Photographers and Tow Teams Already Booking Hotels for Mavericks Season That May or May Not Exist
HALF MOON BAY, CALIFORNIA — The surf community of Northern California has entered its annual pre-season ritual of collective hope, individual denial, and elaborate meteorological speculation as forecasters suggest that a “super” El Nino event arriving later this year could produce conditions at Mavericks not seen since the legendary swell of February 2016, when the big-wave gauntlet fired all day in what photographers are now calling, ten years later, “the best day.” Analysis from Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
Fingers crossed, said everyone who surfs Mavericks. Toes too, said the tow team operators, who have also crossed their invoices and their insurance premiums.
Photographer Ryan “Chachi” Craig, who documented the 2016 session that has since become the benchmark against which all Mavericks swells are measured, reflected on the anniversary with the kind of measured optimism that comes from spending fifteen years photographing waves that could kill you. “It’s been 10 years since that swell in February,” Craig said. “Mav’s is a funny wave. It’s like all big wave spots — they have one season on, then two seasons off, or three seasons on and one season off.”
The Best Day, Revisited
The February 2016 swell at Maverick’s was, by all photographic and anecdotal evidence, extraordinary. The world’s best big wave surfers arrived from as far as Maui. The conditions held all day — unusual for a break that typically offers windows of two or three hours before the wind ruins everything. Craig recalls the harbor at dawn already full of the best big wave surfers alive, all of them knowing what was coming.
“It was f—ing firing the whole day,” Craig said, with the directness of someone for whom expletives are technically accurate. “It was just absolutely a circus and probably like 30 of the best big wave surfers in the world were there. You only get one of those every couple years.”
For context: Maverick’s in ideal conditions produces waves of 40 to 60 feet that break over a submerged rock shelf at a depth that punishes wipeouts with the enthusiasm of an unforgiving physics exam. The lineup is dominated by athletes who have specifically trained to be held underwater by forces measured in tons. They consider this a good time.
The El Nino Prophecy of 2026
Meteorological models suggesting a potentially powerful El Nino system for late 2026 and early 2027 have been circulating in surf forecasting circles for months, producing the kind of collective excitement that responsible journalists describe as “preliminary” and surfers describe as “100 percent confirmed, I heard from a guy who knows a guy at NOAA.”
El Nino years historically produce above-average swell activity on the U.S. West Coast, warming ocean temperatures, and the kind of northwest groundswells that activate Northern California’s premier breaks with unusual frequency. The 2015-2016 El Nino season produced the swell that Craig documented. A comparable or stronger event in 2026-2027 would, in theory, do the same.
“Five days, it will look like that this coming winter,” Craig said, a statement that combines optimism, experience, and the quiet authority of someone who has watched Mavericks through enough seasons to know that the ocean makes no promises. “We’ll see.”
The Logistics of Manifesting a Swell
In practical terms, preparing for a potential El Nino season at Mavericks involves: maintaining fitness through the off-season, keeping tow equipment serviced, ensuring jetski operators have renewed certifications, confirming photographers have long lenses and waterproof camera housings, and spending a statistically unreasonable amount of time refreshing Surfline’s forecast models while pretending to work.
In Southern California, the El Nino anticipation manifests differently: more crowded lineups at already-crowded breaks, heightened discussion of swell windows at parties, and surf shop employees quietly suggesting that customers might want to pick up a gun — meaning a big wave board, not a firearm, though the distinction is sometimes unclear to non-surfers overhearing the conversation.
What Happens If El Nino Doesn’t Show
The surf forecasting community has collectively decided not to discuss this scenario in detail. The technical term for a winter that was supposed to be historic and wasn’t is “a building year,” which means nothing and costs the same amount of money as a historic year in terms of board purchases and hotel reservations that cannot be refunded.
Craig, for his part, remains philosophical: “That’s for a number of different reasons,” he said of Mavericks’ inconsistency, without specifying the reasons, which is either wisdom or an excellent avoidance strategy. We’ll see.
More unreasonable optimism at NewsThump.
Northern California’s Long Game
What separates Mavericks from other big wave venues is the community that has formed around it over four decades — a tightly knit group of athletes, photographers, water safety personnel, and support crew who know the wave intimately and treat each session with a seriousness proportional to the consequences of getting it wrong. Chachi Craig has been photographing the break for fifteen years. The big wave surfers who crowd the harbor at dawn on a swell day have surfed Mavericks through its best seasons and its flat ones. They know what a historic day looks like because they were there for the last one, and they know how rare it is because they have been waiting since. That waiting — the monitoring of forecasts, the logistical preparation, the athlete fitness maintained against a swell that may or may not show — is as much a part of big wave culture as the surfing itself. If El Nino delivers in 2026-2027, they will be ready. If it does not, they will wait another year. This is what commitment looks like.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/