TERRIFYING: Greg Long blacked out 100 miles from shore On 21 December 2012, big-wave surfer Greg Long wiped out during a winter-swell expedition at Cortes Bank, an underwater seamount 100 miles off Southern California, and vanished beneath repeated waves. There was no beach to wash onto and no lifeguard tower nearby. Long had reached the bottom of a huge wave when whitewater caught him and drove him deep. He tried to trigger his inflatable suit, but it did not lift him. After the first hold-down, he swam for a breath and came within feet of the surface. The next lip hit before he could take one, emptied his lungs and sent him down again. His body began convulsing, yet he fought the urge to inhale underwater. When another wave made swimming useless, Long climbed his leash hand over hand towards the board. He reached its tail about 10 feet below the surface, lost his grip and blacked out. This is the part big-wave footage rarely explains: the rescue had begun long before the wipeout. Long’s four-surfer group had six rescue-ski operators, plus two backup skis, because a rider in moving whitewater can disappear between waves. The crews tracked his last position, but the set repeatedly shut the door. After the fourth wave, D.K. Walsh abandoned his ski and jumped onto Long, who was floating face-down beside his board. That leash had become a marker; Long later wrote that without it, he was unlikely to have been found. Jon Walla and Frank Quirarte helped pull him onto a rescue sled, and Long began regaining consciousness on the run back to the boat. He coughed blood, received oxygen and waited five hours for a Coast Guard helicopter to lift him through the dark to a San Diego hospital. His body recovered faster than his confidence. Long paddled into big waves again within days, but later admitted that ego and fear of looking weak had rushed him back. The waves that had once filled his dreams now followed him into nightmares. He chased swells through Mavericks, Jaws, Mexico and Chile, trying to force the old feeling to return. It did not. Eventually, he left the boards and swell charts behind and stepped away. Just over a year after the accident, Long returned to Cortes Bank and paddled out alone in clean, smaller surf. The wave that changed everything was not the largest of his life. He set his rail, reached the shoulder and felt the weight finally lift.