ROBBY SWIFT
The swell was forecast solid but only 13 feet at 19 seconds which is about on the limit for as small as it can get to make Jaws really work. The positive aspect was that it was coming straight out of the north. When the swell comes from the west in Maui it generally gets blocked quite a lot by Oahu and Molokai. When it comes from the north, there’s nothing in the way to block it. We all headed up there at around midday not really expecting too much but thinking that it would probably be too big to sail at Ho’okipa anyway, so we wouldn’t really be missing anything by trying.
When we arrived it was actually way better than we thought. Kai Lenny was already sailing so we rigged our sails as quickly as possible. North swell is quite different from the west swell, it stands up quite a lot on the first peak and then there’s not so much of a wall to the wave. Some of the waves are really glassy but others had a giant chop running through them which makes it really scary as you don’t want to catapult down the face at Jaws.
This particular wave was one of those amazingly glassy, perfect bombs that you dream about dropping into at Jaws. I caught it really deep and thought I was perfectly positioned on the wave but just as I was about to fade into the wave to do a drawn out bottom turn, I saw a bowl appearing way out in front of me. I instinctively straightened out my line and raced about 50m more down the line before fading out in front of the wave to start the bottom turn and it was lucky I did. The bowl grew into a huge wall that allowed me to have probably the best turn I have ever had at Jaws. If I started my turn where I had initially planned, I would have no chance of making it! As it happened, I was in exactly the right place to get a really low, powerful bottom turn and come up under the lip to carve out a cutback at full speed. There wasn’t a ripple out of place on the wave, it was really quite fantastic!
This winter is supposed to be an El Niño winter so that usually brings huge surf to Hawaii. I’m crossing my fingers for some massive waves. Having been here for about the past 15 winters, I have seen some massive swells but they don’t always coincide with wind. To give you an example, the swell we surfed last winter was 29 feet and 21 seconds when it hit the buoy so it was about double the size of this day. Let’s hope we get one like that with some wind this winter!