Biggest Wednesday - Historic Outer Log Cabins Session - January 28th 1998

One of the biggest days in big wave surfing history shot on the North Shore of Oahu.
Outer Log Cabins January 28th 1998.

Photo by Hank Photo
  / hankfoto  

Footage taken from my film BIGGEST WEDNESDAY
Featuring;
Ross Clarke Jones
Tony Ray
Shawn Briley
Noah Johnson
Dan Moore
Ken Bradshaw
Troy Alotis
Aaron Lambert
David "Kawika" Stant

January 28, 1998 is aka the Condition Black day at Outside Log Cabins - when a giant, clean NW swell closed out Waimea Bay and shut down the Eddie, and inspired the US Coast Guard to issue a Condition Black kapu on going out to sea that applied to everyone - regardless of friendship, experience or connections.
The swell was too much for just about everywhere, but it lit up a reef a lot of guys had been looking at for many, many years: Outside Log Cabins. Tow surfing was around seven years old when that swell hit, but enough North Shore guys had taken up the rope and had the experience to have a serious go at some of the most seriously perfect, giant surf the North Shore has seen -- before or since.
Condition Black was the thrill of victory for a lot of guys -- Noah Johnson, Troy Alotis, the but especially Ken Bradshaw, who got whipped into a monster by partner Dan Moore, and raised the bar for how big was big in the late 1990s.
"The biggest thing I had ever seen, it was like looking at a four- or five-story building, going through the ocean," Bradshaw said in a 2008 interview with Jim Clash. "Without breaking. It was just a huge swell, moving through the ocean with tremendous speed. We were going 42 or 43 miles an hour with the boat, staying ahead of it, and began to reach the actual reef and then it shoaled up taller and taller. I let go of the rope, Dan pulls away and I began to drop down."
Bradshaw continues: "Was I scared? To finally have that wave happen, to finally be there for that day, to finally actually ride that place I've always wanted to surf my whole life, like 25 years of waiting for that day... no I wasn't scared. I wanted it. I wanted that wave so bad. I was afraid Dan might not want me to have it. I remember being at the end of that rope and Dan looked back behind me and I could see in his eyes -- I was afraid he was going to pull away: "Go! Don't you stop! Don't you stop!"
Condition Black was the agony of doh! for Brock Little, who got shut down by Hawaiian Marine Safety and ended up surfing the West Side. And it was also a rough day for tow partners Tony Ray and Ross Clarke Jones, who were giving it heaps until their PWC got flooded: "I got four and Tony said, 'let's change', but my greedy side said the dreaded: 'ONE MORE!'" Ross Clarke-Jones said. "That one more was the wave Tony and I got obliterated on. I actually overtook Tony who was driving the ski down the face and saw that he was too slow to outrun the wave. Our ski was running on one cylinder, I reckon. I was engulfed by whitewater and was lucky to ride it out quite far away from the impact while Tony copped the lip on the back of the ski and got launched into space. I surfaced about 100 yards closer to shore than Tony with the Waverunner seat next to my head. Not good."
Nope, not good. Clarke-Jones and Ray sat astride their PWC as they drifted away from history and through a minefield of seldom-seen outside reefs, all the way to Haleiwa Harbor - where they were shown some serious aloha by David "Kawika" Stant and Shawn Briley, who turned their back on history to help their fellow watermen make it to shore safely.
"What I saw was significant," Peter Cole said. "I would call them in the 35-foot range and maybe bigger, the way these people are calling the surf nowadays, with all that stuff they could add a lot more to it. What impressed me the most was the advent of the small board - the s-turning and maneuverability."
Condition Black still resonates on the North Shore as a memorable day, and those resonations crossed the Pacific to the mainland, where tow surfing got a credibility check: "From 1998 to now there hasn't been anything equal to it," Peter Cole said.
And Johnson was just jazzed to get a piece of it: "In the big picture, irrespective of all the little side stories, we are all pretty lucky to have gotten to ride some waves at Outside Logs that day," Noah said. "and I am grateful for having been able to be part of it. That day really left me with a weird sense of peace. It totally felt like the point of everything I had done up to then in my surfing life. Like being there for the fifty year storm or something."

Enjoy!
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