Bodysurfing at Newport Beach

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Outside Magazine August 2004

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Bodysurfing
The Lip Comes Down (cont.)


	Midget gidgets: Kennedy at home with daughters Katy, Caroline, and Cailin (Jake Chessum)

THOUGH I CAME TO Newport Beach a competent board surfer and decent swimmer, before leaving home I assured my worried wife I would stay well clear of the water. But after a long day watching Larson and the other Crew maniacs have an outrageously good time, I yield to the obvious temptation.

My father grew up bodysurfing in SoCal in the fifties—he once even rode the Wedge—but I've always depended on my board. Sitting on the sand, pulling on my borrowed Viper fins, I study the monster closely. I watch Matt Larson take another run. He zooms through the wave's chaos in complete control, flying 30 yards to my right before his wave turns inside out and again swallows him in a sand-filled vortex, a zone of bone-crunching surf known as Cylinders.

At Cyllies, as the Crew calls it, the crashing wave throws a river up the steep beach and then sucks it back down hard. Which is why, the guys tell me, I should never try to climb out of the water there. I'll get yanked off my feet and dragged back into the impact zone, where I'll get beaten like a redheaded stepchild and held underwater and rubbed face first on the bottom, then pushed back up the beach, only to be yanked back into the impact zone again and then, well . . . you get the idea.

Flopping into the ocean, unfamiliar with my fins, I try to keep up with several Wedge guys as they head out alongside the jetty. The sea comes instantly alive, and a rip current pulls us 50 feet in a breath. Starkey and Nickelsen are chatting in the lineup with a 21-year-old newcomer named Aaron Piersol, who won a silver in the 200-meter backstroke at the 2000 Olympic Games and two years ago set a world record in the same event. The Crew is rolling out the red carpet for him as

The wave's impact blows the air from my lungs and drills me to the seabed. Tumbling and spinning, I claw my way to daylight.

part of its ongoing recruitment program. The older Larson loiters alone at the far outside, interested only in the biggest waves. Two red rescue boats motor nearby, three lifeguards watch from the beach, and more than a hundred onlookers line the sand.

All of a sudden, the crowd screams and whistles, and people point to the horizon: A fresh set is rolling in. Whitewater pours over the tip of the jetty, and Matt Larson jumps in and swims for the horizon, hoping to meet the waves before they break. While everyone else follows, I swim well to their right and pause closer to the beach—a perfect, albeit risky, vantage point from which to take in the action. Larson drops in on the first wave and shoots across the wall, right toward me. I dive into the looming face to get out of his way, and pop out the back side. I'm still catching my breath as Starkey takes a turn and drifts up the now vertical wall. Kicking hard, he takes two strokes, reaches out to plane on the palm of his hand, and rips toward me at warp speed. Fantastic! I duck through his wave, too. Meanwhile, an out-of-towner swims for the next wave, but at the last moment, as the lip launches forward, he commits a cardinal Wedge sin: He hesitates. The vaulting wave chucks him into the air. Twisting in midflight, he lands in a terrible contortion under the falling guillotine. Mesmerized, I look for him to reappear, and I think of yelling for help. A lifeguard trots closer, and I can see the audience watching.

Then I turn around and confront the bad news. A fourth wave has already gone concave. I try to dive a third time, but I've drifted too close to the beach. The last sound I hear before I swim for the safety of the bottom is Nickelsen's warning scream. The wave's impact blows the air from my lungs and drills me to the seabed. Tumbling and spinning, I claw my way to daylight, only to face yet another wave. I've drifted smack into the middle of Cyllies. Frantic now, and forgetting what I've been told, I swim for the sand.

"No!" Nickelsen yells. "No! Swim the other way!"

But I've already been there, and now I want the beach, I want dry land. It all seems so close—I can even see the whites of the lifeguard's eyes. And then all that water rushes back down the berm and drags me once again into the target zone, and this time I've got only one choice: swim right toward the beast that's hunting me.

Diving into the wave's face, I feel the lip graze my feet, and then I'm popping out the back, in safe water again. So now I do what I've been told: I swim clear through the panting crowd in the lineup and over to the jetty. The huge black boulders practically vibrate as the currents drag me around, but pretty soon I'm making progress, swimming back alongside the rocks to the safety of shore. I'm only ten yards from the sand when a wave rolls beneath me and explodes just ahead. Looking to my right, I realize that the wave's much smaller reflection has just bounced off the jetty and is running straight toward me.

Nickelsen's yelling at me again, I realize, but now he's saying, "Go for it! Go for it!"

So I do. Two deep scissor kicks, my left arm stretched out, and just like that I'm a wave-powered dolphin, a human missile screaming sideways across the beach. It's a wild, bouncing ride, and I'm starting to shout and laugh when I see the tube's curtain landing out in front of me and I'm in a tight little green room. And then BOOM! The entire back side of my body slams the bottom all at once. I get tumbled like a log right up onto the dry sand, and the wave pulls back out and leaves me lying there, beached and happy.

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