Maverick's Invitational: The XXL swell that shrunk in the wash
Veteran North Shore surfers have a rule of thumb when it comes to predicting wave size: storms generated in the North Pacific have to cross the International Date Line to be considered genuine XXL size - that is, at least 25 foot. And that's for waves breaking in Hawaii. On the US mainland any storm that doesn't cross the date line has to send its swell a further 4,600 kilometres suffering swell decay on the way and also dealing with the size reducing factor of the continental shelf.
Knowing this information it's a wonder the organisers of the Mavericks Invitational ever pushed the green light to the competition that ran today. But that's what happened following a huge storm that lit up the western Pacific last week unleashing all its energy west of the date line. When news that the swell would meet dodgy local winds in Hawaii, stymying the Eddie Aikau and Jaws Red Bull event, the Maverick's organisers gave notice to competitors who began making the last-minute trip to northern California from wherever on the globe they were.
US swell forecaster, Surfline, said the waves would be 15-25 feet faces with the odd 30 feet face. In terms of straight wave height that's 8-12 feet spiced with a 15 footer every 45 minutes or so. The forecast was almost spot on and if you tuned into the webcast that's exactly what you saw.
Is that 'big' enough for a big wave competition?
During the finals Mavericks looked like my local big wave spot, Queenscliff Bombora, during high tide on a dropping swell. A Swellnet commenter asked why the competitors were doing "the Huntington Hop," on their ten foot boards, bouncing up and down to connect the barely-capping outside reef with the inside ledge. The uncomfortable truth was they were pulling into the inside ledge because that was the only place where there was a modicum of danger, the very aspect that big wave competitions depend upon.
We can speculate why the green light was given for such an underwhelming swell: the comp didn't run last year so they were desperate to keep momentum; they had a big name sponsor they needed to keep happy; they pre-sold tickets to a Mavericks festival and need the event to run.
What it came down to was the bemusing spectacle of hardened big wave surfers, who train so they can survive situations other people can't, bounce their guns like it was a points-for manoeuvre system or that they were getting judged for length of ride. Make no mistake, if Kelly Slater was allowed to surf in todays Mavericks Invitational he would've taken a 5'11" out.
Postscript: Peter Mel was named the winner of today's competition, with Alex Martens second and Greg Long third. The finalists all decided to split the winnings and take home an equal amount.
Post-postscript: Two hours after the final scores were read out, and an hour after this story went live, the judges announed that they'd got it wrong. Alex Martens went from second to fourth with Zach Wormhoudt taking second place.
Comments
Just a 'Swellnet commenter' hey? References are good, royalties would be better. Check the buoys for today. 7.8 feet @ 19 seconds. Who cares what the period is when the size is so small?
In regards to your postscript - wrong, they fucked that up too and the judges swapped 2nd and 4th place after the announcement. So, results are> 1st Peter Mel, 2nd Zach Wormhoudt, 3rd Greg Long, 4th Alex Martins, 5th Mark Healey, 6th Shawn Dollar (source their facebook page - which they're getting smashed on - https://www.facebook.com/MavericksInvitational)
Oh nooooo....these guys are making the ASP look good. Their Facebook page is a horror show of outrage and pissed off punters.
What a diabolical surf competition. First it gets run in regulation, hometown size surf, then the webcast failed all day (did it work for anyone?), and finally the judges get the scores wrong.
I can laugh because I'm not involved. Imagine if your were one of the organisers???
From the Mavs Invitational FB page:
-This event has to be the worst organised in history... out of 14 friends who bought tickets only 5 actually managed to enter the contest site (with 1 hour traffic jams, 1 hour for parking, 45 queue to enter) - then the screen was too crowded to see anything and there were 1 hour queues for the food trucks. Overselling tickets is a scam - and when purchasers aren't refunded it has another name. Fraud.
Oh yeah and congrats Peter Mel on taking my $25 for parking and entry that I didn't get to use.
-We came from out of town and this event was the worst. People were rude and the locals keep complaining about how bad it was run this year, all commercial and money scams everywhere. A lot of up tight sheriff officers and miss guided information. So sad in many ways.
-But from a fan/spectator position this competition sucked. The call to run this event should have waiting as the swell charts were showing an increase later this week. And most of all, your streaming web production was pathetic! It kept cutting out, then returning to showcase what I already saw before the feed cut out! Never got to see the finals! Come on Jeff Clark, I respect you too much. You had a chance to become the jewel of big wave competition and allowed it to slip away.
"Eddie wouldn't do this!!!"
You've got to feel for the competitors a bit in this situation. You can be sure they would've wanted the surf to be bigger and they have no say in whether it runs or not.
Be a hard gig trying to decide when to run Mavericks when you know many of the competitors would rather be at the Eddie for a big swell and you've got heaps of days you aren't allowed to run
http://mavericksinvitational.com/2012/12/blackout-dates-what-are-they/
Stoked for Alex Martins - He is and have been for many years the man out there. His cajones are as big as his humility. GO ALEX!!! The next one, you will take it.
No doubt, but looking back over the available data and the call was very questionable, blackout dates or not. Maybe the fact there's fewer days available affects their decision making, causes a bit of panic and desperation to creep in. Wonder if, looking back, the organisers think it was worth running today, considering everything that happened?
Gee Stu, I'm not sure I'd call any of those waves in the pics above, 15ft?
I wouldn't call the waves in those photos 10 feet. There were, however, bigger waves that came through but they were so inconsistent that sometimes there was only one big set per heat.
@stu, the first pic - so what size would you say that wave is ?
i call that first wave 10ft, brutus, freeride, smucko , jug allport, what do you think ?
Nup, 8 foot for mine.
I'd say 8-10ft.. back behind the inside guy is over 3x overhead. If I were out there I'd be claiming 10ft, haha!
goofyfoot 57 posts
Joined: 08 Jun 2011
21 January 2013 08:50 PM
I'd say 8ft. The bloke on the inside is crouching down a fair bit.
Cant believe they ran a big wave conp for the worlds best big wave surfers in 8-10 ft surf. I almost think they would have been embarrased paddling out.
What size would they call that wave in Hawaii?? 4ft?
That inside guy is crouching down a fair way Craig, but I'd say 8-10ft. Not 10ft though, but somewhere above 8ft.
Just checked out Surfline and there is some pics on there of guys catching legit 15 ft waves. I stand corrected!
Stu - "Wonder if, looking back, the organisers think it was worth running today, considering everything that happened?"
I think as a vehicle for mass exposure and keeping their sponsors happy they couldn't have asked for more. Clean, glassy and bluebird - the press releases will "pop" with vivid photos and GoPro footage. It's important to remember the beast that is the "general public" watching cable TV don't really see the difference(nor subtleties) between 10"(8?) and 15' - it all reads the same as huge and beyond their comprehension - extreme!!!! ;) The dissent on FB will fade and be forgotten and likely not even scene by the hordes of punters lining up next year.
In terms of furthering the BWWT at a stage in it's infancy amongst the true surfing community, it will likely flag a decent amount of scepticism and hand ringing for future events. The tour was made to put the best into the gnarliest conditions. Argh, the constant struggle to find balance and appease all stakeholders....
Yeah, there were definitely some bomb 15ft sets out there way bigger than the pics displayed here but in general as Stu stated, it looked like a good day at the Queensy Bommie.
@Goofy,
There was the occasional 15 footer but Surfline also claimed that only 3 waves broke in the whole second heat. Heats ran for 50 minutes! That's some slow going.
hey it was a beautiful day nice 10 -15' waves..there was a winner crowned...yeah should have been bigger,of course there were logistical problems for the spectators and the whole entourage who wants a first hand look at Mavs....as this was the first attempt....teeething problems....
but in the end was pretty small...only one real set in the final,which Pete got the bomb and won!!!
why didn't they wait.....sponsors,surfers,organisers....???
seemed a bit of a non-event because of the surf so far at Jaws etc...plus a big year round the globe....we got a result..well done pete and to all the guys who competed...
10-15' isn't big enough for a big wave competition and one set per heat isn't consistent enough for a competition full stop. I'm not sure about the on-ground problems but they blew the most important aspect - holding it in big waves.
Most of the surfers were locals, why not have a minimum size like the Eddie event does?
can we please hurry up the technology,.. (and lawsuits), so that in the not too distant future all the mod conners building man made waves can move these hyped comps out of the wild. and into the indoors?
because, after this latest load of fuckall. the future cannot come any sooner.
Wave size is a funny thing.
I would also call those pics that Stu attached 8-10 ft. However, if you stack 4 of those on top of eachother you do you have a 32-40 ft wave? Try it with your photoshop and you end up with the biggest wave ever! It seems that it takes a bloody long time to hit 15ft, but after that the scale changes - and shrinks! The difference between 15 and 45 ft is nowhere near the proportionate difference between 3 and 9 ft.
Can any of you Swellnet boffins tell me, is this a phenomena of the 'swell being measured from teh back of the wave', or is it just people (and media) getting over excited when the waves get 15ft+....
Monk, we don't measure the wave from the back as slabby waves fail to really have much back height behind them but are very large in size at the front.
We measure wave heights in similarity to the majority of surfers (in our experience). That is, we measure the front of the wave from trough to crest using a scale where 3ft is about head-high, 6ft double over-head and 8ft triple overhead.
As for anything over 15ft, the lines do blur towards calling close to the actual wave face height in feet but even this has changed various times in big wave surfing history. Bill Sharp and the Billabong Odyssey changed the landscape in the search for the 100ft wave but this is worthy of another discussion itself.
Even after waking early and watching every heat and reading all the website comments (mostly people complaining)I'm still stoked to see the Mavz comp held yesterday.
How big was it ? It's easy to look at the webcast (when it was working) and the photo's and say how small it was. How many people would have done what Healy done on that left? Not many. theer was a set in the final or semi final where 2 or 3 waves went unridden.
Surely if it was small someone would have whipped it on that!
Easy to look from behind the computer and judge. Always a bit different when the lip is cracking 20m from you.
A warm sunny Sunday in California with an event that hasn't ran in a few years and a super clean WNW big period swell was (72hrs earlier) a No Brainer for organisers and sponsors who had already pre-sold 6500 tickets.
Sure it's been better this season and I'm sure it will get better.
But watching them run the comp was better than not watching it.
Well done Pete Mel and all the others who were in it and on the alterante list.
BEN WILKINSON you did Australia proud. Also Jamie Mitchell jagged a few in the morning session and did well in the commentary for a few heats. Good to see the Aussies representing.
I thought it was way better than last years event!
I guess most others didn't, 'cause I didn't hear them complaining last year.
Well Done Jeff Clarke
Got up early missed the first heat but watched 2nd heat and can confirm there were only 3 waves in it. It looked like from the highlights of the first heat, there were some waves that linked up on the higher tide and were in the 4x overhead range so thats 12 foot to me.
After that I watched periodically through different feeds. The webcast is pretty inexcusable these days considering the time prep these guys had, and the fact they did the web casts for the past 2 events previously.
Given the forecasting tools available now its also borderline that they can overcall it too when finally the numbers came in. It took sometime for forecasters to put fiqures out there so I guess they were reluctant to put there hand up.
I don't know anything about the wave but it seems from a spectator point of view taking off on the outside bowl is when the wave moves into another realm, and thats what the masses want. If Jughead can tell us - this only starts at 18 - 20 feet???
Having a big wave event knowing conditions aren't going to reach that size is then a letdown. However a legitimate event happened as part of the big wave tour. Maybe it has damaged the brand but from the MI business perspective it was a success. From what I read on the net the event has had issues getting sponsorship previously so given the gopro donut punching they would be sitting back in the board room pretty stoked.
But if Mavs gets hit by a 50 foot swell ie 25 ft waves during the waiting and conditions are perfect then we can all throw our 20 cents on Social Media.
So the question is do you have a borderline contest or none at all?? Time for Mavericks Surf Ventures to put together their strategic plan for the future. Just copy the manifesto of the Eddie. 20 feet Hawaiian and its green light
Ahhh, you're too nice Jughead, you know that? You've gotta get a bit of the bastard into you.
I've got no gripes with the competitors, and I probably wouldn't have paddled out and caught those waves myself, but still, this was billed as a big wave event - a supposedly prestigious big wave event - and the waves were anything but. The reaction online, not just from the flaming keyboard warriors, but also from people such as Brendan Thomas, editor of SURFER, bears out the public's disillusion.
Call it constructive criticism from someone who likes watching genuinely big waves getting ridden. Think Mick-Free falls into the same basket...?
I'm hearing ya's @stunet and FreeMick
it depends on tides and period (power) as well as size when the Main bowl breaks. There were some genuine waves ridden. Zach Wormhoudt, Greg Long, Pete Mel and goofy's Nathan Fletcher and Mark Healy all rode a few, some only one.
yeah i probably was a bit kind.
however i'm still stoked to see the event run.
I did see a shot of Paul Morgan from 2 weeks back in WA on a bigger wave than anything that broke during the Mavericks Invitational.
maybe a contest in Oz?
Prob only two states that could generate consitent enough swell during a 4 month period though. what ya's reckon?
The problem is actually holding the contest. Boat-based judging isn't a viable option for most of the open ocean breaks (ie Cow Bommie), and our big wave spots close to land (ie Shipsterns) are fraught with access difficulties and insurance hurdles.
What about YB in SA? Wasn't the judging from a boat for the fantastic noodles contest? That was epic that contest.....
Yeah, but half of the crew - me included - were throwing up over the side of the boat. Weather wise (and surf wise), we absolutely scored gold that day but if the wind was any stronger or if there had been rain it'd have been a completely different story.
And, as we found out on the day (being one of the first ever boat-based broadcasts), it is extremely difficult - almost impossible - to coordinate an entire webcast production from a boat.
Because one of the main promotional vehicles these days is each event's live webcast, you'd want to have that solution absolutely nailed down. And I don't think it can be done from a boat.
Thermalben it is about the money. A decent VSAT service and wireless data services out on the boat will fix most of your issues I expect. Oh and big arsed boat that doesn't move around like a cork.
It's not just internet quality Leigh - I'm talking about coordinating a production team from a moving boat in 5m+ swells. Even the big boats have limited space to get the job done properly. Add in intermittent microwave links (from roving jetskis in the impact zone), diesel engines affecting the commentary team and a constantly moving platform from which to work from, and I reckon it's a difficult job for the best of production teams.
Having a laugh now but 2mile would be a great spot. Great angles on the cliff looking down. Tassie gets the most consistent for big swells and would be the only place to have it. I think most of the entries from the Oakley big wave awards were from Tasmania. From what I see in the media the guys down there they are supportive of any event and so would Tasmanian govt for funding promo etc, whereas you wouldn't get that from the Port Campbell Locals. If they got a legitimate big wave tour off the ground then you would include Dungeons, and Papatowai in NZ is also a spot that you could easily broadcast from too.
how about an australian Slab comp...held in WA at...Cylops or the right?
not too sure about YB in SA....the day the noodles comp was on it was twice the size here......the swell of a century.....thats what it takes for SA to work.....if ya don't need spectators...go to WA...
Mick-Free ,
Lets not go there . A rather LARGE discussion has been had recently over such Comps .
Not sure many of the Older WA crew would want it over there .Remembering that a Gnaraloo WCT comp was vetoed by people both Nth and Sth of the Western region .
Tassie ..... Access issues ? ....
SA .... KI sounds like a good idea .... Oh no , thats right maybe not .
I know , the Queensy Bommie , Stu and Craig can be Judges ....
Let the Americans do what they do best .
I think I know the thread you mean. I'm all for the big wave comps being held in legitimate big waves. Its not like these spots are going to be overrun by big wave chargers, because of some additional exposure!
There was talk of a slab comp at Shippies too.
Queensy hasn't broken in 15 - 18 foot range for 7-8 years so that won't work.
Red Bull would be the only company on the planet that could get a ROI for running a BWWT. 5 events, 10 standby locations, if it looks like you can run an event at any of the locations you green light it. 24- 48 hour notice. Package it for ESPN etc.
Once Kelly finishes the tour which he will sometime in the next 10 years, he would be your No.1 drawcard. As good as a WCT dreamtour is the wider public want carnage and draw-dropping moments like Code Red Tahiti. All you need is one day of 20 foot waves to run an event. Sounds easy, maybe someone should call Terry @ Zosea
If only it were that easy, Mick.
Fascinating doco on the 72 hours around the Mavs comp. Jamie Sterling doesn't hold back.
http://www.redbull.com/en/surfing/stories/1331584997301/peaking-jamie-st...
Here's an old shot of Jamie Sterling around our way.
http://i1350.photobucket.com/albums/p775/Uplifted/jamieS17_zps456a8fd1.jpg