The Eddie: This isn’t a contest, it’s an Event

By Nick Carroll

Quiksilver's Highlights Reel from Waimea Bay.

Adobe Flash Player not installed or older than 9.0.115!

Waimea. Drop-ins cool, eating it not so much. Pic: Shield

Ross Clarke-Jones says this around 10.30 in the morning on Eddie day, and in seven words, he nails the whole feeling of December 8, 2009 at Waimea Bay.

The Quiksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau is not a surf contest. It’s a rock concert, a Gathering, a wild Woodstock of a thing, North Shore style. A place where a mass of people come at some crazed ungodly hour of the morning, before the night sky has given it up to the tropical sun, battling through traffic, paying for parking, sleeping on the sand, just in order to … hang out … to be part of something bigger than themselves. Even if they could only see what happened in the shorebreak.


The calm before the crowd before the swell. Pic: Shield

It was one of surfing’s truly great days – and not just because an unassuming kid from small town California turned everything around in the last heat of the event to take the big cheque from an apparently sure-to-win Kelly Slater. More perhaps because Greg Long could say at the end of it all: “This event really encapsulates what big wave surfing and surfing in general is all about. It’s that respect and camaraderie and those friendships you make in the ocean. Being out and sharing it with everybody.”

Oh, and this too: “It was one of the best hours of surfing of my life.”


The waves, and the wipeouts were spectacular. Pic: Shield

Lots happened on this wacky day. Too much stuff for anyone to record. But here’s some of what I saw and heard on Eddie day:

At first, the sheer intensity of the ocean of the day before seems to have almost altogether vanished. Around midnight, its deep basso note had shut down – still rumbling, but not shaking the bowels. At 5.30am, the Bay looks very quiet. People are already having to park three miles away and walk in. People are everywhere! One large lady is lying on her back, coddled in blankets, with a full face mask on, fast asleep. People are murmuring: “They said Eddie would go on Monday.” “They said it was 90% yesterday and only 50/50 today.”

Then around 6am, boom! A 20-plus set through the half dark.


Brucey Irons, fifth place, and eternal crowd favourite. Pic: Binnsie

By 7.30am, with perhaps 5,000 people on the beach and on the headlands either side of the Bay, George Downing has to make his Call. Word is there may be an afternoon pulse to support running the event.

George gets up into the tower and announces it: “Today, Eddie will go.” Everybody cheers.

George steps down from the tower and into a group of friends and family, and feeling the nervous aftermath of the Call, says: “Feel my heart! It’s beating so hard!” Several of his friends reach out and place their hands on his chest and George leans back, closing his eyes. Does he pray his Call is the right one?


A crowd of thousand called in sick, ditched school and lined the point. Pic: Shield

Peter Mel takes the first wave of the day. It’s a macker. He’s too deep but goes anyway. Minutes before this he’d been on the beach with his little son, John. “You want my watch?” John asks him. Pete looks at it and says, “It might fit.” John takes his watch off and hands it up to his Dad. Pete, towering over his son, wraps the watch around his enormous paw. It does fit – just. “Look at that – isn’t that cute?” says Pete admiringly.

“You’re his lucky charm today,” his mum tells John. The little boy smiles quietly.


Shane Dorian. Yesterday's ruler, today's wipeout entertainment. Always a crowd pleaser. Pic: Binnsie

Pancho Sullivan gets the alternate slot for TC. He’s in heat two: the same heat as RCJ, Reef Macintosh, Flea Virostko, Kelly Slater, Mark Healey and Clyde Aikau. It’s that sort of event – where you get to surf in a heat with an Aikau.

Clyde comes down with a big yellow Rawson gun, lets RCJ, Pancho, Reef and Healey go, then charges out himself through a washy shorebreak, refusing the PWC offer of a ride out.

A bit of quiet profiteering’s going on here and there. Near the church, one house owner has his yard available for parking. It fits around six cars at $20 a pop. The house owner, an Iraq war vet, is cheerily offering coffee to his customers. “Come back for lunch – we got hotdogs!”


A man and his pigdog take on 25ft of Pacific Ocean. Pic: Shield

Kelly gets the wave of the day so far, a 25-footer that he rides all the way through the shorebreak. It’s a surprisingly difficult contest to watch, in a way – the surfers are so far offshore that they’re not instantly recognizable, even with their coloured singlets. Only when they ride clear of the initial impact can you pick out one or the other. The majority of the people are out of range of the commentary. But in a way, it doesn’t matter, either – it’s the draw of the event, the rock-concert sense of participation, that’s keeping these people here, attention fixed on the dots of colour and the trails tracking down the dark blue faces.

People out on the point have garbage can lids which they’re banging together – clash! Clash! Clash! – as the set waves come. RCJ says, “It’s great! Sends a shot of adrenaline through you!”


Broken boards are more serious when the surf's 30ft. Pic: Binnsie

He describes Kelly’s wave. Ross was where he’d expected the thing to bump. Instead it shifted 20 feet wider to where Kelly had paddled across and a little closer in. “He’s like, whoa, and I’m like, ‘Jimmy! You’ve got it to yourself!” It leaves Slater far ahead at the end of the round. He’s winning, even when he’s not trying to win.

The rock concert atmosphere grows throughout the day. It brings out the showmen, and no-one’s a bigger showman than Andy Irons. Getting a set wave, he follows it up with a massive Journey-Of-Doom pull-in on the infamous left shorie. It’s irresistible; the crowd screams, cheers, wails, somewhat oblivious to the situation AI finds himself in – caught just inside the shorebreak with a moderate sized four-wave set unloading on his head. The third one takes his board. Then the ski’s on him and he jumps on and throws a victory salute to the crowd. But it’s not over; Andy comes in and runs off in search of his board, and comes back to the corner. He’s going back out!! “It’s the crowd!” he says afterward. “They keep you going! You hear 'em and it just spurs you on.”


The five highest ranked surfers (from l-r) Kelly Slater, Sunny Garcia, Bruce Irons, Greg Long and Ramon Navarro. Pic: Binnsie

It spurs Carlos Burle on almost too far. On a big one, sharing with Jamie O’Brien, Carlos rides far out to the left – a LONG way out. He straightens out under a conservative 20 feet of whitewater and lip. Who knows what might have happened without the skis, who come in and pull him clear and dump him near the sand.

In the second round of heats, the surfers begin climbing out of the endorphic haze of the morning and waking up to the fact that this is in fact a contest. Scores are being counted up. If anyone’s gonna top Kelly, they’ll need sets, sets, sets. But not many are coming. Kala Alexander comes in from his second surf a little disappointed. “I should have waited for a set, a big one. But there’s only five minutes left! And Kelly’s on everything! He just laughs, ha-ha-ha, then he’s on the next wave.”

Then Kala follows up with the sentiment shared by every surfer today: “I’m just honoured to surf in this. I wish Eddie was still here so he could surf with us. Or at least he could watch. Ahh… he’s watching.”

RCJ comes in laughingly cursing because the big one he’d wanted didn’t show up. “Kelly’s got it now for sure,” he says. But Ross has done OK and enjoyed himself. “There’s always next time.”


Greg Long, the happiest man on the North Shore tonight. Pic: Binnsie

Makua Rothman joins the Killer Shorebreak Club with a classic bravado closeout charge-in, and starts to paddle out. It’s halfway through the second last heat of the day. And the ocean explodes. Twenty-five-foot sets, one after another.

Shane Dorian takes one of the wipeouts of the day, a glorious straight-down drop to pull-in. Shane was the surfer of the day yesterday, catching everything that moved and getting thrashed beyond belief. Today, “I think I set the wipeout record,” he says wryly. “Hey,” he then says, looking up at the crowd and giving ‘em a shaka, “gotta give ‘em what they want. Right?”

Two huge waves go unridden. The first, around 1pm, is frankly uncatchable. The second, around 3.20pm, stands straight up across the whole ledge, with no way in. Sunny Garcia gets the one behind it and it’s a beauty. He rides it out into the middle of the Bay and gets a 95, at the time the second highest score of the day. But the next 40 minutes changes the whole game.

Incredibly, another mega-set comes. Bruce Irons goes the first one and rides it dead to the shorie and comes in, done. Sunny gets number three. But the one in between belongs to Greg Long. It’s huge, and he’s all alone with it. He drops straight down it right in the bowl, and gets the first perfect 100. Now the 25-foot sets are coming five or six minutes apart. Greg tracks in on another one. Ramon Navarro, all the way from Chile, gets a massive whopper and rides it to the shorebreak closeout and comes in. This earns him the second 100 and the Monster Drop award.

Sunny gets another one and comes in. The announcers think he’s only caught three of his four allotted rides; he’s sure he caught four. He’s stoked anyway. Almost a year ago, he went through a complete knee repair – ACL surgery on both, one after another. The recovery took many months, but eight weeks ago, he says, it started feeling normal. “Now I’m riding a bike up to the Dole cannery and back, 30 miles every day, and running six miles,” he says. Running?? “Well, only SLOWLY. But six miles.”

Greg Long, the quiet well-mannered kid from San Clemente, California, has won the contest in this last heat, but the news is held back so as not to diffuse the occasion. Greg is OK with this. “It’s a dream come true for me,” he says, signing autographs for the crowd on the beach in front of the Eddie memorial. “The spirit of Aloha is alive and well. The last week’s been the highlight of my big wave surfing career and of my surfing life.”

Interview with the winner Greg Long

Adobe Flash Player not installed or older than 9.0.115!