Sion had been charging all day
On Wednesday, March 16, Tomo and I left San Francisco around 3:30 pm, heading towards Santa Cruz. The surf at Ocean Beach was downright scary, triple overhead bombs blasting all over the beach, no lineup and no surfers in the water. As we drove down the coast, the surf was pounding hard everywhere: Pacifica, Rockaway, Linda Mar... No one was in the water as the conditions were terrible with 20 to 30 mph winds blowing.
As we drove by Half-Moon bay, we decided to go check out Maverick's, the premier big wave surfing spot on the continental USA. I didn't expect it to break, or to see any surfers out as the winds were so insanely strong. However, to my surprise, as we climbed up the cliff we realized that not only was it breaking, but there were about 20 people in the lineup and 6 or 7 guys on jet skis.
the surfers had to keep paddling as the peak was constantly shifting
The only other person on the cliff was Eric W. Nelson, the filmaker and photographer who has been shooting Maverick's for the past 20+ years. The waves were HUGE. On the biggest sets the height of the faces reached what seemed at least 40 to 50 feet. Unfortunately, we were not able to take pics of the surfers as they were catching the wave since we could not see them because of the glare from the sun. We could only see the surfers well after they had taken off.
giant party wave
nice bottom turn!
Eric was informing us that the conditions were less than ideal, which we had already figured out on our own. Very strong currents were pushing through the line ups and rogue waves were forming at weird locations outside the main peak. He said that in all of his years filming Mav's, he had never seen the peak shift so dramatically. He also told us that besides the locals, including Skindog Collins, a crew from Hawai'i was in the water: Danny Fuller, Nathan Fletcher and Sion Milosky.
While I couldn't distinguish the individual surfers, Sion was easy to recognize because of his goofyfoot stance and how hard he was charging. He was on every big wave of every big set.
two guys racing to make the corner
All of a sudden, a giant set showed up on the horizon, bigger than anything we had seen all day. One courageous hellman took off, made the 50+ feet drop, made the critical bottom turn but then disaster struck... He could not set his line as the giant wave mauled him down. "Oh no, this is not looking good" yelled Erik. I had not seen him worry about any of the other wipeouts, so I knew this was serious. As we were trying to locate the surfer resurfacing or his board (I could not see it because of the glare) 3 other waves, at least as big as the first one came crashing down on him.
one of the waves that pilled up on top of the unlucky surfer
At we could still not see whether the unlucky surfer had come back up or not Eric said that he probably resurfaced since none of the jet skis raced in to pick him up. Big wave surfers usually go out in teams with one guy surfing, while another one or two guys are on a jet ski ready to dart in and save the fallen surfer from the white water.
Unfortunately for Sion Milosky later in the day, his jet ski partner, Nathan Fletcher, was not in the lineup when the horrendous wipeout happened. We had just seen him moments before we left our viewpoint on the cliff drop off another surfer by the beach, then drive towards the harbor. I later found out he was going to pick up new, longer boards which were needed to handle this monster session. Thinking everything was alright, and already chilled to the bone from standing on the cliff for 2 hours, Tomo and I left Eric and Half-Moon Bay around 5:55 pm. As we arrived in Santa Cruz and checked Surfline for next day's forecast, we learned the terrible news: Sion's body was found lifeless by the jetty.
Maverick's is not the friendliest place to surf, to put it mildly
unfortunately Mav's claimed another victim, and another Hawai'ian, on this sad day
Rest In Peace Sion, all of our prayers go the the wife and two children that you left behind.
