The winds blow from land to sea, rainfall rarely exceeds 10 millimetres (0.39 in) yearly and the local weather is highly inhospitable. In the days before engine-powered ships and boats, it was attainable to get ashore by way of the surf but inconceivable to launch from the shore. The only way out was by going by way of a marsh hundreds of miles long and solely accessible via a scorching and arid desert.

Hamilton appeared as Kevin Costner's stunt double in the course of the 1995 filming of Waterworld. Reportedly, Hamilton was almost misplaced at sea when his Kawasaki Jet Ski ran out of gas throughout a squall. He then drifted for hours before being rescued by Coast Guard off the Island of Maui. Hamilton commuted every day to the enclosed set between Maui and the Big Island by jet ski.

Laird Hamilton is a co-founder and co-creator of XPT Life or Extreme Performance Training, along along with his spouse, Gabrielle Reece. In February 2008 Hamilton joined the board of directors of H2O Audio, a watersports music firm in San Diego California.

Footage of Hamilton is used on the video for Dayvan Cowboy from Boards of Canada. In 2003, he was featured in Dana Brown's surf documentary Step Into Liquid. On January 13, 2010, Hamilton and spouse Reece appeared as themselves on the episode "Gary Feels Tom Slipping Away" of the CBS tv series Gary Unmarried.

In 2008 Hamilton announced his personal "Wonderwall" line of reasonably priced clothing, offered through Steve & Barry's till that retailer shut down surfing skeleton shirt on the finish of January 2009. He has had lengthy-time sponsorship from the French beachwear firm Oxbow surfwear. Joann and Bill had a second son, Lyon, Laird's half-brother, who also turned a surfer. More than a thousand such vessels of various sizes litter the coast, notably the Eduard Bohlen, Benguela Eagle, Otavi, Dunedin Star and Tong Taw. On the coast, the upwelling of the cold Benguela present provides rise to dense ocean fogs (known as cassimbo by the Angolans) for a lot of the yr.