Excerpt from "Eighteen Surfers Advance to Semis," Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Nov 25, 1974

The Smirnoff Pro-Am Surfing Championships finally got underway yesterday at Sunset Beach in eight to 10-foot surf before an estimated crowd of 1,500.

Only preliminary heats were run, with the semifinals and finals scheduled for today, surf permitting.

Laura Blears Ching, one of six women competing, finished fifth in the first heat, which was won by Clyde Aikau, to take the $1,000 prize offered for the best finish by a woman.

[NOTE: six women were invited to the 1974 Smirnoff, one per prelim heat: Blears, Rell Sunn, Jeannie Chesser, Blanche Benson, Nancy Emerson, Margo Oberg.]

Excerpt from "Dueling for Dollars," by Drew Kampion; Surfing magazine, April 1975

Waimea Bay: an azure pearl, two-thirds surrounded by land, but opening out onto the near-infinite Pacific. Kam Highway comes in from Haleiwa, curls around the bay, and continues on up towards Sunset Beach. On Thanksgiving morning the road is virtually cemented to a standstill. Fleets of rental cars and beat-up surf cruisers and the inevitable buses and jeeps and armored cars with anti-tank guns and the lunch wagons and taco wagons and shoulder-shooting motorcycles, family cars, vans: a huge crawling metalloid serpent, and the sound of it echoing up the Waimea Canyon to the falls where all is swallowed in the Zen garden rainfall sound of forest and running water.

Out over the Bay was a mist that even the offshore wind could not dissipate. There was thunder in the vault of the Bay. Early that morning, as the dawn began to reveal it all, the evidence was clear: the great Gods of the Sea indeed were aligned with the Smirnoff Vodka Manufacturers, for here it was the day of the Smirnoff World Pro-Am semifinals and finals, and lo! the surf was the greatest and most massive in the history of competition.

Peter Cole, Mike Miller, Sam Hawk and others were out early, facing these most incredible and vicious monsters. Thirty-five and forty-foot sets periodically closed out the Bay, moving in like huge black bands that raised up and became all transparent and green, flamed mist at the top, and then plunged over with the force of 14,869 Atlas missiles, rocking the strand of molten vehicles inching around this vortex of unleashed rage.

On the Beach, Fred Hemmings, ex-World Champeen (Puerto Rico, 1968) hastily assembled the elements of the contest: tables, chairs, judges and competitors, the sound system, and lifeguards. Hemmings had it in the palm of his organizational hand: Here was Waimea Bay, the biggest name in surfing with the possible exception of Annette Funicello, booming in like gangbusters on a perfect, sunny, crowded day, not even too far into the scheduled waiting period for the event. Fred is understandably stoked about the situation.

But just as it was coming together, out of the water comes Peter Cole, a Waimea Pioneer and frequent facer of this much chronicled cinematic death plunge. It was 10:30 AM. Most of the survivors of the prelims at Sunset Beach a few days earlier were gathered around the announcing and judging tables perched on the manicured lawn at the edge of the steep sand bowl in the deepest nadir of the Bay. Nervousness was not being concealed on the part of the competitors; quick movements, furtive eyes, whinnies of unnecessary laughter belied the great gulp in their common throat.

"Hey! Let's think about this more," said thick, strong Barry Kanaiaupuni, one of the more able watermen among the waiting competitors.

Up came Cole, dripping wet and bespectacled, appetite whetted with the adventure of his life. Cole looked at BK, then walked up to Hemmings.

"Freddie," said Cole, "You're not planning to run this, are you?"

Hemmings turned around quickly, a brief nervous quiver passing through his flesh.

"Sure," he said. "The waves are beautiful!"

"Hey," said Cole, "the waves are ridiculous!"

"Come on, Peter," said Fred. "We've surfed waves like this before."

Cole didn't flinch. "If everybody had the experience and the equipment and the right attitude, it'd be different. I've been surfing a lot of years, and I've never seen it this big. Have you seen it this big, Fred?"

"I've seen it bigger," said Fred. "But never with guys out there."

Just then, at 10:40, a monster set darkened the sea outside the mouth of the Bay. The great waves moved rapidly towards land, and began to feel the reef. It towered up and up, smoldering and hissing and steaming with frightening immanence. A huge wall, sagging ever-so-slightly at the deep center of the Bay, lunged up with the force of 603,214 Titan rockets on blast-off.

"Send those guys out there!" shouted Mike Miller, pointing out to the gargantuan monstrosity that might well wash over the 2,000 frozen spectators now Oooooowing as the Wave (if such a monster might still simply be called a Wave) curled over, and with a deep-throated WHUUUMMMMPPPP!

"That was a legitimate close-out," said Cole, a master of understatement. "It was top-to-bottom in the middle of the Bay where usually on a close-out it just sort of fringes together from both sides.

The contest was delayed while Fred and the contestants expectantly looked on. But the huge wave was a Neptunian fluke, an oddity conjured up for the moment by the forces of nature who then went on to other games. The surf stabilized at twenty-five to thirty feet on the sets, and after an interval of forty-five minutes, the first heat entered the Waimea grinder.

The three semifinal heats were run off in the biggest surf in competition history. Clyde Aikau, who had been the high-point rider in the prelim heats in fast-track and groovy ten- to twelve-foot Sunset a few days earlier, ripped on these gigantums, again taking first. Mark Richards, who some say was the hottest guy in the water at Sunset, and who was out at Waimea for the first time this day (as were four others: Brad McCaul, Peter Townend, and, surprisingly, Barry Kanaiaupuni and Gerry Lopez) did extremely well, and, in fact, this seemed like the low-point for the Smirnoff judging, which otherwise was admirable. Richards got fourth but deserved better.

Sam Hawk, who'd been out earlier was all fluid drive and good moves, as well as Mr. Hair, won the second semifinal.

Reno Abellira mastered the third semi with close competition from Jeff Hakman. Gerry Lopez, another first-timer at the Bay, also did incredibly well to turn a third. He also performed one of the best Masters-of-Revenge wipeouts of the contest and was put through the Tough Fabric Cycle. Broke his board.

Later, Terry Fitzgerald, recovering on the beach after a water-logged fourth-place finish in his heat said, "It was a fear trip."

Ian Cairns, who surfed well and swam beautifully, said, "I wasn't scared."

After another short intermission, the third and last semi paddled out.

Barry, who had ripped at Sunset earlier (a rarity for him in competition), failed to do much of anything. Owl Chapman, who had carved Sunset like a mad professor, kept getting knocked off his feet at the Bay. And when you were knocked off your feet on Thanksgiving, that wasn't the end of it, by any means. WHUUMMPPPP!!!!

Peter Townend, who afterward said, "Anyone who says he wasn't scared out there is a liar," paddled out for his first time at the Bay and won the heat. "I forgot all about the contest. All I could think about was the waves. I was petrified—just looking at it. Then there was this huge set and I was scratching up the face of this giant wave beside Ricky Grigg, and Ricky said, 'Go!' I looked at him and said, 'You're crazy!' and he said, 

, so I turned around and took off. I did exactly what Ricky had told, and when I paddled back out to him, buzzing, I said, 'Hey, I could do with another of those!'"

James Jones charged into second, behind Townend, with some huge waves and late take-offs and steady control. Florida's Jeff Crawford backsided into third, an incredible feat, but not enough to make the finals.

The surf for the finals was tremendous, gnarly and awesome, yet relatively smooth-faced. The Bay was a pretty picture: beneath the afternoon sun the waves were emerald-green under frothy, steaming white lips. For surf this large it was nearly perfect and Hemmings was stoked because Smirnoff would be stoked and back again next year. The turkey was in the oven!

James Jones opened with a death-defying drop, cranked his turn and prayed as sixteen hundred billion tons of water reached out to drown him. Miraculously, he escaped. Then Sam Hawk took the plunge on a twenty-foot-plus wave and made it. Another huge set came smoking in, and the competitors scratched seaward, inching over the top just before it collapsed like a blasted hotel.

 own Dan Merkel, a rubber duck navigator in the throes of unleashed Niagara. With tattered fins and a frayed air mattress, Merkel put himself right into the jaws of death, shot close-ups of its larynx, and withdrew, barely, to safety. Many say he was insane in such an attempt. We, however, agree.

Also out there was the notoriously fishlike Bud Browne, for once avoiding the impact zone, treading water and looking up fourteen stories to where Peter Townend was free-falling into fourth place.

Clyde Aikau got off to a good start, ripping waves from a takeoff area way over on the point.

Hakman the Tactman started slow but then picked up wave after wave, taking some of the cleanest ones and dropping in as late as possible, driving way, way out onto the flats, then jamming with the patented Hakman pivot in the shadow of a veritable ruptured Hoover dam up onto the shoulder. He even found space on a couple of waves for some climbing and dropping.

But this was the day of the Hunna Butta kid, Mister Reno Abellira, proving once and for all (as many of the slight-of-stature competitors also showed) that the once-immutable law that Only Big Guys Can Ride Big Waves was pau, over. Little Reno (though he has massed a good twenty or thirty pounds since Puerto Rico '68, where he was the sub-hundred-pound kid surfing with and beating the grownups) rode the biggest wave of the contest: a thirty-footer that looked a bit like the Waimea twenty-footer he rode in last year's Duke, when he was edged out of first place by Clyde. This time, however, as the most graceful, composed, and sophisticated surfer on the North Shore, Reno left no doubt in the judges' minds that he was the King of Waimea Bay. He earned the $5,000.

Jeff was only half a point back, but the difference was $3,000, as he took home two grand. Clyde got $1,000, Townend $500, Sammy $350, and James, who received a stunning pounding and a near-drowning on one of his last waves, received just what it would take to replace his busted board: $200.

It must also be noted that, in reality, two events transpired on this monumental and historic day at Waimea. The contest itself, of course. But also the surfing of five notable and henceforth venerable, lifeguards should be proclaimed. For Eddie Aikau, Mike Miller, Peter Cole, Kimo Hollinger and Ricky Grigg rode some of the biggest and best waves of the day, and had they been seeded into the finals with the hot kids, let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, it would've been a run for the money!

1974 Smirnoff Pro-Am

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