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Thursday, July 2, 2009

Suicidal Wave Ride: This is INSANE!

Biggest Barrel Of My Life!!!

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Click below for the full sequence

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I had been out for 6 hours before I got this wave. It had been really slow all day and I hadn’t had any good ones yet. Then this mountain came roaring out from the horizon I got tingles (goose bumps) all over as soon as I saw it. I looked up at Hippo (Ryan Hipwood) who was on the jet ski and he didn’t even smile he just said “this things huge.”

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It actually wasn’t my turn when this wave came. It was Mitch Rawlin’s go. He’s the craziest lid rider i’ve ever surfed with. He’s ridden the biggest waves at this break I have ever seen. His partner started towing him in. They took a more straight on line into the wave coming from directly behind to avoid the bumps you hit if you come across from the left.

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I didn’t really even think, I just yelled out to Hippo go go! I’ll go behind him! Hippo just took off. We were coming into the wave from left to right and Rawlin’s and his driver were coming straight in behind the wave. It put me on the inside and i thought I would just try and pull into the barrel behind Mitch and we’d both get barreled and make it out. Ive done this before a couple of times but on way smaller waves. Hippo was yelling out to them go go go!

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Luckily for me, Mitch didn’t end up going. Afterwards he said that he wasn’t in a good position so he just let me go (owe you one!). The wave sucked so hard off the reef that I don’t think that we both could of ridden different lines without colliding. In this shot i’ve got the full wing span going, just trying not to get sucked up the face and into that lip above my head.

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It was really hard to read the wave at this point. Once a wave gets over 1o – 12ft, you can’t really see the top of the wave in you peripheral vision. You have have to really turn your head and look up to be able to see what’s going to happen next. I was way too scared of falling to turn and look up at the top of the wave here. There was still so much water sucking off the reef. I just kept my eyes right in front of me and hoped the corner of the barrel wasn’t about to lip me in the head.

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Luckily it didn’t! I think it was about here that I could here the boys screaming in the channel.

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Big barrels feel like they are alive. They suck all the air inside. Thats what surfers mean when they say they felt the wave take a breath.

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This is the moment that you just don’t want to end you feel like your surrounded by the whole ocean. All the hard work is done. The air has no where left to go and just gets spat out into the channel, taking you with it. This is the feeling that keeps coming back over and over and over again.

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That all happened in about 10 or 15 sec!

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