HSA: So how old are you?

PC: I’m 68.

HSA: When did you realize that you were hooked for life on surfing?

PC: Well, I started when I was fourteen, but just on paddleboards straight off of Santa Monica. It’s not really surfing, not really standing up on it. And then I didn’t get into surfing until the following summer when I was fifteen in ‘45 in Malibu.

HSA: What made you move to Hawaii?

PC: I moved to Hawaii with a contract to work at Punahou (high school) in ‘58.

HSA: The move, was it surf-oriented?

PC: Well, I got a good job opportunity at Punahou to teach there with a contract before I decided to come and the fact that Hawaii had the very best surf in the world was very much a factor in choosing Punahou. If Punahou was somewhere else, I would’ve stayed where I was because I had a good job.

HSA: You were a math teacher?

PC: Yeah.

HSA: Did you change jobs from a teacher to civil service because of surfing?

PC: The primary motivation for quitting teaching and going to civil service was that when I was teaching at Punahou I was also coaching, assisting with swimming and track. And I just was there all the time and didn’t really get away in the afternoons. The only way I could surf was if I get another teacher to swap an afternoon with me in the morning that taught the same subject and to tell my coach, the guy I work with, to take over my job as a coach.

I only could do that occasionally, whereas in the civil service, especially with flexi-time, I always had the afternoon off. Plus I was getting bored as a teacher--I found myself falling asleep.

HSA: Well, you can’t just bail to go surfing if there’s a test or whatnot...

PC: You have to be there, and it’s such a humbug to get a substitute to take your class.

HSA: So, teaching wasn’t fun? Didn’t you get satisfaction from it?

PC: Oh, teaching was great. It was a good job, but it didn’t lend itself to surfing as much as this job.

HSA: What is your most memorable surfing experience? Maybe a particular ride, session wipeout or emotion?

PC: Probably October ‘69, I got a real good wave at Waimea. And then, I think it was October ‘78, we had big low near the Aleutians that was a real solid big low that was in a perfect position to generate a north-northwest at Sunset that was far and above the best Sunset that anybody that shared that day with any day previously or since. It was just one of those unique days where it was fifteen, possibly bigger, and lined up all the way from Backyards all the way across. Kimo Hollinger paddled over to the point, and then Eddie (Aikau) and I followed him. The three of us were outside of Backyards and we could see the Kuilima Hotel (now the Turtle Bay Hilton) from where we were sitting, we were so far out...

HSA: Ho’ man!

PC: ...And I picked up two waves all the way from Backyards all the way through the regular lineup. Those were probably the best two rides I’ve ever had in my life.

HSA: It hasn’t ever happened since, huh?

PC: I’ve never had it even close to that. I don’t think anybody else has had it close to that either. I lucked out, I was real lucky in that I got two unbelievable waves all the way through.

HSA: Did Kimo and Eddie connect too?

PC: I’m not sure whether they had the luck I had. I had two really choice waves.

HSA: What about that session in ‘69? That must’ve been an intense experience?

PC: Yeah, well that was one of those days where it was small in the morning and just kept climbing. At about 2-3 o-clock we paddled out, and it was maybe fifteen, and it got bigger and bigger. But it was glassy, with a long interval, and it was light offshore winds and it had just the perfect direction, again a little bit north and northwest. Waimea is easiest to ride when its got a little bit of north because it doesn’t ledge and come around.

It was just building and building, and we were surfing and surfing, and Jose (Angel) got an unbelievable wave. And it was one of those few times when I penetrated towards the point further than I normally would sit and I got off on a wave that was just... it just was so much better and bigger than anything that I’d ever ridden. I’ve had as big waves, but I didn’t make ‘em--this wave I made. So I was hooting and hollering afterwards.

HSA: Has Waimea changed? Has the contour of the bottom changed so that it doesn’t break the same now?

PC: I think the sand is shifting in the middle. See what happened was, in ‘56 or ‘57, they pulled the sand out of Waimea Bay to put in the Ala Moana Shopping Center. So that Dillingham company, they grabbed the sand and moved that over into building Ala Moana. In doing that, they made it a lot deeper in the middle. If you look at the pictures before ‘55/’56 the diving rock is on sand. And the sand is going straight across--there’s no definition of an inlet. And the waves, when they broke, they broke straight across. So it was almost like a shorebreak situation.

What’s happening now is over time, the sand is shifting back to where it was before. So, we’re getting a more natural thing. Because when humans interfere they change things. So I think we’re getting back to where it’s more ledgy and more closed out. We used to be able to get out with no problem, and now, anytime it’s over eighteen feet, you gotta really time it to get out.

HSA: Were you guys the ones who started sandbagging wave heights, creating the current "Hawaiian Scale"?

PC: You know the guy that started this, underestimating waves, probably was this guy, Bob Simmons.

HSA: The guy who drowned?

PC: Yeah, yeah. And I grew up with him, and he was sort of my guru. Myself, Buzzy (Trent) and a whole bunch of us followed him around. And he was always for the bigger waves, more than anything else. And you’d get real excited about some wave you got, and he’d always say it was only five feet.

HSA: Hahaha!!!

PC: But actually, I don’t think we’re underestimating waves. I think we’re overestimating them. Nowadays they call it face. A face is twenty bodies overhead, I mean they’re just absurd statements. Then they talk about measuring the back which you don’t ride. But if you think about it, if the wave is like that (raises hand a couple of feet over the desk) and body is here (animates a man’s height with thumb and index finger) and you count the bodies up, that’s probably the only way you can estimate the wave. I don’t know what they’re doing when they’re measuring the face; I don’t know what they’re talking about because if you take the body, even this thing that they call fifty foot, it you took the body and figured he’s crouched down and you count him up, you can’t get much more than thirty-five-forty feet out of it. I don’t know what they’re measuring on that guy, Taylor Knox. I don’t know what they’re measuring, but they’re smoking something.

But I think it (Haw’n scale) was probably a sort of a thing that we carried over from Simmons. Simmons did two things in his surfing characteristics that I sort of followed and liked. And that was he always waited for the better waves. He wasn’t a quantity freak. He just sat there and waited and waited and waited. Sometimes he’d wait and not get a wave and have to paddle in at dark...

HSA: Just like you at Sunset the other time ...

PC: But, he also tended to underscale the size of the wave, probably because he had some scientific reason. He was a scientist and maybe measured the thing differently.

HSA: It actually relates pretty closely to open ocean swell size.

PC: If you take it like this (paper emulating a breaking wave) and you’re looking right on it, you’ll get a certain measurement (counting bodies vertically). But you take that (same paper) and you do it this way (higher vantage point, counting bodies flat on face of wave) you’ll see what happens--you’ll get more bodies up because you’re looking down. And he’s out onto the wave so you’re getting a false pretense. If you take a picture at the heiau (the old Hawaiian religious area) up on the mountain, above Waimea Bay), you can make a twenty foot wave look forty feet.

Now, the trouble with the helicopter is they’re above the guy and it flattens out. But there are ideal locations on the beach to get a good picture.

HSA: I think Bernie (Baker) got a good picture of Brock (Little during the ‘90 Eddie Aikau contest)...

PC: That was from the heiau.

HSA: Heiau. I was at the contest working there.

PC: That was the biggest wave I’ve ever seen attempted.

HSA: Was that bigger than yours?

PC: Oh yeah. I’m sure it was bigger. I think it was in the 30’s. The one I had was maybe twenty-five. The one I had was very similar to one that Darrick Doerner had. I didn’t get the picture of the one I had in October ‘69, but I had a good wave in ‘67 or something, the day that Eddie got a real big one, I got a big one. And they took pictures of that, and they took pictures of Darrick’s and put ‘em next to each other and they looked very similar. And that wave was very similar, as I remember it, but it wasn’t as big.

HSA: Darrick’s one was on Superbowl Sunday or something, a black-and-white shot?

PC: Yeah, that was a beautiful wave.

HSA: Ok, what is it about Sunset Beach that draws you there?

PC: That’s all I surf, right there.

HSA: You don’t even surf in Town during the summer?

PC: No. And the only reason I like Sunset is that it’s always been my favorite spot, and probably the reason that I like it the most is because it’s so difficult. It’s a challenge, and you can have good days and bad days. But when you get a good wave, it’s never boring, it’s always got variety, every wave is different from the previous one.

These places like Jeffrey’s Bay, Rincon, G-Land and everything else--and Pipeline falls into this category--every wave is the same. Waimea is the same thing--every wave is the same. The thing that makes Sunset real neat is because every direction swell, and even within the same direction swell, every wave is different. So there’s a judgment factor thrown in there, that, to me is a very important part of surfing. It gets sometimes lost, judging the waves, picking the waves, and the thing at Sunset too, is that you always have the time to think about what you’re going to do. You take a wave and turn, you can figure out where you’re turning, you can figure out when you want to come back up. It gives you a lot of time to think about what you are doing.

I’ve always been too uncoordinated, too tall, and on too big a board to take a fast, Pipeline-type thing and do very well with it. Where at Sunset, it lends itself to the way I like to surf, which is more methodical, and more time to think about, and I can make up for my uncoordination, lack of balance and everything else. So, to me it’s always been my favorite spot. It’s the most consistent spot. It gets every direction. I don’t like the west, but it’s still good even on a west. It’s always breaking. It has the best wind conditions. And it’s got the power you want. And it’s got the whole package. And it doesn’t have the media after it. It doesn’t have the hype. It doesn’t have the floaters. You don’t see too much floaters at Sunset. It doesn’t get the cameras on the beach. In fact, back when the cameras lined up one time we walked down and told them they weren’t allowed to shoot, and they had to go down to Pipeline or Backdoor and that they were in the wrong place.

HSA: Hahaha! Ok, how do you feel about the resurgence in big-wave riding?

PC: I think the resurgence right now isn’t so much in riding big waves, as it is the new way of riding big waves, which is the tow-ins. The tow-ins just brought the thing out into the limelight.

HSA: Actually, it kinda died off in the ‘80’s, I thought...

PC: Well, it was real big in the late-50’s and the early-60’s, it was real big. And then, we had a stretch there where nobody cared about big-wave riding. You could hardly ever find a camera at Waimea or anything else, from about ‘65 to all the way through the ‘80’s. It was high-performance, small boards, all over the place was high performance. Even at Sunset it was turning. And the real big waves became "not the focus."

And then all of a sudden, individuals got involved, who were trying to bring the focus back on big-wave riding. I don’t know whether it was self-promoters, or what, and it started to come back with the Mark Foo thing (other names mentioned). They started to elevate it a little bit. That was probably in ‘82/’83 it started to come back up pretty big. There’s always been a little bit here and there.

And then Mavericks opened it up so that you didn’t have just Hawaii. And the Todos and Margaret River. There’s a place in Spain that has some real big waves--Guittary (?) gets big wave. Probably the reason for opening it up is more locations so that you spread it out over a larger crowd.

And then I think also the equipment and the knowledge and the improvement in the larger numbers.

HSA: Has the equipment really improved you think?

PC: Oh yeah.

HSA: But it’s the same size waves they are catching now...

PC: Yeah, but we were wiping out half the time. We were having a hard time.

Pat Curren made a good gun for Waimea, but it didn’t do well at Sunset. I had a real good board for Sunset, but it was just hanging in there at Waimea. But I only had one board--I’ve always stuck to one board. So, what you got for Sunset didn’t work well for Waimea.

But I think the real big thing right now is the tow-in.

HSA: Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

PC: I think it’s great, but it’s not the same sport. There’s no comparison between trying to paddle into a big wave and get towed into a big wave. Getting towed into a big wave, the scare is after you’re in there. But it’s probably more dangerous because your into much bigger waves and you’re relying on the capability on the guy that’s pulling you. And there are a lot of guys that are really accomplished, and there are a lot of guys who are starting to get big names who are not. I think we’re going to see some drownings.

HSA: How do you feel about being thought of as a big-wave surf hero?

PC: Oh, I think it’s great. My ego loves it.

HSA: Do you get pestered a lot?

PC: No, nobody. Actually, very few people know who the hell I am. Except for people who read, and most surfers don’t read. Some of the young people, they don’t have any idea.

HSA: I thought it would be the opposite way--I thought you were shying away from the limelight.

PC: Well, I don’t chase it. But if somebody comes around like yourself, I’m happy to oblige.

HSA: Aren’t you going to write a book? All your contemporaries have?

PC: I know. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t.

HSA: Now, I’m going to rattle off some names and phrases. Tell me a little bit about these things: Greg Noll--overhyped?

PC: Oh, Greg Noll is as gutty as anybody I’ve ever known. And the thing a lot of people don’t realize about Greg was a really good hotdog surfer. Agile, young, hotdog performance surfer before he ever became a big-wave surfer.

There were three guys on the coast before Miki Dora and Phil Edwards came into the scene. This would be in the late-forties. You see, Miki Dora and Phil Edwards didn’t get into it until the fifties--they started, but they really didn’t get accomplished. But in the late-forties, there were three young guys that were the best on the coast. Greg Noll was at Manhattan Beach, Ricky Grigg was at Santa Monica and Malibu, and Buzzy Bent, not Trent, was the kid at Windansea. And then there was this kid named Viking that was pretty good. I don’t know his real name, but he was pretty good at San Onofre. Then right after that came Miki Dora, Phil Edwards and all those guys.

Now, when he (Noll) got heavier, when he was riding all that big stuff, he was weighing in at 260 pounds--he was a big guy. And when you’re a big guy like that, you’re agility on a small board on a small wave is going to be less.

HSA: Were you there at Makaha...?

PC: Not the day that he got that real big one.

HSA: Okay, how about Ricky Grigg? Wasn’t there a rift at one time?

PC: Oh, we’re still good friends. There was a rift, oh yeah, because he put an editorial in the Advertiser (newspaper); it was totally ridiculous, saying that we (Save Sunset Beach group) lacked integrity, and he mentioned my name. It bugged a lot of people.

But actually, some people contend that he’s kinda disenchanted with the North Shore ‘cause everytime he goes out there he feels bad vibes. He’s not as popular as he was before.

HSA: I haven’t read his book yet, but I heard that he said that the Obayashi project shouldn’t be pulled down for the wrong reasons and that the environmental studies were flawed and that the current runoff is already contributing to problems with the reef.

How about this statement: "One 25-footer is better than a hundred 18-footers, so why bother with them?"

PC: Waimea at 15-18’ is kind of a lousy wave. It’s got a little bit of a drop, and has no wall at all. But once it gets over 18’, it starts getting to be a better wave. When it gets 25’, that’s the ultimate. Now, I don’t even go out on the 18’ days.

HSA: I was going to ask you whether you regret saying it, because it’s pretty funny.

PC: Well that was a long time ago--I was about 58 or so. But I was charging that time.

HSA: Alright, next question. Do you think that technology has enhanced or detracted from the surfing experience with respect to, say the Internet and the available weather information and forecasting?

PC: Well, to me, I think the leash is the worst thing that ever happened?

HSA: You use a leash now?

PC: No, I refuse to use a leash. So I swim all the time. The thing that the leash has done is its brought up this quantity mindset. Bradshaw’s always telling me how many waves he got. But to me it’s not how many waves you got; it’s how many good waves you got.

So the leash is kind of got it where guys are out there that don’t know how to swim and if the leash breaks then they’re in trouble. And it’s gotten to the point where guys are taking off in a position where if they didn’t have the leash, they wouldn’t be there because they’d be swimming 99% of the time ‘cause they’d be far in, so they’d be able to get a lot of waves. But then when it turns out that you got that primo wave coming, they’re all inside of you and you can’t go because they’re underneath and all around you. To me the leash has ruined surfing.

The Internet has just opened it up so that you can’t sneak out on a day without having hundreds of guys already knowing about it. So that sort of ruined that part of it.

HSA: What about the tow-in deal?

PC: The tow-ins are fine as long as they do it only in places where they can’t paddle into waves. But once they start towing into places where you can legitimately paddle in like Hammerheads or Alligators, then you got problems. And Avalanche--they shouldn’t be jetskiing there. The rules should be: if a surfer can go out there and ride it, they shouldn’t jetski, in my opinion.

HSA: Are they infringing now? I thought there was a pretty good understanding here.

PC: There’s a lot of overlap at Phantoms. You had a lot of guys riding Phantoms a lot before tow-ins. And now they can’t even go out there.

HSA: How about board design and technology?

PC: Board design is always going to get better. Except the foam is weak and you break boards all the time.

HSA: When are we going to get something new, something stronger?

PC: Well, that’s what Patagonia is trying to push--a stronger material. So that might come about.

HSA: Do you like surfing now more than ever?

PC: I think I’ve always liked it. This last winter I was very frustrated--I felt like I had a really bad year. I’m not sure whether its I just got older or the surf was lousy or the crowd got to me. But I can only count the good waves I got last year on one hand.

But when I get a good one I enjoy it even more. Stoked to be still doing it.

HSA: Any final words of wisdom you’d like to share to the world?

PC: I don’t know if I have any wisdom to share... My only feeling is that all this media and all this sponsoring and all these kids that are going to be pro surfers--the thing that I think they’ve got to get a little bit of reality check in there. It is important that they think about other things. That umbrella of time in your life when you can get a sponsor is really short. And when you haven’t got the sponsor anymore, what are you going to do? You got to have something more in life than surfing.

So to me I think education is important. And the irony of the whole thing is that Ricky and I are probably of the older group surfing more than anybody. And we’re the two that have jobs. If you actually analyze it, the guys that surfed with us don’t surf anymore--they don’t surf the North Shore.

HSA: So you think your education has extended your surfing career?

PC: I think the fact that we had an outlet besides surfing, that it made it so that surfing was recreational. Also, when we got worse, we accepted it, where a lot of guys got worse, they quit. I think that’s the reason why most people quit is they got to where they weren’t doing very well and they didn’t like it.

So I think having a triple life--you have your family, something that motivates you in your brain, and you have surfing as a recreation--will allow you to do it a lot longer. The Sunset Beach surfing crowd is pretty much a recreational crowd. They all have jobs and that’s why the afternoon gets crowded. And they’re a much older group--it’s sort of the San Onofre of the North Shore.

HSA: Thank you very much Peter!

At the end of the interview, Peter humbly asked whether I needed any photos. He drew out his wallet, one with a dilapidated "Save Sunset Beach' sticker hanging on, and pulled out a faded black and white picture of himself on a huge Waimea Bay wave (the big one he got in '67). To me, this image is better than any high rez color slide could ever be--because it's obviously precious to him.

Peter Cole, Waimea Bay, circa 1967