Fear Nothing

data analysis and surf predictions.
        Along the shores of the world's oceans, approximately six million surfers regularly ride the waves, and about five and a half million of these are content with waves that have faces-measured from through to crest - of six or eight feet. Ocean swells hide their power below the surface, extending down as much as one thousand feet, and they are not waves until they shoal up and break to the shore; consequently, there was no way, until the late 1980s, to predict with any reliability even where and when six-foot humpers could be found. Surf junkies could spend days at the beach, waiting through surf that was mushy or soft or even flat, while a few hundred miles up or down the coast, plunging breakers were macking to shore, corduroy to the horizon. A significant percentage of those five and a half million boardheads would rather pay Bobby a few bucks to learn where the action will or won't be than rely strictly on the goodwill of Kahuna, the god of all surf.
        A few bucks. The 900 number alone draws eight hundred thousand calls each year, at two dollars a pop. Ironically, Bobby the slacker and surf rebel has probably become the wealthiest person in Moonlight Bay - although no one realizes this and although he gives away most of it.
        “Here,” he said, dropping into a chair in front of one of the computers. “Before you rush off to save the world and get your brains blown out, think about this.” As Orson cocked his head to watch the screen, Bobby hammered the keyboard, calling up new data.
        Most of the remaining half million of those six million surfers sit out waves above, say, fifteen feet, and probably fewer than ten thousand can ride twenty-footers, but although these more awesomely skilled and ballsy types are fewer in number, a higher percentage of them want Bobby's forecasts. They live and die for the ride; to miss a session of epic monsters, especially in their neighborhood, would be nothing less than Shakespearean tragedy with sand.
        “Sunday,” Bobby said, still tapping the keyboard.
        “This Sunday?”
        “Two nights from now, you'll want to be here. Rather than be dead, I mean.”
        “Big surf coming?”
        “It's gonna be sacred.”
        Perhaps three hundred or four hundred surfers on the planet have the experience, talent, and cojones to mount waves above twenty feet, and a handful of them pay Bobby well to track truly giant surf, even though it is treacherous and likely to kill them. A few of these maniacs are wealthy men who will fly anywhere in the world to challenge storm waves, thirty- and even forty-foot belie moths, into which they are frequently towed by a helper on a jet Ski, because catching such huge monoliths in the usual fashion is difficult and often impossible. Worldwide, you can find well-formed, ride-worthy waves thirty feet and higher no more than thirty days a year, and often they come to shore in exotic places. Using maps, satellite photos, and weather data from numerous sources, Bobby can provide two- or three-day warnings, and his predictions are so trustworthy that these most demanding of all clients have never complained.
        “There.” Bobby pointed to a wave profile on the computer. Orson took a closer look at the screen as Bobby said, “ Moonlight Bay, point-break surf. It's going to be classic Sunday afternoon, evening, all the way until Monday dawn - fully pumping mackers.”
        I blinked at the video display. “Am I seeing twelve-footers?”
        “Ten to twelve feet, with a possibility of some sets as high as fourteen. They're hitting Hawaii soon… then us.”
        “That'll be live .”
        “Entirely live. Coming off a big, slow-moving storm north of Tahiti.
        There's going to be an offshore wind, too, so these monsters are going to give you more dry, insanely hollow barrels than you've seen in your dreams.”
        “Cool.”
        He swiveled in his chair to look up at me. “So what do you want to ride-the Sunday-night surf rolling out of Tahiti or the tsunami pipeline of death rolling out of Wyvern?”
        “Both.”
        “Kamikaze,” he said scornfully.
        “Duck,” I called him, with a smile-which is the same as saying buoy, meaning one who sits in the lineup and never has the guts to take a wave.
        Orson turned his head from one of us to the other, back and forth, as if watching a tennis match.
        “Geek,”