This past Sunday, 43-year-old big-wave surfer Peter Mel nabbed his first victory in the Mavericks Invitational. Mel, a Santa Cruz native, has surfed the competition since the inaugural contest in 1999. The fabled break that off the California coast near Half Moon Bay had after first started riding its giant faces in the winter of 1975, but it has recently garnered a lot of attention. This past fall Twentieth Century Fox released , a biopic about the late surfer Jay Moriarity, with Gerard Butler starring as his mentor, Frosty Hesson.
This February at the , director will premiere Discovering Mavericks, an 80-minute documentary on the evolution of the break. The film features interviews with Clark, Mel, and Shane Dorian, among others. “The true story of Mavericks is way heavier than any Hollywood movie could imagine,” according to the trailer.
—Joe Spring