Dave Kalama told the Lenny brothers about one of the worst wipeouts at Jaws he’s ever experienced. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot//Strapped
In the world of big wave surfing, there are few names that should be sung louder than Dave Kalama’s. Strangely, though, he’s relatively un-celebrated, despite the fact that big wave surfing would not be what it is without him. Kai Lenny, who grew up under the tutelage of men like Kalama, recently sat down with the legendary waterman and Pe’ahi pioneer to talk about his life in the ocean for a Lenny Bros podcast interview. The clip you see here is just a small portion, but it’s a standout. Kalama walks the listener through one of the most terrifying big wave survival stories we’ve ever heard.
Now, I’m aware that Kalama has definitely gained a fair amount of fame for his exploits not only in the big wave arena, but stand-up paddling as well — he’s a Molokai 2 Oahu race champion — but in my view at least, he’s not nearly as well-known as he should be. He’s had a lot of really bad wipeouts over the course of his career, but this one takes Kalama’s personal cake. It was, as you’d expect, at a big day at Jaws, before flotation was the norm.
“It was Y2K and Laird was not in town,” he remembered. “When Laird’s gone, I get to act like the big dog. We had gotten a lot of days up to that point, and I was feeling really good about my surfing and I was super confident. I thought, ‘You know what? Today I am rewriting how this goes down; how you ride this place.’ I came out so cocky and confident.”
After a few waves, Kalama was feeling like a god. On his third wave, he told himself he was packing a huge one. “It was a friendly, perfect day, probably 18-foot,” he told the Lenny brothers. “I just remember going ‘okay, time to commit.’ So I did my fade back, brought it back up under. This thing was setting up so perfectly. I was already planning what my claim was going to look like… I got my bottom turn and it was like, ‘Oh, butter.’ I came off the inside rail and I was just starting to ease up to do my best impression of Gerry Lopez under an 18-foot barrel and I had not seen this bump. I was so focussed on what was down the line that I wasn’t paying enough attention to what was right in front of me.”
The parallels between that moment and many other situations in life are obvious, but the consequences of many of those other situations aren’t as bad as the situation Kalama found himself in. Still, though, he was sure he’d make it out.
“I’m up in the air and I’m backwards,” he laughed. “I was still so confident that my first thought was ‘Oh, are they going to be impressed when they see me make this.’ It was total denial. The board has come apart, I’m sliding halfway down this wave, and all of a sudden reality hits: ‘You ain’t making this.'”
As is often the case in heavy wipeouts, time slowed down slightly for Kalama. “I had a chance to look up and appreciate where I was and the enormity of it,” he said. “I remember having this real light kind of, ‘Wow, this is… wow! I can’t believe it.’ And then of course the lights went out.”
Many big wave surfers — and any extreme athletes, for that matter — have a certain calmness in high-pressure situations. In big wave surfing especially, panic can equal death. Kalama, in a maelstrom, took stock of his predicament.
“I finally penetrated and I thought, ‘Okay, this is happening. I need to get my breath,'” he said. “I’m in clear water at this point, so I start to swim. I take about three strokes, and I’m right near the surface. I can see the surface; the blue sky. I take one more stroke and I’m just about to break the surface.”
That was the moment another wave landed, driving him back down just mere inches from getting that lungful of air he so desperately needed. He found himself yet again in the Peahi washing machine, which is one of the most violent places in all of surfing.
“You’re in a car wreck,” he explained. “You’re tumbling, you don’t know when it’s going to end, and you have zero control. You’re just along for the ride. It’s such an overwhelming sensation that you almost innately know that there’s no point in fighting right now. It’s just wasted energy. You just go with it, and you let the wave do whatever it’s going to do.”
Mark Angulo was there on the rescue ski with a sled when Kalama finally reached the surface, but that wasn’t the end of it. Although Kalama did manage to climb onto the sled, yet another wave was bearing down on them. As they tried to outrun the mountain of whitewater, Kalama had a moment of hope. That hope, however, was dashed quickly when Angulo’s ski ran into a boiling turbine of whitewater that sucked Kalama off the back and down to the bottom of the sea.
“That’s when I realized, ‘Damn dude, you’re in trouble,'” he said. “‘This is bad. This could be it.'”
Kalama is a fighter, and he wasn’t going down without a fight. He started swimming as hard as he could for the surface again, fighting the power of the ocean with every stroke. Suddenly, though, his body was wracked by convulsions, likely caused by oxygen deprivation. He did get to the surface and manage to pull in a lungful of air, but yet again, another wave was bearing down on the waiting PWC, this time ridden by Brett Lickle.
“This time I realized that if I don’t get on that sled and hold on for dear life, I might not make it back to the surface this time,” he said to Kai and Ridge.
Kalama grabbed onto the sled again and held on, this time for his life. The wave flipped the ski and pulled it down with Lickle and Kalama still clinging to it, but they both managed to hold on until the wave passed. When they hit the surface, Kalama and Lickle made eye contact.
“The first thing I said was ‘I love you. You just saved my life. Now get me on another wave otherwise I might never surf again in my life.'”
Kalama did continue surfing that day and still surfs today, but that wipeout changed his outlook not only on the importance of flotation, but on life in general. His story in its entirety is worth a listen. You can find it here (or above) and listen to another telling of this wipeout Kalama did at a Ted Talk here.
