Surfer Profile: Grant Washburn

Highlights:
Mavericks finalist 2008, 2006, 2004. Red Bull BWA Biggest Wave Award 2005, 2002, 2000.

  Dungeons might have a big, shifting line-up and waves might seem like they come in from a few different angles, but Grant Washburn knows where to sit. He tends to find his little spot and wait. Sometimes he gets joined by one of the other riders, usually John Whittle, sometimes he just sits alone up there. Grant hasn’t won a Red Bull Big Wave Africa event yet. Some of the event winners might have caught waves from his zone, others might have caught some from the Two-Point-Five. Still, Grant prefers to sit and wait.

Grant has always been a paddle purist, despite the fact that he is pretty competent behind a ski. Still, he definitely knows that over the last ten years the ski has played a part in the sport of big wave riding. While the ski has allowed for progress, so has the paddle side progressed.

 “The past ten years have been a renaissance period for big wave surfing. said Grant, musing on the ten-year anniversary of Red Bull Big Wave Africa.  The ski stuff cracked new frontiers to be sure, but the paddle game has also evolved. The progression has been intense. In the future I think we'll see surfers paddling into bigger waves, and surfing them much better.  In 2008, it is impossible to think of surfing twenty-footers without thinking of barrels and cutbacks. The new mentality and improved equipment are really starting to show. If we get a good day for BWA, you will see some of the most intense surfing in the history of the game. This crew is ready to blow some minds.”

Being a big guy, the tallest surfer at Red Bull Big Wave Africa, we decided to see what Gman’s choice of equipment was going to be for this year’s event.
“I like a 9'8 - which is bigger than my Maverick's boards these days. I always try to ride the shortest board I can, even in 20 foot plus surf. Once you do land one, it's nice not to be riding a yacht. The waves are harder to pin down at Dungeons, so I'm bringing more beef this year as well.”

And what about the spot where Grant sits, alone at backline? As mentioned before, it has yet to win him a Big Wave Africa event, but what it seems to do instead is win him the Biggest Wave Award more often than not, and at a Big Wave event this is a feat in itself.

"There's this moment that's not actually surfing," explains Grant Washburn, the elder statesman, Mavericks local and determined paddle-in purist. "It's just waiting and hunting for the right spot. And then you see them coming and you think, should I run away, because that's what you wanna do, just run away, but you won't catch one if you run. You have to sit in there and let them come and pick you up. Only thing you can do is to concentrate on that moment, when it's all coming together. And when the wave comes and you're in the right spot, and you make this decision to do it, and you commit and you're in there...." As he speaks his eyes grow wider, reliving the adrenal squeeze. "That is something so primal and so pure. It's not about ripping waves or dominating your opponents or anything like that. It's about catching the biggest one you can."

Grant Washburn is a big wave surfing legend, both in his home town of Half Moon Bay, California and here in South Africa. One of Mavericks' locals he has cemented his place on the roll of big wave luminaries. In fact it's difficult to mention the word Mavericks without using his name in the same sentence. One of the most committed international invitees to the Red Bull BWA, this is his seventh trip to the Dungeon, and this film-maker is keen to catch up on old times.

"I can't wait to get back down to the Cape and see all the boys... and to have another go at Dungeons. This could be the year we get to see what this break can REALLY produce. I had the fortune of riding 20 - plus Dungeons on my first session, and have been waiting to see a truly ideal day," he says, hoping that Cape Town's big wave pressure-cooker is set on high.

Like the rest of the Red Bull BWA vets, Grant knows all too well the unpredictable nature of the Dungeon. "Dungeons is really a group of spots, not just one. If it were on the North Shore, it would have about six or seven names, one for each zone. It's certainly one of the more difficult big waves to line-up, but much of the 'wildness' of the break is due to the types of swells we have been riding. I suspect that a clean swell from a particular angle may look more orderly than most people realize," he explains judiciously.

"There's just the plain fact that I like big waves," he says. "So I love to get out there when people say - I think it's cleaner around the corner, I still go in the wind. You know because I just like riding the biggest waves. At home when I was a kid growing up in New Jersey I always wanted it to be bigger and It was never big, so I was constantly hungering for the big day that never came, but every session I wanted the biggest one."