48.0°,
Overcast Long Beach surfer catches record big wave
Will Skudin conquers massive swell in Mexico
“I’ve been surfing big waves for about 14 years now, and in my life I’d only seen waves that big one other time,” Will Skudin recalled. “I realized I might only get a handful of sessions with waves that big in my whole lifetime.”
Skudin, 30, is a professional big-wave surfer and Long Beach resident who tackled what he described as the biggest swell in the history of surfing in Mexico on May 3 — a wave estimated to be 60 feet high.
“It was really nuts — there were mountains of water coming in,” he said.
A major goal for Skudin, he said, is drawing attention to East Coast surfers, particularly those from New York, and establishing them as major names in the sport. Skudin was one of only five out of 20 surfers to tackle the massive, 60-foot waves in Mexico this spring, and had already earned the distinction of Eastern Surf Magazine’s 2013 Surfer of the Year, the first New Yorker to receive that title.
Skudin has been surfing big-waves professionally since he was 16 and is sponsored by Hurley, WRV Surfboards and Right Eyewear. He recently traveled to Chile, hoping to enter the Quiksilver Ceremonial in Punta de Lobos as an alternate in an attempt to catch some of the giant waves said to be hitting there. Though he didn’t make the competition, the disappointment didn’t stop him from chasing the swell up to Puerto Escondido, Mexico, and attempting to ride it there a day later.
“This was the last hurrah before I had to go work [teaching surfing] for a couple months,” he said.
The massive swell was one of the largest waves he had ever paddled into, Skudin added. He and 20 other surfers from around the world attempted to paddle into it without the assistance of personal watercraft, a feat that proved too difficult for most of them.
“You have to be positioned just right,” he explained. “When waves like that come to you, you only get one chance.”
After he conquered the wave, Skudin said, he managed to paddle back. Shortly afterward, however, more 60-foot waves broke in front of him and his fellow surfers and “cleaned them up,” knocking them into the beach, he said.
“It was one of those times when you have to really trust your training and your ability,” he said. “It was a pretty emotional moment when we got back to the beach. All these guys were lined up, watching us paddle in, and people started clapping — not because we caught a wave, but because we survived.”
