Beyond Rincon

An oral history of George Greenough and friends’ mythical session during the massive West Coast swell of ‘69

You may think you know Rincon, with its familiar, tapering walls wrapping from Indicator all the way through the Cove, but if you’d been standing on the cobblestones on December 5, 1969, you likely wouldn’t have recognized what you saw. That’s because a swell event like the one that day—the “Swell of the Century,” as it was called at the time—had never happened there before and hasn’t happened since. Massive walls of water crested on the horizon, tripping over bits of bathymetry that had never even created breaking waves before.

Shortboard revolutionary George Greenough had seen reports on the evening news of homes being damaged by the swell on the North Shore of Oahu the day before, and he knew something wicked was approaching. So on the morning of December 5, he grabbed his trusty red spoon and headed down to Rincon. What follows is an oral account of a swell that redefined what was possible at the Queen of the Coast, as told by Greenough and friends Kirk Putnam and Mike Davis.

George Greenough: My paddle out was easy; the swell was just starting to show. Then it hit. Every set was bigger than the last.

Kirk Putnam: We arrived at Rincon at about 1:00 p.m., parking along the highway 200 yards past the Cove. There were cameras and the hero guys were pulling up.