[TV static drones]
[bright tone]
- I'm going now, bro.
I'm not waiting around, huh?
We got to get going.
- All right.
[dramatic music]
- Come on, guys, the sun's coming up.
♪ ♪
Come on, let's get out there.
Here they come.
Okay, let's go.
- [grunts] - Go.
♪ ♪
There you go, there you go.
Uh-oh. Uh-oh.
- What the fuck?
♪ ♪
- Doing something that nobody's ever done before,
there's no guarantee that your plan's gonna work.
- [groans]
- Once you commit, there is no turning around.
♪ ♪
- We're entirely removed from civilization.
- Look at this one.
- We know once we get there, we're on our own.
- Climbing.
We've chosen to live a life that does have risk.
- Oh, my God. - [crying]
- One mistake, and you're dead.
- Come on, now.
- If you harness that fear,
you can do something that you never thought possible.
- Whoo! Yeah!
- Is the pursuit worth the risk?
[waves crashing]
[bird squawking]
- Everything that you want in life
is on the other side of your fear.
♪ ♪
Africa has a allure of danger and excitement.
The colors...
[birds honking]
The water...
everything about it is unique and special.
♪ ♪
I've traveled all over the world,
but this coast that we're going to,
for me, it's almost the last frontier
of everything.
The vastness of it,
just how many waves there are--
It's a really rocky shoreline,
peppered with these beautiful white-sand beaches
but mostly just Atlantic Ocean,
massive swells just smashing into rocks.
♪ ♪
- I know for me personally,
it's, like, all about the next wave,
the next location.
And it just keeps you driving forward.
You look at the entire world,
and there can't just be four iconic giant big waves--
Jaws, Nazaré,
Mavericks, and Waimea.
There has to be another location.
Oh, my God. There's so many.
- We're going
to this super-remote piece of coastline
that just gets pounded by swell
out of the Roaring Forties.
The big objective is the new big wave
that we've named The Peak,
which is what I believe could be
one of the biggest waves in the world.
There's deep water on the outside,
with outer reefs coming out of deep water
into shallow water,
and that's what makes big waves.
This is gonna be so fun on the low tide
and the smaller swell. - Yeah, in the morning.
This is surf exploration at its finest to me.
Yes, we have this looming, lofty goal of a big wave
with the likes of Jaws,
but there's also reef breaks, sandbars, point breaks,
and everything in between,
and all of it's new.
[birds calling]
- This is the moment to really find and capture
what we've been dreaming of.
♪ ♪
I've actually always explained big-wave surfing to people
as a calculated madness.
I think all big-wave surfers are on that spectrum--
either completely mad or super calculated.
And this adventure part of it,
where these are new waves, it's definitely--
there's more danger involved
'cause you don't know how the wave's gonna behave,
you know, where you're gonna end up after a wipeout.
Are you gonna get pushed into the rocks?
You know, that's all an unknown,
and that unknown makes it more exciting for us.
- Have a look what I'm holding.
Look. Have a look.
- Oh, another one. - Mm-hmm.
There's only one more left for me.
- I think that probably the hardest thing
with big-wave surfing
is that you've always got to be ready
to drop everything for a swell.
- You want to go, too?
- Next time we'll go together, okay?
- Yes.
[squeals]
- My daughter's too young to know what I'm doing,
you know, to know how dangerous it is yet.
And we obviously play it down for her.
You know, she's learning to surf and loves the ocean,
so, you know, we're not gonna say
"Oh, you know, Papa does crazy stuff
in big waves and scary stuff like that."
♪ ♪
- Twig...yes.
Oh, shit.
Oh, God. Oh, God.
Oh--
Oh, shit.
Where is he? Where is he?
Come on, Twig. - Shouldn't he be there?
- Yeah, come over.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
[indistinct chatter]
Shit.
♪ ♪
- He's good. He's on.
- Whoo! - Whoo.
- Yeah. - Not sure.
- I would hate to leave my wife and daughter behind,
but at the same time,
putting myself out of my comfort zone
and looking for places and waves
and people who will excite me and challenge me--
that's kind of what keeps me alive
and keeps me focused
and gives me, you know, the energy of life
that I need.
♪ ♪
Yeah, my wife, she knows what the dangers are,
but I think she also trusts my judgment.
At the same time, I think she also knows
if the wave comes, I'm gonna go.
♪ ♪
This trip's gonna be very, very exciting.
It takes a lot of planning and a lot of preparation,
but it's well worth it, you know,
to look at this final surfing frontier.
♪ ♪
First stop was to Cape Town, where we met up with Ian.
- How are you? How was your drive down?
- Yeah, good. Great.
both: Oh. - Epic.
And from there, we just got everything ready,
picked up all the gear that we needed--
camping, water, fuel,
everything that we needed to survive
in the desert for three weeks.
And while we were doing all of that,
we were monitoring the weather and the conditions.
- Not too deep.
♪ ♪
- Right now it looks like the next three to four days
look pretty light.
And then there's two big swells that are lining up.
What we're seeing is the biggest storm they've had
in the southern Atlantic this entire season
and maybe in the last three years.
As a big-wave surfer,
this is ideally what you're looking for.
- Just to be seeing these type of swells
and the pattern setting up is very encouraging.
- So the ideal scenario for us
is a storm has a little bit of energy
as it starts underneath South America,
and it starts to build momentum and volume
as it gets deeper across the southern Atlantic.
And then it gets about halfway across, stalls out,
and creates a gigantic storm,
and it sends all of that swell directly to us,
and so we get all of that swell energy
and none of the actual weather that's in that storm.
- Bunch of waves in between there.
That's 20 kilometers.
Our swells that come out of that southern Atlantic
can be really stormy and raw.
That's another reason
why I think, you know, the biggest ride of all waves
are definitely somewhere there.
And once we're out there and it's a new wave
and we can combine both our experience
to work together to figure out a wave,
figure out how to catch it,
we'll push each other as hard as we can.
- But that's big, huh? - Big.
That's as big as they get.
[water burbling]
- Right over the back.
[curious music]
♪ ♪
[car bell dinging]
- This is kind of like coming up for air.
- I couldn't find a better person than Ian
to partner with.
He is one of, if not, the very best
big-wave surfer ability-wise in the world.
- With a barrel of his own.
Walsh in a barrel! - What the heck?
- And he's threading through that other section!
Ian Walsh! - Wow!
- Well, there you go.
You have to give that a ten-point ride.
- [speaking indistinctly] From Maui, Ian Walsh.
- Growing up on Maui,
every waking minute, I was consumed by surfing
and being in the ocean.
My parents had one rule for my brothers and I,
which was as soon as the streetlights come on,
it's time to head into the beach.
Sunrise to sunset, it's just them letting us burn
all the energy we possibly could.
For my brothers and I,
growing up in that environment,
you start to dip your toe a little deeper,
and then you start surfing the outer reefs,
and then Jaws found me.
I was 16 or 17.
[dramatic music]
That was a different feeling than anything I've ever had.
And that became almost addictive for me,
to be chasing and targeting waves around the world.
♪ ♪
[scattered cheers]
♪ ♪
How far is the drive north to were camp will be?
- So we're heading about 12 to 14 hours north
and then obviously onto the dirt road,
which is-- - Gonna add some time.
- Probably, yeah.
♪ ♪
[indistinct chatter]
♪ ♪
Whoa, there we go. Yeah.
- There it is, bro. - The Atlantic.
♪ ♪
- I've been surfing 40 years,
and the feeling as you come over the rise
and you see the ocean for the first time
is still the same.
And, you know, the excitement is still the same.
Oh, this is insane, bro.
Look how beautiful this coast is.
Look at all those waves just in this section here--
just beach-break madness.
♪ ♪
So, once we hit the dirt road,
we're gonna head several hours further north,
set up camp in a super wave-rich zone.
Once you leave the tar road,
you immediately feel it.
Oh, fuck.
[air hissing]
We're a little bit jammed up.
See if we can get out of here all right.
- If you can. Yeah, there you go.
[chuckles]
- The reason it is so undiscovered
is because there's just no people up there.
It's in the desert.
There's no real reason
for people to live up in those conditions.
But for a surfer,
it's, you know, the best place in the world.
Look at that ripple
in that corner up against those rocks there.
- Twiggy has a hunger to chase waves--
big, small, perfect, and everything in between.
- Grant Baker, to secure not only a win,
but yet another world title. - Whoo!
- Congratulations. - Grant "Twiggy" Baker.
- Pulling into a big barrel.
What a wave.
- What's going on?
That is real, real Jaws coming to life.
- You know, Mavericks and Jaws still excite me
on those big days and when you're testing yourself
against the world's best,
but it's trips like these
that really gives me that excitement
as if I'm 20 again and it's my first surf.
Oh! - Whoo.
- His desire to push himself in big waves
was something we really connected on.
He's not afraid of hard work to find new waves,
and he's been at the forefront of surf exploration,
especially in this region in Africa, for years.
♪ ♪
Right there against the grain.
- Look it-- - Oh, my God.
- Fucking so many-- - That one's for real, though.
- That one is definitely for real.
- It's swelling, and it's gonna barrel.
If we set up here... - Mm-hmm.
- We might be able to do day missions,
strikes north or south if we want to go further up.
- Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
- I mean, it's just, there's so much, too, to choose from.
If we get good winds,
good tides, and the right swelling,
it's like having the entire coast of California
with nobody around.
♪ ♪
It's still so big
for how small the maps were today.
- [laughs] - It's, like, washed out here.
Tuesday is gonna be too big here to surf.
- I'd reckon so.
This one, close one, The Peak, we can paddle.
I don't think we can paddle that.
- Rip, too? Bunch of current?
- I think it's got a big rip.
It looks like it's got a big rip kind of running out.
♪ ♪
And tomorrow's just a warm-up, anyway.
It's the smallest day we're gonna have of the whole trip.
- It all plugs in like a tent.
- We're really fucking dragging...
- We'll have two types of scenarios.
We'll have a tow-surfing one and a paddle-surfing one.
The tow-surfing one would operate
as Twig and I towing with one Jet Ski.
So we will be the primary safety for each other.
He falls, if I tow him in,
I'm going after him to pick him up.
The secondary safety behind that to shadow
will be Rooster.
The secondary grabber--
- Big-wave surfing is dangerous,
and the crew that we've assembled
are the best watermen South Africa has to offer,
if not the world.
And if you throw Ian Walsh in there,
it's a tight, good crew
that if the shit hits the fan, they're gonna know what to do.
It's a radical slab that's very close to the rocks,
but the surfer's gonna get washed through.
If he's fine,
just let him get washed through and then go grab him.
- To describe a super-violent fall
on a big wave
is hopping into a car, driving as fast as you can,
and just swerving that thing off the road
and starting to roll...
getting thrashed around.
It's a very violent, turbulent system
going on underwater there,
and it's covering a great amount of distance.
Like, you're going five football fields
in the blink of an eye underwater.
[person groans]
The difference between falling
at locations you know very intimately,
like Jaws and Mavericks,
compared to somewhere you've never even surfed,
is a whole different ball game.
You don't know if you're gonna hit rocks on the inside.
You don't know how quick and hard
the safety pickups will be.
So you have to make those assessments there.
Definitely has more of a scare
than it does falling at a place you know
and have fallen at plenty before.
If anyone has any questions at all, like, don't hesitate.
- Thank you. - Yeah.
♪ ♪
[birds crying]
- It's our first morning in the desert,
so we're just kind of trying to set up a routine.
It's pretty damn cold,
but luckily the wetsuits are dry the first day.
Swell's still kind of small,
but there should be some fun waves, eh?
I don't think it's gonna be epic,
but there'll definitely be some fun waves.
♪ ♪
Look at this! Empty fucking beach break.
Not a soul.
Are we the most blessed people on this planet or what?
[laughs]
♪ ♪
There we go. Too easy!
♪ ♪
Yeah! Ha ha!
Let's go, let's go, let's go!
♪ ♪
- Now get out of it. There we go.
Phew.
♪ ♪
- That was great fun.
Great warm-up, you know, just to feel the energy.
Still hopeful for that big swell,
but this is gonna be very exciting
if it all comes together.
♪ ♪
- Today is about 5 feet at 11 seconds.
This should be the smallest day of the trip.
And then the next couple days
will be 9 at 16...
and then...
then some funky weather.
And then we have potentially 17 to 18 feet
at 22 seconds.
That is a...hog of a swell. - [chuckles]
♪ ♪
- Conditions that have to come together
to create a big wave,
even at the existing waves like Mavericks and Jaws
and Nazaré,
they still only break well
maybe once or twice a year,
and it took years and years and years
for people to realize
when they're gonna break and how they're gonna break
and all the risks.
So, when it comes to The Peak,
you know, we're still learning,
and we're gonna be learning for a long time.
See the gap, go.
Whereas Nazaré's like,
fucking coming from all sides.
- Yeah, sideways. - Just...
- Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure.
♪ ♪
It's just-- there's not much to surf.
- This doesn't look great to me.
Not fucking 10 at 16.
- No. It's 3 to 4 feet, for sure.
- Where did that swell go? - I don't know.
We're not big-wave surfing today.
There's so much coastline here
and so much potential and so much unknown
that we have to, like, check a bunch of different waves
to see what waves might handle a swell.
There we go.
- Surfing is very reliant on the wind and the weather
and the swell size.
And unless you're very patient
and unless you really put in the time and effort,
you're not gonna find these new waves.
You're not gonna get to surf them.
♪ ♪
- You can spend the entire day
just driving around looking at the waves...
which is good-- you get a bunch of information.
But I want to surf.
♪ ♪
When you're looking for giant waves,
you look at the structure
and the layout of that location
you're looking at,
so the depth of what might be the channel.
- Gonna go right into the rock.
- Is the channel gonna close out
if the waves are 20 meters, or 60 feet?
Or is the channel deep enough
to handle a swell of that size?
♪ ♪
- You'll see a couple coming in.
- Yeah.
We have a couple zones identified
that we're targeting and aiming for
if it gets really big.
Hopeful that day after tomorrow
we get a little bit more punch in the swell size
and a little bit more organization.
Hoping that gives us
little bit more of an opportunity
to surf and try one of those new waves.
We're problem-solving every day.
♪ ♪
- For the first couple days, it was all about preparation--
preparing the Jet Skis,
preparing our equipment, our boards,
and then discussing the logistics.
Very nice.
♪ ♪
- Two on that, for sure. However it works--
- And that just puts one person on each ski
right in the mix for safety.
There are a lot of variables,
'cause we've never surfed the wave before,
that we're only gonna realize once we get out there.
You know, the most stressful of that is
how to get the Jet Skis off the beach,
through the beach break, and out the back.
- Well, it's gonna be hard to get out, for sure.
- But Gumby was gonna drive him out.
- Most big waves,
they're conveniently located near harbors,
so we can get out.
This location, we're gonna have to launch
right through giant shore break,
so it definitely creates a lot more opportunity
to lose a Jet Ski before you even get out.
Till we know that swell is for real...
- Yeah.
We've got to get the safety team working together.
We got to make sure the Jet Skis
are operational and ready.
Crew--everyone involved
has to be seamlessly working together.
- Done.
♪ ♪
Getting loose, going through the motions,
and putting the skis in the water,
making sure they run good.
You don't really want to wait until the morning
of the best day of your trip
to, like, start the Jet Skis and--
Better to just run everything as if it's the day...
before the day actually comes.
♪ ♪
- There's a big one coming. It's gonna wash in.
- After this next wave, might be his gap.
Here comes a set from the south.
Yeah, there he goes. - Go, go, go, go, go.
♪ ♪
- There they go on the second wave.
[engine revving]
- Got it.
♪ ♪
Fuck, that's not good.
- That's why you got to work all that shit out before.
- Shit, man.
That's gonna be tough to get back on that ski now.
- That's fucking 2 feet out there.
Wait till it's 25 foot and you roll one of them.
- Oh, shit.
♪ ♪
- Safety has become something
that's really, really important to me.
For me, the main pillars of water safety
for big-wave surfing
is having someone that's really calculated
on the Jet Ski,
has a very good understanding of what it feels like
in that violent, turbulent, whitewash, impact-zone area
if they have to rescue you,
and also a very good understanding
of what it feels like off that Jet Ski.
You're never gonna be able
to take out all the risks, ever.
And I've found, over the years,
how important it is to have that safety plan in place
to allow you to push yourself
and minimize the risks as much as you can.
Contingency plan--
if that ski breaks, how does the second ski get out?
How does that one get in?
All that stuff should be talked about.
You can't just wing it.
- No, but we're listening to you.
- Yeah. - We're listening to you.
- It's really important for everyone to understand
how that's gonna work.
Where do they go if someone's unconscious?
Communication is the key
to helping avoid those situations
when they go horribly sideways.
♪ ♪
- Greg and Garrett.
[scattered cheers]
- Ah. - They're down. They're down.
- Ian and I were there at Cortes
when Greg Long drowned
and the guys brought him back to life.
- [coughing] [indistinct chatter]
- That's really when I started understanding
the need for safety
and why you need to be so pedantic
about this type of stuff.
[helicopter blades whirring]
♪ ♪
- There's gonna be something on that big day
that we're gonna have to deal with.
- Yeah, look, it was never gonna be easy, huh?
- No.
- But with some good planning, we can make it easy.
♪ ♪
Lucky enough to be able to work with athletes
like Walshy and Twig.
And the knowledge that they bring to the table--
even in this last week,
what I've learned from Walshy is overwhelming, you know?
Him and his brothers
basically wrote the handbook on safety
in big-wave situations.
You know, they're consummate professionals.
- The remoteness of where we are
amplifies everything.
We're essentially hundreds of miles
from any resemblance of a hospital.
With Jaws and Mavericks,
you can have an ambulance at the harbor
waiting for you when you get in
if something really bad happens.
With where we are,
there's not a single chance of that happening.
And that's something we have to think about
and be ready to deal with.
And that's all good.
[bird crying]
- Ah, too wide, that.
There we go. - Big gap.
- That's a barrel if it's offshore.
- Big carve right there.
- Come on, honey bunch.
Whoo-hoo.
♪ ♪
- Yeah, we just rocked up
at this beautiful, little right-hand reef break.
Best-case scenario is that the new swell
starts to fill in and we start seeing some 6-, 8-foot waves.
♪ ♪
- Whoo-hoo-hoo.
♪ ♪
- Ah.
♪ ♪
- Yeah, but that's how it goes, eh?
Wild fucking coast.
♪ ♪
If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.
Nice one.
He's on it.
♪ ♪
Stay with it. Stay with it!
There we go.
♪ ♪
The fact that we can come out here and surf ourselves
and not see another soul around
is why I live in this incredible continent.
And for me,
the first time I surf a new wave,
it's one of the most exciting things,
you know, that can happen.
- Fuck, that thing's pretty sick.
- It was the perfect size.
♪ ♪
What they do is they dig it up,
and they push all the sand out to sea,
and they make a sea wall, like, halfway out
and then just dig everything up underneath.
♪ ♪
Unfortunately, the west coast is a mining area.
It's rich with minerals. It's rich with diamonds.
And it's been heavily mined in the past
but not to the extent that we're seeing
this new form of mining that's come along.
Digging up the beach, pushing the sea wall back,
and then completely excavating the entire beach...
and then just leaving.
♪ ♪
It's an Australian mining company,
and this form of mining was banned in Australia
in the 1970s.
They've been given 10 beaches.
It's like 50 kilometers of beach,
and they're gonna dig up
every single one of those beaches.
I mean, you know, we've started a coalition.
It's called Protect the West Coast,
you know, and we're trying to fight it,
but it's hard, you know?
We just don't have that kind of environmental klatch here.
[siren wails]
♪ ♪
- It is pretty sad, though, isn't it?
- Why is it illegal to dig up beaches in Australia
and not elsewhere in the world?
- Yeah. - And that's kind of the angle
that we're trying to fight it on.
- It makes no sense to me.
- They're coming to this beach to dig this whole thing up...
And ban us from coming here in the next, like, two years.
- Just kind of puts little ideas in your head of,
if it's small or wind's this way,
maybe we can go there.
It's good to see for the sand, too,
to see where some of the good banks might be,
kind of to paint a picture
of where we might want to go in the morning
with what the swell did today.
- Yeah, I mean, we're always hopeful.
We wouldn't be surfers
if we weren't hopeful for tomorrow.
- And looks like we have a few days of weird weather.
But on the other side of that,
we might have pretty good surf.
[soft music playing]
♪ ♪
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
We have a little...
chunky, windy storm surf.
Still looks kind of fun.
It's a couple waves to be had, but exciting.
♪ ♪
- Oh, there's a drainer. There's a drainer.
I'm just gonna go out, bro.
- Yeah, let's do it.
♪ ♪
- Really good waves at this reef
just to the right of the camp.
That swell direction, the wind direction's
just perfect for it,
so we're gonna go check it out and just have a surf,
but the storm is just-- it's brewing.
So we've got kind of a small window here,
maybe a two-hour window
where we can get a couple waves
and come in and get ready for the storm.
♪ ♪
Whoo. All right, Ian.
♪ ♪
- Oh, watch it, watch it.
[engine revving]
Oh, here we go. What a whip.
- He's up and away.
♪ ♪
- Fuck! - Uh-oh.
Can you guys see Twig?
- I got eyes on Twiggy. He's being picked up.
- Yeah, yeah, this one, this one.
- Go, go, go, go, go!
♪ ♪
- Yee-haw!
♪ ♪
- Pretty awesome, eh?
New wave, and it's got a lot of potential.
Kind of got an idea on the tide
and the swell size, too.
There's an optimum tide and swell size out there.
So, very promising for a big day.
Clean, offshore winds-- could be amazing out there.
That's how you find new waves.
- Still a lot of swell in the water.
We have a shift in wind.
Looks like it's gonna swing this way.
And we'll get some pretty ugly southwest wind
and maybe some rain tomorrow,
which is...
definitely gonna make for an interesting camp.
[thunder rumbling]
♪ ♪
We met some weather last night.
We had a stiff 40-mile-an-hour wind.
And on the other side of that 40-mile-an-hour wind,
we had some pelting rain for about ten hours.
My tent was a casualty.
It was a classic night of weather.
♪ ♪
- Looks a bit ugly out there at the moment, yeah?
- Looks like a front's blowing in right behind me.
♪ ♪
Come on, fours. [sighs]
♪ ♪
It can be testing at times
in these kind of conditions-- the rain and the wind--
but that's what it takes to find these new waves.
And for me, I love all of it, you know?
I love to be out here.
I mean, it's one of the last beautiful natural places
on the planet, really, you know?
And it really makes you appreciate
how little you actually need in life.
♪ ♪
- Get 'em on. It's already wet.
Ooh, that's nice. Super nice.
- Tomorrow's probably gonna be our biggest day out here.
- Yeah. - But I think we should aim
for The Peak and see what we can do out there.
It'll get bigger through the day.
It'll be biggest just before dark.
- Yeah.
- The update looks very positive for waves.
We're gonna have a small window
tomorrow afternoon,
on the low tide as the swell's peaking,
to get out there,
so, you know, hopefully there's a couple waves.
Just moving with the punches.
I mean, if we wake up
and it's much bigger, then we know.
- Yeah.
♪ ♪
- Doing a little surf check,
and ocean looks a lot more organized
than it has the last few days,
after that little storm front blew through.
Today the waves are supposed to get big through the day.
- Tide's a little high,
swell's a touch small,
but it's still looking really good.
Our hope for the afternoon
is some big waves at The Peak, you know?
That's been our goal the whole way through.
And so hopefully we see that.
I do believe that The Peak
could be one of the biggest waves in the world.
The bathymetry of the ocean floor
goes from super deep to shallow,
and that's, from my experience,
what makes big waves.
The question now is, how much swell
and what conditions does it need to be optimal?
Location, booties, wetsuit, let's go.
- Yeah, I'm ready.
♪ ♪
The big swell we were following
has downgraded a little bit,
so it's teeter-tottering on the line
of being big enough
or not big enough for The Peak.
- Come on, baby.
Yes!
Now we wait for the swell.
♪ ♪
Fuck, this wind...
Mustn't go south on us now.
God damn it.
- Ready? - Let's go.
- Okay.
Let's give him a push to get him to the water's edge.
Keep going. Keep going.
Right to the whitewash line.
♪ ♪
You do all this research,
and you try to figure out,
could there be a big wave there?
How are we gonna get out? How do we get in?
What do we do if we get caught inside?
And then to actually see it come to life
and see the wave break,
we're getting a glimpse of what this coastline can do.
♪ ♪
Come on, set, give us something here.
- Oh, what's this back one?
This one could be the roll-in behind.
- I mean, not the best, but it's getting there.
♪ ♪
- Look at this one. Look at this one.
♪ ♪
- Here comes a big set.
♪ ♪
- Oh. So close. - Yeah.
- If this was bigger, it would be on.
- Like, you're sitting out there
and seeing these big wedges come slinging at you,
and you can start to visualize,
what would this wave do five times the size of this?
♪ ♪
- Whoa! [chuckles]
I mean, we had so much fun,
but it's what it holds in the future
that's really exciting.
♪ ♪
My feelings are this is a world, world-class big wave,
but it needs giant, giant swell to break.
♪ ♪
Oh, shit.
Not quite.
- It was definitely a peak.
The name's fitting.
That will hold a giant swell.
Tons of potential.
Definitely psyched on the potential.
And you could see if that thing had
the megalodon swell,
it'd be something very, very spicy.
- Even though the swell's not big enough for The Peak,
it's still plenty big enough for the beach breaks,
which needs a little bit less swell.
So, as the swell dies tonight
and we get some offshore winds early in the morning,
there'll only be a small window tomorrow morning,
but we've just got to be up early and get on it.
- We'll be ready to move at 6:30.
And if the swell has really started to fill in,
then maybe get a session close to camp here
at this beach break.
It's gonna be really difficult
to get the Jet Skis with the whole crew out
through potentially 25-foot beach break
that we have no idea how far out it's gonna go.
- So, obviously, we got to just be on it.
We don't know what's going on there,
so for you guys, just really,
you know, wits about you and--
- And if, for whatever reason, we lose a ski,
then Twig and I would just tow this one, just so that's--
that other ski, if it makes it out,
come in, pick up the other surfer.
And if we paddle,
then this just becomes a safety with one guy.
♪ ♪
- I'm going now, bro.
I'm not waiting around.
We got to get going. - All right.
♪ ♪
- Come on, guys, the sun's coming up.
♪ ♪
Here they come.
There's always fear there, obviously.
And what you get out of big-wave surfing
is you learn to be able to control that fear
and then use that fear to guide you
and to help you make...
good decisions.
- [grunts] - Right. Good.
- Two, three. - [grunts]
♪ ♪
- There you go, there you go.
Uh-oh.
That thing not fucking starting or what?
Oh, for fuck sakes.
What the fuck?
♪ ♪
Get that rope. Get that rope!
- [shouts indistinctly]
- Was it nothing, or was it going...
[imitates sputtering] Like that?
[loud pop]
What was that? - It did not do that.
- There's something not right to me.
- Watch the drainer. - Watch that rope there.
♪ ♪
- Is it going now? - No, exhaust manifold's--
We just need to tighten that hose clamp, check.
- Why don't we get Twig's ski down--
Twiggy's ski down and you guys go?
- Yeah.
[engine turns over, stops]
- Okay, you got it?
♪ ♪
[engine revving]
♪ ♪
- After this next wave.
♪ ♪
- All right, here we go.
♪ ♪
- Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!
♪ ♪
- Yeah, this one. This one!
♪ ♪
Go, go, go, go, go!
Go, Ian.
♪ ♪
Whoo-hoo-hoo!
♪ ♪
Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo! Yeah!
- He's up on a wave.
♪ ♪
- Oh. - Uh-oh.
- The one after that one.
♪ ♪
- [coughing] - I got eyes on.
He's all right. Just an impact throw.
Waiting for a pickup.
♪ ♪
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[engine revs]
- That was a crazy pickup.
♪ ♪
- Whoo! - Yeah!
[laughs] Whoo!
- Good driving from both of you.
Though a couple of pickups Ian did were insane.
- Bit of a rough start to the day--
one Jet Ski down.
The entire exhaust pipe opened up,
and you could stick your finger in it.
Radical inside there.
- Big--when we first got out there, it was really big.
both: Rowdy.
- Rowdy. Such good fun.
- Just as exciting getting back out
after the waves. [chuckles]
♪ ♪
- There's no doubt--I mean, this is a world-class zone.
You know, even though we didn't score The Peak,
you know, the waves that we've found,
the waves that we've surfed,
put this little stretch of coast on the map.
And we're gonna be back for sure.
And I'm sure there's gonna be a lot of other surfers
wondering where this place is and wanting to get it.
[indistinct chatter]
[laughter]
- We came out here
with a goal to find undiscovered surf
and potentially new big-wave locations.
And during this trip, we were able to find way more.
There are waves everywhere we look.
The potential for really good surf
is just littered
throughout this entire coastline.
♪ ♪
- A place like this is gonna reward you
for your efforts.
So all these waves exist
because Africa is still raw, undiscovered, wild.
It's still got that feeling.
I mean, from Cape Town to northern Namibia
to northern Angola, it just keeps going.
Kind of mind-boggling to think of the potential
of how many waves there are still to be discovered.
It's a lot of a time, it's a lot of commitment,
but when you get those special moments,
it's just so, so rewarding.
♪ ♪
[bright tone]