The great Rickson Gracie, on bottom, real calm
in the storm. Vale Tudo/Choke
The blissful joys of hypoxia and the
realisation that Twinks raised on surf can roll with Bears! “If I
could survive the sea, there was no human that I could not deal
with because no man can bring the same level of panic and
discomfort as the ocean!”
By Derek Rielly
I think of these words every time a two-fifty
pounder is grinding his knee into my solar plexus and my eyes start
to leak.
There’s a moment when life slips away, when you teeter
on the edge of the abyss, and as that sweetest sap serotonin floods
the brain, where the divine is revealed.
Pain, depression, all the wrongs of your life evaporate as
paradise unfolds before you.
I frolic in a meadow with my children back at an age when they
still wanted to hang out with me.
Look over there, a happy chimpanzee in a t-shirt and diaper
bounces up and down! A pitcher filled with freshly squeezed
lemonade sits on a small wooden table! A chihuahua with patches of
fur missing dances on her hind legs! The setting sun throws a
golden glow over the tableau!
I’m here, paradise, so take me God.
Then, your legs are getting shaken, a couple of slaps paint your
face and you realise that ten seconds ago your head was wrapped in
the flexed gastrocnemius muscles of a man whom you’d only just
met.
Getting choked in a jiujitsu class is the closest you’ll get to
drowning in a controlled environment and it is, I suspect, one of
the reasons, although not the only one, why so many surfers are
driven to the sport.
The play was I’d get in there, get dirty, report back if it
improved my surfing and if there was a connection between the two
sports.
It was a nexus I’d examine attentively.
I began by watching the documentary Choke about Rickson Gracie,
a surfer, and son of the creator of Brazilian Jiutjisu Hélio
Gracie, and who was earning a million bucks per MMA fight twenty
years ago.
“Surfing taught me, probably more than anything else, how to
deal with the infinite power of things that are beyond our
control,” Rickson said.“All of the emotional,
physical, and spiritual elements I needed to surf big waves also
applied to fighting. If I could survive the sea, there was no human
that I could not deal with because no man can bring the same level
of panic and discomfort as the ocean. With fighting I am only
fighting another man. I only have to be precise, smart, and at some
point, impose my will on him.”
I think of it every time a two-fifty pounder is grinding his
knee into my solar plexus.
No…man…can…bring…same…level…of…panic.
Breathe, just breathe.
Now, jiujitsu, like surf, don’t come easy.
You start off as a white belt and via a grading system that is
casually observational rather than formal, at least where I roll,
you gather stripes as you improve in your live
sparring.
Don’t tap so much? Escape the clutches of a bear? Finish your own
submission? Stripe.
A stripe is a piece of tape that is wrapped around the black end
of your belt. Four stripes and you’re one step away from an
upgrade. White to blue, blue to purple, purple to brown, brown to
black.
Train six days a week for ten years and you’re close to black.
People in the biz joke about it being a more demanding course than
neurosurgery.
Like surf, I’m slow to improve despite hitting the gym six days
a week. The
concepts of leverage and angles don’t come easy.
I get tapped more than I should.
I get pretty busted up: ears flare up from being locked in
triangles and being squished into the mats and give me the
appearance of a weathered elf in Christmas photos; three black eyes
from accidental flying elbows and knees; I hurt my back when I
don’t warm up and my fingers ache at every joint.
An eye gouge from my son puts me into the Sydney eye hospital
and off the mats, and water, for three weeks.
I feel like a machine that has slipped its cogs.
But it’s so in my head I’m thinking armbar escapes and chokes
when I surf.
First bit of disturbing data is my lack of sleep. I figured I
was hitting eight hours a night, easy. Bed at nine-ish, up at
six.
Actual figures were closer to five.
I might be in bed by nine but I’m staring at my telephone for
the first 45, then maybe a book, some more phone, text a few
people, asleep by midnight, apparently.
A few nocturnal wanders, fifteen “disturbances”, bad dreams,
whatever, and oowee, now I know why I don’t feel real flash some
morns.
If I want to train, I have to get off the phone, learn to treat
bed for rest.
Get on it and snatch only a few hours sleep and your recovery
number is going to be in the red. Bigger the stressor the less able
your bod is gonna handle getting smashed.
Like this, three hours sleep and I’m at twenty-six percent. Stay
it bed, it advises.
After one hour of jiujitsu sparring where I think my heart is
gonna explode, I’m swimming in sweat, eyes are bulging, veins
appear on the surface of my legs and arms, and I’m lucky to score
an eight.
A victory for surf.
And you don’t get injured.
Next week: Finding common ground, even empathy, with,
for, VALS!
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Surfer “critically injured” after hit by
suspected Great White at Salmon Creek, north of San Francisco
By Derek Rielly
"Next thing I heard the dude screaming. I knew he
got bit.”
A surfer in this thirties has been choppered to the
Santa Rosa Memorial Hozzy after being bitten on the upper thigh a
little after nine this morning by a suspected Great
Whiteshark at
Salmon Creek, sixty miles north of San Francisco.
Other surfers in the water brought the man in to the beach
parking lot where paramedics used a tourniquet to stop the
bleeding.
“I was out with five guys — we heard a couple people yell shark
about 50 feet away,” a surfer named Cody told KPIX. “It was by the
mouth of the river. The sharks come there to get salmon…Next thing
I heard the dude screaming. I knew he got bit.”
The man is in a critical condition, say authorities, but is
expected to live.
In 2005, another surfer Megan Halavais, was hit by an almost
twenty-foot White at Salmon Creek Beach, the shark’s bite just
missing the femoral artery in her leg.
Last May, the shaper Ben Kelly was killed by a ten-foot Great
White while surfing at San Dollar Beach, south of San Francisco,
but what is essentially the same stretch of coast when it comes to
Whites.
(Yeah, I know, the entire Californian coast is a White highway
etc.)
Long Read: The Most Dangerous Man in
Surfing Does Not Live on the North Shore! “I saw the enemy up close
and personal. Nothing but hate in their eyes, nothing less.”
By Derek Rielly
Son of a big-wave legend, Navy SEAL, shredder in
thirty-foot surf…
The most dangerous man in surfing does not live on the North
Shore.
He does not drive an oversized pickup truck, has no visible
tattoos, and prefers Chihuahuas to pit bulls.
The quiet, coiled 54-year-old has the face of a Hawaiian Kahuna,
the beard of a Pashtu tribal elder, and a body so youthful that it
is still capable of running four miles in 28 minutes
flat.
Born and bred at Makaha Point, not only was Ivan Trent inducted
into the break’s most elite club (“The Makaha Screamers”), when
deployments allowed, he was a regular at Waimea Bay and among the
first to paddle out to outside Log Cabins.
Nonetheless, the Navy SEAL chief’s most remarkable feats in the
water will never appear on YouTube and will probably remain
classified state secrets long after his death.
Trent’s values are closer to those of a Spartan syssitia
or the Roman Legion than modern day America.
“As far as life, there is no unfairness,” he said, “just
circumstances one simply has to deal with.”
Although Ivan Trent’s story culminates in the Afpak frontier, it
begins more than five decades ago on the Westside of
Oahu.
The son of legendary big-wave surfer Buzzy Trent and local
Westside beauty Violet Rodillas was born in a Quonset hut on Makaha
Point.
A stoic who walked his talk, the elder Trent lived for the
challenge of giant surf.
“He was a true minimalist,” said his son. “He would have
impressed Marx. Material objects were just that to him, objects
with little importance.”
Goodwin Murray “Buzzy” Trent was born in 1929 into an
upper-class California family. His life changed forever when his
parents moved from their Pasadena ranch to a house on San Vicente
Boulevard in Santa Monica.
While he learned to surf in Santa Monica Bay, Trent was soon
riding his bike all the way to Malibu to surf the point with Matt
Kivlin and Bob Simmons.
He was also a Golden Gloves boxer and one of the most promising
football players to ever graduate from Santa Monica High School.
The all-CIF halfback ran a sub-10 second 100, and was recruited by
USC. But after a knee injury during preseason training of his
freshman year, Trent moved to Hawaii and never looked back.
Buzzy Trent believed that big-wave surfing developed the two
most important qualities a man could have: dignity and
courage.
“A million bucks won’t buy you an ounce of either,” he said.
No job was beneath the Californian as long as it allowed him the
freedom to surf big waves. Although Trent worked as a fireman, it
was as a construction worker that he established his reputation as
a modern day John Henry.
After a coworker at the Hawaiian Dredging Company accidentally
knocked him off a 14th-floor concrete slab, Trent fell two stories
(approximately 50 feet), grabbed a 12th-floor girder, and swung
himself back into the building.
“He came home and talked about it real casual,” recalled his
son. “He was a caveman, just dusted himself off and went
surfing.”
**********************************
Ivan Trent was born to the manor of big-wave surfing and
counts many of the sport’s true pioneers—Buffalo Keaulana,
George Downing, Greg Noll, and Peter Cole—as his hanai
uncles.
Some of Trent’s earliest memories are of driving to the North
Shore in his father’s VW bug with a Dick Brewer gun strapped to the
roof. He and his sister Anna would play army on the beach in front
of Val Valentine’s house, but if their father’s board washed in,
they dropped everything to drag it up to the dry sand.
Trent remembers pulling up to Makaha Point with his dad during
the winter of 1969.
“Uncle Greg Noll ran up to my dad,” said Trent. “He was
definitely shaken as he talked about his life-changing ride” (As
large as Noll’s wave was on that swell, Trent believes that his
father, George Downing (1958), and Brian Keaulana (1983) all rode
larger waves at Makaha).
Buzzy Trent famously acknowledged the role of fear in big-wave
riding.
“Only a fool is fearless,” he said. “Everyone has fear. It’s
natural. But the secret to fear is knowing how to control it and
make it work for you.”
Even as a young child Ivan Trent tested his fears with quiet
determination. At nine, he walked five miles alone to the forbidden
Makua Cave that, according to Hawaiian lore, was the home of
Kaneana, the shark man. According to the legend, Kaneana would
transform himself into a man, capture his victims, and eat them in
Makua Cave.
When his sister Anna asked him what possessed him to take the
walk, he replied simply, “I wanted to see if I could.”
Today, the expression “waterman” has been reduced to a marketing
cliché used to sell stand-up paddleboards and other detritus of the
so-called “surfing lifestyle.”
There was, however, a time when the word carried great weight,
designating the maritime equivalent of a black belt in a great
martial art.
It was not enough to just surf. A waterman had to have mastered
all the aquatic arts: he was a skilled diver, canoe surfer,
oarsman, meteorologist, sailor, ocean swimmer, bodysurfer,
lifesaver, fisherman, and board/boat builder who could ride any
size surf on any craft put underneath him.
Buzzy Trent forged Ivan into a waterman during a period of
American history when “self-esteem” was earned and not mandated by
the state.
Many of the underwater training methods used by modern big-wave
riders were pioneered by Buzzy who believed that if he could hold
his breath for three minutes free diving, a 30-second pounding in
big surf was no big deal, “Dad was a fantastic free-diver and swore
it was the best conditioning for winter surf.”
Although the father and son regularly surfed Makaha and Maili
Point, their free-diving sessions at Yokahama Bay, Sunset Beach,
and Kaena Point were just as important.
Ivan’s mother Violet did not like the beach, but she made sure
that Ivan joined his father on all of his dive trips, “I would
often wait ashore for hours on end at Sunset, Lanis, and
occasionally the Bay,” Ivan remembered. “[My dad’s] standard order
to me was ‘Son, don’t get near the water.’ The great Jacques Mayol
would have been in awe of Pops; the man had finesse, grace,
patience, and power as a skin diver. He also had an incredible
ability to slip into the deep caverns, crevices, and cracks. He had
immense breath-hold capability.”
**********************************
Growing up on the Westside during the 1960s and ’70s,
Ivan’s peers were some of the unsung heroes of Hawaiian
surfing. Long before Buttons and Mark Liddell, there were
Hawaiian performance surfers like Craig Wilson and Sammy
Alama.
“Craig ‘Kanak’ Wilson was Makaha’s pride,” recalled Trent. “He
had the smoothest rail-to-rail turns at Makaha and maxed out
Yokohama. Above all, he was a humble and gracious athlete and a
great example. Sammy Alama was a local icon in
small-to-mid-size surf. His powerful roundhouse cutbacks were the
best in the world.”
All of the surfing and diving were preparation for only one
thing, giant Makaha Point surf, what Buzzy Trent considered the
greatest big wave in the world.
“I might draw rounds for this statement,” wrote Ivan, “But
plenty of North Shore regulars have a difficult time surfing big
Point surf because it is a whole different animal. I state this not
out of arrogance, but with humble respect for one of surfing’s
greatest rides. Heavy places like Sunset and real Waimea Bay entail
a hairy drop with a slightly angled takeoff, followed by a sweeping
bottom turn.”
Not all set waves at Makaha are makeable, so wave selection is
critical. Big Makaha demands an aggressive, angled takeoff. A
surfer’s line of attack must be high enough to acquire sufficient
speed and maintain pace with the growing wall ahead.
After slipping down the face, completing the ride still requires
threading the bowl section. Big Makaha is one of the few waves that
will stall a chattering board and send it back up the face as the
wave draws.
According to Ivan, Waimea is “a powerful, mutated peak, whereas
Makaha Point surf is completely different. It is an ultra-steep,
fast, vertical wall that ends with a meaty, horseshoe-shaped bowl.
I liken Makaha to giant Laniakea with a Waimea at the end.”
Before cell phones and Internet surf reports, the Trent’s
Quonset hut on Makaha Point was a gathering place for the era’s
best surfers. Ivan still remembers when Mike Doyle and Nat Young
showed up the day before the 1971 Smirnoff Contest at the break.
Buzzy lectured them for hours about big Makaha and even drew them a
map of the lineup.
“We called in for a beer,” wrote Young, who went on to win the
contest, “and ended up staying up late being thoroughly entertained
by Buzzy’s stories about surfing Makaha. His understanding of how
to best surf all the different breaks was very deep and he even
told me how many paddles to take, in exactly which direction, to
get the best takeoff when the waves were 12, 15, 18, 20, or 25
feet, either on the Bowl or the Point.”
Ivan grew into surfing on his own. It was not until much later
in his life that his father shared his knowledge and
advice.
One day during the winter of ’73, the surf jumped from 10 feet
to 15 feet and the 120-pound, 15-year-old, paddled his 7’2″ out to
the point. He remembered the map of the Makaha lineup that his
father had drawn for Nat Young and positioned himself just to the
south of the Beal house on the point.
When the first giant set came around Kaena Point and the long
walls approached, boils began to erupt around him. Although Trent
was nervous, he held his ground, let the first wave pass, swung
around and paddled for the next one. He made the drop but instead
of taking the high line he went to the bottom and got
hammered.
Ivan and his lifelong friend Reynolds Ayau got longer boards and
began to work their way up the pecking order. Their goal was
to ride a 20-foot wave from way outside all the way through the
bowl, which was inspired by the example of Brian Keaulana who Trent
describes as simply “the greatest big-wave rider of all
time.”
“Ivan was very much like his Dad,” wrote Peter Cole Sr. “He
really enjoyed large surf. Brian Keaulana used to tell me how Ivan
would come out on big Makaha days supercharged and yelling from
sheer pleasure while he sat inside of everyone and took off on some
of the biggest waves. Brian would tell his dad, Buffalo, about
Ivan, and Buffalo would say, ‘It’s Buzzy Trent’s son for
sure!’”
**********************************
Although Ivan played football and wrestled in high
school, he was not a star athlete like his father. When he
graduated from Pearl City High School in 1977, he enlisted in the
Navy and was sent to the Naval Training Center in San
Diego.
He planned on becoming an aviation mechanic until the afternoon
he was surfing Coronado’s North Beach and a group of super-fit men
with shaved heads ran by. He found out they were trying to
become Navy SEALS and signed up for Basic Underwater Demolition
School (BUD/S) Class 104.
A crucible that all SEALS must pass, BUD/S is both a training
program and testing ground.
“First of all, it is an elaborate, tradition-bound screening
process that seeks to find men who would rather die than quit,”
wrote retired SEAL Dick Crouch in his book The Finishing
School.
BUD/S is broken into three phases, but the first—and in many
ways the most important—is physical conditioning.
For eight weeks, the aspiring SEALs are kept wet, cold, and
sandy as they undergo “evolutions” in innocuous sounding things
like drown proofing, cold water conditioning, log PT, rock portage,
and surf passage.
“Water is the great equalizer,” wrote decorated SEAL Kyle
Defoor. “More guys rang the bell [quit] because of water than
anything else—whether it was cold, they were under it too long, in
it too long, whatever.”
Ivan not only completed BUD/S, he finished at the very top of
class 104. His first platoon was Underwater Demolition Team 12. And
for the next four years he did everything from playing Cold War
cat-and-mouse games with Soviet ships trying to retrieve US
missiles in the Pacific, to a rescue attempt of the American
hostages in Iran.
By 1983 Ivan Trent had proven himself a rock-solid operator and
was summoned to a secret meeting. When the Hawaiian entered the
appointed room at the appointed time, he saw a longhaired, bearded
man with a large scar on his cheek sitting at a table. Richard
Marcinko looked more like a Hell’s Angel than a decorated SEAL and
that was exactly the point. After the failed attempt to rescue the
Iranian hostages in 1980 (Operation Eagle Claw), the Navy ordered
Marcinko to form an elite commando team to fight terrorism. The
heavily decorated Vietnam era frogman only wanted operators who had
already distinguished themselves in combat, handpicking the best of
the best from the Navy SEALS and Marine Recon.
After a brief conversation, Ivan was invited to participate in
the selection process—a SEAL’s equivalent of an invite to the Eddie
Aikau contest at Waimea Bay.
Among this elite group, half of the candidates were not chosen
and one died. Those who survived formed the original Naval Special
Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU) or SEAL Team Six.
“At the moment of its birth,” wrote Marcinko, “Six was made up
of 72 seasoned shooters with a well-defined, single-purpose
mission: counterterror. Translation: hit the bad guys before they
hit us.”
Most of Trent’s work with DEVGRU remains classified. Suffice it
to say, he was hovering above the airport in Sigonella, Sicily, in
a littlebird chopper the day seven F-14 Tomcats forced the Egypt
Air 737 carrying Abu Abbas, the Palestinian Liberation Front
leader, to make an unscheduled landing. (Abbas killed Leon
Klinghoffer during the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1985.)
After three years with Team Six, Ivan was transferred back to
Hawaii. James Jones shaped him 10’6″ and 11’6″ guns and the
experienced goofyfoot focused his big-wave efforts on Makaha and
Waimea Bay.
As important to Ivan as the big waves he surfed were the unsung
heroes that the sport attracted.
“No media, no photos, no glitter or hype,” he said, “just honor,
courage, and commitment.”
During the winter of 1986 Mel Pu’u, Brian Keaulana, Leonard
Brady, and Ivan surfed Makaha on a clean 20-to-30-foot day. Leonard
Brady described the session as “life changing” and although he did
not know it at the time, “All those days at Waimea were preparation
for that session at Makaha.”
The entire North Shore was closed out and the waves were washing
over the Kam Highway at Laniakea and Pipeline. It was dark and
rainy when Brady pulled into the Makaha parking lot. Brian Keaulana
was the first out, followed by Mel Pu’u, Dennis Gouveia, and Ivan.
Brady followed them way outside—to a section of the wave he had
never seen break.
Although the waves were solid 20-foot by anyone’s measure, both
he and Ivan took great comfort in the fact that Brian Keaulana and
Mel Pu’u were out, coaching them on the lineup.
“The calmest and coolest of men,” said Ivan of his big-wave
mentors, “Brian and Mel—true grace under pressure. The more I talk
about that day, the stoke replicates, even after all these
years.”
Although Brady rode four waves from the point to the channel
what stood out in his memory is one wave ridden by Ivan and Mel
Pu’u.
“The biggest wave I’ve ever seen ridden,” he said. “The takeoff
was super late and they were very close to each other, only those
two could do it because they were so skilled.”
Ivan also enjoyed surfing “real” Waimea Bay, which he says is
not “real” until the water draws and the wave goes beyond vertical
before it unloads. There’s a pause and you can catch the wave. “You
wait, check your lineup and wait,” he wrote. “You see the sets
marching around the point. Nervous surfers stop talking. Your
heart is racing. Again, check your position while the big boils
start bubbling. The first set approaches and the Bay is
alive. When you swing around and paddle there is no backing
out.”
Florida surfer Trip Freeman lived at Waimea Falls Park in the
late ’80s and surfed the Bay regularly. He remembers one big
December morning when a Hawaiian on a gun paddled beyond the pack,
sitting way outside.
“Very few have the oversized equipment and oversized coconuts to
sit out the back in search of the biggest sets,” wrote Freeman.
“The big guy was none other than Big Ivan Trent. We traded
bombs for hours on end.”
On another day with Ivan, when a giant west-northwest swell was
pushing hard, Freeman and Trent took off way behind the peak on a
monster wave.
“The sound of thunder is the only way to explain the sound of a
set that size.”
Although Freeman took off in front of him, he was also too deep
and pulled into a dark west bowl with no exit. Both men were pushed
deep under water. After Freeman scratched through yards of foam to
reach the surface, Ivan was next to him, holding his bloody
foot.
“Hit the bottom?” Freeman asked.
Both men laughed.
“Think that’s funny?” said Ivan, “You’re bleeding out the side
of your head.”
“Of course, we paddle those rhino chasers out past everyone and
were ready to do it again,” recalled Freeman.
One surfer who impressed Ivan at Waimea Bay was fellow combat
veteran Roger Erickson. The former Marine who survived the North
Vietnamese siege at Khe Sanh seemed immortal.
“Nobody rode the Bay with more passion and finesse,” wrote
Ivan.
Another of his favorite surfers was his father’s childhood
friend and hanai uncle Peter Cole.
One of his fondest big-wave surfing memories is of a big,
crowded, day in 1988.
“Suddenly an outside beast marches in and Uncle Peter is in
prime position.”
The greedy pack began to scramble to snake the highly respected
55-year-old, but Ivan wasn’t having any of it: “Dennis Pang, then
Booby, me and a few others verbally cleared the path and hooted for
Peter to launch. After that no one dared to swing around. Truly, it
was all Uncle Peter’s. He swung around with the glare and absolute
focus and scored the biggest wave of the biggest set of the
day.”
“I really enjoyed surfing with Ivan in the late ’80s and ’90s,”
wrote Cole. “It was like going back 30 or more years when I surfed
with his dad.”
Although he quit surfing Waimea Bay at 65 due to the crowd, the
highlight of his final session at the Bay was “watching Ivan turn
around on the biggest wave that day and charge down the face,” he
remembered. “Needless to say, he took an unbelievable wipeout and
had a very rare two-wave hold down.”
When Ivan finally surfaced, he was 100 yards inside of the pack
and “hooting from having such a wonderful experience. He
wasn’t fazed a bit. The free-diving that Ivan and Buzzy both
excelled in—when you are 100 feet deep for more than three
minutes—a large wave wipeout is nothing.”
Once, when caught inside by a 20-foot set, Ivan recalled
something his father had once said to him, “Ah, don’t worry. What
goes down must come up.”
Those words became a guiding piece of advice for Ivan. “To live,
and not simply exist, that’s the key,” Ivan explained. “Life should
not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely
with a well-preserved body. Rather, you should skid across the
finish line sideways, favorite beverage in hand, body totally used
up and worn out, and screaming, ‘Hooyah! What a ride!’”
The morning of the 1990 Eddie Aikau contest Ivan made the most
audacious decision of his big-wave surfing career. He and Alec
Cooke decided to surf Outside Log Cabins. The northwest swell was
20-to-40-foot with stiff trade winds grooming the thunderous
rights.
“To add an arduous and challenging touch,” the two surfers
decided to paddle into the giant waves. Eager to practice
navigation and personnel recovery in massive waves, two of Ivan’s
SEAL teammates supported the surfers in a Zodiac. He paddled out on
his 11’4″ James Jones gun.
For three hours, the two men attempted to catch a wave, but the
swells were moving too fast.
“These monsters rolled under us,” recalled Ivan. “That’s when we
realized the true size—beyond 30-plus.”
They were already a mile offshore but a massive set broke 300
yards outside of them, and the mountain of whitewater did not
dissipate as it approached. Trent took off his leash and dove as
deep as he could. When he finally reached the surface, it was
difficult to get a breath because there was a foam layer so dense
that it was like attempting to swim in soapsuds.
Although their Special Warfare support team performed admirably
and picked the surfers up without incident, the experience left
Ivan shaken.
Regretting his decision to paddle out on an un-rideable day
reinforced his belief in trusting his instincts.
Ivan was out the day Donnie Solomon drowned at Waimea. Not only
does he remain “haunted by that fateful day,” it also served as a
reminder of what can happen while riding big waves.
The day after his Outer Log Cabins session, pieces of his board
washed up on the beach. Although he was even more shaken, he
regained his equilibrium by surfing 20-foot Waimea. Days later, he
left the Islands, collected his family, and headed to his new duty
station, the Republic of the Philippines.
**********************************
Ivan moved to San Diego in 1991, where he would become a
legendary BUD/S instructor, best known as “Instructor
Blah.”
Active duty SEALS play a huge role in both the training and
selection of their future teammates for the very simple reason that
their lives will depend on them. According to Ivan, death is not a
SEAL’s greatest fear.
“It is not being tested, proven, and accepted by their peers,”
or, put another way, being “simply vetted by da
boys.”
Trent would train many of the SEALs who distinguished themselves
in combat after 9/11. According to his former pupil, decorated SEAL
Kyle Defoor, Instructor Blah made sure his students “were as close
to ‘watermen’ as possible, just like the big-wave guys on the
Islands,” adding, “Blah and his contemporaries who were first phase
BUD/S instructors at the time are the guys who selected and taught
the majority of the SEALs who would later fight in Afghanistan and
Iraq. It’s weird that no one has really acknowledged him/them yet
considering the overwhelming performance of the guys in combat,
especially our ‘all-star’ Team, which Blah was a part of.”
Howard Wasdin, former SEAL Team 6 operator and author of SEAL
Team Six, learned surf passage from Instructor Blah and described
his unique pedagogic style: “Danger or no danger, one of our
instructors always spoke in the same monotone. In a classroom at
the Naval Special Warfare Center, Instructor Blah’s jungle boot
stepped on a 13-foot-long black rubber boat resting on the floor in
front of my class.”
Next, Ivan drew stick figures of men on the chalkboard and said,
“This is one of you after the ocean spit you out. And guess what?
The next thing the ocean is going to spit out is the
boat.”
He grabbed the eraser and mowed down the stickmen on the
board.
“Now the 170-pound IBS [inflatable boat small] is full of water
and weighs about as much as a small car, and it’s coming right at
you here on the beach. What are you going to do?”
Ivan’s favorite part of being a BUD/S instructor was “Hell
Week.” Douglas Waller described Instructor Blah as part of “the
most dreaded combination [of instructors] in all of Hell Week” in
his book Commandos: The Inside Story of America’s Secret
Soldiers.
Typically, it begins sometime on Sunday and ends the following
Friday.
“Breakout” marks the official start as instructors armed with
blank-filled automatic weapons, smoke bombs, and sim grenades,
invade the barracks, fill the room with choking smoke, gunfire, and
loud music; when the coughing recruits stagger out of their
quarters, they are blasted with fire hoses. The point of the
exercise is to create sufficient confusion and chaos as to destroy
unit cohesion.
Although the recruits go through their regular physical
training, they are kept awake by three shifts of instructors. Once
the recruits in Steve Templin’s BUD/S class fell into ranks after
breakout, they failed to notice that one man was
missing.
Suddenly the instructors frog-marched their classmate out. He
was now blindfolded, gagged, and plasticuffed. Templin remembered
Ivan calmly saying, “No SEAL has ever been captured as a prisoner
of war but you left seaman Nelson behind, didn’t you?”
Those who survive Hell Week move on to phase two of BUD/S and
begin diver training with the goal of becoming combat
swimmers.
During the dive phase instructors and their students work
closely together and the relationship becomes less adversarial.
This very dangerous form of diving requires great attention to
detail and team work with a “swim buddy.”
The aspiring SEALs will learn to navigate underwater by pacing
themselves and counting their kicks. Finally, they are introduced
to the Drager LAR (lung activated rebreather), a closed circuit,
and pure oxygen system, which releases no telltale
bubbles.
Although Ivan Trent was “a master of megaphone warfare” and a
psychological operator of the highest order, it was obvious to all
those who came into contact with him that his skills in the water
bordered on the supernatural.
If there was ever a frogman to fear, it was Ivan Trent.
In addition to serving SEAL Team 6, the Hawaiian served
exchanges with the world’s best combat swimmers: France’s
Commando Hubert, Italy’s Icurosori, Germany’s
Kampfschwimmers, Spain’s Unidad Especial Buceadores de
Combate, and the Israeli’s Shayetet 13.
Like Greenough discussing fins, boats, or fishing, Ivan grows
beatific when describing Jacques Mayol’s esoteric theories on
free-diving.
More than anything else, the Hawaiian “instilled in us a love of
the ocean and water in general,” wrote his former student Defoor.
“You can see the results of this from the number of guys who still
surf, swim, paddleboard, etc. As any true waterman knows, the
water is the great separator of performers in the
outdoors.”
**********************************
After 21 years in the Navy and deployments on nearly
every continent, Ivan retired to Virginia Beach in
1998.
He was surfing a hurricane swell with his wife on September 11,
2001. While the scale of the attacks stunned him, he was not
surprised. He had crossed paths and locked horns with Hezbollah,
Lashkar e toiba, Hamas, Islamic Jihad union, the Tamal
tigers, Abu saef, the Iranians, the Syrians, the Chechens
and many other Jihadists over the course of his career.
While typically reluctant to offer his subjective opinions, he
makes an exception for the Jihadists he encountered on the
battlefield.
“I saw the enemy up close and personal. Nothing but hate in
their eyes, nothing less. Human decency irrelevant of ideology is
simply human decency. Masking ominous intentions behind religion is
dark hearted.”
A few days after 9/11, the Hawaiian ran into his surfing and
paddle-boarding friend Frank Lundy and told him that he had
reenlisted, “to do what I was trained to do.”
The retired SEAL felt “a strong sense of urgency to come back to
my country’s and my brothers’ aid. Obligation is my ethos, no
strings attached, just go back in and give more.”
He described returning to the teams at age 44 as “an
enlightening experience.”
When he first arrived in Afghanistan, he was struck by the harsh
expanse and the people who inhabited it.
“They led hard lives, and I could see the pain in their
eyes.”
On one of my many visits to the Trent hale in suburban Virginia,
I noticed a small gray gravestone with a weather-beaten Purple
Heart attached to it. Engraved were the names Erik Kristensen,
Danny Dietz, Jacques Fontan, Michael McGreevy, Jeffrey Taylor,
Jeffrey Lucas, and “Afghanistan Kunar Province 2005.”
All of the men were SEALs killed in the Korangal Valley deep in
the Hindu Kush Mountains during Operation Red Wings. The four SEALs
were conducting clandestine reconnaissance when they came under a
fierce attack from 20 to 30 Taliban fighters. Eight more SEALs and
eight aviators from the Army’s 160th Nightstalkers Aviation
Regiment were killed after a Taliban RPG shot down their rescue
helicopter; it was the deadliest day for US Special Forces since
World War II.
Although the Navy SEALs have lived up to their reputation since
9/11, more than 80 Naval Special Warfare operators have been
killed.
“Ivan lost friends,” said Frank Lundy, who recalled one paddle
he took with Ivan after he had just returned home from a
deployment. They were more than a mile offshore just after sunrise,
when he stopped paddling and asked if he could offer a
prayer.
“He quietly sits up on his board, looks eastward” remembered
Frank. “Ivan turns and says, not in a holy roller kind of way, just
pure gratitude, ‘Thanks for the grace given to me to have the life
I have, the good things I am grateful for, and the men I have been
able to serve with. Please look over them and their families while
I have this great day in front of me here’—very thoughtful and
moving. A very humble warrior.”
In addition to paddling, Ivan is a runner. As often as not, his
daily runs cover three to five times their intended distance and
although he regularly wins his age division in 5k races, he prefers
much longer distances.
While suffering from a bad outbreak of Lyme disease, the
Hawaiian entered the 2010 UDT/SEAL Reunion Run. Not only did he
finish the four miles in less than 30 minutes, he won his age group
(50-54).
When his father died in 2006, Ivan honored him by running from
Makaha, around Kaena Point, through Haleiwa, and back to Makaha—a
distance of 86 miles.
Although officially retired, Ivan worked with Rapid Response
Technology—a team including George Greenough, Stan Pleskunas, and
myself—fine tuning some of his maritime security
inventions.
Pleskunas worked directly with him on the project and called it
one of the highlights of his career.
“Even though I was a draft dodger and spent most of my surfing
career riding creampuffs at Sunset Cliffs, he treated me like a
peer,” Pleskunas commented. “I would follow that guy anywhere and
do anything he told me to do. Ivan is the quintessential leader,
waterman, fearsome warrior, technical specialist, teacher, husband,
father, son, and brother. Surfing is a significant part of his
life. However, it is just a footnote in his life’s experiences.
Ivan is a national treasure.”
**********************************
These days, Ivan trains young Seals.
More than anything else, he is inspired by his
pupils.
“Not only are they pressed to fight hardened enemies abroad, but
they unselfishly cast their personal lives aside to serve, over and
over.”
Ivan is typically closed-lipped and vague about what he is
actually teaching. When asked, he responds in classic, antiseptic
SEAL speak.
“We further refine their war-fighting skills by infusing
additional ‘tools.’”
Although Trent reels off an alphabet soup of acronyms and
euphemisms like “force on force,” “immediate action,” and my
personal favorite, “tactical intimacy,” he is teaching them much
more.
Today, the Hawaiian Odysseus makes it clear to his young charges
that irrespective of politics, foreign policy, and election cycles,
in the end they will be fighting for each other.
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Dead fish and birds wash ashore as crude
oil pipeline leaks 126,000 gallons off Huntington Beach: “This is a
potential ecological disaster.”
By Chas Smith
No surfing.
Residents of coastal Orange County woke up,
Sunday morning, to the awful news that a pipeline carrying crude
oil has leaked 126,000 five miles off the coast, creating a slick
5.8 nautical miles running from the Huntington Beach pier to
Newport Beach.
The spill has led to the cancellation of the Pacific Airshow and
closure of the beach from the pier to the Santa Ana River
jetty.
“It’s still leaking and the responsible party for this is
underway right now trying to repair the leak from the pipeline,”
Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley told KTLA news, referring to
the oil platform Elly, operated by Beta Offshore, a Long Beach,
Calif., unit of Houston’s Amplify Energy.
Dead birds and fish are already washing up to a shore that is
increasingly coated black.
Officials from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife
are asking residents to not attempt to help affected animals and to
report any animal sightings to the Oiled Wildlife Care Network at
877-823-6926.
Huntington Beach Mayor Kim Carr called the spill a “potential
ecological disaster” as the region races to contain damage.
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Former women’s world number five surfer
describes terrifying encounter with giant Great White shark at
popular Australian beach, “I knew it was a Great White because I
could see all its teeth and the white belly underneath. It was
definitely looking for something to eat!”
By Derek Rielly
"It was a big shark. Ten-to-fifteen feet by looking
at the velocity and force of it jumping out of the
water.”
For whatever reason, perhaps, but only perhaps, an
explosion in numbers following a quarter century of government
protection, Great White encounters, attacks, have become a
regular sorta thing on Australia’s east coast.
Not so much if anymore, but when.
It don’t matter if you’re Byron Bay or Ulladulla or Bells, the
ocean’s tanks have been making their presence known and felt to
surfers.
And, last Friday, former world number five surfer Amee Donohoe,
a powerful natural footer, Jordy Smith sorta style, who’s now head
coach/owner at Central Coast Surf Academy, got a real close look at
a Great White at McMasters Point, an hour and a half north of
Sydney.
Donohoe reckons the White was chasing her pal Steve.
“It breached out of the water, really close, probably looking to
have a fight with him. He was looking at a wave and when he missed
it he saw what was happening. It was trying to intercept him. From
where I was looking, and I’m not talking it up, there was teeth to
be seen. It was a big shark. Ten-to-fifteen feet by looking at the
velocity and force of it jumping out of the water.”
After beaching ‘emselves on nearby rocks, Donohoe says her feet
are still bandaged but didn’t feel any pain at the time ‘cause of
the adrenalin dump, her pal Steve was hit by the realisation
he was probs about to get hit.
“Pretty intense,” says Donohoe.
“And no doubt that this was a Great White. Very obvious, very,
very obvious. I know the difference between bull sharks and reef
sharks. I’ve seen ‘em all over the years. They’re nothing like
this.”
Still, Donohoe describes the encounter as a “phenomenal
experience.”
“Seeing them on TV is one thing, being that close and seeing
that nature in full force was… I’m very grateful we got out
unscathed. From its behaviour it was definitely looking for
something to eat.”