Tuesday, March 31, 1998
Surfer Taylor Knox rides a wave at Todos Santos Island
in Baja California on Feb. 16. Insiders say Knox is likely to
win the $50,000 prize in the inaugural K2 Big Wave Challenge
when judges make the announcement tonight. The winner
in the K2 Challenge is determined by judges
examining photographs.
Isle surfers won’t
win top prizeThe $50,000 K2 challenge
By Greg Ambrose
award will go to one of two
big wave riders from California
Special to the Star-BulletinWhile it would be nice to have both fame and money, Hawaii's big-wave hunters will have to settle for fame. Two Californians, Peter Mel of Santa Cruz, and Taylor Knox of Carlsbad, were the top contenders for the $50,000 prize in the inaugural K2 Big Wave Challenge, with Knox likely to get the nod tonight from the panel of judges.
Island surfers will have to console themselves with the fact that they rode the most mammoth waves the Pacific Ocean served up this winter, perhaps the biggest waves ever ridden.
On Jan. 28, North Shore surfer Ken Bradshaw was towed into a wave outside Log Cabins near Shark's Cove that stunned Mel, who was watching from shore. On the same day, over on Maui, Laird Hamilton, Buzzy Kerbox and friends were towed into behemoths that were off the size charts.
Unfortunately, the K2 Challenge would only consider waves ridden by surfers who paddled into them under their own power. For most of the winter, Mel stroked into monsters at a surf spot called Mavericks, along a lonely stretch of coastline south of San Francisco.
But when the judges deliver the $50,000 prize tonight at the Newport Beach Hard Rock Cafe, insiders swear that they will hand it to Knox for a wave he rode off Todos Santos Island in Baja California.
Mel had a front-row seat for Knox's wave, as the two were competing against Hawaii surfers Brock Little and Shawn Briley during another big-wave contest, this one sponsored by action footwear maker Reef Brazil in February.
Witnesses described Knox's wave, photographed by Les Walker, as just under 50 feet. The biggest of Mel's many monster waves at Mavericks in January, captured by Frank Quirarte, took him on a speed run the length of the reef and also was estimated at just under 50 feet.
Surfers always have squabbled about the height of waves, employing esoteric formulas to measure what is essentially a fluid, moving, unquantifiable entity.
Perspective is all important, especially when the winner in the K2 Challenge was determined by judges examining photographs of separate waves on different days at distant surf spots, taken by dissimilar cameras from divergent angles.
Bill Sharp, who conceived the K2 Challenge last summer when meteorologists alerted him to the specter of impending giant waves from El Nino, is pleased with how his brainchild turned out.
"We took so much criticism in beginning, especially from the Hawaiian camp. But we didn't lure people to their deaths, we lured surfers to invest time and money in safety equipment," said Sharp, a representative of contest co-sponsor Katin surfwear.
"We feel that the contest accomplished all we set out to accomplish," he said, adding that if Katin decided to help hold the event again next winter, he would refine it to find ways to accommodate concerns of Hawaii's water safety professionals.
