Jamie O’Brien is a Pipeline Master, both figuratively and literally. He rides the tube at Pipe as well as anyone has (or likely ever will), and has 100’s of highlight waves from Pipe and Backdoor the last two decades.
He has nothing left to prove. In fact, he’s been so barreled so many times he’s actually turned to riding Pipe on Catch Surf soft tops for a new challenge. Yep, the same boards beginners use to stand up for the first time at your local beachbreak.
And he’s not just riding Pipe on boards that have no business being out there, he’s mastering it. He went from getting pocket rides a few years back, to knifing late drops and riding the foam ball on 9-foot logs with plastic fins the same way he would his Tokoro guns. This year, he rode 2 of his top-10 waves of his entire winter on a Catch Surf, clocking in at rides No. 1 and No. 5.
“I’m on a Catch Surf 9-foot log on this one,” JOB recalls with a smile in the edit above. “There’s something so special about this wave, and if I would have been on my Tokoro I probably wouldn’t have caught it. I remember waiting out the back for the 8- to-10 foot sets this day so I could slide in early and get a crazy barrel. I remember seeing this wave and I saw the way it was hitting the reef — it looked really nice and approachable — and the crazy thing about riding a big board sometimes is you’re able to track waves down.
“This particular wave was way inside and it had a lot of water. I paddled it down and I remember taking off thinking it was gonna be a pretty easy one, but halfway through the drop I was in the air…”
Click play above to hear JOB’s detailed breakdown of riding soft boards at Pipe, as well as his play-by-play on 8 other waves that only a few people on earth will ever get to experience.
But at least we can live all vicariously, right?
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