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UPDATE: SURFER DIES AT GHOST TREE
Monterey local Peter Davi drowns in giant surf
by Marcus Sanders
Although no one is exactly certain of how Peter Davi died, after talking
with numerous people who were at Ghost Tree on Tuesday, December
4th, as well as friends of Davi's, we've managed to piece together a
clearer picture of both who Davi was as well as what happened out there.
Davi and Tashnick paddled their ten-foot guns out around 10am from
Stillwater Cove. By this point, the lineup had about a dozen tow teams
and six PWCs with photographers as well as dozens of people lining the
cliff. The swell was inconsistent but somewhere in the 30 to 50 foot
range.
They sat on the shoulder and Tashnick successfully paddled into one or
two waves, while Davi paddled into a few he couldn't catch. (While Davi
and others first paddle-surfed here in the early eighties, as old surf
buddy and fellow Monterey local Brent Bispo explained, "there's not much
space out there. If you don't make the drop, you're on the rocks, so we
ended up exploring some other big-wave spots in the area.")
After an hour and a half, Davi paddled out to the lineup where the tow
teams were. "I'm 45 years old and I want to get one of these waves," he
told Kelly Sorenson, one of the PWC drivers and Monterey-area surf shop
owner.
Santa Cruz surfer Randy Reyes, who was partnered up with Davi's old
friend Anthony Ruffo, offered to tow Davi into a couple waves on his gun.
Davi successfully rode one, and then when a helicopter showed up on the
scene, he said he was over it. (Davi was never a fan of the media circus.)
Reyes and Ruffo offered him a ride to shore, but he declined, saying he
wanted to catch one more by paddling.
Davi paddled in towards the inside, and here's where things are still
muddled. No one is sure whether he tried to catch a wave and wiped out
or if he was caught inside. Either way, his leash snapped at the base and
he ended up swimming on the inside.
One report is that Davi started swimming towards shore and made it a
couple hundred yards through the swirl and the chop and the whitewater
to the two giant rock islands outside Stillwater Cove. "Davi knew every
inch of this stretch of coast," explained Bispo. "He was 6'2", super strong,
and extremely strong-willed." But by the time he got towards the rocks,
he was lost to anyone on the cliff who was able to see. (Due to the nature
of the swell, the tow teams out the back couldn't have seen him
swimming that far in.)
Meanwhile, the lineup was getting more and more packed, and tow teams
Osh Bartlett and Peter Garaway and Ruffo and Reyes decided to come in
together and head up to a less crowded zone. "We made it to the beach
first, then Reyes and Ruffo came jamming back in and said they saw a
body," Bartlett said. "Ruffo and I yelled at someone to call 911 and
jammed back out into Stillwater Cove."
"Davi was lying face down in a 10'x10' patch of kelp," Bartlett continued.
"Ruffo got him and lifted him onto by rescue sled, which we were lucky
we had, 'cause he's a big dude. You could see he'd been out there a while,
he was white and really stiff. We motored in as fast as we could, and by
the time we got to the beach (about 2 minutes) the paramedics were
already on their way down the hill. The administered oxygen and sucked
the fluid from his lungs, but it was too late."
The official cause of death is drowning, but the coroner also found head
trauma.
Davi was a third generation commercial fisherman; his grandfather was a
legendary captain from Monterey's Cannery Row glory days who ran 90-
foot fishing boats. Davi took on the family career full-time after high
school; he'd work on herring boats for a couple months, save a bunch of
money and head to the North Shore for the winter, where he spent years
cracking into the super-tight Pipe hierarchy.
"We'd squid fish all night in the summers," remembers Bispo. "Then we
could surf all day. Pete's whole life was centered on the ocean. He was
either surfing, out on a boat or walking around collecting jade; he had a
huge jade collection."
By all accounts, Davi was a local's local. "If he liked you, he'd give you the
shirt off his back," Bispo continued. "If he didn't, watch out."
Makua Rothman, who won the O'Neill World Cup of Surfing Tuesday at
maxing Sunset Beach, said this about his final wave: "Unfortunately, one
of my friends never made it today in California, and he just sent me that
wave. So this is for bruddah Pete Davi. All you guys who don't know, he
passed away today. Aloha bruddah, we love you."
He leaves behind a 17-year-old son.
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