Expert surfers around the world were busy rearranging their lives this week, hoping to get themselves to the Northern California coast by Saturday morning.
Word had spread quickly among their close-knit surfing community that a swell in the Pacific was traveling thousands of miles across the ocean and was expected to bring mountains of water nearing 50 feet tall to Mavericks, a famed surf spot 20 miles south of San Francisco.
If all goes well, the waves will arrive between two storms, offering surfers a small window of thrills, even as experts up and down the coast warned everyday people to stay away from beaches. Back-to-back storm systems are giving California its first widespread rain of the season, and widespread weather warnings for flooding and strong winds were in place. One storm was set to move on by Saturday morning, before another hits on Sunday.
Big-wave riders scrambled to seize the moment, some with easier travel itineraries than others.
On Thursday, Bianca Valenti, 41, was getting her gear ready at home in San Francisco and planned to drive to Mavericks on Saturday morning. Six thousand miles away, Clément Roseyro, 27, grabbed three surfboards and got on a plane early Friday morning in Biarritz in southern France.
“It’s a big mission to get there on time with all the gear,” Mr. Roseyro said.
Part of the gear prep was lining up a Jet Ski. The waves at Mavericks are so big that surfers are often thrown into them as they hold onto a rope attached to one of these 200-plus-horsepower machines driven by a surf partner.
“Every serious big-wave surfer or big-wave filmer is trying to rent a Jet Ski right now and find a way to get out there,” Ms. Valenti said.
There are only a few places around the planet where waves grow as tall as office buildings but are accessible enough to surf. Nazaré in Portugal is one. Waimea Bay on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, is another. And then there’s Mavericks, in shark-infested waters about a half mile off the coast of Half Moon Bay, Calif., where an underwater reef helps produce what some surfers call the gnarliest, rawest waves around.
“It’s one of the scariest big waves in the world,” said Peter Mel, 56, who hoped to surf with his son, John, on Saturday if the weather cooperated.
Mavericks fires off waves several times a year between November and March, but the conditions are rarely just right for surfing. There were no good days last year, and only one really good day the year before that, said Mark Sponsler, who runs the website Stormsurf, which provides weather forecasts for surfers.
Big, surfable waves get their start thanks to intense winds thousands of miles off the coast that blow for days across the open ocean, pushing against the water, pumping energy into it and building a swell.
In this case, the winds first developed in the Pacific Ocean near Japan early in the week, according to Brian Garcia, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Monterey, Calif.
“Imagine a train track laid across the Pacific and it’s pointed straight across the coastline,” Mr. Garcia said. “That was the wind pattern days ago. It takes days for the waves to travel cross the Pacific.”
The monster swell that should generate the waves at Mavericks was expected to send dangerous surf to beaches up and down the coast of California all weekend. Waves were expected to reach anywhere from 10 to 40 feet, depending on the location.
“People should not be going down anywhere near the salt water,” Mr. Garcia said.
The authorities in Santa Cruz, Calif., were among those telling people to stay away. The city said it would close its beaches through Sunday morning.
“For the average Joe, you don’t want to be anywhere near it,” Mr. Sponsler said. “You don’t even want to put your toe in the water. You want to keep a safe distance.”
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