This one's especially for Joe!. The NY Times isn't exactly the best known medium for surfers but there was a great article in today's Sports section. about the Giant waves 50 miles off the SoCal coast kicked up by the recent storms. Here is an excerpt:

In the past seven years, all four surfers have either won or been nominated for Billabong XXL Awards, considered the top honor among the big-wave set. Gerlach, Long and Parsons are considered the most experienced surfers of Cortes Bank. Several waves, they said, far eclipsed anything they had ever seen. The surfers traded vast, swooping carves and dropped down vertical blue walls 80 feet high or more at perhaps 45 miles an hour — faster than they had ever surfed. They rode cautiously, they said, realizing the consequences of a collision with a 20-pound, lead-weighted surfboard, or a harrowing pummeling beneath the dense foam. “There was so much water moving, and so much turbulence, that you could have had a worst-case scenario of a guy getting flushed through the white water and you simply might have never found him,” Baker said.