Glen Moncata coordinates about 20 surf contests in Hawaii every year on behalf of his employer, Quiksilver Inc., but his favorite is the world-famous Quiksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau, at Waimea Bay on Oahu’s North Shore.
Not that the contest always takes place. In fact, in the 31 years since it was started, the contest in honor of legendary Hawaiian waterman Eddie Aikau (who disappeared in rough seas off Molokai after paddling off to get help for his crewmates of the capsized sailing vessel Hokule‘a, in 1978) has been staged only 8-1/2 times — because it can’t proceed unless George Downing, the longtime contest director, is confident the wave faces will be in the 40- to 50-foot range for at least a whole day.
The contest scheduled for the current season might also be scratched, because the waves during the waiting period of Dec. 1 through Feb. 29 so far have not been consistently big enough. Hopes were high that it would be held Feb. 10, but by the time the sun rose that day, Moncata and his colleagues had learned that the expected huges waves had diminished, so Downing called it off — despite the inconvenience to the tens of thousands of spectators who had gathered on the beach, the additional thousands who were still stuck in traffic, the police and lifeguards, and even the 28 surfers invited to be in the contest.
“It was definitely a hard call, but it was the right call,” Moncata said later.
He said, too, that the cancellation cost Quiksilver about $300,000, which the global, $1.4 billion-a-year surfwear company will absorb as a cost of doing business.
Besides being event coordinator for “The Eddie,” Moncata is vice president of sales and marketing for Quiksilver in Hawaii, where it has nine stores and about 200 employees. He joined the company in 1980 not long after moving here from California, where he had graduated from John Muir High School in Pasadena and also attended California State University at Fullerton.
Monacata, 67, lives in Kailua with his wife, Meredith, with whom he has four adult children.
Question: I was watching the surfing network on cable the other morning (Wednesday, Feb. 10), waiting for the Quiksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau contest to start, but then the announcers got around to interviewing you and you had to announce that the meet had been canceled. Did that take a lot of guts to do that, considering all the buildup?
Answer: Well, you know I’ve been doing this contest for 31 years. It’s not the first time it’s happened. … Through the years I’ve probably been down to the beach 40 times to look at it on the morning, and the swells never showed up. The contest has been held only 8-1/2 times. … We have a set standard that we started with and we’ll never change. That’s what makes it so prestigious. When it comes down to it, we need eight hours of 40-foot surf. But the contest wasn’t this big back in the early ’90s. So, of course, it was a lot of pressure to cancel it.
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Q: What do you mean by 8-1/2 contests?
A: One year we went out in the morning and we had 40-foot surf, but in four hours it just diminished, and we’re not going to sacrifice of the integrity of the contest by running the rest of the contest in 20- to 30-foot waves.
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Q:Did you call a winner?
A: No we didn’t. We split the prize money evenly through all the guys.
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Q: I understand the guy who actually says, “No, we’re not going to go ahead with the contest” is George Downing. Why is he the guy who gets to make that call?
A: Because he knows Waimea better than anybody in the world. He was surfing that spot back in the ’50s. He also has data from back 30 and 40 years ago of big wave events that have happened in Hawaii, even in the old days before we had buoys and anything like that. George would depend on ships at sea and weather maps done by the military with little flags on them telling him which way the wind would blow. … So George was very, very good at that.
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Q: Doesn’t Downing have a connection with the origin of this longtime contest?
A: He does. He is the original director of the contest, since 1986. He wasn’t there for the first year when we ran it at Sunset Beach. But I went down and pestered him enough to where he finally agreed to do the contest, but in agreeing to do it, he said Eddie’s favorite wave was Waimea, it wasn’t Sunset. … Waimea was his beach, because he was the first lifeguard there. He said if you’re going to honor Eddie with a contest like this, in his name, then it should be at Waimea, and it has to be to Eddie’s standard. He said Eddie went out on the biggest, gnarliest days, when nobody else went out, and George, of course, surfed with him out there, in the ’60s and ’70s, so he knew what lit Eddie up. When Eddie got real excited is when it got 25 feet or better.
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Q: Downing’s son is a past winner, right?
A: Yes, Keone, in 1991. And Eddie Aikau’s brother Clyde was the first one at Waimea.
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Q: Why was the first contest at Sunset?
A: Sunset Beach was the first because it was more predictable, the waves, and we all felt Eddie loved the spot, but when I wanted to elevate the contest, and get it as pure as I could get it, the only guy who could do that for me would be George Downing . … I knew that George had the credentials to do the contest and also the integrity to keep it the way it was.
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Q: With all the big-wave surfing contests around the world now, does that present a difficult marketing challenge for you, in terms of why is this one so special?
A: No, not at all. We have a set standard, and that’s what makes it so prestigious. And this has created a fraternity of big wave riders around the world.
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Q: I’m amazed that many of the invitees get here on such short notice to participate in the contest.
A: Well, I had a guy, Grant “Twiggy” Baker from South Africa; he flew 30 hours to get here. And another guy, Jeremy Flores from Reunion Island, it took him 35 hours to get here. But the amazing thing is every competitor but Garrett (McNamara) — who injured his shoulder at Maverick’s earlier in the year — was there waitin’ to go.
You gotta remember, out of all the contests, if you ask any surfer, any big wave rider, which one would you rather be in, every one of them would say “The Eddie.” Because it’s the most prestigious.
One of the big-wave contests that the World Surfing League had in Mexico, it started out in the 18-plus range in the morning; but by the time the finals came, it was 10 feet. But they had to finish it.
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Q: How much does it cost to put on this event?
A: On a day that it runs it’s probably about $800,000. If it doesn’t run, it’s about $300,000. In the old days it was just some scaffolding, five judges, some spotters with calculators to go down to the bay, and, you know, in two hours, or in an hour, we would have everything set and ready to go.
With the scope of it now, it takes about a full day, maybe 14-15 hours of daylight to put it in. Like this last one, they started at 6 in the morning and finished at 1 in the morning. You gotta realize you’re building a city. Because, you know, when it goes off, it’s like bringing the city of Kailua to Waimea Bay when everybody comes.
I mean, I think on Wednesday (Feb. 10), I think we had a flyover and at the peak I think they said it was about 58,000 people. And there would have been a lot more. I talked to the officers out there, the police, and they said once we made the call, people who were actually in bumper-to-bumper traffic spun around and started turning the other way to go back home.
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Q: Some people have complained that there are so many contests now out there (on the North Shore) that people who want to be there just surfing have to get out of the way. What do you think about that?
A: Well, we’ve tried to be as friendly to the community as possible. We put up blockades. I think this year we had 16 special duty police officers to keep traffic going. We have parking. One thing, the City and County and the state have been great with us. They’ve granted our permits, they’ve waived different things for this event. They’ve been great. But we try as far as we can to help the situation. And, you know, any day that it’s giant out at Waimea, or the news says it’s going to be 40 feet, I don’t care if there’s a contest going on or not, it’s going to be bumper-to-bumper.
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Q: How much time do you have to give everybody in advance when you think you might decide the contest is a go?
A: Well, we notify the city and state that we’re looking at a swell model that looks like it could be in our range. We put everybody on alert. As far as our production crew, we need to give them at least 30 hours before.
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Q: Are you talking about the people who build the stands and stuff?
A: Yeah. The people who build the city. And, you know, in this day and age, I would say the Internet and TV thing probably is at least 50 percent of the cost of the contest. Like, we would have had six cameras on land in different spots, and also a camera, a live feed from the water. So you got seven cameras; it’s like if you went into KHNL, a studio.
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Q: About how many people does it take to help you set up?
A: Oh, I’d say … just my guys who build the city, there’s about 30 of them.
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Q: Are they independent contractors, small businesses, union people, what are they?
A: They’re just local friends who’ve done this forever, and they’re proud to do it. They are stoked to help.
Like there’s one guy, his name is Terry Ahui. Terry is actually the head of Hawaiian Water Patrol (which operates the jet skis used during the contest), and when I get down there on Tuesday, here’s Terry setting up scaffolding, you know, like 50 feet in the air. Everybody chips in. That’s what’s so great about this contest. It’s not only the Quiksilver contest, it’s not only our contest. It’s the contest for the Hawaiian surfers and the Hawaiian people.
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Q: Yeah, it does seem to have a super connection.
A: It’s got a great connection. If you think about it, if we would have had a contest that day (Feb. 10), we would have probably had more people at our contest than the Pro Bowl had. …
When we ran in 2009, the last time, I think we had more viewers than the Super Bowl. We were worldwide, everywhere. We actually, in 2009, sent a bird up, a satellite bird, and with the signal from the satellite, we let the world take it free. So ESPN could have it. All Brazil, Europe, everybody had it. So you start looking at those numbers, you go, “Holy cow!” … The day after we called off the contest the other day we were the No. 1 “like” on Facebook.
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Q: Where does the income come from to support this? I mean, I know Quiksilver is a sponsor …
A: Well, that’s it. We’re the only sponsor, too. The income comes from selling products — you know, “Eddie Would Go” shirts and event products — but the rest of it is just absorbed in the cost of doing business for our company.
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Q: Do you think this event will continue beyond your time at Quiksilver, and I guess all our lives?
A: Oh yes. This is a … I mean, sometimes you don’t know what you’re going to get, and what I got on this was something I have to keep around for as long as I live. (Laughter) You drop it and everybody would just shoot me or something. I wouldn’t be welcome on any of the beaches, especially at Waimea, if I ever walked away from this. And we wouldn’t.
The big thing about the Aikau contest, too, is we have an opening ceremony on the first Thursday after Thanksgiving, and we’ve had that for all these years. Basically, we bring in all of the invitees and the alternates, we have a big Hawaiian luau, we have a big paddle out there, they all get in a big circle and pay homage to Eddie’s spirit. The Hokule‘a’s been there a couple times …
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Q: Sitting out in the bay?
A: Sitting out in the bay.
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Q: Before the waves show up, I suppose.
A: Oh, no. No. Last year, when we had the 30th (2015), Nainoa (Thompson) brought the Hokule‘a in with the original crew that had been with Eddie, and the waves were starting to get bigger, and they had to bring the boat out a little farther and keep it out there. We had the jet skis just in case something would happen. They had ropes on it so they could pull it to safety.
And that (the ceremony) is really the celebration of Eddie’s life. The contest is the icing on the cake.
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Q: How optimistic are you that you might still be able to hold the contest this season, by Feb. 29?
A: Well, we’ve got two storms out there right now, one that comes in the 22nd, 23rd, … and then there’s another big swell forecast for Thursday and Friday, the 25th and 26th. And like we all say, “the Bay calls the day,” and we’ll sit there and wait it out and see what we got.
