The Heaviest wipeout of All Time.

It begins with an idea to chase a swell to the south coast. With the charts looking ok, I packed up the Toyota 80 series Landcruiser and contacted Chris Ross to team up and surf the notorious right-hander ‘The Right”. The Right is a secret surf location in the south of Western Australia that is found in an isolated location and renowned as one of the heaviest waves in the world. Coming from Margaret River, I decided it would be a good idea to take some company, a beautiful young woman who would later become my wife Asha Watkin. We left in the early hours of the morning, around 5 am and took the road trip on with style.

Like every good road trip, you need to be prepared for anything. Just before reaching our destination, while we were listening to music, the car started to lose power from the use of the stereo. Knowing this was not good, we decided to launch the ski and park on a hill just in case the car did not start when we returned. We suited up and headed for the 25-minute jet ski ride to the wave.

The day was not perfect, and the swell needed to be a touch bigger for the monster. There were still some good waves. Chris went first and bagged a good few waves, and then it came to my turn. Nervous as usual in a place like this, I put extra pressure on that I wanted to show Chris that I would go anything (a sense of bravado clouded my judgement), as I look up to Chris Ross as one of the best surfers to ride this wave. With all my nervous energy and fear when we went for the wave, I was not thinking right in my negotiation and let go of the rope way too early. This put me onto the wave too late, and as I came over the lump of swell onto the wave, I jacked up and I hit a lump in the face. Being on my backhand with the wave drawing off the reef so hard, I fell and knew I was in trouble. I did not penetrate the surface of the wave and started to cartwheel down the face of the waves some eight times before being sucked over the falls and detonated.

The impact of the wave instantly perforated my ear drum, and my equilibrium was gone. My world was spinning, and I was getting bashed like a summer abalone. When I came up, I wore another two waves on the head before Chris could come in and get me. With a few giggles and a sore ear and head, we had to head in so I could seek medical assistance.

When we returned to the car, sure enough, the car would not start. We said our goodbyes to the crew (Crossy was trying to talk me into going to cyclopes, haha) and started the drive back to Margaret River. It was not long till the sun started to go down, so naturally, we put the headlights on. The only problem was that when we used the lights, the car would start to stall from using power. We worked out that it would not stall when we had the blinker on, so we had the left-hand indicator on, and Asha and I drove the entire way back to Margaret River in the pitch-black with a flashing indicator for the entire four-hour journey.

This day did not have the best surf, but it definitely had a crazy story with a hectic wipeout that currently has over 6 million views.

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