Deep charger at Pipe...He made this.

B E F O R E

You’ve probably already heard through global news that there is a MONSTER swell hitting the Hawaiian Islands right now. I’m getting messages from all over the place wondering what it looks like here. To be honest I don’t know what all the fuss is about. When I went for my morning coffee down the road, half of Honolulu has filled in, TV crews are setting up and The Kam highway looks like a parking lot. Not one spare car spot at Foodland and helicopters are circling my shack. Why? ‘Cause some say it’s the biggest swell in 40 years, but I haven’t seen anything mega yet… I drove up to the hill behind Waimea (‘cause the road Waimea was choccas) and all I saw was a sea of 30-40 knot white onshore slush. I’ve seen it much bigger. When it gets big here it just seems to break further out. As I write this I can see white water about 1.5km out to sea. It’s totally unsurfable on the North Shore and there was no way the Eddie would run in such windy conditions (just to clear that up). It didn’t look big enough either to me…

So these photos are not from today. They’re from just before the storm. I’m going to shoot when the tide fills in and the swell spikes (and hopefully some Honolulu crew get back on the motorway). Stay tuned…I’ll do my best to find some monster chunks.

Mahalo :: uge

Green Banzai Sparks

This illustrates how a 4 footer can end up being a 8 footer in 0.2 secs

Draining some speed off to tuck right into the back of a water cave

Lippy

Pipeline green cave before the storm hit

The colours are just magic here at sunset

3 thoughts on “B E F O R E

  1. It was huge at jaws this morning, probably over 50ft and offshore. Laird got some amazing waves. I’m sure they will show up on video soon.

  2. Hi! You take some good shots… I was surfing pipe the evening you were shooting and that was my first real trip I would like to see if you got one of me… Let’s talk please

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