Growing up amongst the heavy water reefs around Cape Town, beatings were a regular occurrence for King. He was the youngest invitee to the Red Bull Big Wave Africa, an event featuring some of the best watermen in the world that was held at the notorious open ocean reef of Dungeons in the early 2000s. One wave there in particular had blown his eardrum and nearly drowned him. But nothing really compares to the prolonged intensity of Skeleton Bay, says King.
“It’s actually OK getting into the wave,” he gasps, between gulps of water. “You’ve got a bit of an advantage because you can see the sets coming and get into position earlier. The hardest part is keeping your rail set and getting enough speed. You can feel all the water pulling off the bottom, just pulling the board up the face. There’s nothing at the bottom of some of those waves, it’s dropping way below sea level. I’ve never felt a wave suck out so intensely.”
More beatings and half-made attempts follow, interspersed with long walks back to the top of the spit that get more grueling as the morning wears on. It seems all but certain the mission is doomed, that this was not a good idea after all, when King gets the wave of his life. He paddles into a crisp wall and manages to hold his line through two long sections by shifting his weight hard onto his inside rail. He travels hundreds of yards, in and out the barrel, past a sprinkling of surfers and bodyboarders who hoot wildly from the shoulder, watching the impossible made possible. A third section lures him in and just as it looks like he might come out again, the wave wrenches him from his board and he gets pounded.
A doctor will diagnose King with a case of severe whiplash two days later when he is back home and unable to move his neck from side-to-side, but for now there is just numbness and adrenaline. He grabs his paddle and joins the procession of wave riders making their way back up the point, into the endless desert filled with possibility.
