The surf is up - Maverick’s big-wave competition set for Saturday
Demian Bulwa, Chronicle Staff Writer
The surfing Smith brothers of Santa Cruz, Tyler and Russell, spent Wednesday night holed up in a hotel off Interstate 5 in Yreka. The seat of Siskiyou County has no waves, nor shoreline, but it happens to be halfway between two surf competitions.
The brothers were on their way to a big-wave showdown at Nelscott Reef in Lincoln City, Ore. But Thursday morning they pointed Russell’s surfboard-packed Toyota Tundra back toward the Bay Area - back toward even bigger waves.
That’s because Jeff Clark, founder of the Maverick’s Surf Contest in Half Moon Bay, had consulted a bevy of weather charts and had decided to make “the call.”
Maverick’s is on for 8 a.m. Saturday off Pillar Point, where Clark expects waves with 30-foot faces to greet 24 of the world’s best and bravest athletes invited to what some have dubbed the “Super Bowl of surfing.”
