Sea salt coated my windshield early in the morning dawn. The sun wasn’t even up yet – not for another hour or so – but I had already been on the phone, texting and calling with friends. “Where’s the spot? What’s the tide doing? Is it on?”
Oh, it was on.
That was the beginning, for me at least, to last week’s season-opener swell in Southern California. Simultaneously, there were countless other stories unfolding in real-time. Some very similar to mine, and some very different. That’s the way things go with swells like this, with all the hype, the buildup, the anticipation. It had been forecasted for at least a week prior, slamming Tahiti, and igniting Teahupo’o. So, Southern Californians knew something big was coming. How big? How clean? You just never know until you go.
Someone who had a very different experience than myself was Santa Cruz surf photographer Ryan “Chachi” Craig. While I was already stationed in Southern California, ready for the swell to arrive, Chachi was fresh off a trip to Chile, debating a flight to Mexico, scrambling to get his equipment together and formulate a gameplan.
“I ended up just saying ‘fuck it. I’ll stay in Cali,’” Chachi said. “It looked like it could be an interesting swell here, so I finally pulled the trigger. On Monday, I did an all-night drive to The Wedge. I left Santa Cruz at 11:30 at night, drove straight to The Wedge, and got there for sunrise. It was pretty big but a little messy, but definitely a lot of long interval swell. I was completely exhausted, so I decided not to swim and saved that for the next day.”
By now, you’ve seen plenty of scenes from The Wedge; but Chachi’s images show a different side to it than the typical vloggers in the surfing space. You see the crowd, the emotion, the raw power frozen, in time through still photography.
Related: The Biggest Wedge Ever? Chaos and Carnage from Historic 20ft Swell (Video)
His next stop? Chachi continued:
“Then I went up to Malibu for the afternoon, and realized I had never really shot Malibu. It was a pretty cool scene, like, so many people on the beach, but all like in good spirits…even though there was 50 people on every wave. It was pretty wild to watch.”
And the swell wasn’t over.
Chachi went on: “After a few hours of sleep, I drove back down to The Wedge. I got there for sunrise again, and it was already south winds, which is a little bit of a bummer. But there were still some crazy waves. I would say the shape was a lot better, but it was more ripped out with the south wind.
“Then I went back to Malibu zone and actually, and shot this crazy backwash. Then, I did another all-night drive to get to Santa Cruz. I actually slept in my car in Paso Robles for, like, two hours because I was about to fall asleep while driving. [Laughs.]”
In the end?
“It was kind of weird swell,” said Chachi. “I don’t really know what to make a it. I don’t whether it was good or not…but it was definitely big. No denying that.”
And the season is just getting started.
Related: 20ft Swell Slams SoCal Harbor Creating Rare Wave for Surfers (Video)