Shooting the Tube

Riding a board through the surf is a little like going on hashish. The addicts--and there are 18,000 of them in the U.S.--have their own fashions in everything from haircuts (long, but not too long) to swimsuits (cotton, a size too small). They speak a lingo of words like "hook" (the lip of a breaking wave) and "tube" (the cavern under the hook) and "wipe out" (a spill into the boiling froth). They listen to apostles, who preach: "When the surf is good, you've got to go and get it. Work is secondary. Once you're about 30, then it's time to take a solid job." And they all yearn to visit Makaha, a lonely beach 40 miles west of Honolulu.

Makaha is where the waves build up to 20 and 30 ft., and race diagonally into shore at 35 m.p.h. It is the supreme test--"the place," says one surfer, "where reputations are made."

Warming Up on Snow. The man who made his reputation in Makaha's big surf last week was Joseph ("Joey") Cabell, 25, a restaurant owner from Newport Beach, Calif., who summers in Hawaii. While 1,000 spectators watched from the beach, Cabell outclassed 349 contestants from as far away as Australia and Peru to win the International Surfing Championships. A trim six-footer (most top surfers are short) who has been at it since he was seven, Cabell keeps in shape during the winter by skiing on snow. The two, he says, are a lot alike: "You go as deep into the hook as possible, swinging to the bottom of the wave, then to the top, then back down again--and shoot through for a long, long ride. The idea is to rock the board back and forth with your feet, just like you do with a pair of skis--then break out of the tube at the last minute, just before you get wiped out."

Every other finalist at last week's championships used a "gun"--a long, heavy (up to 40 Ibs.) board designed for stability in big waves like Makaha's. Cabell preferred a shorter, lighter (25 Ibs.) foam-and-fiber-glass "natural," designed for easy maneuverability and ordinarily used in smaller waves. Each surfer got seven tries. Cabell rode four of his waves almost half a mile clear in to the beach, catching each looming 25-footer off Makaha's northwestern tip, standing up for 300 yds., dropping prone as it dissolved to foam crossing a reef, then rising again as the wave formed again for the final 400-yd. sweep to shore.

Low & Dry. Like most first-class surfers, Cabell has only scorn for the "hot doggers" who risk their necks by crisscrossing waves haphazardly. It takes art to stand, knees slightly bent, arms spread, guiding the board along the tube with almost imperceptible foot movements. And only a few ever experience the ultimate thrill. "Once in a while," says Joey, "you get locked so deep in the tube that nobody on the beach can see you, and if a guy were just behind you, he'd get totally wiped out. You are so far back inside the wave that it breaks right over your head and around your body. And when you come out in the end, why, you aren't even wet."

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