The Vision

By January 2001, Larry “Flame” Moore had spent just over a decade being thwarted in his attempts to document a surf session at the Cortes Bank. In that time, he and Mike Parsons had launched at least three weather-aborted paddle surfing missions, and he and Mike Castillo had flown out over Bishop Rock, Cortes’ shallowest peak, perhaps 14 times. They buzzed the waves at rooftop level on west swells and north swells, during long periods and short periods, and relayed their observations back to Sean Collins. Flame returned puzzled every time. Though they found big waves, they were never the eight-story titans they had witnessed during the seminal Eddie Aikau swell of 1990.

