ROBBY SWIFT
FESTIVE JAWS SESSIONS
The 2024 Christmas period saw a serious of powerful swells bombard the Hawaiian Islands including one insane day that triggered the prestigious Eddie Aikau event in Oahu. Meanwhile over at Jaws on Maui, giant waves were paddled, towed and windsurfed by a brave crew who were up for the challenge. Among the lucky few chasing this holiday gift was Robby Swift, who found himself riding some of the best waves of his life. Robby takes us inside the action, sharing what it takes to prepare for some of the biggest waves on the planet, along with behind-the-scenes stories from these unforgettable sessions.
Words: Robby Swift
Photos: Pierre Bouras
SWELL SEASON
We had an absolutely amazing period of swell. There were over two weeks of the most beautiful glassy waves that I’ve seen on Maui for a long time. I tow-surfed a lot and we had a couple of good days surfing at Ho’okipa. We also sailed Jaws three times during the incredible period of waves. The first two sessions were a bit of a let down, but the last session that we had there was absolutely amazing. It was a new swell. We scored the peak of the waves right when the wind was at its best and there were hardly any guys out because it was the late afternoon and all the surfers were waiting for the next morning when it would be glassy!
HOME LIFE
Actually, the atmosphere back at home, it’s quite funny because I’ve been up to Jaws so many times and my wife Heidy is working so much at the moment that she barely notices. My boys get really excited when I am going and they always want to come and watch. I’m usually so busy with them that until the very last minute I don’t really think about it either.
PHYSICAL TRAINING
Staying fit for big waves is extremely important. And it’s something I have been focusing on more and more during the last few years. We incorporate a lot of CO2 resistance, training, and breath hold training into our workouts now and that makes me feel much more confident that I will be OK if I crash at Jaws. We’ve also been doing quite a bit more strength training recently as well as the cardio. I think it helps to have slightly stronger muscles, especially in the end ranges of all the movements.
COMMUNICATIONS
We have a funny mixture of banter and serious stuff on our chat groups. We have a group with myself, Levi Siver and Marcilio Browne and another group with Ricardo Campello in there as well. Ricardo’s not been here for a while so his group is mainly reserved for banter, which is mainly at his expense at the moment!
Marcilio is always extra prepared, almost to the point of paranoia and likes to get there really early so he doesn’t miss even one set. I like to arrive and just get straight on the water; I don’t like sitting around there for hours waiting for people to get done surfing or the waves to come up. Somewhere in between is usually a pretty happy medium so I slow him down and his speeds me up and it seems to work quite well!
JET SKIS
I have a Jet Ski and Marcilio has a Jet Ski, so he takes care of his Jet Ski issues and I take care of mine. we are actually very good at taking care of them and doing the licensing and everything because it would really suck for the Jet Ski to break down when you’re out there in big surf. So that is one thing that I’m definitely on top of, at least when we start getting close to the big wave season.
THE LAUNCH
The launch from Maliko Gulch is horrible. Marcilio will only do it if somebody else takes their car as he does not want to destroy his truck. Luckily, when we launched for this latest swell, the waves hadn’t really hit yet so it was pretty small in there and it was very easy to get out, but when we came back in the swell was pumping, and the tide was really low so you could barely get the trailer in the water deep enough for the Jet Ski to get up on it. Levi’s truck went all the way back into the water, and somehow the rear brakes seized up by the time we came back in, and I had to fix it with the old trick of whacking it with a hammer, I think when Marcilio saw that, that was the last time he’s ever going to launch from Maliko. Especially if it’s his truck.
Just to give you an example, you are sometimes putting your Jet Ski into the water on a very, very dilapidated old boat ramp, which is being condemned and shouldn’t really be called a boat ramp. Sometimes you have 4-to-6-foot white water surges coming up the gulch and they hit you from the side so it’s really difficult to get the Jet Ski out into the water off the trailer but even more difficult to get it back onto the trailer. In the end because you have to come in kind of riding on a surge with the trailer half in the water and estimate how deep it needs to be when the surge actually gets to the trailer so that you don’t swamp your car, or if you leave it too shallow that the Jet Ski can’t even get up on the trailer and you end up scraping the Jet Ski across the rocks as you get dragged across the side of the boat ramp by the surge. I don’t think I can really describe in words quite how difficult it is. It’s pretty hectic and I can see why Marcilio usually prefers the extra hour and a half or so of driving and Jet Ski riding to go via Kahului Harbour.
THE RIDE UP
Whenever we go up there, it’s pretty windy and rough. We have a lot of gear on the Jet Ski and you get splashed a lot. Sometimes your gear can fall off the back of the sled. If you notice it, then it’s just a headache and you have to slow down. But if you don’t notice it, then you can end up not being able to sail at all if you lose a vital piece of equipment. The journey up to Jaws is actually a pretty miserable experience all around, until you get to the waves that is. And then it’s one of the best places on the planet.
BIG SESSIONS
I had a couple of very big sessions towing at Spreckelsville and Pier One but on the giant day when some people towed Jaws I had been out for five days in a row, and I was extremely tired. It was quite lumpy and scary looking, and the waves were quite probably amongst the top two or three of the biggest that I’ve ever seen since I lived in Maui. That afternoon I wasn’t really feeling it, but I was pretty gutted when I saw all the footage the next day as I’m sure I would’ve had fun if I would’ve gone out. That made me extra appreciative when we got another swell, not nearly as big in wave height, but with a very significant 19 to 20 second period, and with a peak in the late afternoon, right when we would be able to windsurf.
For that swell we got there early and had about five hours to sail basically on our own. That was myself, Marcilio, the Ishii Brothers and Jessie Richman and nobody else was out at all. The wind was a little too offshore to be perfect, but I’m definitely not complaining. I probably got about thirty waves that afternoon and all of them were bombs. It was as glassy as it gets with that much wind and having sailed there a couple of times in the last few weeks, I felt quite a lot more comfortable than normal and was able to push myself a little more than I have done in the past.
SURVIVAL
When we finish the session, I’m usually feeling happy that I survived. When I look at the clips, I’m almost always feeling like I should’ve gone a little harder. I had been watching the clips from the previous Jaws session with my son Rocco on the morning that we went out for the epic day and his only comment was “Dad, you should be over here!” While pointing at every wave, about 10m deeper than where I actually was dropping in.
With that in mind, I definitely put myself way deeper in that last session. And I was happy with a lot of the positioning on the waves that I had. Now that I look back at it, I think I could maybe have done some things different and technically, and made one or two of those airs back in the wave, or done some tight, cut backs instead of those airs that ended up as kick outs, but in the time everything feels so scary, you just feel happy that you’ve made the wave. I hope we get some more sessions out there because if it can take a whole year until you go out again, you kind of start back at the drawing board again, and I would like to progress a little more this year before it’s over.
SAFETY
I think the safety vest is absolutely 100% important. I don’t really pull the cord very often because I’m really tight and I don’t like wasting the eight dollar cartridges! But the times that I have pulled it, I think it might have saved my life, and I’ve definitely done it five or six times over the last 10 years or so. I really don’t go out without it when the waves are big. We also take a close friend, Nano Messera with us every time we go and he rides my Jet Ski and picks us up whenever we crash on that really is important as well as it’s not fair to rely on other people’s safety crews, and it’s always best to know the people you’re going with really well and be able to trust them 100%.
EQUIPMENT
The first two days I was on the 5.0 Combat Pro Fuse and then the 4.5 Combat Pro Fuse. The first day was ridiculously light and the second day was ridiculously windy but the third day which was the best day I was on the 4.7 2025 Combat Pro Fuse, and that they the sail was absolutely perfect. The board that I use is an exact copy of the 2025 JP 87 Ultimate Wave except I asked Werner to continue the tail back into a rounded pintail just for my Jaws board so it’s about 2 cm longer than the production board but other than that exactly the same.
And the fins I use are just the same fins that I use everywhere, the Black Project Quad4 SS fins with 14.5cm at the back and 9cm at the front. I love those fins all the way from Gran Canaria to Jaws, it’s crazy.
APRES SESSION
It’s quite a long mission to get back to the beach and then load the ski on the trailer, drive up to Braw’s house where I leave the ski (thanks Braw), wash it off, dry it nicely and put it under the cover. The whole process takes a couple of hours and after a whole day on the water I’m pretty much done by then so I just go home, jump in the cold plunge for a few minutes and then go and soak in a nice warm bath and I normally feel pretty sore the next day. Not only from the sailing, but just the whole mission of driving around on the Jet Ski for so long rigging on the ski, and many hours in the sun. To give you an example that last day I left home at 10:30am to drive up to collect the ski and I got home at 7:30pm and was pretty much destroyed.
One of the most rewarding aspects, of course, is when the photos and videos start to trickle in via WeTransfer links, etc. That makes reliving the day with my kids and my wife extremely fun. And it pretty much always looks bigger than I thought it felt, the photos are normally impressive and exciting but I pretty much always feel like I should’ve been deeper on every wave and have turned harder on the cutbacks and I’m desperate to go out again, but since these kind of swells normally only happen 2 to 3 times a year, it’s probably going to be a while until the next one.