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Surf & Destroy (Cont.) THE IDEA OF A SPONSORED global search for big surf came to Sharp in January 2001, just a few days after the first successful Cortes Bank tow-in trip. As Sharp and photographer Larry Moore—who discovered the site's surfing potential during a 1990 flyover—circled overhead in a Cessna 172-RG, teams made up of Parsons, Gerlach, Collins, and Peter Mel charged some of the biggest surf ever tackled. Parsons would go on to win $60,000 (which he split with Gerlach) for a 66-foot Cortes wave he rode that winter—widely considered one of the largest ever surfed.
After Billabong bought in, Sharp spent a few weeks that winter driving the coast between San Francisco and Vancouver Island during sizable North Pacific swells, scanning the horizon for surfable reefs. The most promising spot he found was a mile-long sandbar near Cape Disappointment, at the ship-eating mouth of the Columbia River, which separates Oregon from Washington. In October 2001, Sharp invited a dozen famously cocky surfers to attend a tow-in boot camp at the U.S. Coast Guard station at Cape Disappointment. Many of America's best-known big-wave riders enlisted, including four of the six surfers who would later join us in Chile-Parsons, Gerlach, Collins, and Dorian-along with several members of the lawless Santa Cruz brigade, most notably Darryl "Flea" Virostko, whose suicidal tendencies had won him two consecutive first-place checks at the annual Men Who Ride Mountains contest, at Maverick's. Gathered in a Coast Guard classroom, the Odyssey trainees took in a barrage of paramilitary jargon: "safety risk management," "incident command systems," and an eight-section "emergency action flowchart." It helped that the instructor was Oahu-based Brian Keaulana, 42, surfing's premier big-water safety expert. It also helped that each of the pupils knew from experience what it's like to take a gigantic wave on the head. If they ventured into the 100-foot realm, they knew, teamwork would be paramount. Many surfers have survived thrashings by waves in the 50-foot range. But a 100-foot wave is not just twice as tall; it's thicker, faster, and packs more than twice the firepower. Until somebody rides one, it's impossible to know what a wave like that would do to a surfer who digs a rail, lands flat, and gets sucked over the falls. "You would have to be really precise on a 100-foot wave," says Ken Collins. "Because if you ate shit and got mopped by a wave that size, I'd have to think there's a high, high risk of dying." Sharp learned a lesson himself during that first trip. One was to avoid areas populated by territorial locals. During the Cape Disappointment camp, the Odyssey crew rented a house about 30 minutes south, near Seaside, Oregon. Seaside is home to one of the most fiercely guarded breaks on the West Coast, a long left-hander that the tow-in trainees hadn't even planned to ride. Nonetheless, local surfers were not happy. First, they slashed the tires on five of the invaders' vehicles. Then one morning a mob of about 25 angry surfers showed up before dawn and called out the Odyssey crew, tossing threats but no punches. To punctuate the message, someone later left a freshly severed deer head on the front lawn. "It was nerve-racking," Parsons remembered. "I'd never experienced anything like that anywhere."
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