The Day Greg Long Drowned | StabMic Ep. 32

‘I look back on that moment as the single most important moment of my life.” 

Quite a thing to say about the day you died. 

On December 21, 2012, Greg Long suffered a three-wave hold-down at Cortez Bank and clinically drowned. 

Greg was wearing the first iteration of the flotation vest developed by Shane Dorian and Billabong. He yanked the trigger, but it didn’t inflate. He tried again. And again. Nothing. No air came. The vest was faulty.

His team found him, and he was brought back from the brink.

The vest emerged around 2012, as paddle surfing began pushing into territory that had previously been reserved for tow surfing. Sion Milosky’s death made the risks harder to dismiss. If the pursuit was going to continue, they needed a way out when things went bad.

Greg eventually began working with Patagonia. After years of R&D, they released the first PSI vest to the public in 2017. Nobody has drowned while wearing one. Now, nearly a decade later, they’re releasing its second iteration.

Alongside the new vest, Patagonia and Stab are releasing Inflation Point, coming soon to Stab Premium. Greg joins us at the desk to talk about the new film, the experience of drowning, the importance of safety, and the paradox of the PSI vest: the safer you make something, the more tempting it can become to push further.

Greg says more people are paddling out underprepared, convinced they’re harder to kill than they are, with the vest as a kind of guardian angel. It was never meant to be used that way. 

We also hear from fellow big-wave surfer Izzi Gomez, who recently released Chrysalis, a film about her own journey with big-wave surfing and mental health.

Thanks to our partners at Red Bull,  Dome Dust, TurtleBox, Visit Dominican Republic, Devium, Yucca Fins, Roark and Vaer for making StabMic possible.