“I just like his character. He’s eccentric. He’s elusive. I just like how he rolls. He knows how to shape a good board, but unless you see him in the line-up or in the car park at Sunset, he’s pretty hard to find.”

There’s a story behind every story. And, as is often the case, the story behind the story is often better than the story itself. Which brings us to today’s On The Rock webisode. “We originally wanted to do a story about Hog, about Hog’s Hawaii, but it just morphed into a story about Hog’s favourite board,” Jon Frank explained. Enter Owl Chapman, one of the most mythical characters in the surfing world. Nathan ‘Hog’ Hedge’s intimate six-year relationship with is nine-foot Chapman-shaped single fin is a love affair of epic proportions – the guy loves that board like a good woman. It was a story screaming to be told. But the only hitch was tracking down Chapman, notoriously elusive, with a healthy dislike of the surf media. An apprentice to Dick Brewer, an accomplice of Michael Peterson in his pomp, Owl is a legend of the early 70’s North Shore surf scene. But despite his infamy, Owl shuns the spotlight. As a rule, he refuses interview requests. Sean Doherty, who was editor of Tracks magazine for a decade, reckons he’s tried to interview Owl at least half a dozen times. But Owl has always denied Doherty the pleasure of delving into his often random thought patterns.

Hog and Frank bounced between Owl’s stomping ground at Sunset Beach to his shaping bay at Waialua and back again trying to track down the legend. Hog was flying home tomorrow and it soon became an all-day mission. The boys prowled Owl’s favourite haunts, sweating and scratching along Hawaii’s seven-mile miracle, but came up empty-handed. A last gasp phone call to Pancho Sullivan had Hog in contact with Chapman’s nephew, 90’s Pipeline warrior Shawn Briley, and eventually Chapman himself. A late afternoon rendezvous was arranged. “The eagle has landed,” Hog cooed into his cell phone. But when the boys arrived at the Sunset Beach car park, Owl and his distinctive red rhino-chaser were nowhere to be seen. Just when they’d given up all hope, trudging back along the bike path to Hog’s digs, a distinctive figure emerged from the surf. And it didn’t take long for the legend to find his groove.

“It’s a stupid thing riding smaller boards, thinking that you’re better than you really are,” Owl quickly asserted, eyes narrowing at the parade of wafer thin whiz-sticks passing along the bike path. “And really everyone thinks they’re better than they really are. Your board defines that line that shows you the truth. Sometimes you won’t admit the truth. You lie to yourself. You keep telling yourself, ‘I can do it, I can do it, I can do it’. When really it’s just a matter of time before the odds stack up against you, that there’s so many bricks on your back that you can’t take another step. In other words, you drive yourself into the ground, head first like an ostrich. You can’t see nothing because you’re so blind with stupidity.”

At 58, Chapman still rides big Sunset. And he does it on giant boards; sleek, finely-crafted, blood-red single fins, some pushing the 12-foot mark. Back in the 50’s Buzzy Trent coined the term “gun” for big-wave surfboards, reasoning that, “You can’t shoot elephants with a BB rifle. You need an elephant gun”. And Owl maintains that big waves need big guns. He’s tuned his nephew Kalani Chapman into the same trip – a few years ago Kalani paddled into the wave of the season at Pipeline on a 9’6”, three-inch thick single fin shaped by his uncle and has spent this season picking off second-reef bombs aboard a massive, pink pintail.

“It was my generation that refined the modern day surfboard to what it is today,” Owl explained. “And I hand it to Simon Anderson for putting three fins on a surfboard. That elevated surfing to another place. But the single fin had not evolved to the point that it had it to go. It stopped. Therefore I spent a lot of time keeping the single fin alive. It’s my responsibility to pass it on to the next generation, who is Mr. Nathan Hedge, from Sydney, Australia, who really loves surfing.”

20 minutes flew by in a blur, with Owl waxing lyrical about a range of topics – the great sage of Sunset Beach finding a receptive audience in Hog and Frank. Tom Carroll walked blindly into the eye of the storm, trapped briefly by a flurry of words bursting forth like machine-gun fire, before escaping to safer ground. Eventually Hog and Frank also made their exit, with Owl insisting Hog depart with one of his latest design innovations – a flat rocker, wide-nosed, three-finned beast (thank-you Simon). “I want you to catch 10 waves on it; five frontside, five backside. You’ve got my phone number and I want you to call me and tell me that if you don’t rip ass on this surfboard, my name is not Owl Chapman.”

The day is fading. It’s Hog’s last one on the North Shore, bringing his 16th consecutive winter surf season in Hawaii to an end. But he won’t go home empty-handed. In fact, a new love affair may have just begun. //BRENDAN McALOON

Owen Wright was wrecked.

Lying in front of the TV, he could hardly muster the energy to move his head to acknowledge my entrance to the room. He could barely even muster the strength to scoop out a spoonful of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and direct it into his mouth. Since returning to the Curl team house from a surf check with Mick Fanning earlier this morning, Owen hadn’t budged off the lounge. He’d been on there so long that his stringbean frame had started to slip down the back of the cushions, so far that only his head was now popping out.

“This is making me a better human being!” he barked in his defence.

Owen deserved a day of sloth. He’s surfed twice a day, eight hours a day, for the past two weeks unbroken. A seemingly endless series of weather systems have been bouncing across the North Pacific, one after the other from Kamchatka to the Aleutians. Watching an animated swell for Hawaii chart has been like watching a game of Pong. Like most surfers on the North Shore, when the swell dropped down to a meagre four foot this morning, Owen made his Sunday a day of rest.

Pancho, Dunny, and Kekoa all played golf. Mick hung out with his wife, Karissa. Taylor took up some real estate on the lounge and watched the Dallas Cowboys play the Pittsburgh Steelers. Down on the beach the Sunday hordes from town made the most of a beautiful, balmy day and a skinny roll call of pros in the water.

This winter on the North Shore has been the best in five years, maybe 10. “It’d have to be up there, for sure,” reckons Nathan Hedge, who’s had his fill of surf and is due to fly home to Australia tomorrow. “Seven-five out of 10, maybe eight. Just swell after swell. We’ve had a few years of bad north winds and not a lot of swell, but this year there’s been a lot of west swells, and that’s what I love about it. One after the other pretty much, hey? There hasn’t been that many go-to-the-mall onshore days. No town runs. Jack shit down days, pretty much just surfing every day of the week.”

Hog had two surfs at Kammies today on his Owl Chapman 9’0”. He’s not pushing himself too hard, just staying loose and trying to smooth out some bruised muscles and wrenched limbs after he took a beating at Pipe the other day.

“I’m kinda getting surfed out,” reckons Hog, “but when the swell’s west and the winds are trade, what are you gonna do? Not surf? My body’s holding in there, although it’s a bit sore after the wipeout at Pipe the other day. But you see those barrelling lefts and it’s not that hard to motivate yourself to get back out there.”

The other upside to the glut of surf is that the usual brain-bleeding intensity in the water has been downgraded somewhat. Everyone’s been getting their share. “Yeah, it seems a little quieter in the water,” reckons Hog. “It’s been pretty spread out and everyone has been getting their waves, so it’s been a little less intense than usual. There’s been a lot of Pipe days. It’s been more chilled for sure and everyone seems pretty happy.”

“I remember being over here in Hawaii as a kid and it being like this, just swell after swell, but I reckon it’s been at least five years since we had a winter this consistent. Just good tradewinds, beautiful weather, clean swell. Rain at night and long sunny days.”

The downside is that, at some stage, the visiting surfers are going to have to tear themselves away from it. “Looking forward to going home? Yes and no,” says Hog, rubbing his chin. “It’s pretty bloody nice here, and it’s hard to leave when there’s swell. There’s two more coming this week. But getting home to see the family and Christmas is just gold though. You leave for the airport with mixed emotions when it’s like this.”

The swell is about to dwindle slightly tomorrow, the first day of the waiting period for the Pipe Masters, but then surge again on Tuesday. There’s another spike coming Friday. A good season, it seems, is just getting better.

“I rate the season nine out of 10,” gesticulates Hawaiian guru Owl Chapman down at Sunset Beach this afternoon. “And it’s not done yet. I got a feeling there’s a big one coming. A big one.” /SEAN DOHERTY