KAI KATCHADOURIAN
It’s been a La Niña year and that means more rain than usual and rough trades, which was pretty much what happened between February and March and into April. In contrast to El Nino, the pattern we saw this year also meant very few big Jaws swells and the only day that was really sailable was this day in April, which is very late in the season, although not the first time it’s happened.
I had seen this swell on the dial from a long way out and was immediately a believer in the potential. On Maui we were in the middle of our photoshoot, as were all the other brands, but I had a pretty strong belief that there was going to be a couple of big bombs coming into Jaws this day and as we watched the swell come up it was important to make a quick decision about it and we tried to time our arrival for the peak of the swell.
The evenings leading up to this day were spent closely monitoring the low pressure as it tracked across the northern pacific. Even on the day of the swell it was certainly still questionable up until the moment we loaded the ski and went up. After careful preparation to ensure all the boxes were ticked, which included checking flotation vests, making sure the ski was in running order and that we had a backup team, we headed up.
When we got there, there was another crew of people wrapping up and it didn’t look that big and I rigged my 5.0 Simmer Icon to partner with my red Jaws ‘gun’. I moved the fins a bit further forward to get a little more looseness out of the board. Conditions improved quickly and a couple of really solid sized sets came in. It wasn’t the biggest day, but it was credible and there were some really chunky waves coming in that offered the chance for some thrilling drops and some incredible looks at classic Jaws sections. I thought that I had an amazing session and caught a few bombs, which is all you can really hope for because the priority is safety above all else out there. A few sets really surprised me, it felt more like January than mid-April that is for sure.
We had gotten there at the perfect time! It had been small most of the morning, so I think a lot of people just basically wrote it off – but all that late night swell tracking paid off because we were there right when the swell peaked and we scored a rare April Jaws session.
It’s always fun on the way back when you know that you’ve scored massive waves and survived, the only thing you need to do is just get back to Maliko gulch and get the skis out of the water! That is when the adrenaline of the moment does set in and I think it was a little bit enhanced this time by the rarity of it being in the middle of April and the fact that we were conducting our photoshoot as well. It was a special session for us. Lots of high fives and smiles as we recounted many memorable moments, like a wave in particular that my Simmer teammate Rudy and I shared, a perfect mountain of water, clean and massive with an open exit. It was an unforgettable session, serving a reminder that this is a sacred spot dating back to old Hawaiian history.
It was an unforgettable session, serving a reminder that this is a sacred spot.