Man plucked from theater to join hunt for big waves

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Ross Clarke-Jones grabs Cronulla bricklayer to go on big wave hunt

Surfersvillage Global Surf News, 30 August, 2012 : - - All Peter de Haan wanted was an autograph for his five-year-old son Jett. Instead, he found himself on a jetski in the cold and pitch dark alongside a friendly 'maniac', staring at the biggest wall of water he had ever seen. The Cronulla bricklayer has lived to tell the extraordinary tale of how he went to the movies with his wife and ended up in the middle of Bass Strait a few hours later in a real-life adventure beside big-wave hunter Ross Clarke-Jones.

"It was like I was plucked from Earth and I jumped on another planet," de Haan said of his jaunt with one of the world's most famous and fearless monster-wave iders. "I'm just ordinary Pete. Things like this don't happen to people like me. But Ross was incredible. He's a cool dude." The 35-year-old said he thought at first he was being punked when Ross Clarke-Jones ushered him out of screening of adventure film Storm Surfers 3D, on to a plane to Melbourne and then drove him at break-neck speed to his Victorian coastal home at Jan Juc.

Then, when he found himself sitting beside surfing-mad Clarke-Jones on a jet-ski in the dead of night somewhere off the Australian coast, hunting for big waves, he freaked. "I surf big waves in my dreams, not in real life," de Haan said of being towed off the coast looking for monster surf. I am just an average Joe who surfs a bit."

Read the full article by Amanda Lulham at The Herald Sun

Source: The Herald Sun

Author: Amanda Lulham

Tags: Ross Clarke-Jones, Big Wave, Average Joe,

Big Wave-napped: Surfersvillage