Surfing Detective 02 - Wipeout

infamous North Shore titans.
    “Not surfing today, brah,” I told Creighton in my own pidgin. “Working one case. You like help me, or what?”
    “Shoots.” The crack photographer shrugged in agreement.
    “Remembah dat California surfer wen’ wipe out Christmas Eve at Waimea?”
    “Da big wipeout? Da guy dat die?”
    “Yeah, da same one,” I said. “Da widow no can collect on da life insurance. Two hundred grand, brah.”
    “Ho!”
Creighton raised his thick black brows.
    “She hire me to prove him dead.”
    “How you gonna do dat? Da guy been gone since Christmas—da sharks eat ‘em, bruddah.”
    “I figure dat,” I explained, “but you can get me one photo of his board, plus anyt’ing else you got on da case?”
    Creighton disappeared for a while, then returned with an accident report and photos of Corky’s board, recovered near Sunset Beach the morning after his wipeout. The Californian had ridden a “big gun,” also called an “elephant gun.” Legendary surfer Buzzy Trent coined the term in the late fifties. Trent reportedly told his shaper, Joe Quigg, “You don’t go out hunting elephants with a BB gun, you hunt elephants with an elephant gun. Make me an elephant gun to shoot big waves.”
    Corky’s narrow, stiletto-like gun measured nearly eleven feet with a deep rocker, pin tail, pointed nose, and single fin. Its red and white stripes resembled a candy cane—appropriate for Christmas Eve. Pockmarks in Corky’s board showed evidence of being ripped by coral and rock. No sign of shark bites. However, the absence of crescent-shaped
puka
didn’t necessarily mean he had escaped the tiger sharks.
    A Sunset Beach woman reportedly had pulled the fallen surfer’s board from the water on Christmas morning and then, for whatever reason, waited nearly twenty-four hours to contact police, who examined and photographed it on the day after Christmas. The surfboard ultimately remained in the possession of this woman, since Corky’s next of kin—I guess, Summer—had declined to claim it.
    The police report told the story of Corky’s wipeout much as his wife and the
Advertiser
had told it. After riding “the wave of his life,” he was pounded by three successive twenty-footers and not seen again. A several-day search by Coast Guard, fire department, and HPD teams turned up no trace of the missing surfer, except for the battered candy cane-striped board.
    After thanking Creighton for his help I wheeled my Impala back to Maunakea Street, still pondering Corky’s disappearance. The Californian’s widely reported wipeout had all the earmarks of a big wave catastrophe. Each winter, unwary
malihini
—newcomers like Corky McDahl—journey to the islands to challenge Hawai‘i’s fabled waves. Each winter, tragically, one or more may meet his fate. Knowing firsthand the power and massiveness of Waimea’s winter surf, I began to sincerely doubt that Summer’s husband had skipped out on her and their baby.
    From what I had learned about Corky so far, he probably wasn’t my favorite kind of surfer—an aggressive upstart pushing to join the pro circuit, who is typically also a “Wave Hog.” Wave Hogs believe they
own
a wave. The problem begins when you take off on a wave with them. If you so much as stroke for it, they go ballistic. A Wave Hog in the lineup can ruin an entire session.
    One day on a beautiful, hollow, right-breaking curl at Populars, a guy took off next to me and shot within inches of my board. As a courtesy to a fellow surfer already on the wave, I pulled out. Astonishingly, after riding this beauty all to himself, the guy paddled straight for me, cursing and threatening that if I so much as came near him on a wave, he was going to “beat the sh– out of me.” I simply paddled away. He had no concept of community, of the brotherhood and sisterhood of wave riders. His selfish vision of the lineup included no one but himself.
    Why Corky reminded me of this experience I’m not sure—his arrogant eyes or snarly smile? You can’t tell that much from a photo. Or can you?

Four

    “A high-surf advisory is in effect for all North- and West-facing shores,” said the wrought-up voice on the radio as my Impala purred through pineapples fields and coffee groves on the highway to Hale‘iwa. “On the west side, Makaha is reporting in at fifteen to eighteen. On the North Shore, Sunset and Pipeline, eighteen to twenty-plus. Waimea is the big story: occasional twenty-five foot sets,