Big-wave surfers were racing toward Mavericks in Northern California as a rare Saturday morning swell was expected to send mountains of water nearing 50 feet tall through the break between two storms. One storm was set to move on by Saturday morning, and another was expected on Sunday, giving the famous spot only a narrow window before the weather turned again.
That is why Bianca Valenti was getting her gear ready at home in San Francisco on Thursday, planning to drive to Mavericks on Saturday morning if the conditions lined up. Clément Roseyro was already on a plane early Friday from Biarritz in southern France with three surfboards, part of the scramble that happens when a big swell and a short forecast window collide.
Valenti said every serious big-wave surfer or big-wave filmer was trying to rent a Jet Ski and find a way out there. At Mavericks, surf partners often hold onto a rope attached to a Jet Ski while riding the waves, because the break is as much about survival as it is about surfing. Peter Mel, who hoped to surf with his son, John, on Saturday if the weather cooperated, called it one of the scariest big waves in the world.
The swell started far from California. Brian Garcia said the winds that built it first developed in the Pacific Ocean near Japan early in the week, and that the pattern had taken days to cross the ocean and reach the coast. By the time it arrived, back-to-back storms were already hitting the California coast, which meant the same energy that could create a rare surfing opportunity could also send dangerous surf to beaches up and down the coast.
Mavericks, about 20 miles south of San Francisco and a half mile off the coast of Half Moon Bay, Calif., fires off several times a year between November and March, but clean, surfable days are hard to come by. There were no good days there last year, and only one really good day the year before. That is the trap of Mavericks Surfing: the waves can be extraordinary, but the window to ride them can close as fast as it opens.
If the forecast holds, Saturday could offer the kind of brief, hard-won session that brings elite surfers to Northern California from across the world. If it does not, the next storm will take over, and the swell will be remembered as another near miss at a break that rarely gives anyone enough time to make the most of it.
