When rare, XXL swells hit Fiji, the usual suspects are always there to meet them. Nate Florence, Koa Rothman, Kohl Christensen, Nate Fletcher, Soli Bailey…the list of guys we’re used to seeing streak through blue, 15-foot tubes is a fairly short one.
And it doesn’t include South African Drifter Surf ambassador Nick Blottnitz.
So, how did an underground tube hound end up on one of the best waves of the day during one of the biggest swells of the last 10 years?
Simple, actually. He bought a ticket (Blottnitz was literally doing a visa run from Indo), paddled out, waited his turn, and then went when the opportunity presented itself. Of course, that’s an oversimplification, as it wasn’t exactly that easy. Blottnitz’s day actually started in near disaster.
“First morning, and Nate Florence is out there,” recalls Blottnitz in the edit above. “He’s like the Keanu Reeves of surfing these days; if you see him out around the world you’re like, ‘this is gonna be scary.’
“I’d never worn flotation before in my life, and I get out there and it’s like, ‘yep, this is [my] vest, I’m double checking my leash, and we’re doing the whole thing here.’
“I literally went and sat just inside and wide of Kohl Christensen and waited. A wave came, I was in the perfect spot, paddling into it I thought I had it, and it wasn’t until my 7’6″ was nose diving that I realized: ‘This is not good. This is everything you never wanted to happen, since you were a six-year-old kid watching big wave surfers.”
Click play to listen to Blottnitz break down the day that started with a wild wipeout, and ended with one of the best waves of his life. It’s proof that you don’t need to be a recognizable name to nab a bomb during a flexing swell in Fiji. What you do need is…well, you get the idea.