The Hawaiian season is officially open for business.
With a couple opening season swells at Pipeline and Jaws, the winter shenanigans have kicked off at Hawaiian hotspots – and folks have been fully on it.
From Pipe, there were two days of wild and wooly waves, highlight by pockets of goodness amidst the madness, like at one point, which led Koa Rothman to claim: “It’s pretty much as good as first reef Pipe can get. Difficult, but manageable.”
Mostly, though, it was more on the difficult side.
There aren’t many waves made in the video above; mostly it’s just wash-through sets and people getting caught inside, like Jamie O’Brien, John John Florence, and Koa all in the same spot, at the same time, at one point.
“It was a good, solid two-hour session of just getting caught inside,” Koa said from the beach. “Just trying to survive. But I got barreled. A tiny little barrel.”
He continued:
“It’s just been one of those swells. Today’s been rough. I wasn’t even near my surfboard. I was bailing it the whole time.
“I’m so exhausted.
“At one point, I was on this little whitewash, and it was so gnarly and sucking up right there on the inside of Pipe. I’m laying on my surfboard trying to come in to shore. Then the whitewash just pins me on the sand and there’s sand going in my ears, my eyes, my mouth…
“I popped up in front of a bunch of people…like, ‘what just happened?’”
A warm welcome to the season.
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