January 18, 1985, was a springboard for Mark Foo's big-wave career. That afternoon he bailed his way through what might still be the biggest Waimea Bay closeout set to ever roll through an occupied lineup, and afterward he paddled into, and was annihilated by, another closeout wave. More importantly for his career, Mark wasted no time in writing the article you see here, which he submitted to Surfing magazine. It ran in the June issue. Foo, to a degree not seen since Greg Noll, was crafting his own big-wave legend. By doing so he was both resented (by other big-wave riders) and lionized (by the surf media and fans), and Foo considered that a deal very well-struck indeed.

I awoke early on January 18 unaware that I had a date with destiny. My wake-up surf check revealed twelve to fifteen-foot waves, too big for anywhere except Waimea (which had been cooking consistently since the beginning of the year), but still not quite large enough to make The Bay break in traditional big-wave form. The amazing thing about The Bay is it takes so much energy to make it show. Places like Sunset, Pipe and Haleiwa will all be totally out of control with maxed-out second reef sets and Waimea barely dribbles.

By midday the surf met the eighteen-to twenty-foot requirement to become real Waimea and over the next two hours the swell continued to build into twenty-five-foot sets with twenty-minute intervals. Naturally, guys started to venture out: Ken Bradshaw, Dick Asmus and a couple of others paddled out in hopes of riding traditional full-size Bay, but the waves were breaking in a pattern that would have to be called untraditional. Due to the extreme west direction of the swell and the inordinate amount of sand in the bay from a recent onshore storm, the waves this day were sucking and pitching like a shallow sandbar. It looked more like inside Sunset or low-tide Backdoor, except it was massive Waimea and the rip was getting serious, too.

The surf continued to increase in both size and viciousness, intimidating everybody till they paddled to shore, all except Bradshaw who got caught inside on a thirty-footer. He swam for his board but couldn’t get to it before the rip pulled him into the danger zone. Knowing what to do, he swam back out all the way into the lineup and tried to stroke it in again, but again the rip pulled him towards the killer shorebreak and again Ken had to swim back out and around. It took two full cycles before he made it to safety. It was an impressive display of water knowledge and stamina . . . the kind necessary just to survive here. After seeing Bradshaw’s ordeal, everyone thought thrice about going out, except for James Jones, who paddled out just as Ken reached the beach.

At that point I was unaware of how big and serious the surf had become. I was on my way back from errands in Haleiwa and I saw there was no one out. I was doing battle with the flu and had been in the water only once in the last ten days. I was far from being in the most prepared state, but Waimea was doing it and there was only one guy in the lineup. I was out there.

By the time I got down to the beach, James had been joined by bodyboarder J.P Patterson. I finished my stretch just in time for a lull and hit it through the shorebreak without ever getting a good look at it . . . when there is an opening at Waimea you have to make your move. Alec Cooke was right behind me. You usually feel a bit apprehensive paddling out at The Bay, so I always take a slow, extra-wide course to properly prepare myself for what’s to come. We were both almost all the way out, but very much in the middle of the bay, when a wave came out of nowhere and cleaned us up. Now this was different. Leashes prevented both of us from swimming, and we soon joined J.P and James in the lineup. We all quickly realized that this was no ordinary big day. Most of the waves were just too ledgy to even consider. All four of us were sitting really wide in the channel, yet waves were jacking up and pitching in a place that normally would be considered the safety zone. Twenty-five-foot waves were breaking where twelve-footers normally would and were unbelievably hollow and way too gnarly to ride. I picked up a couple of stock sets and started getting my sea legs back.

The interval between big sets then lessened to under ten minutes. Another set appeared and this one wave was a full-on thirty feet and had us all scratching up the face and looking into the pit of the beast. It was a moment I will never forget. The monster pitched up and out and turned into the biggest tube you could ever imagine. On other days at Waimea, Sunset, Pipeline or Honolua, I’ve seen some big holes . . . but nothing like this. It looked like a huge cavern with half the ocean as its roof and sides. With so much power, the water no longer seemed liquid, it looked solid and hard, like concrete. At that instant I came to realize that there was no way to ride such a wave, no matter how long a board, no matter how early you got in, there was just too much energy and moving water. The proportions were just far too large. We all made it over that mountainous wave stoked and awed. James told me how he took off on one like that on the morning of the 74 Smirnoff, got pitched and almost died, and that he’d never do it again. He only half-jokingly yelled, “Hey, Alec, if you had caught that one you would have had the record.”

The set interval then lessened to about five minutes which meant the twenty-five to thirty-foot waves were only the average ones and the big set waves would show up around every twenty minutes. I didn’t know if it was that long, but another set popped up way outside and we headed out over a twenty-footer. I could hear screaming from people on the point, but I still couldn’t see the next wave. I was the farthest over and inside and I just made it over the last wall to see this beast of a wave fill the entire horizon. I had just been looking at waves in the twenty-five to thirty-foot range, which were as big as I’d ever seen, but this thing or wave or tsunami was clearly twice as big as anything I had ever encountered . . . easily. It was standing and feathering a good 200 yards outside, but the only thing I could see was a towering wall of water. No sky; nothing but this massive, angry wave. James, who saw it first, was already digging for the horizon, but there was no way he or any of us would be able to get far enough out, so I decided to bolt for the other side of the bay as far into the channel as possible. Of course, I didn’t think that this wave would turn out to be a monstrous left which started peeling far, far outside and ended up breaking top to bottom all the way across the bay. So there I was, having paddled right into the worst place possible. All the other guys were already diving for the bottom as the wave transformed itself into a thundering avalanche of white water . . . truly awesome. James later called it forty-eight feet. As far as I’m concerned you could have called it fifty or sixty or anything you wanted. Bradshaw, who had seen the wave from the beach, described it as “undisputedly the largest wave anybody has ever had to deal with.” As destiny or miracles would have it, my leash held. We all surfaced and the other three started swimming. J.P, whose bodyboard leash snapped, asked me, “What kind of leash you got on, a chain?” I was too busy thinking about the next wave to laugh.

The lifeguards called in the helicopter as soon as they saw this rogue wave close out the bay. At this stage it was no longer possible to swim in through the rip or shorebreak. James, with fifteen years of big wave experience, didn’t think twice and jumped right into the rescue basket. Alec meanwhile had gotten himself into serious trouble and was getting pulverized in the impact zone of the shorebreak. He was in the worst place on earth at that moment and looking like a goner. They kept dropping the basket to him, but there was too much turmoil for him to reach it, and the close-out sets kept rolling through. As Alec put it, “I was about to become hamburger on the rocks.”

At last Alec was able to reach up and grab on to the bottom of the basket, which was all the pounding sets would allow. As they started pulling him out another wave smashed into him, rocking the basket and the entire chopper. Heavy drama.

Meanwhile, J.P. had retrieved his board but he still couldn’t beat the rip. He got plucked out just after Alec.

As for your correspondent, I was out surfing alone in closed-out Waimea. A lot of people have asked me what was going through my mind al that time. Was I afraid? Of course. I realized the seriousness of the situation and my main objective was to get in. The sets just kept coming. I knew that the only way for me to get out of there was to ride a wave all the way to the keyhole in the comer of the beach, and that was what I intended to do. I figured I would paddle over the huge close-out sets and then try to shoot back to the normal lineup to pick up a twenty or twenty-five-foot in-betweener. The only problem was that I couldn’t get far enough in before another big set would show and I would have to hightail it back out. This went on for two or three sets before the helicopter guys came to get me. I waved them off because I still figured I could ride one in.

With the helicopter hovering overhead and another set approaching, I decided to stay where I was and position myself to catch one of the set waves. I was way, way outside and in the middle of the bay as the first wave neared. It looked like a left and I made a serious effort to catch it. I changed my mind because it started sucking out and there was just too much water drawing off the bottom. I knew there was another one behind it and I figured it would be breaking in deeper water after this first wave and give me a better shot at entry. My theory was correct. It backed off momentarily, long enough so that I could take off and start driving. Then the whole thing started sucking and turning concave. I was already at full speed, but I felt like I was going backward. I saw the free-fall coming, but having made a couple of free-fall takeoffs earlier in the month I had the confidence to launch myself over the ledge of what now looked like a moving cliff. Technically and mentally I kept it all together as I freefell vertically a good twenty-five feet on my board. But the flight was too long and the wave too concave and I crashed upon contact with the wave face. The thing about Waimea is that you are going so fast with so much momentum and power that when you hit it’s not like landing on water, it feels more like pavement. The worst part is, instead of penetrating the surface, you bounce and skip, leaving your body at the mercy of the wave which usually results in a trip over the falls. This time I hit so hard I saw stars, and then I started bouncing down the face as a good portion of the Pacific started to collapse on top of me. I felt the explosion of the lip; I heard my cherished 9' 0" three-stringer Lundy thruster snap; I felt my watch break away from my wrist and then felt myself getting sucked up and over for another thrashing. Things turned pretty grey at that point, and when I resurfaced the helicopter was waiting. I had given it my best shot, and the bay was whitewater from end to end, so I jumped right in the basket for the ride home.

For all of us who lived through the experience, life and waves have taken on a new perspective. We saw and tackled waves few mortal men have. While I may never experience them again, I will never forget that gigantic tube or that monster closeout, and especially that takeoff. I believe much more in destiny now. The unusual series of timing, circumstance, and events that resulted in me being out there with the others and then alone and surviving, makes me know that it was meant to be for me, and telling the story is part of that fate. I hope this meager attempt to describe the indescribable has been sufficient. Thank God we’re all still alive.


Since the events of this extraordinary afternoon, an unprecedented amount of media and public interest has been generated. This has served to refocus some attention on one of the fundamental elements of our sport: man against the sea, and the challenge of testing oneself against one of nature’s most powerful forces. While heroes, contests and design innovations come and go, this aspect of surfing will always remain.

Furthermore, in the aftermath, there has been much hoopla and controversy surrounding the question of who has ridden the largest wave ever. The answer? Nobody. Several men hold the record and have successfully made truly huge waves, the type you could safely call thirty or thirty-five feet. Now that I have seen even larger waves firsthand, I do not believe it is possible to ride them. There have only been rare times when such waves, the ones above all the rest, have even been seen, let alone attempted. Those waves remain in another realm . . . the unridden realm.

[Photos, top to bottom: Gordinho, Milton Barbosa, Gordinho]

"OCCURRENCE AT WAIMEA BAY," BY MARK FOO (1985)

Subscribe or Login

Subscribe or Login

Encyclopedia of Surfing

History of Surfing

Interviews

Features

The Sunday Joint

Videos