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[instrumental music]
El Nino has kicked in
with crushing waves and pounding rains.
The swell is rocking the entire state
causing officials on every island to take measures
to help keep the public safe.
This is a historic swell.
It's the largest ever recorded
by that Waimea buoy, which was deployed in 2001.
Oh, my God, bro.
So it's just a monster.
It's twice of what Peahi is.
Yeah.
- Hello? - What?
King's Reef's breakin'.
[indistinct]
Absolutely, I've been waiting a lifetime
to ride this thing out here.
Oh, my God. Look at that thing.
I don't think I've ever seen it that high before.
[instrumental music]
Legendary surfer Laird Hamilton
has pioneered the sport of riding huge waves.
Even though he has never competed professionally
he is considered one of the greatest surfers
that ever lived.
Laird Hamilton has tackled waves
no one thought possible.
Others ride waves, he rides 100-foot waves.
To put that in perspective
that's high enough for this guy to be insane.
Legendary waterman Laird Hamilton..
A man known for his innovative approach..
...the leading surfer in the world.
Throughout his career, he's been controversial.
He invented problems that will never go away.
He took the soul out of the sport.
He's an incorrigible egomaniac.
He's as radical as they come.
- He is a giant. - Crazy.
- Reckless. - Revolutionary.
A world-class athlete.
Surfing's boldest pioneer.
Boldest stuff of all time.
As far back as I can remember
and people that were in the ocean.
It was a place I could escape to.
There was a certain peace that I found there
you know, within the turmoil
within all of the chaos.
There was something there that I needed.
I was born in San Francisco.
My mother participated in the study
with this thing called a Bathysphere.
They used like a reverse hair dryer.
They put it on your stomach
and it was a vacuum to suck
on the abdominal wall
and let the fetus swim more freely.
I don't know, it -- it might have had some effect.
[chuckles]
My mom was very nurturing, very intelligent woman
but just kind of self-taught intelligence.
She surfed when she was young
and she grew up in surf culture.
My recollection of my biological father
is pretty limited.
I know he surfed, I know he loved the ocean.
Ultimately, he left my pregnant mom
to become a merchant marine.
He was nowhere to be found.
There was no support to help my mom.
There was no Hey, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year
Happy birthday, happy anything.
And my mom would work, you know, six days a week
16 hours a day and make sure we were fed
and clothed.
But she was drawn to the concept of freedom
and wanting to go out and seek her own life.
Part of her coming to Hawaii was to just kind of get away
from society a little bit, like what was happening.
It was the '60s, it was Vietnam.
And it was kind of like go out to freedom
and go to Hawaii.
There's something about waking up in the morning here
and knowing that you don't have to face the LA traffic.
If you think about what was going on in mainstream America
in the -- in the '50s and '60s
think about how people scheduled their days.
[alarm rings]
The alarm clock
the whistle in the factory.
Well, imagine at that same time, you were timing your day
and you were timing your life by the tide.
* Here comes
Surfers really were on the vanguard of the counterculture.
They were exploring for waves all around the world.
They were living in Quonset huts in Hawaii.
You know, living off of stolen pineapples and coconuts
just so they could surf.
* And is ready *
It really was a shift in values
to where it wasn't about attainment
it was about experience.
That drive became a lifestyle.
You're not so far away from civilization
that you can't get to it
if you need it for something.
And people are close.
There's a kind of communion
that you don't find other place
because everyone is here basically for the same reason.
To be near the ocean
to surf --
And free.
I'm walkin' down the beach, I see this little
blond-haired kid in the water.
He is splashin' around this small
little shore break and I was kind of fascinated
'cause you never saw children on the North Shore ever.
I mean, it was like pretty much an adult world.
Well, when I saw Bill, you know
he was handsome, blond surf God
and I was like, yeah, that's how my dad looked
would look like if I had one.
He would look like that.
Bill Hamilton was one of the -- the best surfers of the time.
He was known as the style master
and he had the most beautiful
one of the most beautiful styles in all of surfing.
It was a dance, an art flow for him.
We'd see photographs of him doing cutbacks
the hands up
and the surfboard describing a -- a beautiful arc
which reflects the face of the wave
and just be a little bit awestruck by that.
I saw a picture of, um, Jesus
giving the -- the sermon on the mount.
He's like this, I went, Man, that would look like
that would look like a great cutback.
So I copied Jesus.
[chuckles]
My relationship with Bill was really organic.
It started in the surf.
Seeing Laird playing in this water, kind of unattended
I went down there and I said, "What are you doin' anyway?"
I go, "Where are you from?" He goes, "Maui."
I said, "What are you doing?" He said, "I'm bodysurfin'."
I said, "Do you really wanna learn how to bodysurf?"
He goes, "Yeah."
I said, "Okay, hang onto my neck."
So I swam him out.
We'd stand on the reef and wait for a wave to come
and then leap into it and go, shrrr.
And, you know, I mean, four or five of those
and he was like, Oh, my God!
I remember the first time I got inside of a wave
in -- in the tube was on his back.
You know, in surfing, that's the holy land.
To be able to go inside of the wave
that's intimacy beyond explanation.
We got out of the water and he looks at me and he goes
"I want you to be my daddy."
We were walkin' down the beach
and I see this beautiful
brown-eyed 23-year-old woman.
I'm just like goin'..
I think, you know, it was my destiny.
Somethin' happened.
Laird, Joann and I moved into this spot
right next to the most dangerous wave
in the world, the Pipeline.
I mean, you'd literally..
The house would roll like a boat
when it was 25, 30 feet.
Laird was getting this power infused in him.
What happened to the back half of your board?
[indistinct]
[chuckles]
I was around places where the best surfers
in the world were coming to challenge themselves
and I was learning how to swim in these environments.
On the beach at Banzai Pipeline
that was the wave of the world.
That was the spot that you came
if you were a surfer to prove your stature.
It was an era of really, really big surf
where some of the biggest waves
ever recorded were ridden.
As Laird was growing up there
he was seeing all those great, big, bullying he-men
on their massive rhino chasers
crashing down the face of places like Waimea Bay.
Laird was one of the only children in the entire world
that got to live and breathe
that great period of time
when the pioneers still surfed.
Ricky Grigg
Jose Angel
Greg Noll.
Laird got to see all this stuff goin' on.
I was 17 and a half when I married his mom.
I had to have permission from my parents
to marry her 'cause I was underage.
Takin' on that responsibility with him..
I didn't hesitate because I loved his mother so much
and he was part of the mix.
But I realize looking back
what a challenge it was, you know.
I mean, they don't make, uh, instruction booklets
for bein' a parent, right?
I don't think I responded well.
First, I was the man of the house
you know, the only one, and then comes another man Bill.
And then my brother comes along
and there's a, you know, a third one now.
It's a whole different dynamic and, you know
maybe I'm not gettin' the undivided attention
that I needed from my mom.
I was just always in -- in mischief.
I had a room downstairs where I stored
my, the boards that I'd shaped.
He came into that room. He was only about three and a half.
And he got a hold of my saw, and he was just like..
[chuckles] He was just standing there
with all these brand-new surfboards and just..
Khrrr.
And I'm going, what are you thinkin', you know?
I don't think I spanked him then.
Oh, well, he, first of all, he was furious.
So, because, and, you know, rightfully so.
But he had a heck of a temper.
I -- I don't know how fast I ran
or ho -- how quickly he caught me or what.
I don't recall, but I know it wasn't good.
I never did that again. Let's just put it that way.
Disobedient, uh, he's a 100% disobedient.
I looked up to Laird. I, uh..
There was a lot of things that I was, that were
questionable about Laird's behavior for me at that age.
I was like, Well, this person's kind of unpredictable.
In elementary school, I was very radical.
When I'm in the second grade, I cussed in the class.
I just full cussed, cuss job.
The teacher just, "I'm gonna make you eat soap."
So I said, "Oh, no, I -- I'll just save you the time."
I walked.. The bathroom was right next to the class.
I just walked in, I got a bar of soap
and I bit the bar and I just sat there
and chewed it in front of her.
"You mean this stuff?
You're gonna make me eat this?"
[chuckles] Snapped her.
She ran to the principal's office.
While she went there, I took all of the desks
that were these chair desks
and I put them out the window.
So when they came back, the kids were in the back of the class
all giggling and laughing and there was no desk.
And on the chalkboard, in, in charcoal
were obscenities, the ones I knew how to spell.
That immediately caused a teacher-parent conference
with the principal.
I'm workin' all day, right?
I'm -- I'm working construction.
I get home, I'm tired, and Joann is just livid.
She's just, tells me..
Well, was I angry? No, I was pissed off.
And I took him out in the back
and I whooped his ass really badly.
I mean, like his mom got mad at me.
I got spanked good with that, with a big old belt
and, uh, with a big buckle.
So I had all these strap marks on my back
and so I showed, I -- I was like
that was my badge of honor.
I showed all my friends, Yeah, look, I got my thing.
You know, I got, it's black and blue.
[chuckles]
Rough.
But that was all, that's just, I guess
that was all just, uh, training.
That was all training for the -- for the real stuff, you know?
Training for the lip.
[laughs]
The lip of life.
Bill was stern.
There was a side of Bill that was kind of angry.
He would hit Laird, he would punch him
or, you know, give him a really good punch in the face.
Laird got hit with a pipe a few times.
I got hit with a 2x4.
There was head slapping, um, you know, be a man.
I started to build resentment
that would bring anger out in me.
We talk about home as being the sanctuary
and if you don't have some sort of security there
and a place where you can go and know that you're protected
then you're lost.
And school was even worse.
From the beginning, school was a problem.
Being a white person automatically put you
in a position of a certain amount of hatred towards you.
There was a lot less white people
on the island back in the mid '70s.
And, um, a lot of the white kids got picked on.
You know, back in the days of Captain Cook
it was the Hawaiian scene.
This white man ca -- came over and he would talk
and the Hawaiians would say, uh, ha'aole.
Ha being the breath of life
aole being non-existent.
So the word ha'aole would be
um, person with -- with no truth, no honor.
Then it turned into a slang of white person.
Laird and I were towhead blonds
and everybody else is dark and dark-skinned
and they give this look like, you know, Haole, who are you?
I saw a lot of people that were white get beat up.
It was brutal.
In school, you just didn't use the bathroom
'cause if you got caught in the bathroom, you might get
your head plunged in a toilet.
You always sat in the back of the class
back to the wall, in the corner
so you could see everything in front of you.
I can remember going to sleep at night
and wanting to just come back as a giant Hawaiian.
And I come and I'm like, Yeah, what?
You know, and I just, I come back like this
you know, huge Hawaiian warrior.
And I woke up and I was still the same blond surf kid.
I found equality in the ocean.
That just drove me.
Like, I just used that as motivation.
Laird, uh, what's the most important thing in your life right now?
Surfing.
What else?
Surfing.
The ocean is where I could hide.
You know, I could get away from the land.
That was where all the trouble was.
There are very, very few naturally gifted surfers
and Laird was one of those guys.
He had this natural flexibility
uncanny sense of balance
a sensitivity for the energy of the ocean
and bein' able to be in harmony with that.
I think surfing was a really, really
important part of his identity.
A lot of the local kids respect a guy who, uh
is gonna go out when the waves are big and charge.
I think that's why Laird was such a charger.
Maybe growin' up, he was trying to prove himself.
And he was taking off backdoor in the A-frames
and just getting, stand up barrels
when we were in seventh or eighth grade.
I was blowing my mind.
Yeah, he was just a freak.
You know, you don't see kids that age, uh, charge.
He was just fearless.
I saw Laird becoming more frustrated
with his living situation.
And more temperamental.
Where he was like I want some attention
and I don't care how I get it.
You could tell that if it wasn't gonna be channeled correctly
there would be, you know
jail time, drug abuse.
Well, if I look back, the thing that directed me
was that I had a real purpose
which was the ocean.
That was the place where I -- I found true honesty.
It was just like, you made a mistake, you paid
and when you did the right thing, you were rewarded.
* Oh
* Don't punish me
I was getting everything I needed from that place.
And I was just like, that's where I need to be, you know?
* So I crawled out of the backdoor *
* Took off all these tight clothes *
* Jumped into the water *
* So I crawled out of the backdoor *
* Took off all these tight clothes *
I think it was in 10th or 11th grade
he stopped going to school.
And I remember -- I remember him
telling me he just wanted to surf.
* Jumped into the water **
I mean, when I look at my life and I look
at what surfing has brought me..
...like, it's worth everything.
It gives you a reason to be here.
It brings you fulfillment.
It -- It -- It teaches you courage
and fear and respect.
It's pretty amazing that Laird can ride these big waves.
But what people never know that I actually feel is the consistency
and the dedication in which Laird pushes himself.
It's sort of astounding.
When he's not in his season, he's always training.
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, he's doing it on land.
It might be like, Oh, we're doing 100 reps
of everything today.
My windpipe's getting an exercise.
Not fully yet.
You become lightheaded
loosen the body.
On Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, he's doing
deep-water ballistic pool training.
We're subjected to Mother Nature
and the waves she produces.
It just takes such intense deliberate
dedication to be ready when the moment comes.
I might go get..
I might go in the ice and just one more time.
[sighs] We always finish cold.
He has demanded quite a bit of his body and beat his body up.
He's been having to fiddle with his hip
and maybe at some point, he's gonna have to contemplate
if he needs to do something a little more serious.
I mean, I see other guys half his age
and they don't train as hard and some of them
are on professional teams.
It goes back to what surfing is to him and means to him.
Sometimes he'll say to me, you know
I have a lot more waves I wanna ride.
I've gotta figure out how to do this
and I only have so much time.
You know, that toe still doesn't work, the one
that I was thinking about getting straightened.
Um, I mean, obviously, this arch has been broken
and then that ankle has been broke seven times, but --
The last thing that we were really looking at was your hip.
- And how has that been? - Um, it's irritated.
But I'm not gonna get work done on my hip right during my season.
And -- And this winter potentially has
could be a really monstrous one and I would rather
go into a situation with an irritated hip
than go in there having done some surgery.
There's definitely a -- a road map
of -- of damage that he's sustained.
He smashed his ankle, he's broken the arch of his left foot.
The arch on his left foot is essentially fused.
He's had multiple injuries to his shoulders.
In his right hip, he has progressive arthritis.
Now look at the difference in motion, okay?
This is your left hip.
This, I can't even get you to neutral.
Ultimately, life is going to catch up with you
and you have to live on dry ground --
Unfortunately.
Unfortunately for you, and while are doing your sport
or doing your job, you figured out a way to stay in amazing shape
and so far everything that's happened, either you've been able
to fix yourself or I've been able to fix for you.
We're gonna keep it like that, right?
- Absolutely. - Okay.
Big wave surfing, to the core of surfers
was always there.
It was almost like a subculture of big wave surfers.
And they didn't get a lot of recognition.
When the surf came up, that was the greatest challenge.
Were you gonna go out? Did you have a big enough board?
Did you have the balls?
I think, for Laird, big waves was something
that he could really sink his teeth in.
I was 17. I dropped out of high school
and I was doing masonry.
Pouring cement ten hours a day, six days a week
and thinkin' I definitely don't wanna do this
for a career.
Already, I've gotten the taste for big surf.
I like the way it makes me feel.
I like the way everybody else acts when it's big.
I'm realizing that that's what my real calling is.
It's a place where I can really excel.
This is the World Professional Championships.
Back in the '80s, when Laird was first sort of coming
onto the scene, to be a professional surfer
you had to compete on the international pro tour
surfing, for the most part, little waves.
There was no big wave tour.
I mean, because I grew up so intimately
around competitive surfing
watching Bill Hamilton surf in a contest
when he probably should have won and he lost
I got a -- a bad taste for it.
I -- I don't think I rejected competition
as much as judgment.
When you talk to me about a group of people
judging your performance
I -- I said, Absolutely not.
I'm not gonna subject myself to that.
He's not gonna let himself off easy..
The style of surfing that Laird practices isn't suited to the kind
of format that pro surfing was structured around.
Professional surfing's all about super high performance.
You gotta be able to surf up, down, all over the place.
Really quick moving, really sharp.
How about that for championship form?
I think that he knew deep in his competitiveness
that he didn't want any part of that 'cause..
...he doesn't like to lose.
I think he was sort of practicing and training
for a career that didn't exist yet.
Laird was always sort of aiming towards becoming
in a sense, a professional big wave rider.
All he had to do was push himself into bigger and bigger waves.
And I think that's one of the reasons why he used his imagination
and started expanding.
I started on the pro tour when I was 19 or 20.
You know, barely makin' enough money to survive.
And then modeling was not a career choice.
It sort of fell in my lap.
Bruce Weber jumpstarted my modeling career.
Bruce would look through the magazines and find real people
and athletes to use as models.
I realized that I could work for a week
and make bucket loads of money.
That was like, this works for me.
That was great.
Bruce got Laird started as well.
Bruce Weber asked me to do a shoot for the cover of "Life" magazine.
And I went to Cabo with Brooke Shields
who was a, you know, very sought-after
beautiful young woman and..
That was a -- that was a positive experience.
[laughing]
I just looked at modeling as an opportunity to fund my surfing.
He wouldn't go on casting calls.
We were going on like three castings and Laird's in the car
and it's like he's perfect for this thing, but he wouldn't
he wouldn't come up and -- and cast for it.
He's like, No, if they hire me for the job
I'll do it, but I'm not doin' a casting.
He had no money in the bank, but he wouldn't
come upstairs for a $20,000 job.
Just how he was.
You know, I did pursue it for a second.
I went on a couple cattle calls, and it took me
about a half second to go, No, this is, there's just no way.
There's just no way that I'm gonna walk in with 20 guys
and bring my face shot.
My neck was too big to fit in any dress shirts
and, you know, I was a little bit of a radical.
And then they were shooting this movie "North Shore"
and I went and read for the director.
Bill Phelps, the director, called me up
and he asked me, Do you know anyone that can play the part
of the pro surfer that's kind of a, you know
jerk, Lance Burkhart?
And I go, I do.
Laird came down and I looked at him
and I go, Take off your shirt. He goes, What?
Just take off your shirt, throw it over your shoulder
and follow me in.
We walk in and they look at him
and they go he's perfect.
I thought I said a big board but loose, Chandler.
The nose is too thick.
I don't ride waves going straight like some people I know.
It's a fast gun. It's built for speed, not hotdogging.
Chandler, you still have a single-fin mentality. I need a big board..
To me, the first sign that Laird was like on a totally different
tangent to everyone else was that movie "North Shore."
Surf movies have always been pretty cheesy.
But at the time, "North Shore" really
topped the charts, you know.
- I got it, Burkhart. - Back off, worm.
I got it!
Burkhart, you bastard!
Lance was such a dick.
You know, just such a dick.
And I thought, Laird must've known
that Lance was gonna be a dick in this movie.
And yet he was still willing to go to bat for it, you know?
From that point on, the broader surfing world
had trouble separating Laird Hamilton
from Lance Burkhart.
I remember one day I was at a beach somewhere
and some little kid came up to me and said
Hey, are you Lance Burkhart?
And I go, No, I'm Laird.
I played a guy Lance Burkhart in a film
but I'm Laird. And he goes, Oh.
And he sticks his hand out and I go to shake his hand.
He pulls his hand back and goes
I don't shake hands with cheaters.
The reality of acting was cattle call, go read for people.
And I was just like, Oh, no, I can't go down that wide road.
I gotta go against the grain.
Laird moved back to the North Shore in the early '80s
and lived there at the Pipeline house.
Lived in the same property where he was raised, actually.
Pipeline in the late '80s, early '90s
was one of the most intense competitive lineups on Earth
with a really structured pecking order of heavy locals
that ruled through physical domination
through legends like Gerry Lopez
through, you know, all the hot young guys that were pros.
It's really political dance
that you engage in when you go out into a lineup
because the rules have to be kind of made up as you go.
Like, who's gonna get what wave?
It's kind of weird. It's kind of an animal thing in a way.
It's like, you know, everyone paddles out
and they're just looking at each other, you know
who's who, who's who here?
Laird took one look at that and he just paddled
right out into the mix and he just said
You know what, big dogs eat first.
I'm takin' any wave I want and you better stay out of my way.
And some of the guys had already established themselves.
They started barking a bit, Laird barked them down
and he just said, Look, I'm the alpha male here.
I'm obnoxious. I'm screamin' at everybody.
If somebody's droppin' in in front of me, I'm yellin' at 'em.
Yapping. Just -- Just..
[gibberish]
I'm a young up-and-coming bull
in a field of old bull veterans
you know, and so I'm like full of testosterone
and just obnoxious.
That was a turning point for Laird, I think, in terms of how
some people in surfing saw him.
Um, they suddenly went, Wow, this guy's like a big, tough guy.
A bit arrogant, you know, a bit gnarly.
I shit on Laird today.
Not only did I shit on Laird, I shit on his car.
Laird is fuckin'..
Has he ever done anything nice for you?
Has he ever like given you a wave or anything?
He comes over here and hogs all the waves?
[laughing]
We were at Pipeline, Laird was going on these like closeouts
that nobody in their right mind would go for.
These are not, it's not the right wave
and Laird would just take off and pull in and just eat it.
I don't know why he goes on some of the waves he goes on.
There's obviously no chance he's going to make the wave.
Well, I, my motto is if you just catch every single thing
that's out there, you're bound to catch the good one.
If you just go on every single thing and pull in
sooner or later, it's gonna be the one that opens up
and lets you out.
It might be full retail, but you'll get it.
I used to tell people, Laird's got this huge body
but if you opened him up, there's a little kid at the controls in there.
[laughs]
Buzzy was like the gateway to fun.
Like 'cause Buzzy was older, more successful.
Buzzy's modeling career was very lucrative.
He had cars and boats.
He had a lot of toys that were fun.
And I had a lot of bad ideas.
So he, we were like a perfect team.
We got into prone paddling.
You know, he was, he's an animal
and I loved the -- the misery
so we -- we would just go out and do
all this radical paddle stuff.
We were in Europe and we paddled the English Channel.
And you know, we were doin' it with no net.
We were gonna arrive under our own power or we weren't gonna arrive.
So there's something, you know, scary and exciting about that.
It looks like we gotta go right about here.
Right there?
There's England over there, let's go. We just start paddling.
We don't have any idea like it's the busiest
shipping channel in the world
and the current's like six miles an hour
and we only paddle six miles an hour.
And, you know, we're like out in the middle of the thing going
oh, this is gonna be a long day.
You know, at the end, I -- I got hypothermia.
My core temperature was 88 degrees.
Laird was not even cold.
Then we pulled that one off and then I had
this real genius idea that we were gonna paddle
from Corsica to Italy.
We're gonna start here and paddle across the Canal de Corse
all the way to the island of Isola D'Elba.
The death place of Napoleon.
That looks like pretty far, Laird.
Are you sure you can make that in the daylight hours?
How far is that?
On the chart, it was 37
but it didn't say what the distance was.
And we're like, 37.
Well, we're in Europe. Everything's in kilometers.
So that's 24 miles. That's a piece of cake.
We parked at this one place and we came
and there's like a 90-foot cliff jump.
And Laird goes, We'll start here.
What do you mean we'll start here?
Yeah, we'll start our paddle from here and I'm gonna jump.
And he just jumps and I just like..
Two, three
I -- I don't know how high it is.
The water's clear. You don't know how deep it is.
I see boulders and he's like, It's really good. Come on.
I'm like, I guess I gotta go.
So like an idiot, I jumped off the cliff.
It was like a 15-mile-an-hour headwind
and we're just taking water
and it's just miserable.
And we realize at a certain point
we've been paddling a long time and there is nothing.
Like all of a sudden, we see this island
and it's like, I mean, it's very small.
Like it's like, I'm looking, I'm like, that is just far.
That's far.
So we paddle and paddle and we arrive at dark.
It was far. It was very far.
So that was like a nine-hour paddle into the night.
I think it was Buzzy's birthday.
Buzzy had a credit card in his pocket fortunately
and we had dinner.
We started talking to the owner of the restaurant
and he said, Where'd you guys come from?
We said, he goes, that's -- that's 44 miles.
No wonder it took so long, we couldn't..
So it was -- it was 37 nautical miles
not 37 kilometers, so it was a big difference.
And it took us like four days to get back to Corsica
riding like a bus through Italy.
And all we had was Lycra, so we're like Lycra shorts, no shoes.
And we'd be walking in the city and everybody looking at our feet like..
The Italians, if you don't have shoes on, you are a peasant.
We were spending a lot of time on Maui
and this property came available.
It was undeveloped, raw land, seven acres, beautiful
and the price was cheap and we went, wow.
Let's -- Let's go in and get this property.
This is what we call home.
We built this little 16x16 shack with two lofts
in the corner of the property.
At the front of the property, we built a little box.
So as we came in, we had a phone and an answering machine.
You could check your messages, see if there's any message
and then drive back to the house. Laird didn't want a phone.
He didn't wanna be bothered being called by anybody.
It was a really nice lifestyle.
You know, we were livin' in this little shack
and it was -- it was awesome.
We were living for the now, like we're living for the moment.
Well, we're not gonna wait and make sure that we, you know
the house is paid for and all that, and when we retire
we're gonna get to go do this stuff.
We're gonna be retired right now.
And -- And it doesn't mean that we were lazy 'cause we weren't lazy.
People would have a hard time keepin' up with us.
We'd surf and then we'd come back and dig 500 holes
and plant, you know, 500 coconuts
and then we'd go build a thing
and it was just, there's never enough time.
I've been fortunate enough to have
different types of opportunities.
I always managed to get a commercial or get a sponsorship.
I was with Nike when they were tryin' to do surf apparel.
I've done credit card ads and -- and car stuff.
So what initially inspired you to design your own line?
I mean, I've been sponsored for a long time
and -- and I think it would only be appropriate
to -- to kind of be sponsored by myself.
Like sponsor myself.
I like that.
I'm able to make enough money to continue to pursue my passions.
My real work is in the water.
For, you know, the last five years
I've been focused only on foiling.
And it's really opened up a whole another frontier.
The concept of the foil board really starts with that..
You have an airplane underwater, a little miniature airplane
that's connected by a strut to a board
that has boots that you're in.
It's lifting us up and makin' us fly
above the surface of the water
where most of the tension and the drag exist.
It's just an incredibly efficient way to ride waves.
You can ride more of the swell, start earlier
ride further, go faster.
It's tapping into the core
of where the energy of the wave is
which is underwater.
The original concept of the foil board
came from a thing called an air chair.
When I was 30 years old, we took this contraption
that looked like it hadn't been used in a while
and we took it to the beach.
I went like 10 feet, face slapped
and got my bell rung and immediately named it
the Scare Chair.
You know, within an hour of us
crashing and burning, we were like
Well, we don't sit. We're surfers, we stand.
So we took like this wakeboard
and made a, like a plywood contraption
to hold the foil and I bolted
some snowboard boots and bindings.
Just kind of got up and I went like five feet
and I went, oh, no, that's unbelievable!
And immediately, we're like, Okay, well, we can
you know, maybe we can surf waves on this thing
but we gotta make one that we can stand on
and learn how to fly.
I just kept putting my time in
and started to build, you know, better boards
and -- and get better foils.
We've been accomplishing a lot of these goals
but we'd like to refine that stuff a little more.
We're trying to eliminate..
...that right there.
Which when you're goin' really fast
that's a problem.
As we perfect the board
it will allow us to ride these bigger waves
which travel for further distances.
Ultimately, our objective is to try to ride waves
as far as we possibly can.
[instrumental music]
Now the foil's moving into all aspects
of watercraft.
The America's Cup and surfing and foil boarding
what Laird's doing today, are very, very similar.
We're literally flying above the water now.
We're tryin' to get rid of a lot of drag.
Instead of dragging these huge boats
through the water, we're now liftin' them
out of the water and Laird's doing the same thing.
I mean, he's been doing this longer than we have.
He's been foiling before us.
This is like NASA.
This is some NASA budget right here.
The Oracle Team in the America's Cup reached out to me
because of my foil work
which is pretty
you know, garage-ish and backyard-style
but I'd spent a lot of time riding foils.
In return, I've had access to their engineers
and been able to kind of work on some of our foil designs
which, um, we need.
Is it looking for a foil that won't break structure
or is it looking for more stability on big waves?
Well, stability and speed.
That's the most immediate issue that we have
is just strut stiffness
and is a 50/50 foil strut optimum.
Laird's coming here for help.
But man, I can tell you we're gonna learn some stuff off him.
This, it'll be a two-way street and both parties
are gonna learn a lot together.
Oh, he made that look pretty easy actually.
Oh.
Once you get good at something, it's kind of easy
to stay there, you know, 'cause you get comfortable.
But I think Laird's not afraid of trying something new.
I think he's not afraid of evolving.
One thing about being a waterman
the surf's not always up.
So you're either a diver or a sailor
or you know, or -- or a fisherman.
You're doing other disciplines
to continue the relationship with the ocean.
And windsurfing came along
and it was a tough sport to learn initially
but it was just an incredible way.
I mean, you could use the wind.
[instrumental music]
I mean, you could jump and hit waves and fly.
Windsurfing was kind of the fastest growing sport.
It was like the new age of surfing.
* Got me a movie I want you to know *
* Slicing up eyeballs I want you to know *
* Girlie so groovy I want you to know *
* Don't know about you *
* But I am un chien andalusia *
* I am un chein..
Maui was the epicenter of windsurfing.
Anybody that was competing at the top of the game
was there at that point.
* Up to be be a debaser.. **
Buzzy and I were all of a sudden connected
to this pretty amazing group of windsurfers on Maui.
Mike Waltze was one of them.
Rush Randall, Mark Angulo
you know, and then we have Brett Lickle
Pete Cabrinha and then Dave Kalama.
We used to windsurf literally every day together.
In and out through the surf
jumpin' as high as we could
bashin' off the lip.
You know, we started barrel rolls
and revolving loops.
Laird would jump and do these things that nobody'd ever seen.
He'd be doing it at 40 miles an hour.
So it got people's attention that
this guy is -- is skilled, but he's kind of crazy.
People get photos of it and it gets published and word of mouth.
So the legend of Laird started to grow.
One of my first real sponsors was for windsurfing.
A guy saw me windsurf and said
"Hey, if you finish in the top two spaces
in this event, we'll sponsor you."
And I had to be in the trials.
Like, I was in the trials, I wasn't even in the main event.
So I ended up winning the trials
and I ended up winning the main event.
I broke the European speed record.
And at that point, I got sponsored.
It's kind of interesting that Laird
got into windsurfing when he did.
Really, it took him away from the mainstream of surf culture even more
because in the rest of the world
people weren't doing all this stuff.
How's the Velcro comin'?
It's goin'.
Laird didn't make his name
like a lot of professional surfers did.
Laird made his name by doing things that other people
have never done or thought of doin'.
He made his name through being innovative.
So what I'm doing here is
I've got this industrial-strength Velcro
that I'm attaching to the deck of the board.
It's so strong that when you stick this booty
which has Velcro on this particular stuff
we're able to go, uh, into the air, I think
and do things that we haven't done yet.
[instrumental music]
He was doing things that, you know, the surfers
were looking at and saying kook!
We all thought he was crazy.
He would top of the wave and fly in the air
and do a flip and stuff.
He didn't even care if he ate it or not, you know.
He was just tryin' to pull off somethin'
beyond what everybody else was doin' at that time.
Surfers couldn't stand things
that challenged the hierarchy of their sport.
But as windsurfers, we were lookin' at it going
that's the coolest thing we've ever seen.
Because we had just seen the future of surfing.
I remember we went to this beach
and I broke six boards that day.
Waltze broke six boards, Rush broke five or six boards.
One of those days, I broke my ankle again.
That was another part of learnin' how to loop.
Every board you see in that pile is broken or cracked
or destroyed or dinged beyond repair.
Laird was the first to experiment with connected surfing.
But it was almost like he set it down
and didn't see the applications for big wave riding.
And he was on the cusp of somethin' really revolutionary.
A whole new way to ride big waves.
In the late '80s and the early '90s
big wave surfing was experiencing
a bit of a resurgence.
People started big wave competitions that lasted all year.
You know, whoever had the biggest wave of the year
would earn X amount of money.
The most prestigious surfing event in the world at the time
was the In Memory Of Eddie Aikau
Big Wave Invitational at Waimea Bay
which was the Mt. Everest of big wave riding.
It wasn't just held on any day.
They would wait years if they had to
for this big epic day.
The waves had to be 20 feet or bigger.
And it was a very small list
of invitees to this contest.
Laird really wanted to be in it
and he certainly had the skill.
He just didn't have the experience
in contests and the reputation.
But the thing was, is they were still riding Waimea Bay
almost exactly as they were riding it 30 years earlier.
So big wave surfing was the least innovative aspect of the sport.
six miles up the road, Laird and -- and, you know, and his crew
they were about to take the greatest quantum leap
that has happened in the sport in the last 100 years.
I come into a summer where it's me, Buzzy
and Darrick Doerner, a lifeguard, big wave rider.
We're like the Three Musketeers.
We were playin' around and then boredom sets in
and a lot of ideas come out of boredom.
And we start wakeboarding.
We're using our surfboards
and we start riding behind the boat.
And there's a little bit of a swell
and either I towed somebody and they let go
or I was being towed and I let go
but we started playing with it around some little waves
trying to get the technique down.
At that point, I just had the epiphany like
you know, we could get towed onto waves
like big waves.
Part of the problem with surfing is
all the regular lineups get so crowded
that it's really difficult to get a wave.
But by windsurfing, we had been to these outer reefs
and -- and seen how good the waves were
and there's nobody around out there.
So it kind of gave us an idea
of the potential of what was out there.
We were seeing these waves goin' by, hundreds of 'em
without anyone being on 'em.
No one had the drive to go out there
'cause they didn't wanna die.
You know, or get lost at sea.
But we were experienced at what we did
and we were out there.
Buzzy had a Zodiac boat
Laird had all the freakin' balls in the world
and I had the knowledge.
You put those three together
you get out on the outer reefs
and you can create magic.
The first winter swell comes
and we go out with the boat
and we get towed on.
[instrumental music]
It's just instant.
Like, okay, this is it.
This really changes everything.
- Oh! - Holy shit!
Right at that same time, I was involved
in "Endless Summer II."
Part of the payment was, give me a jet ski
because jet skis had just come out and I was like
I need a jet ski.
And that was our first Waverunner III.
That gave us better mobility and -- and it's safer.
There's no propellers, there's an impeller.
As a conventional big wave rider
I'd go out and, you know, on a good day
a big day at Waimea, three waves, four waves, five waves
I mean, these are like big days.
We'd go out and we'd catch 10 waves a round
you know, and do multiple rounds.
In a week, we were riding
a season's worth of waves.
I remember at one point, Darrick and I were riding at Backyards
and we were just takin' turns riding
the biggest waves we had ever ridden
the furthest we'd ever ridden 'em.
And the ski pulled up and Mel Poo says
The Eddie Aikau's on.
You know, we're both invited.
I looked at Darrick and Darrick looked at me and I went
"Tsk, I don't think we're gonna make it.
Just we're good, we're where we wanna be."
We got word that they were tow surfing into waves.
And I remember we all were like, well, we gotta get into this
but we didn't wanna be big wave riders.
Tow surfing to me and our whole wind surfing group
was appetizing because it meant we could go
to the outer reefs and get away from the crowds
that were starting to develop on Maui.
We saw what they did, we went
hey, while you guys were doin' that
this is what we've been playin' with.
And so we took our boards out
with the foot straps.
That light went off for Laird.
We needed a -- a foot strap
because without being connected, you just fly off.
You needed to be attached.
To be able to take the foot strap that was being developed
by the windsurfers was a perfect implementation.
We're cultivating the technique
of getting towed onto waves on Oahu.
Well, that's when the phone rang
and the guy Gerry Lopez called us up and went
hey, I got this place.
I want you guys to come over here and check out
over here on Maui. It's called Peahi.
Or the Atom Blaster.
A friend took me out to Peahi
back in the late 1960s
and he showed me this wave.
And we had no idea how big it was.
I mean, you know, we thought
Okay, those are 15 to 20 foot waves.
And then when I went out there and dove down
and saw how deep the water was, I went, huh..
Well, these waves have to be bigger than that
to break like this in this deep water.
It's called Peahi, which means the beacon
to be called, like it was calling us.
You could hear the thing from six or seven miles away.
Then we stepped out on the cliff and we looked down
and there was the biggest, baddest barreling peak
we had ever seen in our lives.
It was perfect and there was nothing to hold us back
from getting down there and riding her.
We were on it.
Unbelievably, 100 of years after people
first started riding big waves
they'd found a completely isolated big wave
that virtually nobody had ever heard of.
We'd heard stories that some of the guys had looked at it
over the years and had paddled out
and surfed it on smaller days.
But on the big days
anything really over 20 feet out there
it was -- it was undoable.
To paddle out there, this monster wave in front of a cliff
it was just asking to die.
[instrumental music]
I towed Laird the first time
on a couple of waves out there.
We tried our technique and it was..
Wow, this wave is really good.
The way it comes in, it's a really good setup.
* Wishing for the days when I first wore *
That was like the wave that was designed for it
the technique.
The wave was moving at another gear
and there was nobody there.
* Baby has grown ugly it's no longer cute *
* But I stay on I stay on *
* Where do I get off?
* Onto greener pastures *
* The core has gotten soft *
* Look at us today
I rode three of the baddest, biggest waves
that I'd ever ridden before.
And after havin' all of this adrenaline rush and all
I peaked.
* I stay on where do I get off? *
Peahi became "Jaws."
That was the nickname we called it.
40, 50 feet, spitting, regurgitating.
It was horrifying.
You're lookin' at mother nature build
these mountains of water
that are crashing down with intensity
that nobody's ever seen.
And because I was hanging out with the wrong people
at that time namely Laird
I had to go challenge it.
The first day that I towed it
Buzzy drove me in, I came flyin' down.
I'd never experienced speed like that.
I thought I was gonna run over the jet ski and just keep on going.
* Baby has grown ugly it's no longer cute *
* I stay on I stay on where do I get off? *
* Onto greener pastures **
And that was when we all put together a group called Strapped.
We became a pretty tight-knit team.
Our goal was to keep Jaws as quiet as possible.
This is it right here, man. This is the spot.
We don't even need to tell anybody except ourselves.
I mean, you just gotta go out and do it.
It's pretty, uh..
...it's pretty sweet out here.
We didn't want it to get all screwed up
'cause everything else in the past had gotten screwed up by people.
We took the jet skis, we put 'em in the back of pickup trucks
instead of putting 'em on trailers
and we'd cover 'em with tarps.
Our boat was really dark, our boards were camo
and what we wanted to do was disappear.
In the early days of Jaws, we are on guard
we're intense.
The place is not to be disrespected.
We're in outer space at this point
and we don't know if we're gonna go into a black hole
and never come back.
I was a kid from Delaware.
I wasn't this born big wave rider.
And all of a sudden, I was three quarters of a mile out
looking back at the beach and I'm going
Oh, my God, you're way over your head, buddy.
You really have no idea what you've just got yourself into.
What big wave surfing has beyond danger
in huge quantities is terror.
The minute your head goes underwater in a big wave wipeout
you're dying.
The clock is ticking.
You know, your brain is telling you
If I don't get up and get air, I'm dead.
When the Strapped crew started surfing at Peahi
they were encountering waves that were so much bigger
and so much more fearsome than anything anyone had ridden before.
These guys were really pushing out into the unknown.
- It was radical. - Yeah.
That white waters kept coming.
I know, but you should've come and got me.
At least got another guy.
Yeah, first thing is get another guy.
You guys are spinning around and no one..
At least you could've just shot me over
and dropped one guy, you know? You just..
We made a lot of mistakes up there early on in the game.
And every time we made a mistake
we compensated with a remedy.
We started getting sleds for the jet skis.
We -- we learned pickup techniques, rescue techniques.
We did a lot of training
we did a lot of breath-holding exercises.
We really got serious about it.
It went quickly from being kind of a solo pursuit
which surfing is, to suddenly
okay, one guy to drive, one guy to tow
one guy to, you know, work safety.
We were the Strapped crew.
And while there were eight people involved
there was one leader and nobody will contest that
and that was Laird.
Laird drove everything.
He was the man.
No one else was king.
Everyone else was petrified just like I was.
He was the only one that when he was out there surfing
it was like he was in his backyard
playing with his toys.
It was a wave that was really made for his -- his body type.
Laird has a pretty wide stance.
He surfs really low.
He's clearly a big guy and so he needed something
that he could sink his rail into.
It was at that point that we realized
that Laird had some sort of a -- a fear defect
where his fear mechanism in his body wasn't apparently working.
People say, Oh, you're, you know, you're fearless.
I think I've been scared so many times
that I have a relationship with it.
I've been able to use fear as a tool in my life.
It's made me perform better, see better
hear better, be faster.
As I did more and more tow-in
we just worked our way up the ladder
and I began to enjoy the bigger waves.
You know, it's sort of like that cliff
you know, back in Corsica, Laird jumps off
and, Yeah, it's good, come on.
And so the waves were getting bigger and bigger
and was trying it.
We had the shortboards with foot straps
which gave the ability to tow into a wave
and surf it like it was a small wave.
We could now really move up and down the wave
and basically draw our picture on there.
Now we could start to work on surfing big waves
not just riding big waves, surfing big waves.
Putting yourself in the perfect position to take off
lay into a nice, big, deep-bottom turn
and come flying off the top and ride big waves
like they had never been ridden before.
Strap surfing, tow surfing
this thing that we were onto
just became kind of this catalyst
that brought everybody together.
It was like a daily thing.
You know, we'd all get together
and have breakfast together and go surf
and, you know, try to take this thing that we were doing
and push it a little further and make it a little bit crazier.
We had a really good chemistry with us
and we would all look out for each other
and just lift everybody up, right?
We're in this thing together and we all are gonna do
the greatest thing we can do.
Man, I watch you and you watch me.
And if you don't see me, come look for me.
And we did that.
So our crew really got tight together.
We were putting ourselves in situations
that truly were life and death.
And the level of trust that you need to have
when your life is in your partner's hands
is really significant.
That creates emotional bonds
that will last a lifetime.
And there's -- there's nothing I wouldn't do
for the -- the guys on our team
and I know there's nothing
that they wouldn't do for me.
[all cheering]
Here on the North Shore of Maui
it's the law, you surf or die.
So it was 1995 and I was well into
full swing in my professional volleyball career.
Gabrielle Reece, good concentration.
[crowd cheering]
Now there's an ace for Reece.
I used to do "MTV Sports."
One of the shows I was gonna do was
on this guy named Laird Hamilton.
As you know, Laird likes his waves
kind of like I like my men.
You know, tall, really tall.
I met Laird and I can remember really thinking
this is probably gonna be a pretty intense day with this guy.
Forward, speed, back, turn.
He had a lot of energy.
And I think Laird took me sort of as a cliche
like, Okay, you know, a host who doesn't know anything.
And he actually didn't even know I was a professional athlete.
I met Gabby and I was definitely not
uh, single or looking.
I was married at the time
to a Brazilian boogie boarder
but it wasn't working out.
You know, I was sleeping in my barn.
The last thing on my mind was another woman
and that's probably why it slapped me right in the face.
I -- I think there was definitely..
I mean, Laird and I have a chemistry, you know?
And, uh, Lisa Cabrinha, Pete Cabrinha's wife
said, Hey, the boys, they play volleyball when there's no surf
and they've asked me to bring you where they play.
I was like, sure.
I mean, it never is awful
when you don't suck at something and you can play
with these kind of badass guys, sure.
She shows up and starts playing with us
and banging the ball straight down
and bouncing it off our foreheads
and we're like, Whoa.
I got the impression, I was like one of the only women
allowed to play with them, you know.
It was all that boys' club.
We had made a golden rule at Peahi.
Never allow women in the lineup, never.
That way, we can focus.
Well, one day, the surf got really good
and all of us were, like, waiting to go to Peahi.
You know, all of a sudden, the coconut wireless said
Oh, Laird's at Peahi towing with Kalama
and he has the whole girls' volleyball team
in the lineup on the Zodiac.
[inhales sharply]
[exhales sharply]
Um, I invited a couple of the girls out to the lineup
uh, at Jaws.
Darrick took it a little personal, it wasn't personal.
It was just that there was a volleyball team
and they wanted to see what we were doing
and, uh, and I wanted to show off a little bit.
I, you know, I -- I, at that point, I was..
I -- I don't think I was even able
to control my, you know, behavior.
Laird and I met and from the day we met
we lived together eight days later.
Gabby understood my passion for the ocean.
She understood my desire to go out
and ride giant waves and do that every day.
It wasn't against her. She was supportive of it.
And it's actually one of the things I -- I admired about Laird.
He was committed to the ocean
and he needed it.
But he was capable of loving me as much
and it was sort of an understood agreement
that I would never ask him to choose.
- Where is that, dad? - That's outside Wainiha.
- Oh. - Kepuhi.
It's kind of funny that that's where you foil.
- Isn't it? - Yeah.
- Outside of Wainiha? - Yeah.
- Why, is Wainiha gnarly?
Well, it's where dad grew up, so how, what are the chances
that you grow up in a place and then now
you ride out to sea beyond outside --
There's one. There it goes again.
It's funny because you, you know
I come back into environments that I grew up in.
I remember the first time I came back to Kauai
after I had been gone for a long time and I went to rent a house
and the lady just looked at me out of the side of her head
and like, You're gonna rent a house?
I'm like, I'm gonna rent this house.
I'm not Laird, the little Tasmanian devil.
He was a hellfire, you know what I mean?
You see Laird and you go, Pff, damn kid.
[laughing]
When I met Laird, I was 17..
...and he was seven years old.
As a matter of fact, I saw him ride
his first big waves at Hanalei.
Yeah, and -- and that's just funny how we're like
partners now, you know what I mean?
Before we were so far apart
and now it's come to foiling
and we're both on the same level focusing at that.
This is at its infancy.
We're just at the beginning.
I -- I would call it the evolution.
Laird is the main innovator.
And what he wants to do is come from the top
and just go down into a 100-foot wave
and have full control
and -- and just go for miles.
I was thinking maybe where the bolts are or something
just try to get some straps
to go on the other part.
Terry has been working on a new board.
I hope she's not too thin.
The engineers in Bermuda have designed a strut
that they think will -- will enhance our equipment
which is getting ready to be delivered probably this week.
So we will unite the board with that strut
and go out and test it
and see if it does
what we think it can do.
Transforms, you know, when you put the resin on there.
Yeah.
Wow.
You can see by the workmanship of the box itself
that these guys are serious.
Ooh, buddy.
Hello.
Welcome to the jungle.
Oh, yeah. She's right in.
Yeah, it's so much stiffer.
I gotta test it. Feel how it feels.
You know, there's a lot of energy in the ocean right now.
There's a lot of current.
12 to 15 foot waves.
That was unbelievable.
Just gotta know when to quit.
After a certain point
you're like concentration fatigue.
You know, where your concentration is so tired
you can't just keep -- keep everything..
It definitely is an improvement.
More of a penetrating foil
and -- and kind of resolved
a lot of the issue that we had with the flex.
Oh.
My hip really feels it after that
after I put it through a few hours of downhill.
The potential to have giant waves this year
with this El Nino season is great.
Ow!
We have our eyes on a place called King's Reef.
We've had it for a very long time.
And we know that these foils work
and so now we just have to be patient
and see what Mother Nature brings.
Okay, well, look.
See the decimal point, where it is?
And if it's a hundred, how many times
do you move the decimal point?
Twice, right?
You know, I think Laird does a great job
of seizing those moments and connecting with nature
and -- and then, yeah, he's balanced it out.
He has a family.
And when Laird comes home
he's here and he's right there.
Are we done with the math?
- Yeah. - We are.
You know, Laird's mom passed away in '97
and I think part of the sadness is
is that Joann didn't get to see Laird kind of finish his story
just a little bit more
and sort of develop into a man
that she would have respected.
Thank you. I'll get to this.
- Now tell me what else. - Illegible.
Illegible? Yeah, that's the way I write.
We'd been surfing Jaws for a few years and kind of pushing it.
All of us were starting to have wives
and children and we're having bills.
We're still trying to figure out how to make ends meet.
Someone floated the idea.
Well, why don't we get some camera equipment
and -- and start shooting ourselves
and, you know, put these -- put these photographs out there?
We were working with a manager
that was managing Gabby at the time when I met her.
We just formed this production company
and -- and started to make some films
about what we were doing.
I didn't really agree when they bought all the cameras.
I wasn't seeing dollar signs.
I was out there seeing uncrowded waves and -- and loving it.
They started editing and making videos.
And the first one I believe was "Wake Up Call."
That was the first video that really showed tow-in
and -- and Peahi to the world.
When the Strapped crew started coming out with their videos
i -- it was a remarkable vision
of a whole new world of surfing.
All of a sudden, there's jet skis and tow boards and straps.
It was almost introduced overnight.
I mean, that bomb got set off.
All of a sudden, there's images of the Strapped crew
riding these huge waves, cartoon waves
waves that looked like they were things that you'd drawn
in your schoolbook when you were 13
and just gone, Nah, no one'll ever do that.
And suddenly that worked. And it was mind boggling.
It made the cover of "Surfer" magazine.
It suddenly got mainstream attention
whereas everything prior to that was just a -- a bunch of knuckleheads
up at, you know, Peahi just goofing around.
The surf industry started seeing images of us.
All of a sudden, they went, Wait a minute.
Those are bigger waves than we've ever ridden.
They're getting coverage in the "Surfer" magazines.
Maybe we need to go over and check that out.
And on a lot of levels, it was very gratifying
'cause it was -- it was like
Yeah, we were on the right track.
I think one of the most powerful images that came out
was the cover of "National Geographic."
Uh, it's one of the -- the one thing that
my -- my mom would have actually considered
an accomplishment, you know, 'cause she collected them.
Once they broke it to the public
they almost relentlessly promoted what they were doing.
Strapped, Inc. is -- is a group of -- of seven of us.
You know, the videos came out and the photos..
it, it didn't take very long for their
you know, secret garden to, you know..
Suddenly, there was a traffic jam.
People started venturing into the lineup at Peahi.
Feet in the wrong spot.
They can barely surf and they're out here
tow surfing in these giant waves.
For me, it was like, this is chaos.
I -- I don't like this anymore.
Everything we had created was changing
and it changed really quickly.
I blame no one but ourselves
because we had to show it to people.
There'd be boats, you know, in the middle of the peak
with some guy that didn't know what he was doing.
You know, it -- it saddened me.
It hurt to see
that tranquility in that space
that was there kind of be filled.
Let me tell you, one day we showed up in the lineup
and there was a barge out there
with a hamburger-and-hotdog stand on it.
I remember towing Darrick into a giant left
which is the opposite direction
that you would normally go at that wave.
We were kind of forced into going left
when it started getting crowded.
Laird tows me in and I'm really, really deep.
I've got everything in control
except there's a guy in the way.
And right where I need to be, I cannot be.
I was about 75 feet too deep.
And it's a big wave
and I already know what's gonna happen.
The whole wave pitches.
All I see was this giant hole
spinning with jet skis, the spit blows.
It just about peels the skin off of my feet.
And then I get hit by a jackhammer
and it was the ride after the ride, baby.
And I went down deep.
It threw me on the bottom.
When you hit the bottom at Jaws, that means you're deep
and that means there's a real good chance
that you won't get to the surface to get air
before the next wave.
You know, it took him a while to come up
but when he came up, I was there
but it was, he came up so late that I had
very little time, and I just..
We couldn't get traction, the skis in those days
weren't real powerful and, uh, we got mowed.
And then the ski came and almost ran him over.
We were both on the rocks after that pretty quickly.
I see them on the cliff and they're stranded.
It was just like a life-or-death moment in time
and they both had to be scooped
or they would've been hurt.
I think Don put his main rotor blade
six inches from the mountain.
And I'm just like, Hey, get in now.
One of the most horrific experiences
I ever had, almost dying.
Laird came in to save my life
and almost lost his.
I lost everything on that wipeout.
I lost my board, I lost my self-esteem.
I never surfed Peahi again.
It's a traffic jam today.
Unreal, I just couldn't believe all this
uh, inexperience and..
You created a monster.
There was this pushback.
People started saying, Oh, we don't like jet skis
and tow-in surfing is cheating.
There's a writer that used to say
"You know, if you have to tow into it
it doesn't count, it's not surfing."
It flew in the face of so many
time-honored surfing tenets
that instead of just completely
collectively embracing the innovation
it came up against a lot of resistance.
The jet ski pissed off more surfers than anything.
If you're sitting there on a surfboard
and you're calmly surveying the scene
you're a little bit in touch with nature
you're definitely trying to link into the rhythm of the ocean
how the tide's moving, you know
how long it is between each set of waves.
And then all of a sudden, some wanker roars in
on a Yamaha 1200.
I can tell you, take a normal person
and ask them to climb onto a jet ski
and instantly, they turn into a wanker.
That's one thing no surfer wants
is like a super kook on a jet ski
roaring into the lineup going..
[imitating jet ski]
...and the wake flying everywhere
and some other dickhead behind him
you know, holding on the rope
and there you are sitting there going, Oh, goddammit!
Everyone was, like, aware this was Laird
who'd started this and it's his fault.
Yet the broader surfing world turned away from him
and this innovation that he spearheaded.
You know, that had to hurt a little bit.
All these things, I think, had an effect on Laird
and they hurt him.
I spent a lot of time trying to walk around
Laird and his moods.
I was frustrated, I was angry.
And at the time, Gabby and I were a little bit
had been, had some, some stuff going on in our relationship.
There was some friction.
We had a bumpy kind of six months to a year
and then we were -- we were gonna get divorced.
I was kind of like, Okay, well, I'm gonna just focus on
you know, what I do and who I am.
I went to Tahiti to do this shoot.
And the day I'm supposed to leave, the guys say
Hey, you know, there's just this giant storm
and it's aimed right at us
and in two days, it's gonna be enormous.
I said, okay and so I just canceled my flight.
Lo and behold, two days later, there was a giant swell.
We were like, What is that?
We didn't even think that there were waves
that did that in the world.
- Insane, bro. - Whatever you say.
Insane.
Nothing quite like it anywhere in the planet.
At that time, the surf media was filled
with footage from Teahupo'o.
It was this extremely thick left tube
that peeled over this really shallow reef.
When the waves got over 15 feet
it was considered unrideable.
Laird told me, I think that wave can be ridden much bigger
and I'm gonna go tow into it.
I just went, Laird, are you out of your mind?
Laird's gonna ride that wave. No one's done that.
No one's ridden that wave like that before.
No one's towed in or paddled into a wave that big
at Teahupo'o before, anywhere near it really.
No way. Impossible.
The water outside the Teahupo'o reef is deeper really
than in any other surf location in the world.
Swells arrive through that water.
They're uninterrupted, wild ocean swells.
The water is moving very fast
and then suddenly, it hits the reef.
When it hits the reef
all that energy doesn't rear up
it just plunges forward.
Just goes, phoo, out.
Straight out, straight down
straight toward a coral reef
that's now about six feet deep.
It was just dangerous, you know?
You're part of a critical mass
that's gonna waste you somehow.
It could take your life away
could paralyze you for life
could ruin your body.
It's the wave of the heaviest consequence.
I think I've always had that attitude
lay it on the line.
But the fact that I was sad, I was hurt
heightened that attribute of laying it on the line.
Like I, maybe, laid it on the line extra.
I just said, Yeah, okay, get me on a wave.
Like, I just didn't wanna procrastinate too long
and think about it.
The very first wave I went for
my driver was a little apprehensive
and he just turned out early and I couldn't get in.
I was kind of pissed.
You know, after I saw the footage of it
I was probably glad I didn't go on that one.
That might have been just the wave
that just dashed me across the reef
and I would have been done.
I wouldn't back out.
Darrick gets on the ski and, uh, and we go out.
We go back out and this huge set comes.
I'm trying to line up my ski, so that I don't die.
And I'm really worried about Laird and I look back and he's gone.
He let go of the rope.
[cheering]
[laughs]
It's not just frightening.
It's a little bit like if you've been hypnotized
by a cobra or something. Like, what do you do?
You can't freeze, you can't run
you can't fight it.
You just gotta ride it out.
At one point, I'm on the wave
and I'm having a little talk
between the halo and the horns
and it's Hey, should I jump off?
Well, if I jump off, I won't make it.
I mean, you know, but you better jump off
and don't jump off and, you know, back and forth.
And finally I thought, Well, if I jump off
I'm not gonna make it, so I'm just gonna try to stay on
and if I get knocked off, well, I had nothing
I can do about that.
I ended up making it and -- and -- and when I was finished
I was, you know, kind of overcome by emotion
'cause it was something that, you know
that I'd been training for my whole life
and that I kind of instinctually knew
was out there to be done
and...I did it.
* Fall in
* Fall out *
Collectively, you could mock him for Lance Burkhart.
You know, you could, you know
you could blame him for, you know, crowding up Peahi
but you could not deny Laird Hamilton
when you saw him ride that wave.
This redefined what ride-able was
and that Laird did it in a totally new fashion
you couldn't deny it.
* In the first of light *
* Past the Noachide
* Bodies wrapped in white *
* Stranded every pain
* Baby pasts are slain *
* I got out of La Grange **
And sort of in a sense
Laird arrived on the shoulder of that wave.
When he emerged from the spit
and he was moved to tears
I think -- I think deep down he knew it too.
He had nothing left to prove.
There was an irony to it.
When the things at the house were a little rough
then all of a sudden, I got rewarded out at sea.
We go back to the hotel
and you could still see he's got a broken heart.
And the phone rings.
It's Gabby.
Boom, wham!
He just lit right up.
I don't remember much after that..
[laughs] ...after that ride.
But -- but something happened after that ride
because, well, I, Gabby and I are together.
I think maybe that -- that ride
reminded her, like
who I am.
I have a lot of respect for Laird and his quest.
And I realized that he always needs friction.
Li -- Listen, till -- till as long as I'm gonna know Laird
he needs friction because it creates energy
and it creates forward movement.
It took me a while to understand it
and then I went, Oh, okay, it's not about me.
The next day, the photos came in.
We put them on the light table
we looked down and every single one of us
from me, the editor, to the warehouse guys
said the exact same thing, Oh, my God!
Everyone knew exactly what he had done.
Like, they knew exactly the enormity of what he'd done on that wave
and it just shut everyone up.
It's like no one's done that before.
That was the wave of the millennium.
It instantaneously went around the world within 24 hours.
CNN, Fox News. It was just out of control.
The whole world could not believe it.
This wave was so clearly the thing
that made tow-in what tow-in is.
And this was the most defining moment
that we had had thus far to make it very clear
like, Hey, this is the unrideable
and we rode it.
Tonight meet a man who is to his sport
what Tiger Woods, Michael Jordon
and Lance Armstrong are to theirs.
His name is Laird Hamilton
and he is a giant in the sport
of big wave surfing.
Laird Hamilton, surfer par excellence.
Here's Laird Hamilton.
Laird was perceived
as the lead member of our group
and -- and rightfully so.
He was the lead member of our group.
But, boy, there was a big separation
in perception of what Laird was doing
versus what the rest of us were doing.
We were basically doing the same thing.
We were all driving, we were all surfing.
Laird Hamilton didn't like the idea of limits
so he started using jet skis to tow surfers
into waves too big and powerful to paddle on to.
You know, there may be some guys in the group
who thought they weren't getting their share
of what, you know, what they should have.
After all, it was a group thing, you know
and there was some -- some tension.
Our business manager decided
she was only gonna represent Laird
which means he would just work
for that production company.
And then we got this paperwork that said
that Strapped was being dismantled
and all the Strapped members had to sign this piece of paper
and get a little check and that it was disintegrated.
It's a difficult one. It was -- it was like a -- a divorce.
It was a -- a tough divorce
with a lot of strings attached to it.
My time and things that we did with Laird
were some of the absolute highlights of my life.
You know, from paddling the English Channel
and trips that we did and pioneering tow-in surfing.
It's upsetting to me that we can't be
as good of friends as we once were.
Do I have any regrets, you know?
Whether it was with Buzzy or the Strapped crew
or any one of the boys?
You know, you know, do -- do I have some regrets
of how I handled that at that time? Absolutely.
But would I have changed the way I handled it
at the cost of maybe not arriving where I am today?
I -- I -- I wouldn't.
Laird is Laird, and so therefore
he's going to use what has got him this far in life
and one of those things is living in the moment
being completely there and engulfed in what he's doing.
And sometimes that means stepping away from the people
and situations that have got him to that place.
And to me, that's okay because I realize
nothing stays the same forever.
I think the only people that are really, really close to Laird
and love him tremendously would be Brett Lickle
Dave Kalama and myself.
And -- and -- and that would be pretty much it
for, um, for our ocean crew
our -- our brotherhood.
I was starting to get tired of the production.
Like, that was starting to become work
and it wasn't free riding.
I wanted a day that we, that just wasn't a production day
right, but a giant day.
And we ended up having this swell
that was unforecasted.
Kalama was hurt, so I told Brett, I go
Okay, Brett, you're gonna
you're driving, we're going.
We go to Spreckelsville where it is
it's more protected and, uh
it has better angles.
We're out there for a couple of hours
and all of a sudden, the swells just starts
getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
I pulled him into a couple and along came this
just tank of a wave.
When a tank comes around, it's like
you -- you gotta look back at your partner
and you make sure it's what he wants.
'Cause it's like, Hey you want this one?
He's like, That's the one I want.
The face of the wave was, you know, 80 to 100 feet.
It was giant.
I couldn't get down the wave
much less get across
and I had to dive off and swim up about 60 feet.
Swam up and came up through the back of it.
Brett saw me and came right to me
but behind him was something
that I don't even know how -- how big that was
and I got on the ski with him
and we started racing -- racing away.
I just remember looking to the beach
and I was on the back holding on
and Brett was standing up in front of me
and then all of a sudden, the beach
just disappeared completely.
I remember being hit, what I felt
was a baseball bat in the back of my calf.
And when it hit me, I was like, That just broke my leg.
And it just took me and it -- it drug me so deep
I've never been that deep. It was pitch-black dark.
And we got drug for, I don't know
how many football fields underwater.
And then the next one hit us
and then about four or five more waves hit us.
We were three quarters of a mile from shore.
The jet ski has been washed who knows where.
And that's when I noticed the water
was completely red everywhere.
And I was like, That's so weird.
And I remember going with this hand down here
and just going, Oh, my God.
The leg had been filleted from the back of the knee
to the Achilles' tendon.
Completely blown open like a curtain.
It was the fin of the surfboard is what got me.
The wound started right here.
Half inch higher, it would have killed me.
It came straight down here and then you get down to here
and this is all a graft where the fin scooped all the skin off
and just missed the Achilles' tendon.
I gave Brett my floatation, so he could float on it
and then I took my wetsuit off and I tourniqueted
his leg with my wetsuit.
I saw the ski, maybe an eighth of a mile from me
and I just swam, uh, as fast as I could.
The only thing I could think of was that I
that I'm not gonna explain to Shannon
and his, you know, his daughters, like
why he didn't come home. So th -- that's the first thing.
The ski miraculously started.
Got to Brett and he was just kind of floating there.
I didn't know what shape he was in
but his head was down. Got him up on the sled.
He just shot up that beach as fast he could.
He just came straight up to the top
and he was yelling, you know, help, help, you know?
And I remember the first lifeguard coming over
and looking at my leg and just going, ahh
and then just, like, leaving.
But from there, the ambulance shows up
and the fire trucks show up, they take me away.
I pull into the parking lot
and then there's an ambulance leaving.
And I'm like, I look at Laird, I'm like, Whoa, what is going on?
He is all jacked up, his eyes are like this big around
veins are poking out of his neck.
His knees all swollen, his ankles all tweaked.
He was just like, Argh!
I gotta go back to the giant surf and do what I do.
Like, this is an opportunity that
I might not see again in my life.
And -- and if I don't
I'll just have regrets.
He doesn't wanna be afraid of it.
I mean, there -- there's a very famous story about Greg Noll.
They -- they -- they say, you know
this last wave that he rode in Oahu
it almost killed him, he almost drowned.
It was huge, everything.
He doesn't surf. He doesn't surf anymore.
And Laird understands that.
It's like if you let that thing creep up and build up
so he's like, I need to go now.
He has to conquer that, he had..
That's why he's here. That's what defines Laird.
I go, "Don, you wanna see something like you're never gonna see
in your life?" I go. He goes, "What do you mean?"
I go, "Well, if I told you a tyrannosaurus rex was out there
running around right now and you could see him, would you come?"
He goes yeah. And I go, "Well, then you better come with me
'cause he's out there."
That was the end of it for me, you know?
After that trip, after the whole accident
it was like, I had my ticket out of the gang.
I look at big waves now and I just freakin' chicken.
I just freakin'.. I'm running for the corners.
On the wave that I dove off on
I couldn't get down because there was
so much water moving up the face.
The amount of friction and drag
that was occurring on the board
wouldn't allow me to get down.
I realized that if this thing ever happens like this again
surfboards don't work, I need something different.
And that's when I made the decision to go
Okay, well, now I'm gonna focus on the foil.
Hawaii's biggest swell in years
has washed away beaches across the state.
A storm with hurricane-force winds generated a swell
which is forecast to peak tomorrow.
Surfers ready to go, plenty of spectators already in place.
The excitement's building as the swell is, too, overnight
expecting to bring in some monster waves by tomorrow morning.
Could it be too big for the Eddie?
Well, organizers are hoping
to green-light the big wave invitational
for the first time in seven years
but still plenty of questions.
Look at that, look at that out there.
The banana patch is rolling. Period.
This, that's kind of hard to watch.
What do you do when you get that little yellow thing?
I suck everything right out of the puka.
Right out of the hole, yeah. You can just draw it out.
It's -- it's good for your chi.
I had a Chinese lady do like a whole thing on me
and she said, helps your Chi.
I need all the chi help I can get.
Did you get any of the tai with it?
- The tai chi? - No, no, tai chi.
I'm gonna do tai chi out in the ocean today.
- Good morning, ladies. - Hey.
Hey, you.
We're looking at 40 to 50 foot surf
all along the North Shore today
so it's looking good as we are just now, uh
about 30 minutes away from the first Eddie
in more than six years here at Waimea Bay.
I am glad that they're having the Eddie.
It doesn't happen very often.
And so I know that means that the surf's gonna be giant here.
The energy is -- is high.
I've only seen pictures of that. I gotta go.
Ooh.
I don't know how much longer he's gonna be able to do this.
He's so much older now that..
I mean, it's one thing to ride 'em, but it's another thing
to get wiped out on a big one
and then live through that and hop back on
and go do another one.
You know, guys have a moment
and that's it, they're done.
- That's, how big is that? - Well, that's --
Look at it feathering at this..
The biggest.
- Hello? - I'm in my car.
Okay. Well, King's Reef is breakin'.
- Well, you sure? - Absolutely.
I've been waiting a lifetime
to ride this thing out here.
You didn't even have to sand that.
That's another thing about the stainless
no corrosion.
Hey, you can't walk, but you can do this?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Kava!
Come here, I know you don't like this
but you gotta stay here and I don't want you off
you know, gallivanting around the neighborhood.
So I'll be back and you be good.
You promise? Okay.
When I'm out on the big water
and my partner puts me onto a giant wave
there's something really pure about it.
I wasn't into this whole competition thing.
I'm naturally pulled towards exploration
of the unknown and the undone.
We'll see you all later.
In the beginning, there's 1000 20-year-olds
and they're just frothing at the bit.
And then there's 250 30-year-olds
and then there's a 100 40-year-olds
and you get, start to get to 50 and 60
and there's like me and Terry.
The leader board is getting very competitive
with just a few heats left to complete this epic day.
Amazing wave there!
Uh, I really hope the judges kind of bump it up
for those big drops even though they get kind of
picked off in the whitewash at the bottom.
That's where, you know, the danger is.
My thing is to ride giant waves
to run with the dinosaurs, you know?
I wanna get out there and run amongst them
and have the freedom to do it the way I want
and when I want, how I want.
Oh, look at that one wave out there.
Yeah.
Oh, my God, look at that thing.
I don't think I've ever seen it that high before.
Oh, yeah, Laird's gonna be frothing when he sees this.
Okay, we got some energy here.
This is salty.
We're searching for a wave that'll just go for miles.
And then it's up to you, you and your body
how long you can endure that length of ride
on that -- on that rig.
Drive it!
Wow!
Laird completely redefined
what it meant to be not just a surfer
more importantly a waterman.
And here's a person that epitomizes that
and has, hasn't just
you know, talked about it, written about it.
He's lived it.
We talk about the -- the road less traveled.
Laird has taken a road that nobody has traveled
and he's made it work.
He's found a way to compete without competing.
Laird is sort of like a, you know, flawed human
who through a real dedication and a passion
is able to do these really extraordinary things.
And I think that's important
'cause I think sometimes we all feel like we're, you know, limited
and we are, but maybe, maybe less than we think.
Oh, there we go.
Oh, beautiful.
[instrumental music]