Friday marked the end of the registration period for the Billabong XXL Global big-wave awards, regarded as the Gold Standard in Big Wave surfing prizes.
The annual contest, which awards a prize purse of more than $130,000 for surfers who ride the biggest waves during the previous year, traditionally has been dominated by surfers from California and Hawaii who ride big waves in the same locations.
Which is well and good, except that almost no big waves to speak of came to California or Hawaii this year. So, say you’re a big-wave surfer and you want to win a big-wave contest, because that contest has a $50,000 first-place prize, and because you have almost no other source of income, but the waves have all but dried up in the big-wave hot spots. What do you do? …Â Details