The Pacific Ocean, supercharged by a strong El Niño system, went into hyperdrive in terms of high surf at the end of 2023.
Both Mavericks in Northern California and Jaws on Maui saw some of the biggest waves of the entire year…and in recent memory (mostly Mavs on that one).
Accordingly, some surfers wanted to surf both – like Hawaii’s Kai Lenny.
In Lenny’s latest vlog, he paddle surfed a day at clean, gigantic Jaws, then he caught the redeye flight that night to San Francisco to tow surf the historic, utterly massive day at Mavericks on December 28th, 2023.
Per the caption of his video, Lenny called it:
“One of the biggest swells to hit California first passed by Jaws on Maui. We first paddled surf clean Jaws before hopping on a flight to Mavericks in California to immediately surf the biggest and most unruly Mavericks I’ve seen. We came home in one piece!”
So, just to put this into perspective a little bit, Lenny surfed waves at home on Maui one day, then followed the swell 2,500 miles to California to surf the same waves the next day. Exact same swell, two very different settings. One tropical, one frigid.
It’s been done before, of course, following a swell from Hawaii to California. Like with Maui charger Tyler Larronde earlier in 2023, and longtime Australian waterman and surfer Jamie Mitchell following that.
Regarding the redeye Pacific swell chase, Mitcho said:
“You can [chase a swell across the Pacific. The redeye is a horrible flight. But it does get you where you wanna be. You can surf Jaws all day, come in, regroup, get on a flight at 10:45pm, get here at 6:30am, and be in the water at Mavs in a couple hours.
“It’s not for the faint of heart. But you can do it.”
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