An excerpt from Mike Hynson’s autobiography Transcendental Memories of a Surf Rebel.
Hustling down to the water, I started the day off with a good old puff of Mexican ragweed. Thanks to my friend Bobby Uptegrave and his connections in Tijuana, I had enough pot to last me three months… Dope smoked on the other side of the world is so much stronger. One puff and bang—it spun me.
The tide down at Cape St. Francis early that morning was high and one to two feet. A slight offshore beach break appeared, with little left tubes breaking toward the shore. The sandbar looked like a typical day at Newport, where Robert surfed every day of his life—just my luck. It wasn’t anything like I expected, though. I fired up my Tom Thumb pipe again and was just about to lay back and get into my early morning high when I noticed that the tide was going out.
I swear it was like waking the dead. Nobody budged. I did everything except jump up and down and yell at them to get their asses to the beach. I got nothing. I was pissed off I left…
In the short time I was gone the whole beach changed. The tide was dropping fast and it looked like fifty yards of sand appeared.
Then out of my right eye I saw a wave lapping onshore at the point, nothing surfable, but the wind was offshore. Any other day I would have jumped in the water at daybreak, surfed my brains out, and talked story about all the good waves everyone missed. But this wasn’t a pleasure trip. We were here to get as much surfing on film as possible. So far nothing was worth writing home about.
Terence helped me get the blokes up, but the time we got down to the beach it changed again. Bruce looked at me like, “what the fuck are you smoking?” I was pretty sure he didn’t know anything about my stash.
Right in front of us the tide came back in and the sandbars started producing little peaks. When the lefts started to form, Robert ran back up to the panel truck to grab his board. I checked the point a third time. Bruce and I really weren’t on good terms that morning, probably because I woke him up early. Every time I got attention the wave disappeared. While Bruce was getting his camera gear set up the tide was on the move in. More waves started breaking in front of us. Everyone was ready except me.
I caught another glimpse of the right break up at the point. I swear it was a little Malibu, but Bruce missed it again. The final straw came when Bruce got frustrated and said something sarcastic that really pissed me off. I blew up like someone blindsided me.
“You know what, Bruce? Fuck you and your fucking movie,” I let him have it and just didn’t care anymore. I grabbed my board and stormed off.
I walked along the shoreline as the incoming tide crept in. The closer I got, these two- to three-foot sets began forming over a sandbar into a cove, and the wave started breaking outside. Every set became more pronounced. A set of four perfect waves went ripping down the point with nobody riding them.
I was so excited—I was crying, I was laughing, I was scared. I was all by myself, about ready to put my white-ass body to the test, entering uncharted waters. We knew there were sharks cruising along the surf. We saw them almost every day.
Racing across the face, a bolt of energy hit me and I screamed my lungs out while the gang ran down the beach like racehorses.
When the crew finally reached the point, Robert paddled out and Bruce stood on the beach and put the camera on the tripod. I swear he didn’t budge an inch. Terence handed him one cartridge after another while he filmed.
The tide was really rising now. You could tell it was going to fade out sooner rather than later. I rode in and forced Bruce out there. When I reached the shore, I took over the camera and filmed him.
The whole thing lasted forty minutes. But I was alone in that perfect setting for at least ten or fifteen minutes. Bruce shot six rolls of film, and the sequence was perfect. It was the best footage of the entire trip—a definite turning point in the direction of the movie: finding the perfect wave.
