Joe Rogan - Kelly Slater on Surfing Wipeouts

You know a little bit easier. What is it like when one of those giant tubes crashes down on top here? Yeah, so this game Medina He ended up winning the contest It's not super fun when you eat it. I could imagine it's I mean you've probably talked to Shane that's me actually Yeah, I've talked to Shane about it. Yeah, and I mean look Shane. No one's more of an authority than Shane is Maybe not in this super hollow crazy stuff I mean whatever Shane rides everything but the biggest ways in the world changed the authority like he's had Wipeouts that he came close to dying. He probably talked to about the vest he created because of that he almost drowned He created a vest that you pull a co2 cartridge and it blasts You know this big bladder and lifts you to the surface even if you get knocked out or taken water Somebody's gonna find you and probably save you But yeah, this is that's me there So I didn't make that but that wasn't even a big one You know that for that day that was a small wave fucking huge though when that's coming down see where I'm at I'm kind of in blue water, right? So I was able to dive and kind of get under it not get sucked back over So there's a little bit of a skill that goes with wiping out so you understand that energy It's you know it's like a it's like a tornado or like a hurricane like the eye wall is the worst But you're in the center you're fine You know I always I've always wondered like could you follow a hurricane inside the center of the eye like could you just stay with? It and be okay I bet you could if you moved at a really slow speed right they don't move that they only move about ten to twenty miles an hour Right sometimes you less kind of plain go that slow no But maybe you could stay in your car right and kind of like you know find a road If you had a really good GPS system, you got a good Okay, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no Northwest go Northeast. Yeah, okay. You're gonna have to go off-road Yeah, or you'll die But so that energy all that energy is in where the lip with a you know If you're in the center that you're pretty safe But as soon as you get sucked in right into the wall that and you get pitched in the living That's when the lip spreads the water that it hits and it sends you right down to the reef especially in a place like this Where it's when you see a way that's real hollow. It's generally a lot shallower than it is High so the wave will be 15 feet and the wave water might only be five or six feet deep So think of all that energy. It's gonna hit most of it's gonna hit the reef at some point So that's the you want it you want to try to kind of fall like Wear that lips landing and then escape under it into blue water. What do you do if you know you're gonna hit a reef? You kind of just brace. You don't want to hit your head You for the most part you can tell up and down. I mean sometimes you lose your equilibrium a little bit underwater But for the most part you can tell what is up and down so you can feel it coming in I mean, I'm gonna put my arms there before I take it on my head, right? So I'm I'm like trying to be like a cat like when I hit I want to be able to I'll break my hands or feet or whatever, you know, I'm not worried about that. I don't want to get knocked out Right, right, right. So I think everyone Default is to try to cover your head You know if you hit anywhere else you're kind of okay You just don't want to hit your head and when the waves come crashing down on you Do you lose your sense of up and down? you can yeah, but You know you you also have your board connected from the leash and that's usually that's generally gonna pull up Mm-hmm, so you kind of know If you don't feel your board pulling You're kind of worried like shit. My board might hit me might spear me underwater, you know Right you can occasionally spear in the face with your board or fin or something. That's kind of spooky I was surfing with a guy who's like a big brother me I just travel with Tom Carroll is a two-time world champion We were surfing Tahiti one time together and he used to wear a helmet A lot of guys don't work. Most people don't wear a helmet. But Tommy used to wear a helmet He was real real used to it. But having something, you know, an extra say inch around your head or half inch It's like it changes your judgment a little so you got to be used to it. I always felt like it was weird It's weird for sparring to yeah, it fucks with your peripheral vision. Yeah. Yeah so it would mess with me when I tried to wear him and that extra weight and like When we're trying to on a critical wave, we're trying to pull in the barrel. We're we are dealing with inches, you know percentages of inches like just tucking your head under that lip and so you got to you got to kind of be really aware of your Range and your your ability to like tuck your head at certain places And I was never comfortable with it But I served with Tom and he wiped out and his board speared him in the ear and it broke it broke the helmet And broke his eardrum Jesus. So we were just wondering like what the hell would have happened if he didn't have his helmet on You know like probably would have killed him, you know Definitely knocked him out and we didn't have a jet ski with us that day or anything We were you know, 500 yards or more off the beach half mile off the beach somewhere At this reef you blow your drum like that. Do you have to get it surgically repaired? No you I I don't think so I think I've never just let you up. I almost busted my ear drum like six weeks ago in Hawaii just freediving I felt it like like a pinhole I could feel it like going and I kind of got dizzy and I just came up and stopped diving But um, there was a guy I Got a buddy named Greg Long. He's he has drowned and he's been attacked by a shark Not too many people can say those things Wow, and he's alive How do you get saved when he drowned? That's a really crazy story But I'll just talk about one sec But he did break his eardrum at Mavericks up in Northern, California And he just you just flounder you don't know what you think you're swimming one direction. You're it's like you have Yeah, it's like your boats turning and you don't know which there's no rudder You know and you're you don't know what's up and down and you you know you think you're swimming up and you're going sideways And it's really dangerous. There's a there's a guy in Hawaii a couple years ago that drowned Surfing out a reef he and a friend of mine caught a wave and this guy wiped out He didn't have all he had on was surf trunks and generally will wear like even a wetsuit Which is just thin, but it keeps you warm And even that's enough flotation to where if you'd got knocked out you probably come to the surface So this guy wiped out his leash broke so he lost his board and then We think the guys who were out there think that he popped his eardrum because they said they saw him hit the surface and start Like his feet were coming up and his hand was coming up And you know he was kind of just floundering around and then the next wave hit and they never saw him again But he was only in surf trunk, so they didn't ever find the body Because he didn't float up, but if he just had it even just a wetsuit just some neoprene ever found the bottom Find him the waves are huge. It was you know it was like 40 50 foot whatever But it was really unfortunate. It was a rule those things are really like sobering in the surf community because we all know each other and and You know ultimately you're doing this for fun and You know it's it's it's a heavy thing, but it's crazy that your eardrum affects you that much Yeah, I mean I've seen I've seen people that have inner ear infections And they'll get dizzy walking and I just don't know what they're doing while they're one front in front of the other they want To fall sideways. It's very strange. Yeah Well so Greg Greg long he drowned actually at a place called Cortez Bank Which is about 120 miles off the coast of Dana Point? It's just a re it's basically the the top of a mountain on an island that never hit the surface and It was discovered when I think it was a nuclear ship actually grounded itself on that reef Back, I don't know 30 years ago or something and caused a lot of cause tens of millions of dollars of damage to this ship Navy ship And yeah, I don't know if they had sounded the bottom by then and they must not have known it was there, but anyways this wave breaks when it's really big and Shane's been out there Shane was actually I'm I think shame was out there this day not positive, but I'm pretty sure shame was out during this session there's about 15 guys out dozen guys out and Greg took off on a wave and Somebody was in front of him on the wave which kind of changed his angle a little bit But he I don't think he would have made the wave anyhow, but it just put him in a little bit of a precarious situation And he ate it and was down a long time this wave has just so much energy in it because there's nothing between where the wave started and this break like it's Thousands and thousands of feet deep that you know over the whole Pacific so there's no continental shelf to slow the wave down You know if you can imagine the East Coast We have small waves a big part of that Part of that's because most of the storms go west to east and they don't come towards us But even on a hurricane our surf's not that big because we have a continental shelf that goes You know you can go out you can go out 20 miles and it's 70 feet deep some places So the swells just drag in the Pacific. They don't drag. There's just nothing to get in the way So these swells are going 35 miles an hour when they hit so it's a lot faster than a normal wave So there's all this energy in the wave and so when Greg went down this wave is probably you know 40 foot face or whatever 50 foot face He was underwater, and he's really calm. He's you know he's probably as as ready for anybody is in big surf He's totally prepared. He's done all the CPR and breathing courses and everything and he was real calm and he said he pulled his vest and it didn't work and Then he pulled another one and it didn't work and he pulled it a third time and it didn't work And so he's like oh fuck. I'm screwed You know that kind of thing, but he at that point you're when you start to pull it you're already in a little bit of a Some some guys pull it right away Just to be safe on a big wave but some guys kind of wait and go I'll see if I'm able to pull this one off and I'll save my little canister because you only have like Some of the vests have two or two canisters some have four so you don't want to have to change your canisters all over So if you're thinking gonna make that you're gonna get back to the surface, or you're okay. You can handle it You got a good breath. You're like. I'll just I won't pull it, but he pulled three times, and then he blacked out and They luckily they had really good water safety crew and I Don't know that it was his brother that saved him, but a couple of guys went and grabbed dove in and pulled him up by the leash luckily was to the leash because he wasn't floating because he didn't have the co2 and then He had taken a lot of water And they had to airlift him off the boat in height in big seas that night after dark wow and got him back to Mainland so did they do CPR on him? They did CPR Yeah, and then did he come back to consciousness came back to consciousness? Yeah, but he was awake while the airlift anybody fucked up yeah, but guys can have secondary drowning We stub water in the lungs, and you're not like aware of the symptoms or get it out I don't know they pump it out. Yeah, you can't just like hang by your ankles or anything Yeah, I think they pump it out I was with a buddy in Australia a year and a half ago And and he almost drowning got knocked out his board hit him in the chin knocked him out cold and I Was I was sitting out the back waiting for a wave and I heard everyone kind of I heard another friend screaming Luckily the waves kind of stopped and they were able to get to him pull him up on a jet ski And he had taken in some water And he's puking and coughing and all this stuff and I came up from behind and I didn't see his neck and I Heard one like I say oh he got his board hit him in the neck and in the throat and so I was expecting This artery to be cut or like the throat to be open like I was like okay I don't want to look yet. You know right because I was behind him I didn't want to get her to go around him and try to look I'm like okay Let's get him into the beach luckily. We had a jet ski because we're about a mile offshore and I just I held on the jet ski and kind of I just squeezed on behind on it We have a sled on the back of the jet ski like a body big giant bodyboard with handles So I just kind of straddled him my other friend rode the ski all the way up on the beach And then I thought okay when we get to the beach. I'm gonna have to see this is gonna be gory But luckily he wasn't opened up. He just had a huge hematoma here On his neck, and he it didn't slice him. It's just like contusion like a blunt force That's very lucky. Yeah, but he spent two or three days in the hospital because they were worried about secondary drowning Which I don't exactly know what secondary drowning means, but I guess when you have water salt water in your lungs It can I don't know maybe from the way you lay down or I don't know I should probably be super school But I mean yeah You must see a lot of crazy shit in the water like I'm seeing some crazy stuff. Yeah Wildlife, and I mean you must see an amazing amount of fish and the shark Copics super it never ends You know like I mean anyone in the world I meet is like I'm scared sharks Tell me about sharks and then that story doesn't ever end that story like it's a primal fear right getting eaten by a monster Well you feel so vulnerable in the water I mean maybe you feel less vulnerable because you're so comfortable and you have a board and you move so quick with the board But like someone like no you you are totally vulnerable if a great white wants you oh, yeah completely if you if a shark over I mean even if I six-foot shark once you but That's the that's the misconception. You know everyone thinks oh shark Death you know jaws just fucked everybody up. No. I was seven or something when sure when John I was six I think when jaws came out and I watched it you know I watched freakin poltergeist when I was like ten You know my parents let me watch everything and mine, too Maybe that's why I always thought there was some boogeyman in the closet. You know or whatever, but the Yeah, and keeps you prepared. Maybe that's why I started training with the dragon. You know