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The Green Light With Johnny Paarman and Gary Linden
Giving the Green Light with Johnny Paarman and Gary Linden: Big Wave Africa 2008 Contest Directors and Big Wave Legends
By Miles Masterson
For most surfers, Red Bull Big Wave Africa contest directors Johnny Paarman, 53 and Gary Linden, 58 need no introduction. Their task at the event - to make the call to Green Light the contest - is one of the most difficult in surfing, but as both are accomplished big wave riders and experienced surfing legends in their own right, there are arguably no individuals better qualified for the job.
Johnny Paarman is one of South Africa’s most successful and widely known professional surfers of all time. “JP” grew up at Glen Beach, in nearby Camps Bay, and ultimately won and placed in pro events in Hawaii in the 1970s and finished a career best 15th in the world on the IPS (International Professional Surfing) tour in 1976. A long time standout at Cape Town big wave spots such as Outer Kom, Sunset and Crayfish Factory, Johnny first surfed Dungeons back in the late 1980s. He had always used it as an indicator when driving along Chapmans Peak on the way to surf the big wave spots in the Southern Peninsula, but once he eventually surfed beneath the Sentinel, was hooked. “I went out with a yacht and paddled out,” he recalls, “It was 25 feet and perfect.” Though undergunned on a 7’6” and understandably tentative in his debut surf there, Johnny soon found his groove out at Dungeons and had some memorable sessions there over the years. “I can just remember those drops,” he says with a wide smile. “Big, big horseshoe bowls.”
Thanks to his surfing reputation in his prime (which still endures in Hawaii) and his intimacy with the wave, Johnny Paarman had to be on the list of invites for the first Big Wave Africa, if only to add his special aura to the event. “I probably didn’t have the killer instinct that I would have had many years ago,” admits Johnny, who gracefully stepped aside the following year for some of the younger crew. “But I just felt like if I am going to do something for all these surfers and they are going to benefit from it, then that’s great.”
Gary Linden, on the other hand, hails all the way from Oceanside in California. Once he had started surfing in his teens, Gary soon found his way into the shaping bay and in 1978 founded Linden Surfboards, shaping for a long list of top professional surfers in the US, many to this day. Gary also became involved in surfing competition administration and as an avid monster surf charger himself, was involved in a number of big wave events around the world, including eventually, Big Wave Africa. Invited by Mickey Duffus during the big wave champs in Mexico in ‘99 to come over the next year surf and check the event out in 2000, Gary then took over from him as contest director. “I was stoked at the chance,” explains Gary, adding how back then he truly saw the potential of Dungeons for the first time that year, “I will never forget climbing the Sentinel one day with John Whittle at the tail end of a huge storm and seeing the most incredible big waves ever,” he says.
History shows that in 2000 Gary made the call to run Big Wave Africa, the waves fired, and Sean Holmes won. After after two uneventful years, Gary then gave the Green Light again successfully in 2003, with Greg Long taking the spoils in the solid, photogenic Dungeons walls. Linden continued to perform the extremely stressful task of event contest director by himself up to 2005, the same year he, famously at age 53, caught one of the biggest waves of his life during a freesurf one afternoon at Dungeons. But he was justly relieved to see Johnny Paarman return to Big Wave Africa, this time as a contest director, in 2006, to share the burden. “Having a former competitor with such a tremendous amount of local knowledge was a huge asset,” tells Gary, who no doubt needed the back up by then. With increased publicity and expectations around the event, the new format involving a four month waiting period and with the international surfers waiting to fly in on their go ahead with 48 hours notice, it would be more essential than ever that they got the call right.
The team did indeed give Big Wave Africa 2006 the Green Light on July 27 of that year. But whilst there were some bomb sets in the morning and the waves maintained a reasonable size through the day, as the heats progressed it became clear that the intermittent swell had not materialised to the extent that everyone hoped. But they’d committed and followed through to the final, won with aplomb on some bombs by John Whittle. Thanks to the epic waves and freesurf sessions that followed over the next few days, there was a lot of talk that they had made the wrong call, but anyone who has ever tried to figure surf conditions in Cape Town knew they had done the right thing. “We kind of pounced on it because we only had this one day,” Johnny explains. “It was one of the most nerve-wracking things I’ve ever been involved in. It was hectic, trying to call guys in for an event like that, I mean it’s not like the break is four hundred miles up the coast. We’re here and the swell’s come from out there and the wind’s just come up and... and... it’s just so radical trying to call that.”
“Since there are no bouys in the South Atlantic we must rely on a lot of speculation instead of the hard facts we have available in the North Pacific,” agrees Gary. “The surfers wanted to compete... and all of our weather information said there was nothing behind the swell. At the end of the day though, any time Dungeons breaks it makes for an exciting event and that is what we were able to provide.”
As that year’s winner John Whittle once said, “Mavericks might be more consistent, but Dungeons has this special allure." Indeed, it is this fickle and unpredictable personality of Dungeons that adds to its mystique and is part of the magic of Big Wave Africa. Despite some close swell calls in 2007 though, Johnny and Gary wisely chose not to give the event the Green Light. Now in 2008, with a combined century of collective surfing experience - and more than three decades of surfing Dungeons and involvement with a decade of Big Wave Africa itself to draw on - they are more prepared than ever, and will be steeled to once again to make the right call, should the Atlantic Ocean begin to stir.
“Get ready for a great event as all the boys are back in town to celebrate 10 years of Red Bull Big Wave Africa and with all the practice, 2008 will produce the goods,” says Gary with his characteristic optimistic grin.
