The Bride

David's bride Sarah moments before the deed is done. We love her. On Santa Cruz: the city has a population of aprox. 54,000 and is tucked into the northern edge of the Monterey Bay. In 1791, the Mission Santa Cruz was established - the twelfth in California. A university was built with a 'banana slug' mascot. Then, in the 1950s, surfing was discovered and the sleepy hollow became a mecca for surfers and middle-aged water hippies who arrived from the world over. Classic spots include Steamers Lane and three and four mile points - simply that distance on Highway 1 from the Santa Cruz lighthouse. Barnies are not welcome. Farther north at Pillar Point Harbor near Half Moon Bay are Mavericks which, on a good swell out of the Pacific, crest at 50 feet or higher. The break is caused by an unusually-shaped underwater rock. Mavericks Point was discovered by Jeff Clark in 1975 and he surfed the Giants for 15 years before the world caught up with him and them in 1991. The story is recently documented in Riding Giants. Driving to the wedding I see the Mavericks on a deserted day - rocky cliffs, kelp and angry froth greet the suicidals who revel in this action. Me, I prefer boogy boarding closer to a sandy shore.

"Surfing, alone among sports, generates laughter at its very suggestion, and this is because it turns not a skill into an art, but an inexplicable and useless urge into a vital way of life."
MATT WARSHAW, Maverick's: The Story of Big-Wave Surfing