INSIDE STORY : Big Wednesday : A Gung-Ho Grommet and Two Wary Veterans Tackle the Giant Surf of Mexico’s Todos Santos Island--Where One Mistake Can Mean the Wipeout of Your Life

Just so everyone understands: It’s shortly after dawn and we’re sitting in a small boat nine miles off the coast of Ensenada, Mexico. We’re here because readings last night from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s #6 buoy off the Northern California coast, 750 miles to the north, indicated that gigantic swells were rolling this way. You’d never know it from the way the Pacific looks now, flat and glassy.

To the north, a series of winter storms over the last week has churned the Pacific into a maelstrom of wave energy. The latest, 1,000 miles west of Eureka and roughly 1,500 miles northwest from where we wait on this chilly Wednesday morning, peaked two days ago, generating winds up to 70 knots. The next day, the #6 buoy registered 42-foot swells with a long, 17-second interval between peaks. Waves like that don’t just vanish.

Sean Collins, owner of Surfline, a Huntington Beach meteorological firm specializing in surf prediction, analyzed data from that buoy, as well as from weather satellites and other buoys in the Pacific, and made a phone call yesterday afternoon alerting us. Enormous swells, possibly the biggest of the year, were headed this way, to this tiny, bird-swarmed island called Todos Santos, where a unique combination of underwater troughs and shallows generates some of the biggest waves in the world. In peak season, usually February, a swell that might provide a day of head-high surf on the mainland can generate waves three stories high here, packing the punch of a mountain avalanche.

Moving fast through deep water, these swells will first funnel into an offshore submarine canyon a half mile from where we sit. When the swells hit a shallow, rocky bottom ringing the island, friction slows them down, and their energy compresses. “There’s nowhere for it to go but up,” Collins explains. “It just explodes into giant waves.”

Three people on our 24-foot boat want to ride those waves: Mike Parsons, Brad Gerlach and Mike Todd. They are three of the world’s best at a sport that legend traces back to a day in the winter of 1957, when Greg Noll, a big and seemingly fearless surfer nicknamed “Da Bull,” was the first to paddle out at Oahu’s Waimea Bay when the swell was maxing out. His friends quickly followed. Big-wave surfing caught on, aided by advances in surfboard materials and design, and for years the North Shore of Oahu was the sport’s focus. Nobody thought West Coast waves could compare--until photos of Todos Santos Island waves made the magazines in the 1980s. A flurry of attention ensued, and for a few years, Todos Santos was the proving ground for Californians.

Although a break called Mavericks near Half Moon Bay stole the limelight for a time, Todos Santos leapt to the forefront again last year. That’s when surfer Taylor Knox bagged a 52-foot wave there, winning the $50,000 jackpot of ski and snowboard manufacturer K2’s Big Wave Challenge, in which the object was to be photographed riding the largest wave you could find anywhere on earth.

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Morning is wearing on. From next to nothing the waves have slowly increased to 10 to 12 feet, big by most standards but small compared to what we are expecting: unpredictable vortexes of energy the size of small apartment complexes. Surfing them is one part thrill, one part challenge, three parts survival. Considering what the three surfers are waiting for, their mood is lighthearted. If they’re nervous, it’s the jangling nerves of thoroughbreds awaiting the race. “It’s good to be scared, slightly,” Gerlach says. “It keeps you alive.”

The David versus Goliath challenge of big wave riding is what these surfers live for, and sometimes die by. Though instinct says paddling into a 25-foot wave on a narrow, 9-foot spear of fiberglass and foam is almost suicidal, there’s little daredevil in any of these guys. They size up their risks and make decisions carefully. “I’m not a macho guy and I don’t care if someone calls me a puss for not taking a wave,” Gerlach continues. “If I’m not up to it, I’m not up to it.”

At 32, Gerlach has been one of the top pros on the international surfing circuit for many years, once leading the world rankings through most of a year only to suffer a last-minute upset. He’s compact and muscular with chiseled features, and Sports Illustrated has characterized him as the “James Dean of Surfing.” Though he’s from San Diego County, he spends so much time chasing waves in places such as Tahiti, Australia, Hawaii and Indonesia that this is only his second time at Todos Santos.

Parsons, 33, is something of a legend in the world of big-wave surfers. The thin, freckle-faced athlete has surfed Todos Santos an average of 15 times a year for more than a decade. It was a picture in one of the surfing magazines of Parsons dropping in on a towering wave at a Todos Santos Island break called “Killers” in the late 1980s that brought the spot to the attention of the masses.

The third surfer aboard, 17-year-old Todd, is the current Southwest Conference National Scholastic Surfing Assn. Men’s Open champion. The Laguna Beach native, short with tousled brown hair and a shy manner, has none of the cockiness or swagger you’d expect from a world-class high school athlete. The owner of the boat and organizer of this trip is Surfing magazine photographer Robert Brown.

Todd seems eager to get wet. He has borrowed one of Parsons’ boards but what seems like a simple swap is complicated by the financial realities of the surfing industry. Surfers on this level don’t buy their own gear. Sponsors ply them with boards, wetsuits, clothes, shoes, plane tickets, fancy trips and, in the case of the very best, endorsement salaries ranging well into the six figures. In return, whenever the surfer gets his picture in one of the magazines with company logos prominently featured, the sponsor gains street credibility with the kids who buy their products. So after Parsons’ decals are carefully peeled off, Todd reaches into his backpack and smooths his own sponsors’ stickers on. Then Todd leaps from the boat and paddles over to Killers.

The waves are building. Every 10 or 15 minutes another set of bigger ones hits. In between, nothing. It looks like a lake. Parsons and Gerlach seem to be in no hurry to get into the water. The boat is rolling in the swells, and Gerlach’s face has turned a sickly shade of green. “Why do I get seasick when I’m a professional traveler?” he laments.

Two other boats pull up. They’re pangas, Mexican fishing skiffs hired at the Ensenada harbor to ferry surfers to the island. We don’t know the four surfers who jump out of the pangas into the water, but they quickly recognize Parsons and Gerlach, who’ve finally slipped in and paddled over to Killers.

As if on cue, the first really large waves arrive. Parsons and Todd are both in the right spot for the first big one, but Todd gets it. None of us except Parsons have seen Todd surf before, and it’s quite a surprise. In waves this big most surfers, even old, experienced professionals, are reduced to survival tactics. As waves grow taller, the increase in energy they carry is exponential. A 30-foot wave packs 20 times the power of a 10-foot wave, and punishes your screw-ups accordingly.

This schoolkid, however, plays with the wave like he’s the boss. Laughing and grinning when he pulls out, Todd paddles back to Parsons and catches another, then another. Three in a row.

Parsons waits. He stalks the waves like a lion, patiently. Another set darkens the horizon and he paddles outside, wheels around and picks off the largest wave yet. It hits the reef. The swell jacks up, huge, easily 20 feet as Parsons strokes a few times and stands up. The vertical drop is tremendous. Racing down the face, Parsons’ body pogos to absorb the G-forces when he turns at the bottom.

*

As the hours pass, as the tide ebbs and the swells continue to increase, the takeoff zone--the spot where it is possible to catch a wave without getting clobbered--is shifting. The sets are breaking farther outside and the wind has picked up, making the waves a little chaotic. In these tricky conditions the pack of surfers keys off Parsons like ducklings to their mother. Parsons paddles left, everyone else paddles left; Parsons moves in a little, they move in a little, too. As Parsons scrambles for safety as a cleanup set rumbles in, everyone is right on his tail.

Parsons grabs another wave, this time a huge one that swings in from a southerly direction. Wisps of whitewater show at its crest and Parsons drops in behind the peak. It’s a spectacular show of machismo but a bad pick--and he will pay dearly. He makes it to the bottom of the wave only to get blasted by the breaking lip. One second he is there, full speed ahead on his big-wave gun. An instant later, he’s gone. He doesn’t fall, or slip, or stall. Just adios, Mike, as he’s eaten up by a mountain of whitewater six times his height. He pops up but three more waves unload on his head, forcing him down again and again.

Planning for this trip, I’d feared I would want to paddle out and catch a few waves with the guys, but when I see the magnitude of this surf and the punishment it extracts, I’ve never in my life been happier to not go surfing. Each time a wave breaks over Parsons, I know he struggles to maintain composure because panic will eat the limited amount of air in his lungs faster. Maintaining that calm is tough because every element conspires to make a surfer lose his cool: the icy water, the roar of the waves, the darkness, the loss of equilibrium when he doesn’t even know which direction is up.

Brown and I exchange knowing glances. “I’m having a heart attack right here,” Brown says, “He got annihilated!” Finally Parsons surfaces and paddles over. “God, that just vaporized me,” he giggles, “That was exciting. Boy, that woke me up!”

Parsons and the other surfers, however, are hardly glib about danger. When Mark Foo, one of the masters of the sport, died at Mavericks in December of 1994, Parsons and another surfer, Brock Little, were on the next wave behind Foo and suffered such a hideous wipeout that they, too, nearly died. Their fall was so frightening that people looking on from the boats and in the water were distracted, waiting for Parsons and Little to surface. In the drama of the moment nobody noticed that Foo was missing. Only hours later, when a group of surfers on one of the photo boats noticed a piece of surfboard floating by and pulled it up to find Foo’s dead body attached to the leash, did anyone realize what had happened.

A smaller set of waves comes in. One of the surfers from the pangas paddles for the first wave and misses it. He paddles for the second and misses it, too. By now he’s a good 50 yards inside the lineup and near the rocks when the third wave rears up and breaks right on top of him. “Keep an eye on him,” Brown says, “He could end up in a lot of trouble.”

After 20 seconds and traveling about 75 yards underwater, the surfer pops up and clambers back on his board, or what’s left of it. It’s snapped cleanly in half. As he paddles past our boat to get another board, he says, “I hadn’t even caught a wave on this one yet.”

Waves keep coming, getting bigger still. Parsons calls a particularly big set 30 feet, but big-wave surfers are notorious for underestimating size. In these conditions the surfers are pushing the limits of what is technically possible. The physics of surfing are infinitely complex, but this much is obvious: To catch a wave you must match the speed of the swell until it rears up into a breaking wave and gravity takes over, pulling you down the face. Then, hopefully, you are going fast enough to keep from being obliterated by the whitewater.

Watching surfers who are among the best in the world struggle to make the drop is a fearsome sight. Gerlach in particular is having a hard time. His seasickness hasn’t improved and he’s struggling for waves. When he finally catches a giant one, he slips and eats it, bad. Unlike crowded mainland breaks, where a seemingly infinite number of surfers do battle for a limited number of waves, the scene out here is one of intense camaraderie. Every time someone paddles for a wave, the others hoot their encouragement. When one of the surfers loses his board and gets stuck in the impact zone, Parsons grabs the loose board and paddles back into the surf zone to deliver it.

On one takeoff, Todd hits a little bump in the wave that wheelies his board onto its tail, rendering him completely airborne. A lesser surfer would have wiped out, but through some miraculous combination of youth, balance and sheer luck, Todd free-falls a good 15 feet, lands it and gets an awesome ride. It’s the kind of over-the-edge scary sequence that surfing magazines love to publish. Brown catches it all on film, pumping his arm in the air and making cash register noises, ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching.

Parsons is in fine form now too. On wave after wave he shows why his nickname is “The Mayor of Todos Santos.” Finally, cold and tired, the mayor retires back to the boat. Brown turns to Parsons and says, referring to Mike Todd, “Your boy is going for it. He’s psycho!”

“Yeah, he’s not bad for a grommet, is he?”

The wind picks up another notch. Nothing can end good waves faster than a strong onshore wind, and these periodic gusts threaten to turn into a full-fledged howler. For now, though, the waves are surfable, but the wind chop makes them even more difficult to catch, and riskier to ride.

Todd, cocky or tired or both, paddles hard for the first wave of a very large set. By the middle of his takeoff, it’s obvious that he’s not going to make it. He tries to pull out but might as well try jumping over the moon. We groan, watching a tiny body tumble in an avalanche of water. Then it disappears.

Big waves hold surfers under because the violent explosion of a breaking wave aerates the water until it isn’t dense enough to support a swimmer. With the water too thick to breathe and too thin to swim in, it’s an odd feeling, tumbling around in limbo at the bottom of a fizzing layer of icy, dark ocean until you’re able to float or swim to the top. Todd’s wipeout wave holds him down at least 25 seconds and drags him 100 yards. Another surfer is on the next, even bigger, wave and Brown instinctively grabs his camera. But Parsons wants Brown to take the boat over to Todd. “Follow him, Rob. Follow Mike.” A second wave rolls over Todd and drags him another hundred yards. He disappears for a long time; all we can see is his board “tombstoning” straight up out of the water while Todd struggles somewhere below. Finally he pops up and gets a breath. “He’s OK, Mike,” Brown says, still holding his camera.

Parsons becomes angry. “Rob, turn the boat around and follow him. Or give me that board. I’m gonna go get him.”

Brown wheels the boat around and we go roaring in toward shore, but there’s not much we can do except watch from the channel as wave after wave breaks over the surfer. To go in there with the boat would be suicide. Todd disappears under one more wave, then pops up safely in deeper water where the waves aren’t breaking. He paddles about a quarter mile back to the boat. His reaction? “I’ve never had so much fun surfing,” he says. “Thanks for bringing me out here, Rob.” This kid has a big future ahead of him.

The waves are getting even angrier in the wind. We’ll need to leave in a few minutes. But Gerlach is still in the water. A huge wave rears up and we all gasp as Gerlach catches it. He pushes over the edge and makes the terrifying drop look easy. Suddenly he’s shredding: hands flipped up at his side, fingers pointed, all grace and style. Jubilant, he pumps his fists overhead in victory. Brown gets the whole thing on film.

Gerlach finally gets in the boat. “When I first paddled out this morning, I was feeling so sick that I was looking up at those scary waves saying, ‘No way, I’m not going to go for that.’ Finally, I changed my self-talk, looking at the waves and saying, ‘Yeah! Yeah! I want this thing.’ It built up my confidence. My whole body felt different.”

As we bounce over waves on our way home, I expect these three to revel in their accomplishments today. But their minds have already moved on. Like surfers everywhere, they always dream of finding the perfect wave.

“There’ve gotta be other waves just like this up in Oregon and Washington,” Gerlach says.

“I hear there’s a huge Mavericks-style break on the west coast of Vancouver Island,” Parsons answers.

“The biggest waves, though, I hear, are in Rapa Nui,” Gerlach says.

“Rapa Nui? Where’s that?”

“Easter Island.”