For a long time, Kaena Point was the next frontier in big-wave surfing. Or actually, no, the 

 frontier in big-wave surfing. You'd you'd have to be over 50 to relate, but when I was a kid, Kaena was the only break in the horrifying half-imagined realm beyond Waimea. And now, unless I've missed something, the place has dropped off the big-wave map entirely.

Flippy Hoffman, Roger Erikson and a couple other guys rode Kaena in 1976. It was 15' or thereabouts. No drama. Hoffman said it was "just a lot of fun," which of course is not at all what we surf fans are looking for in a conquest of this purported magnitude. Big-wave huckster Ace Cool rode it too, in 1984, also mid-size, before turning his attention to the North Shore's outer reefs.

For the most part, though, Kaena was the break that people thought about riding, but didn't. Buzzy Trent, Jim Fisher, George Downing, Greg Noll, others. "Every year," Mike Doyle wrote in 1963, "there is a rumor that someone is going out at Kaena." 

Doyle himself watched 50-footers peeling off the point and brainstormed the situation. "My idea involves a helicopter with a 150-foot nylon line with a shock cord tied around the surfer's waist. By this arrangement, the surfer could be pulled into the wave just like a waterskier, and if he didn't make the drop or if the wave closed out, the helicopter could shoot ahead of the break, dragging the surfer forward and up and into the air." Big-wave surfing with a big dose of Wile E. Coyote.

Then of course there was Jim "Wildman" Neece. Poor Wildman. Kaena got into his head and more or less broke him. The story goes something like this. Neece was a good-looking haole-Hawaiian who charged huge Pipeline and Waimea like a Viking. In mid-1973, Neece, 21, reportedly signed a $12,000 deal with a Los Angeles-based film company to ride a 40' wave at Kaena. He talked with SURFER about what was billed as "The Kaena Challenge."

When I've seen it, the left is out of control—impossible. But the right is an open door pushing out to sea around the point toward Makaha.

I saw it in December '69 when it was 60-plus-feet. There's no stopping how big it can get because it won't close out. It just breaks into open ocean.

The left makes Pipeline look mushy. The right is as hollow, but more makeable. It throws out, with a ledge like Waimea, only bigger.

At what size would you contemplate riding it?

Possibly. But with the experience I've gained these last few years, I feel quite confident. Enough to risk it.

What you have attempted it that day it was 60-feet?

If the money was on the beach, I'd do it.

More information filtered in over the months to come. The mission would involve a small oxygen tank strapped to his Neece's back and a pull-tab inflatable device around his waist. To earn the money, Neece would not only have to take off but make it to the end of the wave, still on his feet. He had a pair of glorious 12-foot red-on-yellow guns made. Stepped up his PR game, too. Mental preparation, Neece told the 

in the summer of '74, outweighed physical preparation. "If you're going to eat it, you're going to die no matter how good of shape you're in." 

That fall, Neece revised his plan of attack. As 

 reported, Wildman would now be "towed into the wave by a speed boat." Grigg further explained:

This method would eliminate the problem of catching the wave, of waiting too far outside and missing the wave, or getting caught inside, which would be certain death. By "skiing" into the face of the wave, the surfer could be standing, holding onto the towline, and actually be able to maneuver into the best position on the face, so that when it got steep enough to ride, he would already be in exactly the right spot. At this point, he would drop the towline; he would be in the wave and irreversibly committed.

The film crew arrived. Neece went into training. He gave a couple more humble-gnarly interviews. Kept training. Broke one of his 12-footers at Waimea. (Grigg says Neece was able to "practice the water-ski takeoff," which would make for an interesting prelude to tow surfing, but I can't find any other mention of this happening.) Swells came and went as the weeks passed, but nothing big enough to trigger a showtime dash to Kaena.

By the end of December, the film crew was low on funds, and Neece was getting jittery and anxious. The crew left Hawaii early in the new year, making vague promises to raise more money and return. Grigg reported that Neece "also bailed out to California, unable to cope with the pressure."

On March 23rd, a tremendous late-season swell hit Hawaii. Clean, long period, sunshine, windless. Not a soul to be found on the entire barren lava point in the distance. Fifty-foot waves were exploding like ordnance out there, with nobody on hand to ride, and the Kaena Challenge, unofficially, was over.

Two years later, SURFER ran a single-paragraph postscript to the episode. "Have you caught yourself wondering whatever happened to Jim (Kaena Point) Neece? He's in Italy, working as a Southern European Task Force ski instructor. Neece joined the Army because, in spite of his flashy surfing career, he had become bored."

Forty years and who knows how many cubic yards of bullshit are now covering the real Wildman-Kaena story. 

Meanwhile, I hope your day, like mine, has been made a little more cheerful thanks to Mike Doyle's helicopter-takeoff scenario. Meep-meep!

"KAENA CHALLENGE" MAKES, BREAKS JIM "WILDMAN" NEECE

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