Carving Giants

Wilkinson has a board for any wave you’d want to ride, and some for waves you’d want nothing to do with.

It was late in the day, and the sets at Waimea were 25 feet and growing. The morning had been completely flat, so this swell, even by Hawaiian standards, had come up fast. Ben Wilkinson, fresh off a full day of construction and house painting, face and arms covered in paint, rolled up in his van an hour before sunset and paddled out.

There was a pack of 40 or so surfers already out in the lineup, including some famed professional big-wave riders. With one of the biggest sets of the day approaching, sending many of the surfers scurrying, Wilkinson discreetly moved toward his go-to lineup: extremely deep and underneath the other surfers. When the first wave of the set rolled through, threatening to take out the entire pack, Wilkinson called the wave’s bluff and held his ground, spun his board around at the last minute, and took off under the lip. While it was an impressive display of bravado, most of the lineup had written off any chance of him making the drop as they scrambled toward the second wave of the set. Ten seconds later, Wilkinson glided nonchalantly over the shoulder of the wave and into the channel.

You could say that Wilkinson was built for big waves. The first thing you notice when encountering him is his sheer mass. His arms, shoulders, and neck are thick as a linebacker’s, and when you shake his hand, it feels like you’re slapping paws with a grizzly. Next comes his nose: it twists in several directions before finishing off at a severe angle from where it begins, thanks to various scraps on and off