The thing that struck Maya Gabeira was the sound. “I had never heard anything similar: it was the first affirmation that that was the biggest wave I had ever ridden,” she says. “It was just ‘phwoooaaaarrrrrrr.’” She mimics a bomb exploding in her hands. There was also a continuous “Brrrrrrrrrrrrr,” she says, like a deep engine humming – the sound of tonnes of water falling, falling, falling from a great height. “It almost vibrates inside your.
Local s Perspective On Day of Days at Maverick’s
Catching up with longtime NorCal Mav s vets about Tuesday, December 8th
HMB local Luca Padua, December 8th. Photo: Kenan Chan
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By August Howell
As we extensively reported (see links above), Maverick’s saw its best day in recent memory last Tuesday. Consistent 40-foot faces greeted some of the world’s best surfers from sunup to sundown. And while the swell on December 8th peaked to a burly 17 feet @ 19 seconds, the wind stayed mellow all day, allowing for some truly jaw-dropping surfing to take place.
As Maverick’s pioneer Jeff Clark put it: “It’s the biggest, most consistent, powerful swell we’ve had since 2010.”
Paul Evans
Somebody’s has to speak up for the forgotten victims, like 2016. The year that gave us Brexit, Trump and killed everyone who’d ever thought about making a decent song or film, had enjoyed a level of infamy as the gruesome year everyone wanted to turn off and on again, until 2020 came along and put 2016 back in its bland to middling irrelevant little vanilla box.
If 2016 was kicking life while it was down, 2020 was Tyson uppercuts to the face whilst underwater in a crashed plane going over the falls in a tsunami.
And yet for all the misery, as seen from the narrow prism of surfers, we were more concerned for our wave counts than R-numbers.
Maverick s: Day of Days
Full coverage from arguably the best dawn-to-dusk paddle day ever at Mav s
Photo: Kenan Chan
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Yeah, we love superlatives when it comes to big waves, probably to a fault. (Of course we get excited about this kind of stuff. Waves are rad. Especially big, glassy, all-day waves.) But upon consulting an expert, certain claims can be warranted. In this case, it’s Mav’s grandfather Grant Washburn, who’s been keeping a daily journal of Maverick’s sessions for almost 30 years.
Kai Lenny from above. Photo: Billy Watts
“Of course there’ve been glassier sessions when we could catch more waves but I can’t think of another day with waves that size for the entire day and those kind of conditions,” Washburn said. “There were times when it was good, but not all day at that outer back bowl. We used to call that the ‘outer realm.’ Peter Mel and I talked about that for a decade, and nobody went near it. I’m calling it: