As luck would have it, the afternoon this phone call takes place Mark Healey and I had just spent the hours prior engaged in the same pursuit-mending chook sheds.
Mine had required reinforcing after a wily fox crept in under the dead of night and made off with a prized bird, leaving a trail of blood, feathers, and a gaping hole in the fence in its wake.
I wondered if Mark’s issue was the same.
“No, it’s just raining hard I’m just putting up some plastic to keep them dry,” he begins.
“We don’t have foxes here, or snakes or birds of prey. We have mongoose and they’ll get the smaller chicks and eggs, but the chickens have it pretty easy really.”
What follows is a short detour in conversation toward the early British explorers’ habit of introducing vermin to foreign lands and Captain Cook’s gruesome demise in Hawaii before returning to the topic of interest-the recently run Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational and one wave in particular.
Much has been said and shown of the event in the days since and I had reached out to Mark the day after but as could be expected-he’d had a lot to take in.
Tracks : You come down from that comp yet?
Kinda, I mean, I’ve been busy celebrating and have been pretty sore, but it’s time to get focused and start taking care of business again and today feels like the first day of starting to reorganise my life.
One of the most reoccurring comments was that it didn’t look like a competition, more of a spectacle, what was it like from within?
Mark: It was completely different from anything I’ve experienced within surfing or a surf competition. It was one part family reunion, one part church service and maybe just one part competition. Even the most competitive people out there were taking a moment. We were all just so happy and fortunate to be a part of it.
What were the bouys reading the night before?
About 9pm I was getting ready to go to bed and they were 27 feet at 19 seconds.
Geez Lousie.
Yeah, I had a hard time believing it. I thought there’d been some sort of misreading. I mean, 20 feet at 20 seconds would have been good enough for the Eddie, but yeah, I went back out and got a bigger board ready after that. Like, for sure the Eddie. They were some incredible readings.
Can we dissect that bomb you got into during your second-round heat? From the cheap seats it looked like you were blown off the back, which may have been a good thing?
I was inside the rest of the pack when a giant set came but we were way outside further into the channel so there were no landmarks whatsoever, so it was more of a gut feeling thing. The wave started to feather and everyone else was paddling up the thing and I thought, “I might be in a catchable spot here,” so I turned around and started paddling as hard as I could. Immediately, I was in the air just hovering and I reconnected with a little ledge. My board was already at a bit of an angle because I was aiming to head toward the middle of the bay if I dropped in, but there was so much wind coming up the face it grabbed the bottom of my board, chucked me into the air and off the back.
You’re quite a methodical guy so I’m guessing you’ve gone back and analysed that wave. Think you could have done anything different to get into it?
I’ve watched it back in slow mo, had I angled a little straighter, almost like I was going to go left I would have had better odds for sure. Then again, had I reconnected the remaining 20 feet of face would have bottomed out on me.
So, crisis averted in a way perhaps, but what happened after that? From memory that was the first wave of a very beefy set.
Oh yeah, there was another one behind it. I swam through it just hoping my leash wouldn’t break, which it fortunately didn’t. I got dragged somewhat but pulled through and paddled back into the lineup.
You placed third, but had you made that one, the result could have been different-did it sting a little?
No, that’s what happens at every event, and this was the most special event I’ve ever been in, and I tried my hardest. I’m not really upset because I tried my best to get down the face of that thing.
What were you riding throughout the day?
I rode a 9’8” Ron Meeks in the first heat and a 10’4” Paddilac in the second.
You are known for going left at Waimea, was that even an option on the day?
No, I sniffed around during the first heat but there was no option for that whatsoever.
And there was another one later in the event where you were gunning for the shore break and got flogged by what looked like a left coming toward the right?
That was the worst flogging I got in the event. I got my ass handed to me. After it pounded me, I got rolled all the way into the shore break and I felt myself go over the falls. I had to pull my inflation because I figured I would have nothing left in the gas tank by the time I get to the beach.
I imagine being tethered to a very big and buoyant board would have made that all the more difficult?
Oh yeah, you’re probably not going to look cool doing it, it wouldn’t have been the most graceful thing for sure.
You’ve since posted your summary on your YouTube channel – Koa Rothman, Nathan Fletcher and a few others have done the same. As surf-related sponsorships dry up, is YouTube the new revenue pathway?
I shifted away from the surf industry some years ago because I saw the trajectory with which it was headed, so I’m not stressed about the sponsorship side of things. It’s another tool. I just wanted an excuse to do all the trips I like to do and get them funded.
Your on-screen presence looks a lot more relaxed these days.
That’s one of the best things about getting older, you start giving less of a shit and things just go better that way. That’s the nature of the content that goes better anyway, people have so many options, I think they know when people are being dishonest or not themselves.
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