:36:02
As the morning progressed...
:36:04
... the hundred-year swell
surging out of the North Pacific...
:36:07
... was giving rise
to bigger and bigger waves.
:36:11
Finally, everybody was out
of the water. I was the only one left.
:36:15
And I was having a real hard time
trying to gear myself for this thing.
:36:20
Because I knew that basically
it was a situation...
:36:23
...where your chances of surviving one
of these waves was about fifty-fifty.
:36:27
And I'm thinking to myself:
:36:29
"Is it worth giving up the farm
for a stupid wave?"
:36:32
I finally had to just paddle
outside the lineup a hundred yards...
:36:38
...and sit on my board
with my head down...
:36:40
...and kind of go into another gear.
:36:44
And the final decision was that
I would never have forgiven myself...
:36:48
...if I had allowed
this day to go by...
:36:51
...without at least trying for a wave.
:36:55
Noll turned and paddled...
:36:56
... for what was then considered
the biggest wave ever attempted.
:37:00
No photographers were on hand
to capture his wave.
:37:03
Not a single shot or a single
frame of footage exists.
:37:07
All that remains are the memories
of the handful of surfers...
:37:11
... who were there that day
to witness his momentous ride.
:37:15
Greg Noll starts to paddle,
and we're all in our cars just going:
:37:19
"Oh, my God, look at this."
:37:21
He's starting to paddle into this thing.
It's this huge, black, massive wall.
:37:25
We watch him.
He takes off, stands up.
:37:27
He's this little speck,
and you're going, "Oh, my God."
:37:30
And he drops in, and he looks like
a little tiny cartoon figure.
:37:33
He gets that Greg Noll stance...
:37:35
...where he gets into this thing
and goes, "I'm going."
:37:38
Drops down, drops down
and gets to the bottom.
:37:40
The whole thing's already starting
to come over on top of him.
:37:44
And he just kind of, like,
stepped off the rail.
:37:47
There was nowhere to go.
That was it.
:37:49
The fact that he made the drop,
got to the bottom of the wave...
:37:52
It was, like, oblivion after that.
The whole thing just: