Daring surfers take on challenging legendary spot on northern California coast

HALF MOON BAY, Calif. — The swells begin thousands of miles away. When they finally reach the northern California coast at a once-secret surf spot called Mavericks, the sea floor rises suddenly.

The water can only go up, creating liquid walls 50 feet or higher. The spot’s fierce waves take no prisoners: Hawaiian surf star Mark Foo died here in 1994. Anthony Tashnick, 20, tamed Mavericks’ killer waves Wednesday, taking home a $25,000 top prize in arguably the most dangerous event of its kind.

“I don’t know if it’s reality or a dream. Somebody’s got to pinch me right now,” Tashnick said after raising his check in the air.

Tashnick beat out 23 challengers before hundreds watching from a cliff and along the beach shore. Judges were in a boat strategically positioned just outside the main break.

Defending champion Darryl “Flea” Virostko dropped out of the contest at the last minute as he continued to recover from injuries sustained in a brutal wipeout in Hawaii just a few weeks ago. Virostko has been the only man to win Mavericks in the three years the contest has been held: 1999, 2000 and 2004.

The world’s best big-wave surfers were called to the spot by contest organizers just a day before the event, held only when climate conditions and wave heights are best suited to delivering monstrous four-story waves.

Surfing legend Jeff Clark discovered the Mavericks break in 1975 when he was only 17 and surfed there alone for more than a decade until he began to share his secret. It remains the playground of experienced big-wave riders.

“It was a great confidence boost for me to have gone where no one had gone before, and to ride waves that were more powerful than anything that I had ever imagined,” Clark said in a statement posted on the Mavericks surf contest Web site.

Newcomers can be held down on the sea-floor by sequential waves or rattled around in a rocky area known by locals as “the boneyard.”

Tashnick said he looked down the face of one of those waves and devised a go-for-broke game plan.

“I want it really bad and it’s worth the beating,” Tashnick said he told himself before dropping into the wave. “Just do it.”