![]() I haven’t felt that scared in awhile, maybe one of the scariest moments I’ve had. You’re so far away from anything, so we needed to be as optimum as possible. Even with all that and the option of a helicopter, you didn’t want to injure yourself. All the surfers were super skilled, and then we had four guys on top of that watching from the channel and running safety for us. “You don’t do this kind of mission without a lot of preparation, and as a crew we all know how to do safety. Lucas took the ski to check out the lineup as fast as possible, and he realized there were perfect waves changing all the time. We were so far away from the waves, and there were no surfers on them, so it was really hard to tell the size. We were like, ‘Wow, how is it possible we are so far out to sea and the surface of the water is so glassy?’ I’ve never surfed a place that glassy, not even Nazare, where it’s close to the shore but there’s always at least a little bit of wind. “The first thing we saw was the perfect, glassy conditions. Just like Sunset Beach, in the middle of the ocean, on some kind of bender. It’s so far away from anywhere, you look around 360 degrees and there’s just water everywhere, with no vision of land.” Cortes Bank feels like a different planet. At Nazare, Jaws and Maverick’s, you can see the shore. It’s really different from everywhere else. We kinda used the sunrise for information, but couldn’t tell which direction the wind was coming from. It was still dark when we saw the first set, but being in the middle of the sea, we didn’t know where the lineup was. Fred, Chumbo and I tried to sleep on the deck outside in the salt air, but we couldn’t really sleep. Not a single wave broke on the Larry Bowl, but the Bank did not disappoint.” Photo: Brown Justine: “My instincts told me to remind Captain Todd Mansur of the limits we must enforce that would keep us safe - like not going over the line where the infamous Larry Bowl breaks, which is the equivalent of Sunset Beach’s West Bowl, in that it comes in sideways from a whole different direction and ruins anyone’s day who happens to be in the wrong spot. “I thought of my first successful trip out there in 2001 - Project Neptune - and reminded myself of the near-70-foot wave I’d driven straight up and over as it nearly pitched over my boat,” said Brown. It almost felt like a Nazare session with Garrett, Nic, Chumbo and Justine. Just to be there was insane, not to mention being with some of the best big-wave surfers in the world. I remembered all the old footage of Mike Parsons and those guys surfing out there, and never in a million years would I’ve said that I’d be surfing Cortes Bank. I was super stoked to get the opportunity. “The logistics behind the trip were nuts with the boat and the skis and the production, because it was a 100 Foot Wave project. Don’t bring anyone and don’t tell anyone.’ And I started making moves. All my good stuff was in Portugal, so I had to go back there no matter what, and Garrett phoned me back on Monday night and said, ‘Get on a plane right now. I was in Ireland when I saw that everyone was going to the Eddie, and the whole Pacific was going crazy, so I texted Garrett out of the blue, ‘Cortes?’, because I’d never know how to read a swell there. “Cortes Bank had been on the cards for just over a year, but on the backburner ’cause we didn’t know when the swell would happen. There were private text threads, smoke bombs, big ships from the Pacific Maritime Group in San Diego, a whole bunch of jet-skis, at least one helicopter, three teams of surfers, an armada of filmers and photographers, and so much more.Ī truly global crew. It was the same swell, and it looked fantastic on paper. Cortes is so far removed from anything that 99.99999% of us have ever experienced, it could barely be called a surf spot.Īs we were broadcasting live from Waimea Bay on Wednesday, January 11th, the wheels were in motion for a Cortes mission on Friday the 13th. This is due mostly to the fact that it’s so far offshore as to be exposed to any breath of wind or change in swell direction. Unlike Waimea, Jaws, Maverick’s or Todos Santos, Cortes Bank has only been surfed a handful of times since its dramatic unveiling 22 years ago ( January 19th, 2001). Photo: Quirarteīig-wave spots, by their nature, are fickle beasts. The mission wouldn’t have happened without this guy.
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