Surf’s Up at Wedge

By Jack Likins

2005

I remember one day during my second summer life guarding in Laguna hearing that the surf was up at “The Wedge” and I wanted to ride the big ones.

This story needs a little background, so here it is. Over a period of time from about 1960 to 1970 there were several graduating classes of water polo players and swimmers from Upland High School who would come to Laguna to take the lifeguard test every spring. Dean Westgaard, who was the assistant football coach at our high school, recruited most of us but his real claim to fame was jumping out of airplanes over Main Beach with his SCUBA gear on and then swimming to the beach under water, emerging as some sort of underwater god. Because of his reputation and our own abilities in the swimming pool, we all thought that we were pretty hot water “men”. I think we thought the ocean was just a big swimming pool with waves. Most of us had learned to body surf “big” waves at Brooks Street on 6-8 foot days. I remember the first time I had the feeling of skipping down the face of a wave on my chest. It was an exhilarating feeling! I could even stay in front of the curl getting 15-20 second rides.

Anyway, here's the wedge story. One day we heard through the lifeguard grapevine that the wedge was breaking. Some of us “men” from Upland wanted to go and ride the big ones so we tried to convince some of the older local lifeguards to come with us, but I think in retrospect, they knew better. Of course we all knew the wedge by reputation, but none of us had ever been there on a big day. We (my brother, Bob, John Whittaker and Gideon Letz) all decided to go the next morning to body surf the really big ones.

When we got there, fins in hand, it was kind of like the commercial on TV where the four guys arrive to kayak a class 5 rapid. After they actually see what a class 5 rapids looks like, they decide if they take a class 3 and class 2 rapids it would be the same as taking a class 5, and they leave (chickened out). The problem was that none of us, except Gideon, were smart enough to chicken out, so after watching for about ½ hour hoping the waves would get smaller, the other three of us went into the water.

The wedge was breaking as it usually does on big days with the backwash coming off of the jetty at about 3-5 feet and the main waves wrapping around the jetty and building up to about 15-18 feet. This combination made the peaks of the waves break with about 20-foot faces moving quickly across and parallel to the beach.

Finally there was a “lull” (about 10-12 ‘faces) so we got up the nerve to go into the water. As luck would have it, we waited just a little too long to get in between sets and as soon as we were past the point of no return, another set started. I was so focused (or was I scared?) on getting out through the white water that I didn’t see the other two guys at all as I tried to swim out getting pounded wave after wave, not quite making the following wave because it was a little bigger than the previous one. Between waves I’d get sucked out just enough that if I swam with everything I had, it continued to seem that it was better to keep swimming out rather than trying to return to the beach. Finally, after about 4-5 waves, they started to get smaller again and I made it out beyond the breaking lines of waves. I was so worried that another set would come that I kept swimming until I was about 50 yards beyond where I thought the biggest waves would break, trying to catch my breath. I looked around for Whittaker and my brother, but they were nowhere to be seen. By this time I was about 200 yards off shore in the rip next to the jetty.

After resting up and getting my nerve back up, I thought I’d better go back to the beach and look for them, or at least it was a good excuse to get out of the big surf. After one of the sets I slowly made my way toward the shore until I got to a wave that I thought I could ride into the shore (it was about 15-16 feet). I took off and got about a 3-second ride of my life until the back wash caught up with me and kicked me out in front of the wave and into a free-fall that landed me just far enough in front of the wave so that its full force came crashing down on my back driving me into the sand and tumbling me so many times that I had no idea which way was up except for the instants when I hit the bottom. It was so shallow that I could almost stand up, but it is also so steep that I could not get a foothold and the outgoing water from the waves would just suck me back into the next bigger wave coming at me. By the time the next wave would get to me, I would be 25 yards off shore again and there was nothing but a 10-foot wall of white water coming at me. After that happened a couple of times, the set passed and I got washed up onto the beach enough so that I could cling to the sand.

I saw my brother 50 yards down the beach crawling up the birm on his hands and knees. I made my way over to him and asked him how he was. He said, “ I was going to yell for help, then I realized that I was a lifeguard and if I couldn’t save myself, then no one else could either”. We got up and started looking for Whittaker. He was nowhere to be seen. Gideon came over and as we were all standing there trying to figure out what to do, Whittaker came walking up from behind us. When we asked him what had happened, he said,” I thought I had died and gone to heaven (he ended up going to Harvard’s School of Divinity so he was not exaggerating). He said that he had gotten pummeled so many times by the waves and swallowed so much salt water that once he got beyond the waves, he thought he had found his salvation in heaven and just kept swimming out to sea. By the time he had realized what was actually happening, he had reached the end of the jetty. He then swam around the jetty and back to the beach on the inside of the jetty.

We all learned that day that we were not the invincible water “men” that we thought we were. We also came home feeling lucky to be together again and with a newfound respect for the ocean and Mother Nature.