Subtitles by explosiveskull www.OpenSubtitles.org
You've been following that swell
across the whole ocean, watching it on the computer.
How big is it gonna be?
15, 18, 20 to 25?
You're always nervous.
In the dark, you're ready.
Daylight hits it,
and then you realize what you're dealing with.
You put on your gear, and you paddle out to waves
that could take your life at any second.
Finally, you get out there with your friends,
all the preparation,
all the nerves, all the training...
and all of a sudden that set's come from across the world.
Somehow you get to turn around and start paddling
like you never paddled.
As soon as you paddle, you feel it pick you up,
and then taking off.
And at first you can't even see nothing.
It's just all wind and just all rush,
and then you finally get to your feet.
Right there, the wind clears,
and the water clears from your face,
and you get to see what you're dealing with.
Now it's just survival.
You just gotta make it no matter what the case is.
When you put it all on the line right there,
and you ride the wave,
it's the most exhilarating thing that you could possibly do.
You ride that wave,
and that's when you just get the ride of your life.
That's what makes you just wanna go back and do it again.
I've always wanted to challenge death.
I loved to get just as close to death as I could possibly get
and then dodge it.
That was my thrill in life.
This was back in 1943.
Dickie Cross was a senior in high school.
Woody and he went out at Sunset.
You know how, on the North Shore,
it'll climb from six foot in the morning
to 30 feet in the afternoon.
And once they got out there,
it was just closing out all over the place,
and it was probably in the 20-30ft range.
And they decided that they would paddle down to Waimea Bay
where they could come in.
Woody Brown got washed up on the beach, nearly unconscious.
Dickie Cross was never seen again.
Surfing was the first
of what now they're calling extreme sports.
Young men going out with nothing but a surf board,
no lifeguards, no rescue,
and risking their lives for the chilling ecstasy
of riding a wave that could kill you.
My name's Nathan Fletcher.
My grandfather, he would tell me that,
you know, if you're a real surfer,
you can make the inside bowl at Makaha when it's 20 feet.
Now you see the inside bowl at Makaha when it's 20 feet,
it's pretty much unmakeable, very few waves are makeable.
It's pretty much a close-out.
If I rode 100 waves out there,
I might've made three through the bowl.
If you do make a wall,
all the way from the point through the bowl,
it is the ultimate.
Nate's grandfather knew all the Hawaiians,
and then talked Buzzy Trent to coming over.
They were living together in a Quonset hut
over on the Makaha side.
They were sending back pictures to us on the mainland
that just were mind-boggling
compared to what we had been surfing.
Those years, they were riding really big waves at Makaha
and revolutionizing big wave surfing.
I was around and influenced
by the older guys who were around my grandfather's house.
And as I got older and got more into big wave surfing
and started understanding what was going on in the photos
and who the people were, I realized,
wow, these people were like astronauts to big wave surfing
and to surfboard design.
So it's pretty cool
to see what those guys did with the equipment they had,
and to hear all those stories, and to carry a family tradition.
I was born in San Clemente General Hospital,
grew up in San Clemente.
My earliest memory of surfing...
I think I was about three years old.
My dad pushed me on the little whitewater, I stood up,
and then ride it, hit the sand, and I would slide up the beach.
And that's my earliest remembrance
of riding waves, getting pushed in.
Nathan learned how to surf and talk and walk and skateboard
all at the same time.
The Fletchers are from California,
but Nathan and Christian were pretty much raised
on the beach at Pipeline.
It wasn't like this kid coming from San Clemente
who was just, like, going and surfing the North Shore, like.
He was literally just shy of, like, raised
on that Ehukai Beach right there.
My dad and Gerry Lopez had a house at Pipeline
when I was young,
I wanna say between the ages of eight and eighteen.
So we would surf it a lot.
My brother had his own Waimea gun shaped by Gerry Lopez.
It was pink and purple camouflage, eight feet long,
when he was 11. I don't know any other kids
that had an eight-foot custom big wave board at 11.
He went and surfed Waimea,
and I had to go out because I was 16,
I couldn't let my little brother paddle out and sit in the car...
like a jerk.
He got the biggest wave of the day, too!
I have photos of him at Waimea when he's 11,
riding a pretty good-sized wave, 18 to 20 foot, backside,
when everybody else was caught inside.
When it got too big, my dad was doing his jet-ski thing.
He'd come to the house at Pipeline on the North Shore.
He took the jet-ski out to go surfing,
and then he ended up having us tow-rope...
I used to tow Nathan and Christian
out at Banzai Beach in the '80s.
People just weren't ready for it.
When I was growing up on the North Shore,
the Fletchers lived just down the street.
So I grew up with Nathan and Christian,
and I've known them since the '70s.
They got skateboard backgrounds, you know.
When those guys were doing their tow-in thing,
they had Herbie pulling them in, doing airs,
and Herbie Fletcher letting people see the possibilities
of using some sort of motorized vehicle connected with surfing.
It was a whole new world, futuristic stuff.
It all kind of stemmed from
Herbie taking the jet-ski to Outer Reefs.
Herbie said, "The ocean was made for pistons, Darrick!
"You gotta match power with power."
My dad introduced motorsports into surfing.
He also was a pioneer for the '60s and '70s skate-surf style,
but Jay Adams is the person who took that to the next level,
and he was the first guy to really surf and skateboard.
I met Jay Adams
and I met Christian Hosoi when I was 11 or 12.
Jay Adams was older than Christian,
but real similar, you know?
'Christian Hosoi,
'one of the best skateboarders in the world!'
In 1978, Jay Adams would take me surfing
at, like, five in the morning.
He'd be in the water by himself,
and he'd just charge from in front of the rocks
and just go down the line and then just blast the biggest air
before airs were even something.
There's always those ones that are just special,
and Jay had that, he had that "it" factor.
There's just something about him
that's influenced everyone in so many different ways.
He was hanging with surfers trying to emulate, you know,
say, Buttons, and doing, like, rail-grab cutbacks,
and taking that to skateboarding in the pools.
He was just raw.
Jay Adams and that generation -
punk rock, skateboarding, everything -
comes from surfing in the '60s.
Then it filtered out into "Kultur".
That was the name of Christian Hosoi's company, "SKT Kultur".
Me and Jay would terrorize the surf/skate scene.
Nathan was really small at the time,
but his brother Christian was into skateboarding,
so we all had this kind of family feeling
when we'd go and hang out together.
Christian Hosoi's all style,
and then my brother, he was different, he had his style.
My brother Christian, when I was about six years old,
had already started bringing airs
from skateboarding to surfing.
He was doing stuff that nobody had ever seen.
It was an evolution of air-surfing
and style and skateboarding all mixed together,
just a real innovative time.
So everybody was just crazy, right?
Christian Fletcher, Christian Hosoi... just whacked.
And then Jay, he was on his deal, too.
At a certain point, everybody just went too far.
So they went to jail and did rehabilitation.
Me, I was a lot younger than those guys.
I kind of watched it, saw what was going on.
Nathan started hanging out with Jay Adams in Hawaii,
now living there.
When I was about 12, he'd come pick me up
to take me skateboarding up in the hills in Pupukea.
He was already a famous guy,
but when I was young, he would treat me like an adult.
Time grew on, and we became friends.
He was definitely one of my heroes for sure.
I think he was the biggest influence on Nathan
skateboarding and really telling him,
"Dude, this is what's gonna make your surfing even better."
Skateboarding and surfing and snowboarding
and all that kind of shit is just fun to me.
It's what I do, it's my life,
it's the only thing I really know.
You know, he always surfed.
You know, he was skateboarding, he was snowboarding,
and then he got really into motocross
and became a pro motocross guy,
but his real deal was jumping, he loved to jump.
Growing up,
I used to be into jumping off things, jumping on things.
I liked to jump down things or jump downstairs.
On motorcycles I didn't like to go fast, I liked to jump,
and so that was the whole evolution
of freestyle motocross: jumping.
Nathan got big air.
Gotcha Europe were sponsoring the Tahiti contest,
so they invited me to go do it.
It was a big trip with me and my family, my wife at the time,
and I ended up saying to myself,
"OK, if I advance through the second round of the trials,
"then I go and try being a pro surfer."
So I go to Tahiti - boom, I make it through the two heats,
I make it through all six rounds of the trials.
Now I'm in the main event of the contest. The waves come up.
Nobody's ever seen Teahupo'o big.
The waves were getting bigger,
and I ended up being in the spot to catch this wave,
and I got a ten.
Then I paddled back out.
A bigger, gnarlier set came and I got another ten.
And so, after that wave when I kicked out,
I realized that I was meant to be a surfer,
and I realized that all the things that I'd done
would just add to my surfing ability.
From getting those two tens,
I ended up getting sponsored by Gotcha, making money,
and that started me as a pro surfer.
On the way to Tahiti,
I had blown all my responsibilities off,
so when I got back home,
I had none of the things that I left with.
I lost my house and my wife, but I had an income.
I became a sponsored surfer for Gotcha,
so they started paying me to surf.
So I moved into my car, the G20 white cargo van.
I had my white van,
and I ended up just driving around looking for surf.
I'd go to San Clemente,
I would go to San Diego and hang out,
and just basically look for the best waves
in California at that time.
I had one van
that I lived in and did whatever, and I would travel,
and that was for a couple of years of my life
doing whatever with my friend Hank.
Hank Foto. Ozzie and Hank. That's the meanest photo!
I'm just really stoked to be able to surf
and have a good time with my friends.
You know, I did a lot of different things,
finding out who I was.
I came up with all these robots...
...a mechanical band...
...and other weird shit.
Through it all, the only thing that matters is surfing.
We'd skate, too, and sleep and film my friends.
I'm psychoanalyzing you right now, Jay.
What do you see?
I see fucking... an influential manner of life.
What does this say?
That says fucking "Stone Age".
And that says...
Who do you like as far as people in general?
I used to have a lot of friends.
A lot of good influences, bad influences,
- and everything in between. - Thank you, Jay.
You know, Jay Adams and me kind of have a colorful past,
and he's been through some ups,
but he's also been through some downs.
And even though we got caught up,
even though we got stuck in ruts,
even though both of us went to prison,
we were on drugs, living crazy lives,
but at the end of the day,
he came out of it still dreaming.
Still visualizing where we were gonna be in the future,
how we were gonna travel the world,
how we were gonna do what we loved and do it forever.
If anybody would be a mentor, somebody to look up to,
I'd look up to Jay, because...
before Jay, nobody was gnarly at anything.
He's an individualist
and somebody who created something totally different.
And punk rock, skateboard, everything,
that's all because of Jay Adams.
His air awareness or his whole thing, too,
was bringing airs from skateboarding
and bringing that to surfing.
I wouldn't necessarily look at surfers as an influence.
I was more attracted
to the skateboard style and the skateboard approach,
and so when I would surf, I would think,
"OK, what would Jay do?"
And so that would make me wanna go do something
that was bigger with more power.
That's what skateboarding's about -
do the biggest air, go the fastest, do the longest grind,
and fly the farthest and do it with style.
Christian Hosoi was the first guy
to bomb-drop off the roof into the transition of a ramp.
Him and Jay were there in San Jose together.
It was me and Jay-boy out in San Jose
with me bomb-dropping off a roof.
Nathan saw what we did
and said, "You know what? I'm gonna do this in the water."
And I've seen him jump off of these rocks
that were so high into this wave,
it was almost like it was impossible.
It came to me in Santa Cruz
when I would be looking at these rocks
and then trying to jump off them.
I ended up running
and jumping off smaller rocks and then cliffs.
I didn't really make it.
And then realized that no,
you can't really just jump off something that's high
and land on a wave.
You need to be going the same direction
and have the same momentum as the wave.
The first time I heard of Mavericks,
I don't know what year it was, '98 or something like that,
the swell would be up and then I would try and go find Mavericks.
It took me five different seasons of going up there,
getting there, having it be foggy,
or having it blow-out, get there too late, whatever the case was.
First time I got to surf it, the sun was setting,
there was south wind, which is called Devil Wind,
terrible conditions.
And I ended up catching two waves.
That was the first time I got to surf it,
and then after that, I knew where it was
and knew how to get out there,
and so I would be up there surfing.
When it was about 25 feet, I thought,
"Oh, man, maybe you could jump out of a helicopter,
"and land in one of these waves."
As I was growing up, there was a guy, Ace Cool.
He used a helicopter to take him and his big wave surfboard
outside of the surf line and get dropped off,
so he didn't have to paddle out and catch a big wave.
When he did that, he nearly lost his life.
My vision was, to use the helicopter as a power machine
to jump into the face of a big wave and be able to surf it.
Putting all that together was a dream that I had.
It's called "Acid Drop".
I saw videos of Bruce and Andy before I knew them.
My dad would go pick them up and take them surfing and film them,
because he was making the "Wave Warriors" movies.
The surfing was just insane.
Those "Wave Warriors" videos were
what me and my brother grew up on.
I was, like, 12. My brother was probably, like, 13.
Herbie took me and my brother surfing at Lowers.
Nathan wasn't that into surfing at that time.
He was off doing motorbikes and just other shit.
It wasn't really until he went to Tahiti.
I was there for the trials.
He got those waves and changed his path back to surfing.
When I got sponsored by Gotcha,
Bruce and Andy rode for MCD, and we were in Europe.
I maybe was, like, 19 or 18. Bruce was, like, 16.
Nathan, me and my brother,
we did many trips together, like we went to Europe.
There's not a lot of people I like to travel with,
and Nathan was an easy-going person, you know.
He doesn't really open up to a lot of people,
but when he does open up to you, it's cool
because the dude's really smart.
We got stuck in France.
And I had to drive them around to contests.
They were on the QS Tour and shit,
and so we just surfed every day at Hossegor.
And so it was insane. It was a really cool time.
It was just us three for two weeks together.
That was when we first started hanging out.
We became good friends.
So we'd do our things. We'd see each other on the North Shore,
surf Pipeline together.
I love surfing with Nathan.
We kinda got each other.
He drew different lines, he did different stuff,
and I like that, and it wasn't the same old shit.
We both had crazy older brothers,
growing up with such radical fucking individuals
who just happen to be your brothers.
It's a pretty heavy thing.
Brothers are brothers, and he'd be bitching about his brother.
Same thing with me, I'd say shit about my brother.
And vice versa with Christian and me,
my brother Nathan, you know the same...
I guess you could say that we had similar relationships
with our brothers, me and Nathan.
Sometimes it was almost like therapy, I guess.
Andy just fucking ripped,
and Bruce, he would out-rip him,
but we just surfed all day, every day.
I was a fan of Nathan Fletcher and Christian,
the Fletchers. I still am.
You know, just growing up, watching their videos.
That's what inspires me in surfing,
people that are doing different stuff,
not the same old repetitive shit.
That's why I liked watching Christian Fletcher surfing.
I looked up to that shit, doing aerials and stuff.
Unconventional is conventional to me.
Nathan, Christian and my brother went to Indo together.
That was, like, twenty years ago.
Me, my brother, Andy
had that trip. It was in the Mentawais.
I went with Archie, Andy Irons and my brother,
pretty much ten wave hogs.
So we'd pull up at Spots,
and people would just get in their boats and leave,
because they didn't want to surf with us.
It's really neat to go surfing
with guys that surf really good in really good waves.
Archie and Christian was
what me and my brother wanted to be like
and what my brother wanted to surf like, you know?
That's 100 percent.
Man, it's hard to remember.
On the trip, Andy kept saying it was his birthday.
He was gonna be 21. That was the day we got back to port.
So, er...
...ended up he was drinking, right?
Drinking, drinking, drinking.
And he drank so much that he stopped breathing.
And I was right there, and I'd been sober at the time.
And I just heard him stop breathing.
I was drawing in my art book or whatever.
Andy tries to keep up with Archie and Christian,
and these guys have been doing it since they were seven years old,
so their tolerance level's beyond.
But he can't keep up with those guys, you know, he can't do it.
You can't keep up with Archie when it comes to drinking,
especially not on your 21st birthday.
He's a professional.
Nathan's the kind of person,
he's always aware of what's going on.
He's got eyes at the back of his head.
His sensors are always sensing.
And I saw Andy, grabbed him by the hair, smacked him.
When we got him to the hospital,
he had his lungs filled up with alcohol,
and then he was in a coma for, like, six hours.
And so, from that,
my relationship with Bruce and Andy was different.
I'd never saved anybody's life.
Bruce knew that I did that.
And so there was a different relationship
between me, Andy and Bruce.
There was a spiritual bond that could never be broken.
There can never be any animosity or envy or fucking ego,
or anything that some relationships have.
You know what I mean, you've seen it... with that person.
They've seen it with you,
there's ultimate trust in the bond.
I didn't have that with nobody, I still don't.
I've never saved nobody.
So from that, he went on and he won those world titles.
To see somebody go from dying on their 21st birthday
to be a world champion...
was to see somebody accomplish their life goal.
Nathan and Christian...
up to that, we hung out, surfed a lot
and hung out with me and my brother,
and from there, you know, we became really tight.
The first time the outer reefs on the North Shore were surfed
was in the early '40s.
My father, John Kelly, and George Downing
paddled out on their Hot Curl boards
and surfed Himalayas.
And when they came in, they were talking about it,
and they said, "It's like the Himalaya Mountains,
"they're so big."
The first time that John Kelly surfed Himalayas,
I don't know what year that would've been.
I surfed Himalayas I would guess in the early '60s.
I came out with Buzzy Trent.
It was a day that Waimea was probably a little too big,
and we went out at Himalayas, and it was probably 18 or 20.
When you make it out and you see the break
and you realize that that's why they call it Himalayas...
Wow, those are big waves.
They're big and perfect.
When you see these mountains coming in
and the way they're shaped, you know they're rideable.
And when you hear stories
about the guys that did it in the '50s,
it's amazing that people did it even before that,
but they've been doing it for years.
I've known Nathan since he was a little kid.
His dad's Herbie Fletcher, you know?
That's royalty in the surfing world.
So I watched him just wondering, like,
"OK, your dad's Herbie Fletcher,
"your brother's Christian Fletcher, who are you?"
And sure enough, man,
Nathan ended up surfing bigger and bigger waves
than his brother or his dad ever did. He just wanted it.
Then the big wave tow-in thing came around.
By being out there doing the tow-ins and stuff,
obviously I did the tow-ins when I was young with my dad.
I got into paddle surfing in big waves.
My friend Hank, who I lived with,
him and his buddies had jet-skis,
and so those were the guys who were doing tow-ins,
but we'd end up paddling out where the guys were towing in,
so then I knew that my friends would be out there, surfing,
doing tow-ins, but then I could go out and paddle, too.
Cos the whole tow-in thing was so big
and there were so many guys doing it,
I think everybody's got sick of it,
sick of guys who didn't even know how to surf
getting pulled into a 20ft wave.
So that's how the whole paddle-in thing started again,
and Nathan was, like, at the forefront of that.
Tow-in surfing maxed out,
and so what that's done, it's brought the whole paddle surfing
to a whole new level.
One day, I was surfing Phantoms,
this Sion guy was out on a jet-ski, they'd been towing in.
That was in 2009.
I'd paddled out. Hank was on the ski, right with me.
And so he ended up sitting there watching.
And so he asked me the next day, "How was it?"
I was like, "You saw it. It was 20ft and glassy,
"with just me and the guy on the ski, right?"
January 3rd, 2009, I broke my leg at Pipeline.
- Is that Nathan? - Yeah.
Is he alright?
Oh, my God, he's fucked up his leg.
- His leg? - His knee's bad, dude.
All of a sudden, this Sion guy,
he's right there at my feet, right?
And I don't know this guy that well.
When I was laid up,
he would come by every day and check on me, and always ask me,
"You need any food or this and that?" Cos my family's not here.
I couldn't move, I was laid up.
I have a lot of friends, but nobody really did that.
End of that next season, Hawaii came up, I'd just healed.
Me, Russo and Sion became friends at the same time.
I ended up getting a photo of Nathan Fletcher
out at Pipeline on a self-shaped 8'1'',
and it was the early stages of the boards that he rides now.
He just went out and got this magical wave,
like backlit 10 foot, First Reef Pipe,
and I shared the photo with him.
And he started going into details
about the board that he's riding.
I personally ride a four-fin,
cos I like the drive in the initial entry
and the point A to point B speed that you get.
Doing something that I believed in,
we got everybody else to just be interested
in how much difference just the fin design makes.
Back then, no one had these four-fins.
Nathan got that thing going.
He gave me my four-fin board.
The four-fin had been around,
but Nathan brought it back,
and I remember these original designs,
people like, "Oh, my God, this guy's crazy."
And then look at how many people are riding four-fins today,
or look at big wave surfing, everybody rides the four-fin.
Sion and Nathan really started becoming friends
more and more after that.
They were spending a lot of time in the ocean.
So that next season in Hawaii came up.
All of a sudden, boom, he would call me.
"What's up? High surf advisory."
We were looking at the internet charts and stuff,
and we were like, "Wow, looks like it's gonna be really big."
And Nate's all, "We gotta get a board made for this."
I was like, "What? You're gonna make a board right now?"
"Yeah, I'm gonna get LeRoy to shape it.
"We're gonna get a giant blank, and he's gonna shape it."
And I was like, "Alright."
I surfed the one day down at Himalayas.
I'd had a 10'0'', and I just felt under-gunned,
and so I went to LeRoy and said,
"Hey, we need to make a board that's bigger."
So we made an eleven-footer.
He's known my dad,
he's been into surfboard-making since the '60s.
I grew up with his dad. He's, like, part family with me.
He wanted me to build a board for the biggest waves
that a human could possibly catch.
When I went to make the board with LeRoy,
what we were trying to do
was make a surfboard that paddles really quick.
When you talk about a 50-foot face, a 100-foot face,
you're not dropping a Weber or a BB.
You need the momentum. That's why you need the gas,
the power by the paddle, thickness,
and the weight to get you right down in that sucker.
Once you're on it, you want to stay flat on the wave,
not let it get up underneath you,
and just a nice cruise to the bottom.
We made it off the template
of a late '50s/early '60s big wave board,
kind of a fuller nose, I guess, a Buzzy Trent gun.
When they were riding Makaha big surf,
they had these Hot Curl boards shaped into guns.
And Buzzy Trent started calling them guns.
And Buzzy would say, "If you're gonna hunt for elephants,
"you want to use a gun, not a bow and arrow."
I'd say that Nate Fletcher's board
that he's using now to paddle into the waves
is very similar to the concept and the boards
that they were riding at Makaha and Waimea
back in the late '50s or early '60s.
Best boards in the world are the Buzzy Trent/Dick Brewer.
It's extremely thick.
But at the same time, we have a nice, tight rail.
LeRoy has a certain rail design,
and it's because he used to work with Brewer and those guys,
and so automatically in his sleep,
the board you're gonna get is with a down rail Brewer rail.
Dick Brewer is kind of my idol, my guru.
Nathan knew that there was gonna be a swell one of these days
where you needed a board that big that he made,
and he was on that mindset of, like,
"I wanna be ready for that day." And we drove to Waiahua.
They wanted 450 bucks for that damn thing.
It's a twelve-footer.
We got the blank, drove back down,
and that day LeRoy just was in the shop, chopping it up.
It's the biggest and the most fantastic big wave board
in the tradition of a Buzzy Trent.
That is ugly in its own way.
It looks good. It'll paddle good.
I don't think you can beat it.
LeRoy, from the outside perspective,
people would think he's crazy,
but the guy is so on it and so in tune.
I think it was the third day, he was already glassing it.
They bring the board back to where Nate's at, standing there,
it was like a battle was about to happen.
January 11th, a 25ft west swell comes in.
The waves were honestly 50 to 60ft faces,
but it was variable winds, dead winds.
And when the waves are actually that big with that much energy,
and the swell's hitting the reef out there,
it's actually like a 50ft double-up.
The wave is barreling.
These guys are so in tune
and just taking off on 50ft waves
and pulling in one after another.
That's when I realized the difference of equipment.
I was on a 9'8'', Sion was on a 10'6'',
and Nathan was on an 11'0''.
I was literally getting three paddles to his one.
Nathan was brought up around his family,
and they're constantly thinking about
what is possible to push further.
We're like, "OK, this is the equipment that's out there.
"It works. Great."
He wasn't settling for that.
Once I'd surfed on the eleven-footer,
I said, "You know what? I need a 12-foot surfboard."
So I went back to LeRoy and said,
"Hey, you know, that 11-footer was insane,
"but I still want a bigger board."
I wouldn't do that for anybody.
Only for people with experience like Nathan Fletcher
that I'd even attempt to make a board like that work.
So we made a 12-foot board.
Of course you need a 12-foot board,
that's what the old-timers ride.
That's why I just pulled that in,
made it a little wider to do a four-fin.
I put a four-fin...
The thing was 12 feet long and four inches thick.
So, you can catch the biggest wave in the world on this board.
I was like, "Go get 'em, Nate."
I was like, "What's next, Nathan?"
Nathan's like, "I'm gonna paddle fucking Jaws Left."
No one was doing that.
He was telling me, "Oh, we gotta go to Jaws
"to surf the Left on a big west swell."
And him and Sion went over there,
there was maybe four or five of them out, being that vulnerable,
cos Pe'ahi is like a whole other world.
The first section at Jaws was me and Sion,
and that was the first paddle day really that was exposed,
and a new day of big wave surfing, right?
He was mad because I wanted to get out at Jaws,
because it got windy, right? I was over it.
Then he saw the photos,
and when he looked at the photos,
he was pissed because he left early,
and in the photos it looks all clean, right?
He felt like he just didn't get enough that day at Jaws,
so when we went to Mavericks, he really had a point to prove.
It was his first time we'd go to Mavericks,
and I'm gonna meet him up there,
cos I was in California at the time,
and I'd been telling him about this Maverick spot, right?
We'd go to Mavericks.
We have this session out there, and he absolutely goes nuts.
Nathan Fletcher was basically surfing royalty,
he came from the family that everyone knew.
And Sion was unheard of
except in this really tight circle of big wave surfers,
but he had never been to Mavericks,
and almost right away moves up the pecking order
to, like, the top five guys.
So we get out of the water,
and we're changing our wetsuits in the parking lot...
Adam Replogle comes up and tells us, "Did you hear about Andy?
"He just passed away."
That was just horrible news. You know, I just lost a brother.
Whatever happened, the way it happened, was just so sad.
After Andy's funeral,
there was me and my wife and Hank Foto.
Andy's funeral just finished, we were driving back.
I looked up, and there was this white bird,
and it was about 15 feet from the car,
there was no way I could stop.
It was super weird.
It was, like, staring at us. And I was, like,
"OK, if I didn't stop, it was, like, a thing, right?"
But in my mind I said, "Man, if I just slam on the brakes,
"I might be able to save it."
And so I slammed on the brakes. As we hit it, it flew off.
So I looked up what a white owl is,
because that's what it was, it was a white owl.
I guess that when something like that happens,
it's a premonition.
It means that something big is going to happen in your life.
I guess it meant I was going to have to deal
with some extreme tragedy.
The first year was those big waves.
This is the second year.
Now the first swells are like March again.
We're gonna go back to Mavericks for the second time.
Everything's kind of clear with Andy.
I remember being in New York of all places,
I saw these three swells on the map
that looked like they were going straight to Mavs.
I was like, "Hey, it looks like there's 3 or 4 purple blobs
"going directly to Mavericks."
So I flew from New York to Mavericks.
First time at Mavs?
I came here once before,
and I just came back, I just wanted to feel it out.
I'm hoping there's bigger good waves,
and I got some good equipment,
and I'm here with a good team with the boys.
- Nate, what did you think, man? - Yeah, it's gonna be good.
And we're going.
Mavericks is different
than a lot of the big waves in the world
because it's so deep after the initial break.
So the first thing that pops up is the big A-frame bowl
that we see in the photos.
But just behind it, towards the shore,
is a real deep crack in the ocean, in the floor.
It's, like, 60ft deep there. What happens is,
the wave pours all this water into the chasm,
and it's super common to get two-wave pulldowns out there.
If your leash breaks,
and you don't have something that kinda pulls you up,
you can just get planted so deep underwater.
I surfed every Mavericks swell for twenty-something years
and was really, really familiar with the line-up
and the size that we were surfing,
and had a bad wipe-out
where a wave kinda clipped on me, ahead of me.
I got completely smashed and held down,
and I thought for sure I'm dead.
I kinda waited to die, and then I didn't die.
And I got let go.
I didn't have the illusion that I did something to survive.
It was just, it let me go.
I could feel that you're not always gonna be let go,
and if you get in this one spot, you're not coming up.
It happens really quickly at Mavericks,
and once you're under there, it's just really black
and it won't let you out.
There are human limits.
The idea that you can just
put your head down and make it happen,
you know, there's reality there at some point.
It's not mind over matter.
There's a lot of matter out there, and it's heavy,
and it will hold you down.
In order to ride big waves and to be out there,
you are going to be testing the limits of human endurance.
That's just the nature of the game.
That day when we got down to the marina,
it was as if he was the chief
leading the troops into war or something.
He was so calm and at ease.
I was just like, "Fuck, I've been here once before.
"My last session I had here was just terrible."
Nathan, Sion and I made our way out.
We'd been out there for a couple of hours.
I caught this wave, brought me to tears.
So you know you got a good one
when you're pretty much in tears of joy afterwards.
So I said, "Hey, I'm good."
Sion, he'd caught a bunch of waves.
He was just starting to feel it.
We surfed for a few hours, and I'd actually gotten a few waves.
My session had gone 1,000 times better than my previous session.
Nathan got some really good waves. he was feeling content.
Nathan and I got on the ski and were just motoring around,
admiring Sion. I'm just like,
"Dude, this guy's so fucking gnarly. Are you kidding me?"
Just acknowledging the waves he'd been catching.
And we can see another set feathering out on the horizon,
and what do you know, he's on it again.
We motor up to him and we're like,
"What do you wanna do? You wanna go in?"
We're sitting on the ski. He said, "Are we done?"
And I said, "No, we're not done, we're gonna watch you surf."
He looked at Nathan and he's like,
"Take Fuller in. Maybe grab your other board.
"Come on, we'll catch more fucking bombs."
I was just, like, freezing. I had frostbite at that point.
And Fuller's freezing, so he says, "Know what?
"I'll grab that other big board, and I'll come back out
"and catch a couple of waves with you." So he said, "OK."
So I went in to grab this 12-foot board,
drop off Fuller in the harbor. I come back.
However long that takes, 20 minutes.
When I'm coming back out on the ski,
they said, "Hey, where is Sion?"
The other guys on the ski, right?
I said, "Where is he? I don't know. I was in the harbor."
He said, "Oh, man, he caught a wave
"about however many minutes ago, and he fell,
"and then Shawn Dollar caught the one after and he fell, too.
"We rescued Shawn Dollar, but we haven't seen Sion since."
And I'm like, "What the fuck do you mean, you haven't seen Sion?
"Where is he?"
Waves are 25 feet,
you don't just let somebody fall and not take inventory.
If you're on the jet-ski, you get him, you get the other guy,
you say, "OK, everybody's safe."
So I turn around, I race inside,
and they turn around to go back out and take pictures.
Time's gone by, about five minutes or so,
I can't find him anywhere.
So I go back out on the ski.
I'm like, "Hey, have you seen him? Has he paddled out?
"Where is he?"
"No, man, we haven't seen him.
"We went out to the line-up. He's not out there either."
Now it's been ten minutes.
I'm looking around everywhere, on the rocks, on the beach,
and I've not seen his board, I'm not seeing him.
And I'm like, "Man, I'm just gonna go way inside,
"maybe he broke his leash,
"and he swam through the shark water, because he's that crazy."
So when I go over there, I pull up,
and he's connected to his board, face down.
So I just say, "Sion!" I jump in and I grab him, right?
And I just punched it, right?
Straight to the beach, as fast as the jet-ski would go.
At some point I kind of switched
from trying to pray him back
to, like, kind of...
It's like you accept it, you know.
So he's still there.
And we just went next to him.
I said goodbye, you know.
I didn't know him that well.
Mostly, though, I'm sad because of my kids.
And I thought of that.
You know, I think of that when I'm out there.
And, you know, jeez, man, it just comes down to:
"Why the hell are we doing this?"
But he was doing what he loved to do.
And I'm doing what I love to do.
You know, not reckless, not stupid.
But following your calling.
It's sad and it's tragic, but it's also life.
I've always thought, even outside of surfing,
about these people that do just crazy shit.
What is it that separates them from the average human?
What enables them to go dance with death?
That's what they live for.
So now I go to Mavericks
and it's a different place to me.
You know, it's still that same great wave, but..
But it really makes me miss Sion.
Everybody's got a time.
Circumstances may change things sometimes,
but for the most part you're born, you're gonna die,
you just don't know when.
It's sad when people die young,
but only for the people that are still here.
I don't think they're thinking about it.
Guys like Andy and Sion found the fountain of youth.
Because they're gonna be 32 or whatever for eternity.
I was just shattered.
After all that,
I never knew if I was gonna surf big waves anymore.
When I went to Fiji, me and Bruce had this session.
That was the first time we'd really surfed
after those two tragedies.
My brother died and Sion died...
That was a really heavy part of my life.
I was very emotional, angry. A lot of stuff.
I wasn't even gonna go.
Nathan was calling me, like, 20 times.
He was all, "This is gonna be a session
"that you don't wanna be at the end of the year saying,
"'I wish I was there. Fuck, I could have gone.'"
I remember I had three of my brother's boards.
Brand-new. Shit, the biggest... I think it was like 6'10" maybe.
Bruce and Nathan showed up
when the peak of the swell was going off
and they had a boat.
Nathan had a bright-red board.
He got a crazy, beautiful wave. Just, like, perfect.
Long-barreled. Rode it all the way to the end.
I broke all my brother's boards actually that day.
I'm sitting on the boat, pretty much rattled,
when Nathan gets that huge wave, that really big, nice one.
Not a touch of water out of place.
Nathan got that wave and he was riding at the tip of the board.
He came to the boat. He was all pumped up.
So I was pretty much blown out, broke all my brother's boards.
And he was like, "Here, take my board out."
"Fuck that! I'm not riding a 10-foot board. Fucking hell."
I've never rode a board over 7'6" before.
Nathan was like, "You can get the sickest wave ever."
So I take that big red board out there,
and that wave that I got
was the most beautiful barrel of my life.
I'm laughing to myself because I'm on this 10-foot surfboard
going, "There ain't nowhere to go away from this thing."
So I was just in this mesmerizing,
translucent blue barrel
way out in the middle of the ocean, and...
it was getting deeper and deeper and deeper.
And then all of a sudden I jumped.
I didn't even touch the water, I went straight to the bottom
and hit the reef so far down there
it felt like my jaw was about to break,
because the pressure was so heavy.
And then I started swimming to the top.
I was swallowing my breath, I had no more air.
I thought I was already at the top.
Four huge full swims and I'm still not up there.
So I was just going,
"Oh, my God, this is it, I'm drowning."
My kids started flashing, my family...
I was about to black out.
Then I came up and took the biggest grasp of air,
and Russo was right there.
If there was another wave, I would've been smoked.
He has a photo of me grasping for air.
He just had this look on him
and I just kind of grabbed him,
just to let him know, "You're all good."
We got back to the boat, and they were just so happy.
That wave that I got was surreal.
A lot was going on in my life.
A lot was going on in Nathan's life.
He was there when Sion passed away.
It was a really intense moment
for both of us in surfing and in our lives.
For me, that was a career session.
To have those tragedies
and then have that magic come from it,
to persevere through the worst things in your life,
that was just the most beautiful thing,
so out of all respect for the brothers that we lost
we just had to be strong and stay strong and carry on.
That's exactly why Nathan went there for that trip
to catch that wave he got.
That's exactly why he wanted me to go there
to catch that wave, you know?
And I was stoked for Nathan
for giving me a kick to get there,
because a month later the same scenario happened in Tahiti.
I was in Tahiti and I said,
"Hey, motherfucker, you better get the fuck down here."
Three weeks after Fiji, I went to Tahiti.
It was the first year I was back there since my brother died.
My brother loved Tahiti.
All of a sudden that code-red swell was coming,
and I was on the plane
and I realized that I hadn't been to Tahiti
since, like, '99 for the contest, right?
That was a big deal. I was thinking, "Oh, man.
"I wonder how prepared people are gonna be?"
All these things go through your head.
I was very unprepared. Shit, I didn't have tow boards.
I think I was in Papeete
fucking hitch-hiking back out to the end of the road
to go see what the waves were doing.
So I stayed in Papeete
an hour and a half, hour and 20 minutes away from Teahupo'o.
Brought my wife.
Said, "I'm just gonna go on a vacation.
"If I catch a wave or two of the swell, that'll be great."
I didn't put any pressure on myself.
We drive and, you know,
I'm seeing the swell and it's big.
And so...
I'm supposed to be going with Bruce.
He's coming too, wherever he's at.
So he's asking me, "How big is it?" I'm like,
"Man, there's waves going over the road by Raimana's."
He's like, "OK. What, 12 feet?"
I'm like, "Man... maybe 12 feet, yeah."
But I'm thinking bigger.
So I'm watching these waves and it's just gnarly, right.
By this point, I'm a nervous wreck,
but I'm whistling and yelling for people.
I wanna get involved.
Here goes nothing!
We're going out there, and he's like, "Look at it."
I said, "Fuck, no. I don't wanna look at it. Shit, no.
"I don't wanna look at it. Let's just go right past it.
"I don't wanna look at what we're getting ourselves into.
"Just straight to the outside,
"because if I'm gonna sit there and look at it...
"I'm gonna fucking psyche myself out real quick.
"Shit!"
They're like, "Oh, it's fucking big."
Koby's out driving me on the ski,
and Koby's a force to be reckoned with.
And so, "Here comes a wave. I'm gonna go, Koby."
He yells, "Whoa!"
That was a fucking heavy wave for me.
You're not really paying attention to this thing...
the water that's coming up,
you're hanging on for dear fucking life.
It's dry reef right there and it's huge.
Fuck. You know what I mean? When I ate shit on that wave,
I was like, "Oh, my God, this is it."
This is the worst I've ever been in.
I'm upside down, going over in this huge wave at Teahupo'o,
like in the lip.
I was just like, "What the fuck did I just get myself into?"
And I'm ready...
I thought I was just gonna get beamed up to fucking, wherever I'm going.
And, fuck, I didn't even feel anything.
I was in the lip, upside down, fucking like this,
and it was like I was in this protective bubble.
You know, my brother was protecting me.
And, fuck,
I came up on dry reef, and I didn't feel a fucking thing.
And I didn't know even how...
I just thought that was just a normal wave.
It was big, but I didn't know how big it was.
Then Makua sees that
and he's like, "Dude, what're you doing?"
And I said, "I don't know, I'm just trying to get a wave."
I was like, "Let's do something!"
"Man, I gotta get Nate to the wave."
I could just see it in his eyes.
He was like, "Look at this one. You want this thing?"
The thing just looked massive because you're in the water now.
From before in the channel, you can see how big a set it is,
but now when you're in the water on the ski,
it's just like everything looks below sea level.
Here comes this huge fucking wave.
And I'm like, "It's fucking Nate."
At first I'm going, like, "Go, Nate! Yeah, go, Nate!"
Then I was, like, going, "No, Nate. No, no, no, no!"
Because I was like, "This is gonna fucking kill you."
It looked like a little drainage ditch
at the bottom of the wave.
It was all round like that
and then way down here was a little kink.
So I get down there and I do my turn.
But I'm fighting it the whole time,
because the water's sucking this way,
but you gotta go that way to come out of the barrel,
so it's like you're fighting it to stay your line,
to make it out of the end.
And so I'm struggling.
I'm not making it, I'm back to making it.
I go through the foam ball, go through this white water.
I come out, and I try and hop down back into it
to reset my line, to restart, because I was getting sucked up.
But then I wasn't making it right.
I remember falling back and seeing the way the shoulder was
and just saying, "OK, I've had a great life."
Humans just don't handle this.
So, I survived the wipeout and I come up.
It feels like I got my head ripped off my shoulder.
My spine's all hot. I coulda been capped, right?
Everybody's freaking, telling me,
"That was the heaviest thing."
So I get out of the water and I bail Teahupo'o.
I go back to the hotel, hang out with my wife.
The next day, Bruce texted me a picture.
I saw the photo and I just could not believe that was me.
So, August 28, 2011, Tahiti,
the most historical ride of my life.
If I'd been on time
and had all my stuff together and prepared,
I would never have caught that wave.
Everybody goes to do these things.
I was just there to be part of it.
From after Andy passed away and Sion,
I didn't know what to do.
I didn't know if I should still surf big waves. I didn't know.
And so God or fate or whatever just gave me this magic wave
and pretty much changed my whole life.
That right there was the heaviest wave ever at Teahupo'o.
That right there sent Nathan into the millennium future.
And the funny thing is,
you know, fuck it, he just showed up, just scattered.
Just boom!
Five minutes, he got a wave, boom! Then we're out of there.
For Bruce and Nathan, it was a transcendent day.
It somehow redeemed the tragic deaths of Andy and Sion.
And all that said,
I owe it to the fate of dealing with those hard times
and, you know, that was what fate gave back to me,
to pursue a dream that I had with a friend,
so it was a really special time in my life,
and I'll never forget it.
When I look at the photos that Brian Bielmann took now,
and I think, "That's me on that wave,"
it's just, you know...
I can't even believe it.
So, in the end, those two sessions,
the first time in that heat when I got two tens
and then when I got the next wave,
the code-red swell, there was eight covers the same month,
all over the world.
I won the XXL, all that shit.
And so that one wave put me into pro surfing,
made me so Gotcha paid me.
And then to catch that other wave,
really Tahiti made my life what it is today.
And really, because I didn't die on that wave,
I try and appreciate every moment
and I don't rush around to go do swells or anything,
because it's never gonna be like that wave at Teahupo'o.
It doesn't even matter.
And so, after I rode that wave,
it was like something said thanks to me
for dealing with all that.
And so, somehow now I have an iconic ride of history,
but I owe it to Andy and Sion.
He says it put him back on the map,
but I don't think he ever fell off the map.
But in his mind, I guess that's what he needed.
Me and my wife, we moved to Hawaii
to start our family, have a baby.
We'd been here for about a month.
She was eight months pregnant. It was November 13th...
...2013.
And we ended up surfing down at Alligator's.
This guy Kirk Passmore, we saw him on the beach.
He paddled on Waimea down the wave with us.
He ended up catching this wave and he didn't make the drop
and he ended up drowning.
That night,
we were looking at the guy Kirk Passmore's Instagram,
because I didn't really know him
and we'd met him that day on the beach.
It was around nine o'clock,
so we shut the phone off to go to bed.
Right after that, two minutes later,
boom, her water breaks.
So then we're off to the hospital to have the kid.
We went into labor that night. November 14th Laser was born.
And so to have Kirk pass away
that same day as we had our child
was pretty much the ultimate feeling
of knowing how valuable your life is
with what you do in big-wave surfing
and the chances you take.
And there's some sort of karmic connection
with Kirk and with Laser and Andy and Sion
and then catching that ride in Tahiti.
I feel like I'm real content.
My focus is making sure that I'm in my child's life,
so that, when he gets of age, he can go do the same thing.
I got a call from Mexico
that Jay Adams had passed away.
It was just real surprising,
being one of his friends and somebody who knew him
through the ups and downs of his life,
and had been there to see it with him.
He was just at the best place in his life where he could be,
in Mexico on a surf trip with his wife,
surfing, skating, off hard drugs.
It seemed like everything was going real good,
and so when it happened that Jay had passed,
right there I felt like it was an end of an era.
The day Jay Adams passed, I got a phone call.
Sadness came over me right away.
All I could do was run through the reels
of me and him growing up,
our teenage years of us raging
and traveling and skating around the world and partying.
And then our dark years.
Then all of a sudden, our good years,
our sobriety years, our faith years.
And I went through it so quickly at that very moment,
but then I knew that he was home,
he was ripping in paradise.
Jay Adams is one of those figures
that's gonna influence generations throughout eternity.
Jay was a huge influence to me.
I thought about all the things he had done in his career
and his legacy, innovating in punk rock,
skateboarding and style all mixed together.
It all starts with Jay Adams.
That inspired me to go out and go do something
that's never been done before
in memory of Jay.
It started with his grandfather,
riding big waves that had never been ridden before.
In our family, that's what we talk about.
When it came to me it was in Santa Cruz,
when I would be looking at these rocks
and then trying to jump off them.
I came up with the idea, I thought,
"Oh, man, maybe you could jump out of a helicopter
"and land in one of these waves."
So, coming from a family of innovators in surfing,
I got the chance to be able to bring the helicopter
into the surf world.
Power and machine surfing has gone one step further.
There's a good set right here.
I'm gonna hang out a little bit.
I don't know how long it took
but maybe 12 years or 15 years.
But thinking about it, imagining it, dreaming it.
And then this opportunity came by with this guy Michael
to be able to bring that dream to life.
To jump out of a helicopter into a wave.
The feeling I got when I was outside the helicopter
looking down at the wave
felt so insanely extreme.
Once the wind's in your face
and you see the view of the waves,
then you're just barely above them,
going through the rush right there.
It gave me those butterflies like when you're a little kid
and you're gonna jump off a high rock or something.
In surfing it's all you...
...trying to get out alive.
The helicopter brings a whole other element.
And of course it's gonna be spiritual.
If it's not, then you're not in the moment.
I was on the edge of the helicopter, looking down.
I was on the brink of the unknown.
'Do you wanna track one wave right here?'
'Yeah.'
To be able to make this,
we're gonna have to go and follow the wave,
get in front of it
without hitting the tail rotor on the lip,
and drop down in elevation and then right then is
when I'm gonna have to get out and get over.
And then, as I do that, he's gonna have to pull away
and go the opposite way.
The technical side of the safety of the whole jump
is where we're at.
We gotta figure out who the person is
that's the most qualified to be in the seat next to me
that's guaranteed not gonna make a mistake
and just totally be able to be on.
So we need to find that other person.
I come out of the water in Waimea,
and Nathan pulls into the parking lot.
"I need your help. You gotta help me with this project."
I'm like, "OK, what is it?"
"I gotta jump out of this helicopter with a surfboard
"and land on a wave."
I'm like, "Yeah, no problem, dude."
We're in April and we're in springtime.
Out of the blue, a killer swell shows up.
The day we got the permits, it's on, we're going.
There was a lot of moving parts.
We put it all together, got the people, got the pilot.
We did some test runs.
Seeing the last swells when they popped up on the charts,
that's when we knew it was destiny.
There wasn't supposed to be a swell at this time of the year.
We watched it go from glassy and sunny to cloudy and rainy.
But while we're watching it right now,
it's getting ready to blow out as we sit here.
We should be flying right now.
It's a lot of rain, but... I'm comfortable with it.
I don't think it's that much of an issue.
'Do you wanna maybe wait out this rainstorm?'
'Yeah.
'It doesn't really matter, to tell you the truth.'
We're just gonna go for it. We need to fly right now.
Where's Rush at?
This is the fun part, flying around in the bird.
This is it, Nate.
'Super stoked!'
Everybody here has a job.
And everybody knows what that job is. Correct?
Worst-case scenario, if the helicopter does hit the water,
I'm gonna count on my rescue workers to contain the area
and we're gonna dive on it, OK?
We've got O2 bottles, we've got spare air bottles.
Everyone knows what to do to back each other up.
Our paramedic is gonna be on the boat.
'If anything happens to Nathan, I'm gonna go right to the boat.'
We're gonna assess the situation
and we'll monitor whether we call 911.
Our emergency landing area is gonna be on the water.
We're gonna shoot for the Pillbox area,
the Stables, then back to the helipad.
We got a great athlete,
he can get the job done real quick.
Sounds good, Darrick. Perfect.
This whole thing was something that I was saying 15 years ago,
like telling my close friends.
Basically, what you're gonna wanna do is a step-off.
The closest thing to a step-off.
Right? Because you're gonna wanna be as low as possible.
This is what I was thinking earlier...
So, that's the wave right there, pretty much, huh?
Can we do it on that left?
Let's do it.
I think it's gonna be makeable.
Makeable.
It's gonna be sick, actually, if I make it.
Pretty excited. Pretty nervous.
The tail rotor goes really low to the waves,
so if something happens and I'm actually standing up...
It's like...
it's gonna be amazing if I don't get cheese-grated.
And if I get cheese-grated,
that means everybody's going down.
It was raining, it was thundery, it was stormy.
But it was my last chance, so I decided to go for it.
'How's that surfboard?
'Solid.'
'What do you hear?'
'Yeah, we're good. Roger.
'A bit of rain...'
'It's just like Nam shit, with the rain.'
'Apocalypse Now. Charlie don't surf.'
'Yeah. Just need machine guns.'
'It's got that ominous dreary-looking look.'
'It looks big out there today.'
'Oh, what? Gnarly!
'Looks like everybody's in position.'
'Roger.
'Roger, getting into position.
'Safe ride.'
'Copy that.'
It was choppy, rainy, stormy.
OK, we'll just do a couple of pass-bys.
'OK, harness is off. I'm clear.'
'OK, roger.'
The conditions went to complete shit,
and it wasn't gonna get any better before the day was over,
so it was either do it or don't do it,
and so I chose to do it.
And what that did was just add an element of danger
with the rain and the wind and everything,
which I kind of expected but not to that extent.
'Guys, we'll wait for another set.
'How about this wave, Nathan?'
'Looks good.'
'Alright, guys,
'we're gonna roll with this wave coming up now.
'Oh, fuck!'
'Uh-oh. I hope he's OK.
'I was just looking at this skid up here.'
- 'He hit the skid.' - 'Uh-oh!
'Yeah, he jumped forward.'
'Hope he's OK.
'He gave the thumbs-up when he hit the water,
'but once that adrenaline wears off...'
I got out of the water, I was shook up.
I just was kind of nervous
and didn't really know what was going on,
didn't really wanna proceed with what was happening.
I thought about danger versus reward.
I was thinking, "Is this really worth it?"
So I was trying to balance out the fears against the safety,
against... the end result if I made it.
So that's when I carried on.
That was so close. The timing was off and so...
I jumped at the wrong time.
I'm gonna try and do it better this next time.
Once I'm out on that skid,
it's actually really hard to be balancing,
so, say, three minutes out there,
I've already been on a tightrope for three minutes,
I'm ready to go, you know what I mean?
But we can't just wait for one single wave.
Yeah, we're good.
We're gonna wanna go up right here
and go and get right in front of it and then kind of lower it.
'Wow, looks big out there today.'
'Look at this one, Nate.'
'OK, I'm in position.'
'OK, roger.'
'Oh! Oh! Oh! Your tail rotor was in that pocket.'
- 'In the water?' - 'In the water.'
'Fuck!
'Shit, we should've gone for it.
'Rush, what do you think about this one?'
'Yeah, number two, right here.'
- 'This one right here?' - 'Yeah.'
'Roger, copy. He landed that one.'
'That was perfect!'
Being somebody who is attracted to adrenaline
and... all the different forms of high-energy sports...
the rush is a real addiction, you know.
I'm addicted to the rush, for sure.
I'll chase it to the other side of the world.
The energy of it with the helicopter with the waves
felt really great.
It's one of the heaviest things I've ever done.
It felt really, really good.
All of it came together.
It was a childhood dream. It was a huge success.
Making the jump was something I thought about, dreamed about.
And to have it come to life
for our family name and our legacy,
we get to take surfing one step further into the future.
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