A rare Pacific swell was expected to drive mountains of water nearly 50 feet tall into Mavericks by Saturday morning, giving big-wave surfers a narrow chance to paddle into one of the world’s most dangerous breaks between two storms. Bianca Valenti was getting her gear ready at home in San Francisco on Thursday and planned to drive to Mavericks on Saturday morning.
The timing is what has everyone moving. One storm was set to move on by Saturday morning before another hit on Sunday, and that gap could be the only window for the swell to line up cleanly at Mavericks, a half mile off the coast of Half Moon Bay. Clément Roseyro got on a plane early Friday morning in Biarritz in southern France with three surfboards, joining surfers chasing a forecast that could vanish as quickly as it appears.
Valenti said every serious big-wave surfer or big-wave filmer was trying to rent a Jet Ski right then and find a way out there. She was not exaggerating by much. Mavericks does not fire often, only several times a year between November and March, and there were no good days there last year and only one really good day the year before that. When a swell this large shows up, it concentrates a whole season of hope into a few hours.
What makes this one different is how the swell was built. Winds first developed early in the week in the Pacific Ocean near Japan, then traveled across the ocean in a pattern Brian Garcia compared to a train track laid across the Pacific and pointed straight across the coastline. He said that wind pattern happened days ago and that it takes days for the waves to travel across the Pacific, which is why the swell is arriving now, not when the weather first formed.
That same power is why experts warned people to stay away from beaches up and down the coast. The monster surf was expected to be dangerous far beyond Mavericks, where an underwater reef helps shape the break and where the water is shark-infested. Peter Mel called it one of the scariest big waves in the world, and that is exactly why the draw is so strong: a rare, high-risk window for the few who can handle it, and a day for everyone else to keep their distance.
The real question now is whether the waves will hold together long enough on Saturday morning to match the forecast. If they do, Mavericks could deliver the kind of session that big-wave surfers measure years by. If they do not, the coast will still get the dangerous surf, the storms will keep moving through, and the opportunity will be gone.
