Professional Surfer Guest Speaker - Mike Parsons

Cortes Bank Big Wave Slide Show Presentation

6th Grade Assembly Pictures

Date: March 22, 2001

 

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INTO THICK WATER: PART ONE Mike Parsons, Brad Gerlach, Peter Mel and Ken "Skindog" Collins summit Cortes Bank January 22, 2001 There's nothing in Piven and Borgenicht's Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook about riding 30-foot waves in the middle of the ocean. You can learn how to escape from quicksand, how to deal with a charging bull or even how to survive an avalanche, but when you're outrunning a six-story wall of foam that packs enough power to light up Manhattan, you're on your own. Thanks to Mike Parsons, though, there just might be a new chapter in the making. At approximately 10 a.m., on Friday, January 19, the unlikely big-wave hero they call "Snips" speared a blue, wooly mammoth that would've stomped all over any paddle-in surfer in its path. But this is a new era, an era in which surfers like Parsons can conquer the ocean's deadliest predators with the push of a button. How do you survive a 30-foot wave at a submerged shoal 100 miles off the California coast? Easy. All you need is a PWC, a towrope and a partner with a good driving record. Just 20 seconds after handing the throttle over to Brad Gerlach, Parsons grabbed the rope, motored out the back and launched straight into the biggest wave of the morning and the biggest wave of his life. One quick fade, and the rail-thin Snips on a skinny 7'2" tow board became a small black seed at the bottom of a giant blue salad bowl. Taking a traditional big-wave line, Parsons sat in the trough of the massive wall for a split-second before giving his 16-inch-wide water ski everything he had to make it around the next thundering section. "I think he got weeded!" yelled Captain John Walla, who was watching in horror from the shoulder on his 10-foot gun. But Parsons stayed planted and kicked out 100 yards inside to the disbelieving cheers of everyone who witnessed the one-wave freak set. Just how big was it? Photographer Rob Brown has a pretty good idea: "I've watched and photographed Mike Parsons surf since he was 14," he said, "and all I can say is that yesterday was the pinnacle of his long surfing career." Santa Cruz's Ken "Skindog" Collins, who was towing with Peter Mel, agrees: "Hey, he owes me five bucks," he said, referring to the $60,000 Swell/XXL Biggest Wave Wins event. "I should get at least .05 percent, or whatever, for having to watch that wave." And then, from Parsons himself: "I still can't get over how quickly you go from idling around to a life-or-death situation on a Wave Runner," he said. "That was my first wave, long before I had any idea what I was getting myself into. Easily the biggest wave I've ever been on." Five hours later, the 54-foot Pacific Quest limped back toward the San Diego harbor like a battered mule. A half-mile behind it, another ruler-edge, 20-foot set poured across the open-ocean reef to the audience of a few seals in the channel. It was a long, hard 24 hours for the charter fishing boat that's used to getting its winters off. With only one engine running (making the vessel's top speed a breakneck seven knots), its antenna snapped and a whole mess of bumps and bruises from the three 800-plus-pound Wave Runners tied up on deck, the wounded soldier was estimated to be back in the docks by 6:30 a.m. Saturday morning. "Hey, it can take us a week to get home, and I won't care," said a sunburned Peter Mel as he passed out another round of Budweisers to Collins, Parsons, Gerlach and the cabin crew. "We just made history." "History" is the first serious assault on the California coast's sleeping giant, Cortes Bank, a 17-mile underwater mountain range that comes to a head 3 feet below the surface at a spot called Bishop Rock. Despite its isolation (100 miles out of San Diego Harbor on a 260-degree track), "The Bank" is by no means an overnight discovery. As early as 1990, Swell Photo Editor Larry "Flame" Moore decided to follow up on Walter and Flippy Hoffman's wild tales of a smoking right-hander in the middle of the ocean and began documenting the spot by plane during the 1990 Eddie Aikau swell (which showed evidence of a Makaha Point surf-type bowl on steroids). Since then, after one feeble attempt with George Hulse, Bill Sharp and Sam George in 1990 and an aborted mission in 1995 with Brock Little and Mike Parsons, Flame has yet to find a day when the conditions and swell look like they'll match the Big Foot photos he'd captured from 300 feet up. Then came January 19, 2001. Mild Santa Ana conditions, one of the biggest swells of the winter (16 to 20 feet at 20 seconds on the West Coast offshore buoys) and Jeff Clark's official postponement of the Quiksilver/Maverick's event prompted Moore and Surfline's Sean Collins to give the offshore big-wave expedition the green light. Since Moore had worked out the kinks and logistics the year before (Project Neptune was intended to be a more formal "tow-in expression session" last winter, but the conditions never pulled together), the transition from concept to completion was miraculously seamless. Well, almost seamless. -- SWELL.com and Evan Slater