“Michael deNicola's Long Ride”
by Pablo Capra
 |
| Stars aligned for Michael deNicola's long ride on January 5, 2023. Photo by Casey O'Neill. |
Every surf spot has its champion of the long ride. There’s
Laird Hamilton trimming from Little Dume to Paradise Cove, Allen Sarlo starting
from Third Point and shooting the Malibu Pier… and, in the last swell, Michael
deNicola connecting Boomers to Charthouse.
DeNicola grew up watching swells wrap around the coast from
his grandparents’ hillside home in Castellammare, Pacific Palisades. He’d
already imagined his future ride after noticing that the biggest waves would sometimes
wrap around two points before expiring. He joined the USA Surf Team at 19,
turned pro, then created an international surf contest called “5X.” In the late
1990s, he began building an art career around his colorful, graffiti-like paintings.
In 2010, he produced a film about Santa Cruz surfers called The Westsiders.
Stars aligned for his long ride on January 5, 2023. The
Harvest Buoy off Point Conception measured a wave height of 26.9’, the biggest winter
swell in decades. The rain cleared up in the morning, and the tide receded to a
low -0.8' at 3:08 p.m., which was necessary for success. “On the way to the
beach, I told my buddy Jesse Faen [also a former pro] that this could be the
day I’d make it to Charthouse,” deNicola says.
Conditions were so hairy that a fire truck waited on the
bluff for an accident to happen. Most surfers couldn’t paddle out through the
windswept giants. DeNicola got a push by jumping into the muddy creek as it rushed
into the ocean. “It wasn't a beautiful day to surf, but I was excited by the
energy in the water,” he says. “I rode a 7'7" board, shaped by Bruce
Fowler, with a quad setup that had a fifth fin the size of a guitar pick to
help with turns. We'd been playing with that design for about six years.”
The only others who made it into the lineup were Faen and Quinn
Williamson. (An earlier session had been surfed by Edwin Martin, Richard “Evy” Evans,
and Mo Magee.)
 |
| Michael deNicola. Photo from The Brush Off (2020), a book of artists' portraits by Jeffrey Sklain. |
DeNicola caught a number of waves while searching for his
outlier. Around 4:00 p.m., with sunset approaching, he took off on one that
allowed him through every section. He surfed past the lifeguard tower, the
stairs, the Malibu Feed Bin, until, suddenly, the next point loomed up ahead. “I
knew I definitely didn't want to get stuck in those rocks, so I did everything
I could to keep moving, even as the wave began to flatten out,” he says.
The first to realize that something remarkable was happening,
Martin narrates, while filming, “He’s going to make it to Charthouse.”
Tristan “Red Dog” Welch filmed the ride’s end from the parking
lot of Mastro’s Ocean Club. He and his friends were shocked when deNicola
appeared. They ask, “Where is he going?” and “Does he have a motor on that
thing?” Then Welch declares, “That’s the wave of his life,” and they begin to cheer,
“Make it!” until the half-mile ride ends just past the restaurant.
“I was high on adrenaline from the victory, but my legs were
so tired that I practically had to crawl out of the water,” deNicola says. “I
started surfing at 12. I've surfed big waves all over the world. I've had
injuries that I thought would prevent me from ever surfing again. Yet, at 55, I’d
experienced a breakthrough at a beach I’ve been surfing my whole life. It feels
even more special to find a great wave to yourself in a city as populous as Los
Angeles.”
The only other time that someone is known to have accomplished
this feat was in the winter of 1998-99 (Surfline wrongly says 1982-83), when ex-pro
Donny Wilson surfed a full mile, to just past the Sunset Mesa intersection. He
remembers, “I airdropped into the biggest wave of my life and didn't cutback
once, just raced straight ahead on a 7'6" gun, shaped by Steve Wilson and given
to me by Local Motion in Hawaii. Except for Allen Sarlo and Matt Wessen, nobody
else was in the water.”
Wilson also lays claim to being the only surfer to ride
around the Malibu Pier, in the summer of 1998.
On the biggest day of the 1970s, September 27, 1975, Paul
Lovas rode a 9’10” gun, shaped by Robbie Dick, to the Charthouse restaurant,
but didn’t make it around, according to his memoir Topanga Beach Experience (2011).
DeNicola hopes his long ride will inspire young surfers to achieve
their goals. That's also the idea behind his cartoon character, Torquato, “born
of water and stoke, the action hero inside each of us who says, ‘Yes You Can!!!’”
He currently has an art show at Paliskates, 1021 N. Swarthmore Ave., and invites
surfers and skaters to bring their boards for a free spray-painted stencil of Torquato
on March 25th, between 2-4 p.m. More at www.iamtorquato.com.
***
Pablo Capra is the Archivist for the Topanga Historical Society and author of Topanga Beach: A History 1820s-1920s (2020).
