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| Show Up and Blow Up - Jamie Sterling |
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By Tiff Hervey  He’s a big wave hit man.. A madman with a passport inked up with five-star surf locales like Tasmania, Tahiti, Puerto Escondido, Europe, Chile, South Africa, Samoa, Australia, Indo and Ireland. For Jamie Sterling, it’s all about paying that extra thousand dollars on a last minute plane ticket and knowing that he’s going to get 25-foot surf. “When I leave Honolulu Airport, I already have that anxiety,” Sterls says, his hazel eyes shining. “I already know I’m going to score. It’s a great feeling knowing that before you get there.” Jamie lives now, in an endless winter, traveling the world year-round in search and score of the biggest waves Mother Nature has to offer. “Every time I travel, it’s another new wave I get to surf. It’s fun to think about how many new waves I’ve surfed in the last five years or so.” Until recently, Jamie had never actually won anything in his life. Never won a pro surf contest, or even an amateur one. But this year, at 25-years-old, he received two prestigious awards for his hard-charging prowess and won his first surf competition ever at the Maestro del Gringo Tube Riding Contest. He is also breaking into the business side of things. As an owner of a piece of the Pipeline Posse pie, Sterls and the boys are elevating what used to be an underground crew into a corporate surf company. Home on the North Shore of O‘ahu for about six months out of the year, Jamie has just enough days to enjoy the winter season and tend to business. Schooled from boyhood by some of North Shore’s most core surfers and coming of age to make his own course, Jamie Sterling is a truly unique surf story. There is nothing traditional about the path Jamie is pursuing, but his pure stoke for surf is classic. We know your roots are on the North Shore, but you were also educated by some legendary watermen growing up. Who were some of your early influences in surfing? Gary Linden came into my life when I was about 12. He was my first sponsor, and he shaped boards for me. He still charges really big waves on the biggest days. It was really cool that someone with that much knowledge could pass it on to me and teach me a lot of things about surfing and life in general.  The late Ronnie Burns? He was my mom’s fiancé, and it was rad just being around his energy. He taught me a lot when I was starting to surf on my own. He would take me to spots like Goat Island and Monster Mush. It was rad to just be enlightened by someone like that at such a young age, when you’re like a sponge and everything you learn, you really pick up quickly. I was pretty blessed he came into my life when he did and I think my surfing talent attributes to him. As I got older, I kept his vision— his energy— in me, and sometimes it feels like he kinda surfs through me in a way. What’s the most important thing he taught you? Just to be humble. Let your surfing do the talking. That’s what he did and everyone respected him for that. Just keep your cool and follow your dreams. When he rode for Billabong, they were starting to make adventure surf film—no contests. He was making a name for himself riding at G-Land all summer and not really following the contest circuit. Before he passed away, he really concentrated more on editorial surfing and it opened the door for guys like me today to be able to make a living outside of the contest route. Did you grow up competing? I did NSSA and HASA as a grom. I sort of liked it, but not so much because it was always in small waves. But it taught me a lot. It was fun socializing on the weekends. It taught me to be a better surfer because I was surfing against the cream of the crop from Hawai‘i. I never really liked the feeling I got from the other kids when I was surfing with them though. It seemed like a lot of parents pushed their kids way too hard at a young age and for me, my parents weren’t super aggressive with it so I think that’s why I’m still super hungry for it. You don’t want to push your kids too hard. You want to be there for them but you want to let them do it themselves. Did you ever have dreams of being a pro on the WCT? No. I always dreamed of doing it differently, like it’s never been done before. I’ve been sticking to my passion and it’s been working out well. I’ve gotten to do a lot of things no one has ever done. I worked hard for it though for a lot of years. But it’s worth it. I’m right where I want to be in my career and life. When did you realize you were addicted to big waves? Probably at 14 or 15 years old, surfing big Sunset, which at the time was 10 to 12 feet. Just catching waves on the same day that Kelly Slater caught waves, ya know? Knowing that you were out there when the best surfers in the world were out, and you were handling and surviving it. Being able to go brag about it to your friends who were playing in the shore break. I was doing something my friends weren’t doing. I was paddling out on my 7’4. I had a quiver of four boards back in the day: a 7’4, 6’8, 6’3 and 5’8 and that’s all I needed. Could you describe the feeling to those who would never dare ride where you ride? It’s like driving your car super fast on a super curvy road, with nobody on the road. So you can drive the whole road, switch lanes, you don’t have to stay in your lane. You feel that gravity tugging and pulling on you. It’s so satisfying to get the wave, complete it and touch the sand when you get back to the beach—all your endorphins pumping. It starts from like four days before the swell hits to a week after, the dopamine in your body is ignited and so like, for 10 days you’re in a state of bliss. Um…what is this Deep Throat Award you won at the Billabong XXL Awards? It’s a porno I made. [Laughs] Nah, it’s like the most committed guy, trying the hardest, charging the hardest, something along those lines. The reason why I think they gave it to me is because I was in Chile on a trip and they called the Red Bull contest on in South Africa, so I flew last minute into Cape Town the morning of the event. Landed there at 9 am, the contest was already going by the time I got there. I ended up having to surf my heat at 10:30 am. So I went straight from the airport to the harbor, changed, put on my 4/3 gloves, hood, boots, packed up my 9’4—I actually already had that waxed—I was pretty prepared because I knew what I was gonna have to do. Slid right onto the zodiak, drove out to the mother boat and surfed the heat, ended up surfing the contest the whole day, and made the final that day. The waves were really nice: 15 to 18 feet, glassy, sunny day. And you also won the Surfline Overall Performance Award? I was up for two: biggest paddle-in and overall performance and I’m really stoked I won that award. It emphasizes on the guy who is paddling and towing at the most wide range of spots around the world throughout the year. I’m 50-50. I like paddling. I like towing. So it suits my persona. It’s been quite a year. Awards. Your first contest win. And I hear you’re a businessman now. What’s going on with Pipeline Posse? We’re bringing it up to a broader scale. Basically we’re gonna rival Quiksilver and Billabong and any other great surf company that’s been around for years. We have a really good backer. And it’s gonna be really good quality clothes. It’s a lot of hands-on. I’ve been learning a lot of business. We’re trying to mix saltwater with Harvard. Braden, J-Fred, Flynn and the rest of the guys who surf Pipe are the salt water, and the Harvard are the guys in California doing the designs and Rick, the investor. The Posse goes corpo. It’s my company. It’s our company. It’s nice to say that. It’s a really great feeling knowing we have some security now as professional surfers. Now being with Pipeline Posse, we are really blessed. We have a lifetime agreement with this company. It’s always been a two-year deal, a one-year deal and then when December comes around, you’re not really sure where your bread-and-butter is gonna come from next year. With this company, we’re going to be able to have endless amounts of fun out here on the North Shore for years to come. So what’s the first step in taking over the surf universe? We’re working on a lot of big stuff. We’re gonna be doing clothes off the bat. Our online stores will launch soon. We will do some movies, bigger TV production stuff down the line. We will also endorse other people’s products, cross-branding Pipeline Posse with another brand, things we use on the daily as pro surfers. Not only are we bringing more people into the Posse, we’re advertising in every magazine, we have a website, we have our own clothes factory in LA. We have people in the Posse behind desks now! So you’re cool with Joe Redneck from Kansas sporting Pipeline Posse gear? You don’t have to be a really good surfer at Pipe. You’re part of the Posse when you’re friends with one of us, or you like Pipeline or your passion is surfing. It’s not a closed-door, VIP kind of company. We’re basically marketing the best guys at Pipeline, doing what we love to do. We’re still getting mixed reviews. For some reason, people are afraid to put on a Pipeline Posse T-shirt. They think we’re like, bad boys or something. But we’re not—we’re just basically an entity of the best surfers at Pipeline. Well, the majority of consumers have a North Shore and Blue Crush education on the scene, so they may be afraid of the “regulating” aspect. We’re the best guys out at Pipe and we want to make it safe for us and anyone else in the world coming to test their skills at Pipe. We just want everyone to enter and leave the water safely, and that’s what we enforce. Speaking of safety, when do you decide to put that helmet on? Depends on how I’m feeling and how the waves are. If the waves are below 70 percent, like a C or B- kind of day, then I’ll put a helmet on. If the waves are really perfect and I’m feeling good, I won’t put it on because I think I’m gonna make every wave anyway. But if I think there’s gonna be some dues paid that day, I’ll put it on. It depends on how I’m feeling when I wake up that day too, if I’m tired or whatever. Any superstitions or pre-session rituals? I’m not a superstitious guy. No rituals. I usually have tea in the morning lately. I’m really into this tea I’ve been drinking. Sometimes I’ll have a pair of boardshorts that fit me really good and if the waves are really serious I’ll wear those again because I know they won’t come off. [Laughs] Injuries incurred on the job? I hit my head at Teahupo‘o. I’ve broken both eardrums, once at Rocky Rights and once at Teahupo‘o. I’ve had a couple bad cases of staph from Hawai‘i, bad reef cuts. A lot of scars from the reef, but nothing too major where it kept me out of the water for more than two weeks. Impressive. So many surfers have such a long list of injuries. Do you ever consider the worst-case scenario in what you do? Death is not too much on my mind. It was when I was younger, but now that I’ve been doing it for so long, it’s all part of the game. Death could happen at any moment and I accept, that riding big waves, I could die someday. Dying doing what you love to do wouldn’t be such a bad way to die, either. I don’t realty think about it though. It’s just factored into the equation. What’s goes through your head when you get held under? I tune out everything and go into complete Zen. I don’t concentrate on what’s coming next. I tell myself to turn off the lights. Go limp and don’t think about coming up and just enjoy it. If you don’t enjoy it, that’s a huge part of surfing, so you have to like to wipeout. Sometimes wiping out is more fun than actually surfing a wave. You get more of an adrenaline rush sometimes wiping out on a wave. Do you have a specific regimen for keeping fit? I have a really healthy diet. I do a lot of yoga, run the beach a lot, incorporating a lot of medicine ball and balance ball training that Kahea Hart has been showing me. Also, I practice a lot of visualization while I’m doing yoga. A lot of meditation. Visualizing what you’re gonna ride tomorrow. You have to really want to do it when it comes down to it. Be really passionate about it and accept that you might have the time of your life or you might get hurt. You hope for the best, expect the worst. How was your run in with La Costa (The Thing) in Chile? It’s called “the thing” because it’s this heavy, slabby, shallow reef break. For the first few feet it’s perfect, and then right when you think you’re gonna come out it’s got this thing at the end of it: this shallow patch of reef that slurps up and it forms about three little ledges and tries to grab you. Sometimes you can surf right through it, and sometimes you gotta air down it like a stair case. Those sessions are incorporated into the untitled big wave documentary I’m shooting with Andrew Kopjak and surfers Mark Healey, Rusty and Greg Long. So, you’ve been spending alot of time in South America. What is the “Peru Project”? It’s a surf documentary we shot with Dana Brown last year, just surfing through Peru, exploring the culture and all the great mysteries. We went to Machu Pichu. Just getting a better understanding of what Peru is all about. How do you get the opportunity to surf all these new spots? Sometimes locals in the area contact me and want me to come down and surf with them. Sometimes it’s a contest. Or a connection like Coco Nagales, who is Chile’s best big wave surfer. I’ve been working with him on discovering some other spots in Chile. We’ve got five already, but there’s a lot of uncharted territory to explore. What is it like becoming a world traveler? I’ve learned a lot about myself. I’ve learned how to be patient, different ways to cook food. A lot of different cultures influence me in different ways. Out of all the waves you have surfed in the world, can you pick a favorite? Pipeline. [Big smile.] Pipeline is my favorite wave. Words to live by? Treat others how you wish to be treated. Just be happy and enjoy life as if it may be your
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