Malibu Gets a Swellegant Swell Event

When a big, powerful Southern Hemisphere swell is sweeping along the California Riviera—Malibu lacks nothing. But Malibu may be getting a little too much of a good thing approaching Labor Day Weekend, as a Southern Hemisphere swell has rumbled more than 6,000 miles through the Pacific and arrived with enough power to take out staircases and decks at Malibu Colony.

Last weekend, as the  went off in decent surf, a major swell event was happening 4,000 miles over the southwest horizon at a Tahitian reef called Teahupoo. In surfer talk, Chopes was going off the richter at an almost historic size—closing out the channel three times and sending boats and surfers scurrying for their lives as some incredibly brave tow surfers challenged waves that exploded on the reef like buildings collapsing.

Take a look at that Teahupoo session here if you want to be amazed.

That "Code Red" Teahupoo session was created by a Southern Hemisphere swell generated by an abnormally powerful storm in the southern ocean. The swell generated by that storm unwrapped as it moved north, and an indication of its strength was a swell period of 25 seconds. Swell period is the time between the passage of two successive swell crests past a fixed point. The longer the period, the more energy the swell is carrying.

True to hopes, the swell began to show in Malibu on Wednesday morning, and all who got a taste of it, tasted a significant amount of power in the big, long lines of swell rolling in from a storm 6,000 miles to the south, from below New Zealand.

The angle of the swell filled every nook and cranny of the coast from Sunset to County Line, and points beyond.

Surfers at Latigo, Surfrider and Westward Beach reveled in a Southern Hemisphere swell that arrived with significant power. The swell on Wednesday wasn't huge, but it was, in a word: Meaty. Powerful, some thought abnormally so, and a lot of surfers and homeowners went to bed with visions of double-overhead walls—and exposed seawalls—dancing in their heads.

Surfer dreams came true as Malibu was nearly swamped by an A+ south swell the next day. It was more power than a lot of surfers could handle, and even some of Malibu's surf spots were a little overwhelmed. There were 15 or more surfers challenging double overhead waves at Colony Reef on Thursday morning. The rising tide brought with it a set that cleaned up everyone and pushed them to the beach. After the set cleared, every one of the 15 was gone.

A little farther to the east, at the far end of Malibu Colony, the rising tide and swell came together in swift collision—stripping away giant swaths of sand and laying bare the rip-rap and seawalls protecting the frontline Colony homes.

South swells aren't known for doing damage, but this was a south swell with chutzpah and as the 5.93 high tide peaked at high noon, all that energy was crawling up the back of the tide and detonating directly on the rip-rap, the seawalls, those exposed stairs and maybe a little higher.

As seen from Malibu Road, there was open-ocean, Hawaii-class power exploding 20 to 30 feet in the air. It looked serious—and it was. Before too long, there were giant chunks of torn-off wood drifting alarmingly through the lineup at Colony Reef, and observers began to wonder if houses were getting blasted down there.

Colony resident Marshall Coben had videoed the water approaching the Colony beach on Wednesday and Thursday. At 1:53 p.m. on Thursday, Coben wryly confirmed that damage was being done.

"Ask the lifeguards at Surfrider if they saw [Colony resident] Marty Hamburger's deck go by ... Pretty sure they will answer in the affirmative."

In the afternoon as the tide was dropping close to a .45 low at 6:45, Coben reported, "I just walked the beach and have seen lots of decks and stairs reduced to rubble. I used [a Colony house] to access that end and put one foot on his stairs and fell through. I looked closer and found the whole staircase is hanging by a thread.”

On Thursday a surf safari from Zuma Beach to Paradise Cove and Latigo found that a lot of Malibu spots were overloaded, washed out and not handling the overabundance of swell. The world famous Surfrider Beach was editing all that energy beautifully, and it was the place for an all-day Bacchanal of big surf and bigger crowds. Hundreds of outsiders from God Knows Where flooded into town, including the likes of John Peck, Herbie Fletcher, Brad Gerlach, Ken Bradshaw and Joel Tudor. They joined local rogues like Allen Sarlo, Andy Lyon, Anthony Petruso, Ricky Schaffer and too many to name.

"That's the biggest I've seen it since the 1960s," said Peck, known for being a quick, daring backside surfer at Pipeline in the 1960s—when Pipeline was Teahupoo. "I've been timing the sets and some of them have 40 waves."

And then Peck paddled out to join Rabbi Schifrin and another guy with a huge beard to bring some ZZ Top to the lineup. (All kidding aside, Peck is 67-years-old and charging it like a youngster).

The sets were rumbling in every 20 to 30 minutes or so, and there was surfing that was as spectacular as waves that were about as big as Malibu gets. Tudor and Skylar Peak shared a wave, both of them crisscrossing backside on their longboards, keeping an eye on each other, but also the .

There were waves that almost looked big enough to break past the front of the Pier—a rare event and a lifetime achievement for anyone who dared such a wave.

Sarlo made it through the pier several times, approaching it at speed and looking for the gaps that hid broken pilings that could have killed him if he'd hit them. Sarlo shot the pier several times, made it through on all of them and even did a big reentry in the shorebreak— detonating in front of the parking lot.

Shooting the Malibu Pier is dangerous business. The pilings aren't angled correctly, and you have to pick a wave that stays green as it moves through. Back in the late 1950s, an African-American surfer named Nick Gabaldon died when he hit the pier while trying to shoot it. The incident is mentioned in the 1957 novella Gidget.

Shooting the pier frontside is dangerous enough, but those who try it with their back to the wave are doing something even more dangerous. Tudor approached the Pier backside and wisely pulled out of a wave that broke within the pilings and would have cheese gratered the talented souther.

Meanwhile, around the corner at the Colony, residents were surveying the kind of coastal damage usually associated with winter storms. The stairs that had broken loose from one Colony home earlier in the day circled around in the current and came back to haunt the place:

"Those stairs circled around inside the crescent of our beach all day afternoon, banging into houses and then moving back out beyond the surfzone,” Coben said. “Last night my neighbor ... paddled out solo at dusk. He thought he was sitting by a bunch of seaweed. I shouted him away and when it got caught by a wave and all those big timbers came up, he realized how close he had been.”

Malibu is getting a good thing right now, or maybe too much of a good thing, if you are a Colony resident now missing your staircase, or parts of your deck, or parts of your home. The National Weather Service has a high-surf warning for strong waves and rip-currents, extending through Labor Day weekend.

It's a little crazy out there, so be careful.