The best big wave in the world is a bold call, sure. There are slabbier waves. There may be taller waves. There are waves with more history and waves that break further out in the middle of the ocean. But by most accounts, Jaws is the most surfable giant wave on Earth.
SEE: Official Forecast for the 2019 cbdMD Jaws Championships
“No wonder they call it Jaws,” says Brad Gerlach. “As soon as you see the thing, your jaw drops.”
Ian Walsh. Photo: Hallman/WSL
Ian Walsh offers another analogy: “It breaks exactly like V-Land. Only way, way, way bigger.”
The rest of the big-wave community seems to be in agreement, at least when it comes to dishing out prizes. Jaws has garnered more XXL Awards over the past decade than any other spot — from Ride of the Year to Tube of the Year to Wipeout of the Year.
But Jaws is no one trick pony. It’s not just a dramatic drop or a staircase-riddled, triple-up tube. Ever since it was first ridden in the ’90s, guys actually rip this wave: carves, airs, flips, all of it. The only real flaw is the strong tradewind that often blows giant side-chops into the already treacherous faces.
“Jaws is one of those freaks of nature that every surfer should try to see in their lifetime,” Sean Collins says in Surfline’s Making The Call. “The ocean floor is incredibly unique with an extremely deep trench close to shore, which was dug out from massive amounts of freshwater streaming out of the Peahi valley over thousands of years. The water depth in the trench is more than 100-feet deep — right next to a shallow reef which is 20-feet, which is where the waves break.”
Photo: Jeremiah Klein
The secret here, as Collins explains, is water depth. “Wave energy passing over the deep water of the trench bends in aggressively towards the shallow water of the reef. This combination of extra energy converging over the reef helps the waves to become three to fives times larger than their original height in deep water.”
READ: Mechanics of Pe’ahi (Jaws), Maui
Three to five times larger than an already giant, deep-water North Pacific swell? This probably inspires most of us to find somewhere a little more sheltered — like our laptops. But for the relatively small cadre of big-wave aficionados, that’s straight up music. And back in the early ’90s, the small cadre was much smaller.
In the early ’90s, Maui’s “Strapped” crew — Laird Hamilton, Dave Kalama, Brett Lickle, Mike Waltze, Pete Cabrinha and Rush Randle — were the first to tackle the wave they’d been watching for over a decade. First on windsurf boards, then on surfboards with straps and yanked in by PWCs, they essentially created tow surfing.
Darrick Doerner, early days. Photo: Erik Aeder
“Gerry Lopez was the guy who showed it to me,” Waltze recalls. “He called it ‘Domes’ and the fishermen called it ‘Jaws.’ Finally, we got tired of looking at it and some of us decided to windsurf it. It was just incredible: double-mast-high, triple-mast-high. I don’t know how big the faces were: 30- to 40-foot… We found out that the valley and the stream and the point are called ‘Peahi’ which means ‘to beckon.’ Well, it was beckoning to us.”
The next dozen or so notable sessions were led, unsurprisingly, by Laird as tow boards became more developed and PWCs got better and teams got more experienced. The early 2000s saw an XXL bonanza, with back-to-back-to-back Biggest Wave awards going to: Makua Rothman (2002-03: 66 feet), Pete Cabrinha (2003-04: 70 feet) and Dan Moore (2004-05: 68 feet).
The pioneers of tow-in surfing at Jaws. Photo: Erik Aeder
By the middle of the decade, however, Jaws was being crushed under the weight of its own popularity. On December 15th, 2004, the day Bruce won the Eddie – Peahi was packed. By noon, four helicopters and at least 50 skis were in the water, along with four boats full of photographers. According to one report, “There was so much flotsam and jetsam bobbing around it looked like a scene from Water World or Tora, Tora, Tora.”
Dan Moore went on to win the year’s XXL Biggest Wave for a 68-footer, but the chaos of the day brought about some changes at Jaws, at least for XXL glory seekers.
“The following year, Rodney Kilborn was going to have an invite-only contest at Jaws, and we were only going to use rides from that,” explains Billabong XXL director, Bill Sharp. “Ironically, it never really broke that year. And the next was pretty crappy, too. We didn’t get another real submission from Jaws till Sebastian Steudtner won Biggest Wave in 2009-10. And now, it’s all paddle.”
Billy Kemper. Photo: Keoki/WSL
Indeed, the giant-wave surfing landscape changed significantly in the last part of the decade. Turned out the so-called “Unridden Realm” first tackled by horsepower at Jaws wasn’t as unridable as first thought. In fact, as big-wave stalwarts around the world were proving, it was actually paddleable.
VIEW: Jaw’s Surf Report and Forecast
February 2011 saw the first major paddle-fest at Jaws, with guys like Greg Long, Mark Healey, Nathan Fletcher and Sion Milosky pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, and culminating with Danilo Couto’s wild bomb that earned the hard-charging Brazilian the XXL Ride of the Year. A month later, Shane Dorian paddled into an unbelievably large behemoth, and pulled in, earning himself both the Monster Paddle and Monster Tube Awards for the same wave.
Meanwhile, early January 2012 offered a glimpse of the future via an all-paddle morning in giant conditions. “There were a few teams out there but no one towed while people were paddling,” Walsh explains. “We wanted to put that down today. Last year we tried to see how it worked with both going and it didn’t mesh too well. Today, they got their turn once the windsurfers showed up around 2pm.”
So, is it all-paddle, all-the-time now? “It was another stepping stone in the paddle realm, for sure,” Walsh continues. “There were a lot of gnarly guys over here, but only a few good waves ridden because Jaws is hard to line up. It’s a big playing field. The wave almost catches you.”
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