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The Mafia Revisited (PART I) A Mavericks Preseason Photo Briefing

A lot of things are brewing. A shark was recently spotted circling the legendary break and two fisherman died trying to fish the lineup, but the predicted October 8 opening day at Mavericks never materialized. Despite the hazards, everybody's amped up, especially the surfers and photographers. News services from Los Angeles to Germany covered the Quicksilver Mavericks Men Who Ride Mountains Big Wave Event last year. The window for second contest will start November 6 and run through March 31. The first place purse has been doubled to $30,000. Kelly Slater and Noah Johnson have been invited. The first woman to surf the big wave break, Sarah Gerhardt of Santa Cruz , is on the list of alternate contestants. Keep your eye on the contest website www.mavsurfer.com. A spotlight will flash when the contest is set to begin. The sites founder/photographer Frank Quirarte will be part of the four man Mavericks Water Patrol. He also will be looking for another cover shot like the one of Dan Moore last March- a spectacular fifty foot "face of death." Proexchange had a chance to catch Jeff Clark, Don Montgomery, Doug Acton and Alan Love of Aqualenz as the season was just beginning. They had some interesting things to say about Mavericks, staying healthy, the contest and surf photography.

DA: I had fun reading the interview that we did here. That was good.
BC: I just got one with Les "k2" Walker that's gonna go up soon He had some things to say about you Doug.
DA: Ah Oh. What does he say now?
BC: You'll have to read it.
DA: The thing is everybody that has worked here, like Don, he was one of the first guys shooting period...He was the first guy who got a shot published. All the time that we've put in, everybody involved just documenting the place..For quite a few years.
BC: Allot of work...really allot of work. But you've done it; you've made it famous.
DA: No, the guys that surf the place make it famous.
JC: It's the photographers that do it all...
ALL: Nahhhhhh!
AL: Well I'll tell ya. There's a few bucks to be had if the photographers show up. That's for sure..
DA: You know what it is? It's the whole circle...it's good. We all enjoy what we're doing. Everybody's having a good time. I look so much forward to doing what I'm doing here. Bottom line.
BC: You're ready for another winter now, huh?
DA: Yeah, always.
JC: I went to the most amazing Chiropractor today. He did the full analysis of my body. It's crunching up here. It's spasming here. Your right legs shorter than your left. My first visit and this morning, I mean it was tears to tie my shoes. I've cancelled the operation.
DM: Jeff's got a broken back.
JC: I'm gonna go into rehab. Serious rehab as far as physical therapy. You know doc (Rennekker) told me about this guy two years ago. When I told him I was scheduling a surgery, he's going, "Now wait a minute...Let's really think about this". He says, "I've got an appointment, be at my house at 9:30. You're going with me."
GL: You guys must be psycho. I mean me an Alan grew up in Southern California, Huntington Beach. The waves don't get very big there. Where Alan lives now in Australia the waves get pretty good; there's some really beautiful classic waves. But nothing monstrous.
AL: Too big for me!
GL: It gets big and you're praying before you go out sometimes there. But when I see Mavericks and I've only recently started hearing about Mavericks, I go what the heck? It's scary.
BC: Get those three videos on the wall. ("High Noon at Low Tide" and "Twenty Feet Under" by Eric Nelson. And "Mavericks" by Lili Schad and Grant Washburn) They tell the whole story.
GL: Catherine's husband Jeff (Clark). Oh my God.
BC: He's "Mr. Mavericks". He's the pioneer.
DM: Yeah, he rode this place all by himself.
GL: That's what I heard. I guess when we first started hearing about Mavericks was about five or six years ago. I just thought, who is this guy surfing these sickening waves by himself.
DM: The first published photo Jeff in Surfer Magazine was in 1992.
GL: Oh really, did you take it?
DM: Yeah....
JC: I started surfing it in 1975. I was 17.
AL: By yourself?
JC: Nobody wanted to go.
GL: So you just decided one day to go out there?
JC: No. I was out there every day as a kid playing. I mean we'd hang out in the tide pools. Even before we moved over here, I'd been on the reefs out there. My dad dove for abalone in the early 60's. We built a house in Miramar, right over here in '66. And you know we started cutting school shortly thereafter, and spending all day at the beach. And my friend and I would walk from Montara, around every nook and cranny, all the way down to here. Around the point. And we started surfing Ross's Cove.
GL: Where is Mavericks? We've never been here. We're like tourists.
JC: 300 yards outside the rocks. To the northside. The peak actually starts behind the rock. And you can ride a wave for 45 seconds and at the end of that 45 seconds you have just made it to the last rock. If it's a west, you're going into the rocks. If it's a northwest to north current, it will float you. I mean you can still go through the rocks but its better on a northwest. On a west swell, where it splits the wave, sometimes it's better to swim to the north; cause it's splitting and you'll get in deeper water.
AL: That wave here (Lawrence Beck's monster shot of Jeff/Surfer's Journal), is that the place? Why are you going left? I thought it was a right. I always see all these rights.
JC: Cause the right was mushy (Ha! Ha!). It's an A-frame peak.
GL: That's probably got to be the biggest left..You always think of Weamea Bay and Sunset Beach and these big rights....
BC: That was the biggest cold water wave ever ridden for quite a while.
AL: Nice light out there. California light.
DM: Once it gets to around eleven or twelve o'clock, you might as well be shooting with black and white film. (From the cliff)
AL: That's when the light gets good in Australia. About eleven o'clock.
GL: I heard that the day that day Foo died wasn't that big?
BC: It was plenty big.
JC: That whole set took everybody through the rocks. That day, if you fell, you were going through the rocks.
AL: Allot of west in it.
BC: I was in Santa Barbara the night before that whole swell hit (Monday AM and lasted all week). And I drove up the coast and it just kept getting bigger and bigger. I was seeing cloud breaks north of Santa Cruz that I'd never seen before. I got here to the harbor and they said they were going to close the harbor. There was no way you could get a boat in. And then the next morning you guys were out there. (Jay Moriarty's "Crucifixion/Bob Barbour)
JC: Yeah. Foo was having a great time (on friday). He goes, "I never thought it was this good a wave".
DA: He was getting some good waves too.
JC: He goes, "This place is unbelievable". I think he got really comfortable with it, and he got some really nice waves, surfing really well...kinda let down his guard a little bit..And his catching the red eye, not getting any sleep. That kind of creeps into your whole world. And you get comfortable, you kind of relax. Took his edge off, that he had earlier....and make a mistake.
AL: To my understanding, it wasn't one of Mavericks big days.
DA: It was a good-sized day, don't take anything away from that.
JC: The problem was, it was so glassy. That when it's west, it really jumps...and you start leaning in and the bottom falls away...and you're leaning on air...and your board drops away...and you do a face plant.
DA: He went up and over. The last shot I got in that sequence, you can see the tip of the board poking out of the curtain. He was going with his board up and over. So you figure, his board's there, he's there too.
AL: Wow that's a cool card (Jeff Clark's Quicksilver Business Card). It says "Contest Director". They have a bigwave contest here...do they?
BC: Oh yeah. When does the waiting period start Jeff?
JC: November 6. We're really lucky that our big wave season is seven months. It will start Saturday (October 8) and last year it ended in June. I'll be running the contest from the water and all of the contestants are going to be on the beach. All of the judges are going to be on the cliff.
DA: So you're out there watching em puking and stuff?
JC: I'm gonna be that guy. The format, the way we're gonna do it this year. Its gonna be "Top 2 advance".
DA: That's good. That'll make it really interesting. How many people in the heat?
JC: Five. It'll be 45-minute heats. We'll start the heat when a set comes and we'll end the heat after a set. No more of this, "Oh the set's 30 seconds out."
AL: Progress in sports, I love it. eehhahh! (Cheering).
JC: You should have seen us chase the IMAX Camera. (Last season)
AL: IMAX? A 70mm IMAX camera? I don't understand how they lost an IMAX Camera.
JC: A swing set. It's 80 pounds.
DA: The box is this big by that by that (indicating it's big) and it's on a boogie board.
JC: A six-inch foam brick that's about four feet square. A wide one came through. It taxed him (Peralta) and he didn't want to hold on. He should of. I mean...he should have had like a fifteen-foot leash on the thing and just swam deep and just held on to the thing.
AL: It would have dragged him for a while.
JC: We had a caddie right on him.
DA: Yeah. And it washed through the rocks.
DM: Yeah, he (Paralta) was shooting for Mcgillvery. It wasn't damaged though. It was rolled a couple of times, but it was OK. They were sweatin it.... They were sweatin it heavy.
BC: 250 G's.
AL: So did they get any good footage?
JC: Yeah, they did. For Greg Mcgillverey's "Wild California" which is gonna come out in June.
DA: They scored one of the best days of the year.
AL: I know he did "Everest". But he did, "The Living Sea" as well. That's where Don King did the IMAX stuff.
DA: The thing is he did so much, even before the IMAX part of it.
AL: Who did the big waves off Hawaii?
DM: "EXTREME".
DA: God, that wave is so huge. (Quicksilver Poster of Outside Log Cabins/Ross Clarke-Jones also "EXTREME" footage).
JC: It's not that big. Where the nose of the surfboard is basically the bottom of the wave. That's the thing about that wave.
AL: Why didn't he hire Don King?
DA: Those guys were using those little Sonys. They had two of em out here. In fact, I was talking to em about it. They use it for allot of point of view stuff.
BC: Frank lost a camera last year...and if he would have had an Aqualenz housing.... Well....
AL: How did he loose it?
BC: He said he was shooting the lefts and looking through the camera lens and lost perspective something like, "That looks like a nice peak, Ah Oh it's feathering...." He had to jump the waverunner over the wave and the camera got dunked.
DM: He literally got tossed in the drink didn't he.... With the camera...
AL: Yeah, you got to try and keep that thing dry. It doesn't like water. I've heard some horror stories. Over the last six months or so.... Art Brewer got it real bad. You hear about his story in Indo? I think he got dumped, somebody was telling me about it. He lost everything.
DA: I told him not to stand up in those little dingys, too much weight.
AL: Indonesia is having allot of problems right now. I don't think they'll hold it this year either or next year. It's out of control. It's worse than ever.
GL: What was that magazine with Aussi surfer Mick Lowe? "WAVES"? He got the centerfold shot? The one where he's in the tube and the cameras on the board? Inside the tube barrel shot from behind?
AL: Oh, my shot? We mounted a camera on the back of a surfboard. That was with a 17mm instead of a fisheye. Like Lopez had that really wide fisheye and the surfer looked like he was a mile away. We cropped him about here (at his feet). It made it look a little more realistic.
DM: Bolster's done allot of stuff like that.
AL: You can't beat what Bolster's doing.
BC: That's one thing we haven't seen at Mavericks yet. The "from the wave" point of view Mounting a camera on Jeff's board.
JC: Go click, take a picture as the guys dropping in. That would be pretty cool.
AL: Now I remember when I met you (Doug). You were just getting ready to release the first issue of "Surfer Girl". How did that go?
DA: How did it go Don? We made the best women's surf magazine on the face of the planet. We took the whole industry by storm.
AL: How's it going? Is it still out there?
DA: Let's put it this way. Surfer was so scared of what we did; they instantly sued us for the name. And as soon as they got the name back, they came out with their own magazine..."Surfer Girl".
DM: They sent the attorneys after us, "just like that"
BC: Surfer Magazine now is part of a publishing conglomerate with a staff of lawyers.
AL: Peterson owns them I heard. They own "TRACKS" and "WAVES", they're huge!
DA: We were a grass roots crew, hah Don? Grass roots as grass roots can be.
BC: The first issue came out. It had been sort of questionable. And then the advertisers were there 100%. And then after the first issue, the phone was ringing off the hook with advertisers.
DM: In fact the guy at ROXY QUICKSILVER called, Martha Jenkins took the call, the guy says, "Somebody just threw me an issue of your first magazine on my desk...I want to buy ad space".
DA: It's funny because I called Randy Hill, and I didn't even know the guy.... He'd heard of me and we talked. I said, " You know, we've got this women's magazine, surfing magazine that we're coming out with..." We basically gave him a free ad and he didn't want to do it. He wouldn't even take a free ad. And it was the same thing. I talked with Peter Townend. Actually I went through Darren Brilhard who is pretty much Peter's right hand man. I had to sell these guys on taking just a free ad. And I'm going, "Come on man. If you've seen what I've seen, advertise. Because this is going to be the most insane magazine." We were pulling in some of the best images that were around. We were getting stuff from Pierre Toasty we were getting stuff from Shawn Davey, well Shawn was a hard sell. Sean's in camp with Flame at Surfing and they were doing "Surfing Girl". He was going, "I can't bend any toes with Flame".(in strine) I go, "Hey. Is he paying you salary? This is another avenue for you to sell photos". But the Aussies want to be in the American mags cause it's straight US dollars. There's no conversion. Whereas for us to go to there...we loose. A $300 dollar shot in Australian Surfing Life and I get the check its only like $120 bucks.
BC: I never saw an issue after those two issues.
DA: You never will. It's done. It's over. It's history. But our names are still on the masthead Don (Montgomery)! Head of Photo Services, (Doug Acton) Photo Editor.

The opening day at Mavericks turned out to be October 28, and it was the largest in memory. There were two tragic deaths, one of them a surfer in New Brighton Beach, ten miles south of Santa Cruz. The game at Mavericks was tow-in: Two teams; Peter Mel and Ken Skindog Collins made up one team with Jeff Clark and Grant Washburn the second. Only a handfull of photographers were on hand; Frank Quirarte, Doug Acton, Steve Spaulding were shooting water. Don Montgomery and Eric Nelson were shooting from the cliff through a thick haze of lip impacts. Word has it that Peter Mel was actually pulling into beast after beast for some spectacular tube riding. He didn't always make it out but lived to tell the tale. Watch your newstands. (To Be Continued In Part II)

Bill Clarke/Proexchange.com