Quick, Someone call a Dr.
He has a PhD. in Ocean Dynamics, has just written another book and has been an avid supporter since day one. Dr. Tony Butt dropped in a couple of weeks ago, catching up on the winter’s swells, admiring Carlos’ newly shaped guns and sharing some recent stories from the battlefield…
“Last winter I became a proud member of the Two-Wave hold-down club. It was an unusually punchy 12-15 foot WNW swell at Menakoz, with about six waves in the set. I remember letting the first one go through (standard practice here), paddling for the second one, getting to my feet and not putting enough weight on my front foot. Next thing the wind was under my board and I was airborne. The strangest thing was I actually surfaced after the wipe-out, but it was the next wave that really got me. Fighting off the temptation to come out of my zen arms-across-the-chest position before the turbulence had stopped was the hardest thing - this time it seemed to keep hold of me forever. Once it finally let me go, I started swimming upwards, six strokes and I still hadn’t reached the surface. Then I suddenly started to hear the ‘whoosh’ of the next wave, which pushed me down once more. I remember feeling sort of betrayed - all that effort and back to square one again. When I did finally come up, I had been dragged into the infamous ‘Los Calvos’ (a zone of nasty vertical rocks, sticking up like giant knives). Now I know that two-wave hold-downs are not just something you read about in the mags, and even now, over a year later, I still worry about hearing the ‘whooshing’ sound of that second wave.”
