“You might be taking your vows in a prison chapel.”
Two hours later Jen imagines that she’s floating on her back near the roaring Mavericks waves, looking up at tiny stars in a black sky.
In fact she’s in her bed, but miles from sleep, her mind about to tick off for the third time, what she will need just a few hours from now when she crosses the harbor to the sea. She’s packed two bags of gear in Laguna, and now they’re in Brock’s Go Dogs Econoline, parked down in the guarded Oceano parking basement, ready for Pillar Point Harbor.
This third mental check is vital in Jen’s mind because she can’t forget anything, can’t overlook even one of all the detailed things she’ll need to survive Mavericks.
Things in addition to fitness and skill, experience and luck.
Eyes closed but mind working, she’s in full contest mode now:
She’s got Reno and his workhorse boat, Amiga, set to meet her at the launch. A twenty-six-foot fiberglass cruiser is no match for a fifty-foot wave, but Reno’s terrific under pressure; Amiga’s twin outboards have torque galore, and Reno goes in fast and gets out even faster.
Jen has serviced and trailered her jet ski, doing the work herself, deliberately and slowly, like John taught her, making sure the fuel-oil mix is right, and the filter is clean to prevent stalling, and the gaskets and seals are good, the fuel lines fresh, the screws tight. Her ski is a three-hundred-horsepower Kawasaki two-stroke, fast as a banshee and weighing in at eight hundred pounds. It answers to the name of Thunder—Jen’s first dog. Of course, she’s got it custom painted orange and black in honor of you know who, and she’s made sure it’s as bright and polished as a dragster. Took her a while to get the gas off her skin and the grease from under her nails.
Four surfboards for unpredictable conditions: two thruster guns—an eight-two and an eight-eight—and two pintail single fins at seven-six and eight even.
Plus four leashes and a spare. Of course, fins and keys to get the fins on and off—she forgot her fin keys once but luckily John had his. Got quite a look from him for that.
Her five-millimeter wetsuit, so thick it’s hard to move in, rash guard, inflation vest, boots, hood and gloves, impact suit for under the wetsuit in case she gets mashed into the rocks, inflation vest CO2 cartridges, helmet, and wax.
Important details include human fuel: protein bars and boxed energy shakes, sports drinks for salt and sugar and carbs, canned caffeine and more sugar courtesy of Casey’s sponsors, bananas, nut clusters, and a handful of Abba-Zabas that, when she chews them after a long session, helps the cold, dense seawater drain from her ears. Sliced roast beef and string cheese wrapped in flour tortillas for lunch—cold but filling.
Next, things you don’t want but shouldn’t be caught without: first aid kit with plenty of waterproof tape, tourniquets and packing gauze for rock and board gashes, a plastic bottle of isopropyl alcohol, scissors, and a freshly sharpened pocket knife.
Finally, she’s packed the sea-glass earrings John gave her for her eighteenth birthday, the day he asked her to go to Cortes Bank with him, where he asked her to surf the world and ride big waves together. And more, a lot more. She still wears them, but they’re not made to be worn under a neoprene hood. For trips like this she uses the wooden box they came in, with the same funny-page paper, now softened and faded with age.
All that packed into padded board bags so heavy she’ll appreciate Reno’s help loading in.
She lays there in the dark, facing the ceiling, feeling the ocean beneath her, trying to shut down her mind.
Impossible.
Towing Casey.
Brock and Mahina.
Her own chances riding Mavericks for the first time in twenty-five years. At fifty feet, or bigger.
And John, always and forever.
36
Sunrise without sun.
Jen powers Thunder from the Pillar Point launch toward the breakwater and Mavericks beyond, Casey seated behind her. Brock and Mahina are out ahead of them, a plume of ski spray rising in their widening wake.
The sky above is gunmetal gray, and the water here in the harbor is the same color, but shiny. Up on the bluff the old Air Force tracking station globe presides over the harbor, a World War II relic.
Behind Jen trails the rescue sled. When she speeds past the breakwater into the open ocean, she hears Casey’s ritual war-whoop invocation behind her: “God save us all!”
The sea is rougher outside the second breakwater. Thunder bucks into the chop, her engine whining with the dips and drops. Jen cuts diagonally to lessen the impact, half of her attention already on the waves that she can see coming in a half a mile northwest. They’re very big—thirty-foot faces breaking right—nicely formed and spaced at lazy intervals, crowned by twenty-foot plumes of spray suspended by a light offshore breeze. Jen’s last Surfline forecast this morning had the brunt of FreakZilla hitting Mavericks between 10 and 11 A.M., carrying forty-foot waves with sixty-foot faces. Surfers measure waves from the behind, she knows—a Hawaiian tradition—and faces from the front. Two helicopters—a red San Mateo County rescue chopper and a black-and-white ESPN machine—weave high above, awaiting action.
Aboard Amiga, Jen helps Casey choose his board. Brock and Mahina are trying to sleep in the little cabin, still pounded by three days at the Flagstaff fire, which claimed two lives. Reno holds his boat steady in the current and swell, chattering away about his new granddaughter, but his eyes keen on the waves, which here at Mavericks are prone to sudden changes of size and shift of direction when they hit the reef below.
Jen watches her son waxing his board—an eight-foot-ten, orange-and-black thruster with three of the five available fins deployed. Casey moves like his father, she thinks, deliberately and calmly, on his knees, pushing the wax block across the deck with one hand, rocking with the swell.
He looks up at her. “Hey, Mom.”
“These are good waves, Casey.”
“These are beautiful waves.”
“Don’t try to win this thing on the first one.”
“Never. Easy does it.”
“You have to make it. Then on the next one you do more.”
Jen sounds just like her mother, always the coach.
“You sound like Grandma,” Casey notes with a smile.
With his thick yellow hair tousled Casey of course reminds her of John. More than reminds her. Is John, in one of those rare, exact genetic handoffs from father to son.
“I’ll be there if you need me.”
“I know, Mom. I got this.”
Sitting on the deck, he zips on his booties, pulls on his hood and gloves. Clamps the leash to his right ankle, takes up his gun, stands, and slips overboard.
Jen climbs down Amiga’s folding ladder and onto Thunder, which starts up with a throaty blast of white smoke.
Casey hits the lineup—first heat, six men. Jen joins the other five tow skis, buzzing around like noisy wasps, all keeping well away from the big walls of water marching in. Pipedream, the judges’ boat, rocks steadily inside, allowing good binocular views of the rides. The ESPN chopper drifts low, while the county rescue copter stays higher for the macro view.
Through the raunchy smoke of the outboards and ten jet skis—four of them for rescue—Jen tows Casey into his first wave.
It’s a twenty-five-foot beauty queen with a smooth face, a thick lip, and an inviting right shoulder. Casey drops the rope and Jen makes a quick escape, circling out wide so she can see him.
Casey drops in and makes the bottom turn easily, tucks into the barrel, runs his right hand along the cylinder, then accelerates up to the lip again from where he drives a straight fast line out ahead, then launches his board and himself into the sky and over the mounding wave to safety.
Jen watches with a hitch in her breath and a smile on her face, Thunder rocking under her. She picks up Casey on the lee side of the wave, hears the boom of it over her snarling ski. She steadies Thunder while Casey straps his board to the sled and climbs on.
They’re back in the lineup a minute later. Casey sits behind her on the ski, for elevation, his still-leashed board stowed for now in the rescue sled.
“Beautiful work back there,” she says.
“Perfect tow, Mom, but I need bigger.”
