[ News and Events ]
CHEYNE'S CARVING 360
Great Untold Stories Part 376
Category: General
Posted by: tim
Came across this little nugget from an old issue of the now defunct Deep magazine. In the mid-90s Cheyne Horan went to Hawaii with a full quiver of fat-arsed, big wave lazor zaps with the express intention of trying to pull a carving 360 at solid Sunset. Despite a few failed efforts and zero fanfare, he did actually pull one off, but in typical Cheyne style, almost no one saw it. Almost no one. Always keen to see Cheyne get his due as one of the most innovative surfers of his era, I recorded this account from surfer/artist/musician/shaper Chris Lundy some years later:
"We’d spent the better part of that whole day at the copy shop working on Rainbow Rock stuff, and got back to Sunset just in time for Cheyne to get into the last heat of the community Hui Expression Session. I just hung out and watched. It was pretty good Sunset and the last heat went through its paces, nothing all that eventful. The horn blew and all the judges up in the tower stood up and started folding their chairs. Everyone was pretty burnt out from a long day at the beach and probably more than ready to clear out of there. 10 seconds after the final horn blew, Cheyne took off on that wave. He was on that board that was obviously built to do something like this, a normal looking 8’ gun in the front half but with the big wide “Lazer Zap” tail that was bound to come in handy for something sooner or later. It was an eight foot, good looking, lined up wave, and he caught it out on the north west peak. He went way out in the flat, and did this two stage bottom turn, but still fluid. The point at which he started to direct up the face he did a whole second turn and went up and arced it all the way across the lip, heading back towards the tube, and at no point did he hit anything to pivot it round. He never bounced off whitewater or lip or anything, projecting upwards and back across the lip, and down the face with no pivot. It stopped me dead in my tracks. That’s the move everybody’d been talking about since I was a kid. I know a few people have pulled 360’s in some pretty solid surf, like Slater last year at Haleiwa, but if I’m not mistaken, there was always some part of that where they pivoted or hit something to bring it around. Cheyne never bounced off anything, a full carve on a lined up eight footer at Sunset. It was a real wave, it was doing it’s thing, and he pulled this whole thing in one big smooth move, a full carving 360 on an eight foot wave at Sunset. The moment I realised what I’d seen, I looked up at the judges’ tower, figuring everybody would be blowing their minds. But they were all up there with their backs turned, packing their gear to go home. I started a bit more of a desperate visual scan of the beach and the car park down towards the lifeguard tower, looking for some sign that someone had seen this thing go down, but everyone was looking the other way, business as usual and it occurred to me then that nobody saw it! There was nobody paddling out that would have seen it, nobody on the beach watching. The irony was that it was in this contest situation and no one saw the carving 360, probably the first and only one ever. It was exciting. It was the big elusive dream move. I went home and I had to ring him up. When he picked up and said “Hello”, I just said, “I saw it.” He was stoked, and said “I’m glad somebody saw it, cause I’ll have a hard time convincing them of this one!”
"We’d spent the better part of that whole day at the copy shop working on Rainbow Rock stuff, and got back to Sunset just in time for Cheyne to get into the last heat of the community Hui Expression Session. I just hung out and watched. It was pretty good Sunset and the last heat went through its paces, nothing all that eventful. The horn blew and all the judges up in the tower stood up and started folding their chairs. Everyone was pretty burnt out from a long day at the beach and probably more than ready to clear out of there. 10 seconds after the final horn blew, Cheyne took off on that wave. He was on that board that was obviously built to do something like this, a normal looking 8’ gun in the front half but with the big wide “Lazer Zap” tail that was bound to come in handy for something sooner or later. It was an eight foot, good looking, lined up wave, and he caught it out on the north west peak. He went way out in the flat, and did this two stage bottom turn, but still fluid. The point at which he started to direct up the face he did a whole second turn and went up and arced it all the way across the lip, heading back towards the tube, and at no point did he hit anything to pivot it round. He never bounced off whitewater or lip or anything, projecting upwards and back across the lip, and down the face with no pivot. It stopped me dead in my tracks. That’s the move everybody’d been talking about since I was a kid. I know a few people have pulled 360’s in some pretty solid surf, like Slater last year at Haleiwa, but if I’m not mistaken, there was always some part of that where they pivoted or hit something to bring it around. Cheyne never bounced off anything, a full carve on a lined up eight footer at Sunset. It was a real wave, it was doing it’s thing, and he pulled this whole thing in one big smooth move, a full carving 360 on an eight foot wave at Sunset. The moment I realised what I’d seen, I looked up at the judges’ tower, figuring everybody would be blowing their minds. But they were all up there with their backs turned, packing their gear to go home. I started a bit more of a desperate visual scan of the beach and the car park down towards the lifeguard tower, looking for some sign that someone had seen this thing go down, but everyone was looking the other way, business as usual and it occurred to me then that nobody saw it! There was nobody paddling out that would have seen it, nobody on the beach watching. The irony was that it was in this contest situation and no one saw the carving 360, probably the first and only one ever. It was exciting. It was the big elusive dream move. I went home and I had to ring him up. When he picked up and said “Hello”, I just said, “I saw it.” He was stoked, and said “I’m glad somebody saw it, cause I’ll have a hard time convincing them of this one!”