bells 81

That vision where it shows the helicopter and then pans below to the breaking wave shows how big it was!

Also the footage straight after with the freightraining wall of whitewash!

^^That helicopter footage is from Storm Riders. Also the shots of MR in the Porsche and a few others are from the film. There's a whole lot more footage from the day so it's worth hunting down the movie.

Bells '81, the subject for one of Dekka Hynd's memorable pieces...

Surfing World, Issue 204.

Ripping Yarns, Story Ten, by Derek Hynd.

Dane was the farthest outside when the horizon heaved. He was a good ten strokes away. Nick Carroll hadn't even seen it - he'd just scratched and missed a small twelve footer in the howling offshore. And Gabe Callaghan - Gabe was underneath Nick in the impact zone after a bad nose dive.

Dane yelled to me, he yelled to Nick, he yelled to Gabe, "OUTSIDE!" and forged his Aipa gun out to sea as a sickening set loomed darker and darker in the sky.

The THINGS were still thirty seconds off us but were going to throw beyond the normal line. It was obvious. I glanced back at Nick in a whirling scramble to catch me. Poor Gabe was only where his opponent had been an age ago and was paddling sideways for Winkipop. Gabe was going to die.

Dane was now lurching for the horizon and the fear in him was doubled in me and tripled in Nick and Gabe...he was as good as in hell - behind in the heat, behind in the paddle.

Dane's red board had the look of a bloody spear as I yearned to be up with him. Nick was now angling for Winki. Like Gabe.

The first wave looked big enough to close out Sunset as Dane started hurling himself up the face, it's rogue chest already feathering in the twenty knot north wind. Dane was in mid-air over the lip and four ceilings above me as I dipped into it's pit. My nose would punch through. I knew.

As the beast pitched two seconds later and the ocean contorted my face like never before, Nick was well behind me. Gabe.

In a mass of windspray Nick burst through the lip to the side and kept squirming to avoid the monstrous suckback. Seconds passed. So big was the wave that the Bells clifftop was still obscured.

It had passed over Gabe, the biggest thing that I'd ever seen, and had obliterated him like a heel does an ant. He'd been down for maybe fifteen seconds when the windspray died away and the cliff came into view.

But why did so many of the distant specks have their arms raised?...GABE WAS ON THAT WAVE, and the wind carried the crowd's mighty roar.

made my day, SA the best in my books in every sense capable humble innovative and loving it . excellent

last weekend was the 45th anniversary of the giant 1965 swell at Bells. Won by Robert Conneeley.

It was big that day too.

so its only 5 more years until keanu shows up for the 50 year storm

LOL, I like it !!