Riding Giants

Well, you wonder, how dangerous could the "graveyard" be if Clark survived it solo for 15 years? Then word of Mavericks gets around, and legendary surfers from Hawaii's North Shore come to visit. One of the sport's champions, Mark Foo, is killed after wiping out on a medium wave. One theory is that the tether to his board got caught on rocks and he drowned. Another surfer thinks he felt or sensed somebody under the water who shouldn't have been there. Exactly one year later, during a memorial to Foo, another surfer is drowned.

The documentary "Riding Giants" shows surfers gathered to discuss and mourn the lost men. It does not show Jeff Clark during those previous 15 years because, of course, he was alone. And what a species of aloneness it was, to plunge into the cold ocean and swim out 45 minutes for a few seconds of exhilaration at the risk of your life. Clark and his kind live at the intersection of courage, madness, skill and obsession.

Consider Laird Hamilton, the current golden boy of the sport, who has cashed in with endorsement contracts, modeling assignments and magazine covers. But no, I am not comparing him unfavorably to Clark, because Hamilton is also a superb athlete and a driven man. Hanging around as a kid with Hawaii's big wave riders of the 1960s, he introduced his divorced mom to one of them, who became his stepfather and tutor; Laird grew up to become surfing's first superstar.

What Hamilton has done is go farther from land than any rider had thought to go, seeking "remote offshore reefs capable of producing unimaginable waves." At first this involved paddling two hours and then waiting up to two hours for a wave. Then Hamilton invents "towing surfing," in which a jet ski tows him out to the far reefs, and slingshots him onto waves moving so fast it is impossible to access them any other way.

The jet ski driver's other job is to pick up Hamilton again after the ride, or be prepared to rescue him. The current thriller "Open Water" sho...