Nathan Florence charges the scariest, deadliest, and all-around gnarliest waves in the world. But even guys who charge that hard have rough surf sessions sometimes.
Last summer, he survived a “10-foot mutant slab” at Shipstern Bluff. He also endured “absolute annihilation” at Ireland’s Mullaghmore Head, took a “mega beatdown” at home on the North Shore, survived “freight train” slabs in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
In his latest vlog below, he gets humbled fighting Pipeline’s crazy current while surfing with his brothers John and Ivan.
Related: Clip: Huge Whale Almost Tail-Whips Surfer as it Cruises Through the Lineup
Nate captioned the edit above:
“CANT GET IN CANT GET OUT, STUCK IN THE NOTORIOUS BACKDOOR REVERSE CURRENT!”
Opening the video, he says, “Let’s all paddle out together.”
That’s it for dialogue, and from then on the video’s almost 10 minutes of pure raw footage of the brothers surfing Backdoor.
They score some fun little barrels until almost two minutes in, when Nate breaks his board and begins the long, drawn out swim into shore.
For a good few minutes, he fights the current, making little progress swimming against the backwash that we saw Jamie O’Brien and Kelly Slater having fun in yesterday.
After a slow and steady fight against nature, he finally makes it to shore and to the front half of his surfboard.
Of course, he didn’t wase any time paddling back out for more barrels with his brothers.
Judging by viewer comments, they found comfort in seeing that even the Surfer of the Year has the occasional rough session. Check out the comments below:
“This is what I love about this channel, mate doesn’t just show how awesome he is, shows that everyone gets smashed from time to time.”
“I enjoy watching how these dudes imperfect, challenging-impossible waves like these. So many late drops, early pop-ups and amazing near faceplants! So much to learn from here.”
“I wanna here JJF experience in that backdoor rip.. this was awesome real waterman shit going down.”
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