SURFER ran this article in the January 1966 issue. Author Peter Van Dyke, younger brother of Fred, was best known for his theatrical drop-knee turns in small waves, but he had big-wave chops as well. That's Peter in the spread photos, at Makaha, in the late '50s.

I'm awfully tired of all the phony talk about big surf with descriptions of death-defying surfers and those lousy Hollywood movies with the dramatic background music and the rolling, tumbling surf and bone-breaking type dialogue.

Because riding big waves isn't perilous, dangerous or as hairy as it’s cracked up to be. In short, riding big surf is overrated. No surfer has drowned in big surf in the past 16 years. At breaks like Makaha. Waimea and Sunset on a big day a surfer can paddle out without getting his hair wet.

So why all this fake publicity comparing big wave riding to really “death-defying" sports such as Grand Prix racing, mountain climbing, and bullfighting?

Those sports really have death statistics to back up claims of being not for chickens. Look at the Grand Prix big names killed in recent years: Hawthorne, De Portago, Ascari, Von Tripps. Even the greatest. Sterling Moss, finished his career —and almost his life—in a crash a few years ago. And death in the bullring is almost too obvious to mention. Every matador from Manolete on down picked up horn wounds—many fatal. So as far as danger goes, riding big surf isn't in the same league.

Of course, I'm not saying every surfer can ride the big Hawaiian heavies. If I took 300 Sunday surfers from any crowded California beach and funneled them into Sunset Beach with a rip running on a 15-foot day, 90% of them would drown. But what surfers who listen to this big-wave-danger hokum don't realize is that there’s a much larger group of surfers who could—if they tried—ride the big ones in the Islands.

The last surfer to drown in big surf was David Cross at Sunset in 1949—and this was an exception because the surf was 40 feet that day. By big-wave surfing, I mean anything up to 25 feet, because larger than that is really a different story. But since Cross, all surfing drownings have been in relatively small surf—under 12 feet. The major cause is overcrowded conditions and just about all were hit on the head by their boards and knocked unconscious in the water.

Now, I’ve surfed all kinds of waves and come much closer to being killed in small surf on a crowded day in California than I ever have in the Islands in surf over 20 feet.

There's also a lot of talk that a surfer has to be in top condition to ride the big surf—more bunk! Plenty of big-wave surfers living on Oahu’s North Shore "train" on cake, kool-aid, ice cream, and candy—and smoke a pack of cigarettes a day.

Big-wave riding doesn’t even require good swimming ability. The late Bob Simmons, for example, was the worst swimmer I've ever seen. Yet Simmons pioneered big-wave surfing in the Islands and then came back to California and drowned at Windansea! Whether he got hit on the head by his board or ran out of gas in the rip, I don't know.

Anyway, Simmons was really the first to surf Sunset Beach extensively back in the early fifties. That was when Walt Hoffman, Buzzy Trent, Jim Fisher, and that group were riding Makaha. And Simmons would come back from the North Shore raving about Sunset until finally the Makaha group went over and discovered what a great surfing beach Sunset is. But Simmons, a dreadfully horrible swimmer, had been riding Sunset all by himself!

Makaha, Sunset, and Waimea are overrated, too. Makaha is a complete sanitarium, even on a big day. At Waimea, a surfer can get out on a 25-foot day without getting his hair wet. The same thing is true at Sunet—a surfer can step right into the rip when it’s 18 or 20 feet and paddle out with his hair still dry. That doesn’t show me any challenge when you go out so easily in that size surf.

Many surfers with little experience can start right out surfing the big waves. An example: Jim Fisher, whose famous picture on a 25-foot Makaha wave ended the Old Timer’s section in the July issue of SURFER Magazine. Fisher had been surfing the big waves only a year when that photo was taken. Jose Angel came up fast, too, with only three years of surfing behind him before he tackled the big waves.

I’ll admit there are some breaks in the Islands that offer a real challenge—but few are ever surfed. Avalanche, for example, outside Haleiwa, separates the pseudo-surfers from the real big-wave riders. The break at Avalanche is far out and it can’t be photographed—so right away that excludes 99 percent of the surfers. But if a surfer wants a challenge, Avalanche is the place because he might drown way out there. There’s a real danger that doesn’t exist at some of the overpublicized spots: Makaha, Waimea, Sunset.

Perhaps I’m a little biased knocking big waves because, first of all, I happen to be a superior swimmer in rough water conditions. I was well prepared before I tackled Hawaii’s big surf for the first time, back in 1955. I had a background of six years of competitive swimming and five years of riding a board. Also, I had plenty of bodysurfing experience in the most dangerous water I’ve ever been in: Kelly’s Cove in San Francisco on a 15-foot day. A big day at Kelly’s, with the cold water and a strong rip, is more dangerous than a 30-foot day in the Islands, as far as I’m concerned. In the frigid water, you hold your breath only half as long and you can’t even paddle against the rip. So for me, beginning in rough conditions like that, the big surf in Hawaii didn’t seem so tough when I first ran into it—and it still doesn’t.

Of course, surfing Hawaii’s big surf back in the '50s was different than today because no one then knew what to expect. It was like the Western Frontier days, and we were the first, the forerunners. When we paddled out, we didn’t know if we would come back alive or not—it was a challenge because it was new. Now the Hawaiian big surf has been completely conquered. Surfers have ripped it up with bottom turns and everything. So that’s why I can’t understand why big-wave riding still has this scary reputation. Any surfer today can become a hero just by flying to the Islands for one day, paddling out at Waimea, and going over the falls on a 25-foot wave.

The natural fear about drowning in big surf is mental and can be overcome. The only thing I was ever afraid of in big waves was being held down too long—Even on smaller waves when I was held down for eight or ten seconds, my natural inclination was to push the panic button a little. One day at Sunset I went over the falls backwards on an 18-foot wave and was down probably 20 seconds. I thought I was going to drown, but looking back, I realize that self-preservation is much stronger and I was a long way from the blackout point. Exactly where the blackout point is, I don’t know, but it takes a lot longer to get there than everyone thinks.

Of course, there is a real danger in surf over 25 feet, because a surfer could be held down from 15 to 30 seconds and come up in heavy foam just in time to get hit by the next wave and held down again. The wave interval in that size surf would probably be between 15 and 20 seconds, and when you wash inside there’s no green water: just all foam, 10, 12, 15 feet of foam. So you don’t come up at all—you just stay down. Waves that size really are a challenge.

But when the surf is under 25 feet, that danger doesn’t exist. Now, I’m not saying that waves up to 25 feet are easy to ride, necessarily. I’m just saying they’re not as dangerous as far as drowning goes. I think it’s time big-wave riding got cut down to size.

"BIG-WAVE DANGER: A HOAX!" BY PETER VAN DYKE

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