of highly
dangerous, unsuccessful attempts on day one.
“It was way more than I expected,” said McNamara. “I was almost going
home the first day.
“After the scout, I guaranteed that we would ride a wave - any wave.
After the first day, I just wanted to make it home alive. Not knowing
where the glacier was going to fall, where the wave would emerge, or
how big it would be. It was so different to anything we’ve experienced
in our big-wave tow-surfing history. I spent most the time thinking
about my family and wonderingif Iwould survive tosee them again. It
was in a realm all its own.”
The largest wave Garrett rode was a 15-foot face. Keali’i rode a 20- to
25-foot wave. The most memorable and unnerving moments came when the
glacier calve “booked”, or fell like a book off a shelf, landing flat
on the surface of water, causing a deafening eruption of water and ice
to explode into the air, and forcing them to make a run for their lives
with the assistance of their jetski.
“This has changed our outlook on big-wave surfing. In this case, we
didn’t even need a huge wave to get a rush. It was the heaviest rush
just sitting out there, dwarfed by this enormous glacier face, waiting
for the whole thing to crash down in front of us and hoping we’d
survive it when it did.”
As to the future of this new surfing spin-off? Perhaps take heed of
what Garrett, one of the world’s most daring surfers has to say: “I
wouldnt recommend it for any one. I won’t be going back. This is not a
new sport.”
A feature film and one-hour television show is now in production, being
created by Ryan Casey of Deepwater Films. Casey was responsible for the
discovery of the wave at Child’s Glacier.
# # #
To obtain footage and images from this adventure, contact:
Ryan Casey, Deepwater Films LLC
Tel: (858) 349-5634
Email: ryanmayrcasey@hotmail.com
For still images, contact:
Bo Bridges Photography
Cell: (310) 937-3764
Email: bo@bobridges.com
Garrett and Keali’i are planning on surfing the tsunami-like waves generated by huge chunks of glacier that break off and hit the water.
This phenomenon was discovered by a photgrapher in 1995 when he was filming for IMAX. He was an avid surfer himself, and noticed the waves. He said the wave looked amazingly rideable and would peel for lengths of 200 yards at a time, but it looked treachurous, 20-30 foot waves breaking on a ice shelf only 18 inches deep. Deepwater films is returning to find that wave this summer, and this time they are bringing along extreme surfers Garrett and Keali’i.
We will be updating Glacier Surfing .com as events unfold, Garrett and crew are currently waiting for the right conditions.
In an interview with deepwater films, Garrett describes his love of big waves, and actually riding the wave at Mavericks that won him the 2007 Billabong XXL biggest paddle award.
Surfersvillage Global Surf News , 19 April, 2007 : - - What does a place called Pillar Point Harbor, a loner from Half Moon Bay, California, a white haired German Shepard, a Flea and a guy named Garrett McNamara all have in common? Something close to nothing, really. But hang with us.
In 1975 a kid from Half Moon Bay named Jeff Clark caught wind of a little know, ominously dangerous surf spot located just off shore from Pillar Point Harbor. Due to its funky shaped underwater rock formation, winter storms sent across the northern Pacific Ocean would come freight training in on Pillar Point Harbor, sending in 15-to-20-foot boxcar-size waves.
For 15 years, Clark did a masterful job of keeping the place on the down-low, only a few locals aware — and in possession — of one of the finest breaks in the World. In the March of 1991 three local surfers, having learned of the spot, decided to give it a shot. So did one of their dogs. His name was Maverick and the white haired German Shepard got so wound up on the 20-foot waves, he too joined the crew in the water.
Worried for him, they brought Maverick back in and tied him to the bumper of a truck. The dog had his day, though, and by the surfers had left the spot for the day, they had dubbed it “Maverick’s Point.” That same year, Surfer magazine published a photo of Maverick’s and it was on. Surfers from all over the world converged on the place to ride giants and tempt fate.
In fact the late but great big wave ace Mark Foo was killed there in the December of 1994. In 1999, a world class contest at Mavericks’ was held and won by a local Santa Cruz surfer named Darryl “Flea” Virostko (Richard Schmidt, Ross Clarke-Jones and Peter Mel placed second, third and fourth, respectively).
Which brings us to Friday evening, April 13, 2007 and a place in Orange County, California called The Grove, site of the BiLLABONG XXL GLOBAL BIG WAVE AWARDS. The epicenter of the American surf industry (make that global surfing industry), a few thousand surf enthusiasts made it out to the big hall — based immediately adjacent to Angel Stadium — to hoot, holler and cheer for the wavemen who had been nominated to potentially win Billabong XXX Global Big Wave Awards.
When one envelope in particular was torn open, a piece of paper removed from it, and the contents of that piece of paper read aloud over a microphone, it was declared that Garrett McNamara had won the Monster Paddle Award.
McNamara, of Haleiwa, Hawaii, USA was give a big oversize, make believe check for $15,000, his reward for catching, riding, and surviving a Godzilla-like wave at Maverick’s on December 14, 2006. (McNamara also won Surfline Men’s Best Overall Performance Award for the deed).
Later that evening in The Grove, Garret MacNamara reflected back on the day in Half Moon Bay, California that brought him international fame, glory and fortune (not in that order). “That day — December 14 — was perfect and glassy and the waves were at about 18-to-20 feet,” he explained. “There would be a couple of bigger ones here and there, but it was pretty consistent.
I had been watching guys surf there the day before and they were catching good waves, but I realized it would be better to go deeper and farther back into the bowl. So Vince Collier gave me a 10′ 10” the next day and I paddled out.
“I knew where I was going was dangerous,” he went on. “It was a place that you’d make 10% of the waves that came in; the other 90% would be close outs. So when I went out I told Peter Mel, ‘Hey, I’m going in where it’s dangerous. Watch over me, would you?’
So I keep paddling and notice that he’s taken his jet ski and gone off to the left. I paddled as hard as I could to catch back up with him and yelled, ‘Hey! I’m not messing around here!’ I wanted to catch a monster wave and was confident that Peter would be there if I got into trouble. I’m a wimp, you see.
“So I see this perfect wave coming, and think to myself, should I turn around? I thought, not yet. It was one of those glossy California waves and I wasn’t sure.
So the wave got right up on me, I turned around and shoved the tail in. The board stuck immediately and I made the drop. It felt perfect — like cutting butter with a hot knife. I was upside down and backwards, but in control. I felt great. I got to the bottom and looked up and wanted to try and make the turn, but I could see it was all about to come down on me.
I took a pounding, but it was nothing out of the ordinary. When Peter Mel came up and grabbed me, he was just freaking out. He was saying, ‘Oh my God! That was the biggest wave ever paddled into here! No, that was the biggest wave anyone has ever paddled into anywhere!
That’s it, man! You’re going to win every award there is!’ I told him to take it easy and tried to reflect on what I had just done. Everyone around was freaking out.’” And how did it feel to walk out of The Grove with two big-ass cardboard checks he’s try and cash at the friendly, local Bank of America?
“It was awesome,” he enthused. “I had no expectations to win and I ended up coming home with two awards. I mean the awards don’t mean too much, but it was real nice to be acknowledged by everybody.” Now typecast as a tow-in surfer, the ever-friendly and amusing McNamara went on to explain he was especially proud of the fact that he won the XXL Awards for actually paddling into a wave.
“I was definitely stoked to win Monster Paddle Award,” he said. “You know I grew up surfing at Waimea. I paddled in and surfed there my entire life. It was always a paddle spot, but the place got too crowded. So to get away from everybody I started to surf the outer waves. Because of that I think everybody forgot that I knew how to paddle. Tonight, I was able to show everyone that I haven’t!”
Dan Russo gives his account of getting this photo of Garrett’s paddle in wave at Outer Log Cabins. This wave may have won Garrett the XXL paddle award if it was in focus. Good thing his wave at Mavericks did the trick!
“>Complete story at Surfingthemag
Looks like Garrett got a bunch of absolutely humungous barrells to himself at Teahupoo. These latest photos will make your jaw drop. 
