That whole spring had been filled with massive highs from everything that was going on with us and around us. Malte Simmer, Craig Maisonville, David Ezzy, Fred Haywood, Mike Eskimo, Brian Carlstrom and Alex Aguera were all captured on film by Arnaud De Rosnay riding huge Hookipa, bigger than anyone had ever seen. Those twenty three images changed everything for Hookipa. Suddenly it was all about these men riding these huge waves, culminating in Fred's singular ride of a lifetime.

The surf had been huge all day, and there was lots of watching before they went out. Some of them got out and got rolled around pretty good, while Fred made it completely outside. These huge walls of water were closing out Hookipa from point to point. In a case like that, there was no going back in easily. Fred decided to just wait for the biggest one he could imagine, thinking it would get him the farthest in to shore if nothing else. He sailed around outside for forty five minutes until this beast came over the horizon.

The wind was sketchy, and he was on a TriRadial that would be about 5.3 meters today. He knew the break, and knew what he was looking for to give him a shot at making it in without getting creamed. He bore off, got speed, and caught the wave of the day.

I guess we would all ask, what next? No one had seen anything like this before. It was huge beyond all our imagination. Fred said the next thing that happened was no wind in the bowl. No wind. He was standing and waiting for what might happen next.

This shot has been around some. As you can see from Arnaud's signature in the lower right, this image was #3 of 100 copies. Fred wasn't thinking about that though. he was wondering how he was going to survive that mass of water that was falling behind him.

Here you barely see the leading edge of his mast in the center of the photo. These pictures are about 1 meter long and 80cm tall. The quality is faded, being they are twenty years old, but the drama is still there. Fred, at this point was deep in the froth. He said it felt like the mass of foam was twenty feet thick.

Here again, just the tip of the mast shows. He is now having trouble with breathing. Still hurtling forward, but surrounded by aerated water.

Finally he surged forward, out of the foam, water spilling from his sail five meters up. His momentum took him into the breeze, His sail worked. And he made it to the beach.

When he landed, he took his gear apart without saying much, got in his car and went home and slept and ate for two days.

When Arnaud got the photos back from Maui Custom Color, he invited the gang to his house for a big celebration. With Queen and Jean-Luc Ponty as background, and the big slide screen, he played them out with the mastery of a showman. The first images showed the scale of the swell as Malte, and Craig got wasted. Then came Fred's wave. He held the images for minutes so we could study them and be amazed. As they progressed we were hooting and yelling, the music louder and louder, until the final frame.

Those images would end up all over the world, from Paris Match to Stern and Life magazine, and in every windsurfing publication there was. Arnaud's payoff must have been huge to be on the cover of Life magazine. Fred's was this set of images and the memory of having been given a pass on big trouble.

That night, little did we know until my three year old son, Zeppo, came down and said that Jenna, Arnaud's young wife, was leaking, that his daughter, Alize', was to be born later that evening. Nothing but peaks. Waves of peaks. Simply amazing.