GRAHAM EZZY - PRINCE OF THE SEA
Story & Photos John Carter
Raised on the north shore of Maui and son of world famous sail designer, it’s hardly surprising that Graham Ezzy has become one of the most prominent wave riders on the planet. But cutting loose with the most radical windsurfers in the world at Ho’okipa is just one facet of Graham’s incredible talents.
Back in 2009 he gained a place at the prestigious Princeton University. Four years later, with an English Literature degree secured, Ezzy Jnr. is back in Hawai’i mixing up his progressive style of wave sailing with his writing aspirations.
We despatched Windsurf’s heavyweight intellectual protagonist, John ‘Three A-levels’ Carter for a highbrow cross-examination of Graham, to find out more about his ambitions, life on Maui and a few insights into his latest literary projects.
(This feature originally appeared in the November/December 2013 issue of Windsurf Magazine. To read more features like this first, Print and Digital subscriptions are available. Prices include delivery globally for 10 x issues a year!)
You would imagine the son of Dave Ezzy, must have been drip-fed on windsurfing since the day he was born. With a sail loft in the garden and his dad heading for Ho’okipa every windy afternoon, surely it just had to be a matter of time before his son was hooked on sailing?
GE: “My dad didn’t make a special an effort to push windsurfing into my life. He left that up to me. But given that his whole life revolves around windsurfing, I couldn’t escape being a part of it. When I was really little my dad was a designer and board member of North Sails. When I was four, he left North and focused on Ezzy Sails, which he had started way before I was born. Every month, the mailman would deliver windsurfing magazines from around the world. During some point of my childhood, even Josh Angulo lived at our house for a short period of time. I can’t escape it! I am a child of windsurfing. Even so, I didn’t step onto a windsurf board until I was 10 or so. And that wasn’t with my dad. It was at a summer kids’ camp at Kanaha. All my friends did it, so I did it to. After that, my dad started teaching and sailing with me”
Having one of the best designers in the world must have its advantages but does their ambition to make the best wave sails in the world end up with family squabbles at the beach?
GE: “I hear other riders complain about not having any influence on their sails but I get to have a say in everything I ride. I love R&D and am definitely a part of it. Development is never-ending. Lighter, faster, more efficient, more range. We want a sail that’s quick and easy to rig and allows the rider to forget about the rig. We make sails that are built for purpose. David is the first to ride on every sail, then Kevin Pritchard and myself get to test them. By the time we release a sail into production, we always agree on the design in the end. But on the path to that final model, there can be some disagreement but that disagreement is usually good, it reveals an area of the design that needs to be examined more closely so that’s what we do.”
Before he headed off to Princeton Graham could always be easily spotted out on the water, because he was pretty much the only guy out at Ho’okipa wearing a Gath helmet. Originally it had been something his dad had insisted on but the Gath soon became a trademark until an accident on the US tour made him think otherwise.
GE: “The helmet was my trademark. I liked that it protected my head and that it looked different. In what other extreme sport do people not wear helmets? Look at skiing and snowboarding. All the riders wear a helmet now. I like to tease Ricardo [Campello] that he should start wearing a helmet because it’s cool, but at the end of the day it’s just common sense! I don’t wear mine as often now. The reasoning behind this isn’t very logical. Last summer, I smashed up my face during the Oregon AWT event. I cut up my skin and broke a tooth down to my gum. After it happened, I was in a ton of pain. The tooth’s nerve was exposed and would bleed constantly.
Losing the tooth affected me emotionally more than any broken bone or ripped skin and believe me I’ve had plenty of both. Teeth don’t fix themselves. While it looks perfect, the replacement tooth is completely fake and foreign to my body. And, what body part matters more than the face? And on the face, the mouth. Without a mouth, you can’t eat or speak. After the incident, I thought, how am I going to protect my face? I could add a full-on face guard to my helmet, ‘à la American Football’. But even that doesn’t fully protect everything. If I want to be safe, I might as well stop windsurfing, as windsurfing is about taking risks. I choose to risk my life and limb with the windsurfing I do. After those thoughts, wearing a helmet all the time seems silly and counter to my go-big-or-go-home windsurfing philosophy on the whole. That said, I still adamantly support people wearing helmets. Especially those riders who don’t put so much emphasis on taking physical risk. I still wear my Gath – just not all the time!”
While most of us dream of living in a place like Hawaii with wind and waves at your disposal, many Maui residents often feel the need to escape Island life, Graham is no exception.
GE: “Maui, I love-slash-hate it, I guess. Growing up here, I know everybody. In the grocery store, out to eat and at the post office, so I run into someone every 5 minutes. I like the small-town feel, but I need a dose of anonymity too. I need to spend time in places where I can go somewhere or do something without anyone knowing. So yes, Maui is great for windsurfing and watersports. And it is beautiful. But there is a huge cultural-deficit. There are talented people living on the island. Artists, successful businessmen and Pulitzer-prize-winning writers, but they moved to Maui to get away from society, so there are no communities. I find myself spending a lot of time in New York City. All my friends from Princeton live there now, making NYC a sort of small town too. When I’m there, I run into people in coffee shops and on the street. But it’s New York City – one of the biggest cultural hotspots in the world”
Leaving windsurfing behind and headed for Princeton for four years was obviously a major decision in Graham’s life. But the chance to attend the sixth highest rated university in the world was obviously an opportunity too good to miss.
GE “My father left the decision up to me. He sat me down and said: “Don’t do what you think I want you to do. Don’t do what you think other people want you to do. You have to find what you want and do that, no matter what it is.”
I wanted to go to college. And from my high school, everyone goes to college, so it would have been weird to be the only one to stay on Maui. During my final year of high school, I decided that if I didn’t get into one of my first choice schools, I would take the year just to windsurf and reapply the following year. Princeton was by far my first choice. After I was accepted, I planned to defer my enrolment for a year so that I could train and compete on the PWA tour without any other distractions. But then I met a European girl who was also just accepted to Princeton. We met up that summer, I fell in love, and I headed to Princeton that fall. We have long since broken up, but I’m forever happy to have gone to school right away. I graduated at 21, free to go back to windsurfing full-time but with a host of new friends and a life-changing experience. Princeton was a tough four years, but I emerged with a degree and many life-long friends. I did not start with English. I originally was studying economics. I made a late switch so my education was a bit two faced. My first two years were heavy economics but then I switched to two years of very concentrated literature. I passed everything so was pretty pleased when I graduated!”
So pretty much four years away from Ho’okipa must have taken its toll on Graham’s level of sailing or did the break actually help iron out the rough spots and allow him to redefine his style?
GE: “I definitely missed being able to train all the time. But during my time at Princeton, I progressed more than I had in the previous four years. I rowed (lightweight) for my first 2 years and that kept me in good physical shape. And I went back to Maui for all my holidays. Though, the whole thing felt like I was juggling. At the end, if I had to go one more day, all the balls would have fallen. Or so it felt”
Any new moves in the pipeline?
There’s always something new to try! Lately, I’ve been going for no-hand goiters but so far I have only pulled a couple. I’m trying to get more consistent on the ‘Hangover’, which is a frontside, flat-spin 360, preferably with a slide. My generation of sailor, guys like myself and Brawzinho are just coming into their own. Everyone is pushing the limits. It is a wonderful time to be on the water in Hawaii. I love doing the turns but also love doing all the tricks when I am sailing. There are so many rotations and new things to try. Either taking a hand off doing the taka or goiter or doing different spins. Windsurfing is a hard sport and the only way to get consistent at these moves is to train them hard. No-handed jumps and wave moves are really cool too. I just started doing the no-handed goiters which can be kind of scary. No-handed pushloops were the first no-handed move I did. They are fun but also really scary because after you throw the rotation and let go, there is no control. I have had a few where I get stuck upside down and land on the rig. That is when I just curl up in a ball and hope for the best. It’s a tough move to try every day because the risk is a bit higher, so it is more of a photo shoot or contest move!
Taka Secrets?
I have no idea what I did to please the taka Gods enough for them to bless me with the power to pull that move. I’ve been doing them since I was 12 and was the first to consistently do them in down-the-line conditions, pioneering the carving taka. Somehow that move just works for me.
What is the atmosphere like on the water at Ho’okipa these days, is it still quiet aggressive or is it mellower than the old days?
Way more mellow than the old days! Back in the 80s it was all aggression and fights. It mattered how long you’d been on Maui by the month. My dad was part of the very first generation of windsurfers at Ho’okipa, way back in 1981, with Mike Waltze being the pioneer. I hear a lot of stories from him about Ho’okipa in the 80s being a gnarly place, tales of very well-known pros beating people up in the shorebreak because they were new to Ho’okipa and not respecting the rules. Ho’okipa is definitely more friendly than then. It might be hard to catch waves as a tourist, but you definitely won’t get beaten up.
What other sailors are your biggest influences and why?
I’m influenced by everybody. I love windsurfing and watch what everyone does. My biggest influences are Jason Polakow, Levi Siver, Mark Angulo, and Josh Angulo. Polakow pushes the borders of wave riding with his vertical, charging attacks on big waves. Levi was the first to bring the tricks into powerful lines on the wave. Mark invented almost all the tricks. And Josh has serious style and flow in his riding.
With his Princeton era over Graham is now free to either get a real job or follow his passion and see what happens with his windsurfing career. Right now it looks like he is trying to juggle with both options.
GE: “Windsurfing IS a real job! At the end of last year, I was upset with the windsurfing industry and I started looking for finance jobs in NYC. But after the interviews, I thought “What the hell am I doing? I don’t want to quit windsurfing!” Right now, I’m windsurfing and writing. I’m working on two books – a novel and a collection of short stories, poems, and essays. The first book is set in Guincho, it’s a novel. It’s about two guys that just finished college and they are spending the summer in Portugal before they start work. One of them is a windsurfer, so that is why they chose to go there. They end up getting in trouble with the local mafia and owing a lot of money to different people. I have spent a lot of time there, and I started imagining all the underworlds that go on there. The other book is called ‘A Sailors Almanac’ which is a bunch of short stories about travelling as a windsurfer. Some of them are about sailing and some about stories on the road. I hope to publish them one day but right now they are far away from being finished. Let’s see what happens.”
Thanks Graham.