So with that in mind I took it easy on the first couple of waves, but then wanted more. The wind picked up to planing strength, so I sailed to the boat and rigged my smaller backup sail I had thrown in before the boat took off.
After that I started to feel more and more confident and looked for that big air section but the wave never walled up nicely in front of me, but a couple of late carves more than made up for it. After one of them, the wave suddenly hit a shallow part of the reef and started to throw a big lip, letting me airdrop into the flats. I tried to pass the next section, but One Eye was too fast and decided to eat me. By that time it was almost low tide and the thick lip just pushed me straight into the reef. I managed to protect my head with my arm and got away with reef cuts on elbow, leg, foot, back and my knee.
Two waves later I was comfortably sitting on the dry reef like a turtle on its back with the corals sticking out left and right of me. Thanks to my harness I was almost laughing, finding myself sitting there waiting for the next whitewater to push me into the lagoon. Surprisingly my gear didn’t have a scratch and I managed to get my hands on it, before the current could suck it towards the small channel at the end of the wave. With the dying wind, it took me almost twenty minutes to get back to the beach. Uli took a more comfortable ride back into the lagoon with the boat.
Even though all week, we’d already had epic sessions in logo to mast high, really rippable waves, this session at One Eye will stick with me forever. Being so close to these huge barrels and coming in on one of these massive and fast moving lines is such an intense rush!”