~Ze Banzai Pipeline
This was an amazing moment for me. I had never surfed Pipe before and getting this wave on my first day out there was a dream come true. Here is a little story about the lead up to this wave:
My good friend Danny Ecker, who works for Billabong and coordinates their North Shore operations, invited me to come stay at the Billabong house at Backdoor for this most recent swell. We got in Thursday night, and woke up to bombing surf. We first looked at Phantoms, one of the outer reefs, but conditions weren’t right so decided to paddle out at empty Sunset on my new 9’4″ Rusty(board rides amazing!) to what guys were calling 12-15ft. Got some good ones, got really cleaned up by some shifty west bowls, but all in all, had an awesome, adrenaline-packed session.
The next morning pipe was perfect size, but overwhelmingly crowded, as always.. I paddled out for a morning session and fought for scraps and closeouts with fifty of my closest professional surfer friends (not fun)… After two hours of good beatings, a couple closeouts and a handful of kisses from the reef, I went in humbled and with my tail between my legs… welcome to Pipeline, haole. I sat on the deck all day and watched as a handful of the greats cycled through the pack, getting spit out of the most ridiculous barrels I had ever seen. Everyone who was anyone was out, Jon Jon, Jamie O, Slater, Bruce Irons, Mark Healey, as everyone was claiming it was the best pipe they had seen in 10 years. I decided I had to paddle back out at least to be amongst it. Due to the direction of the swell being so west, the magic was happening on the left and thus that’s where the crowd was focused. There were very few makeable ones at backdoor, but I decided I would dodge the crowd, sit there, and hope one came to me.
I made my way out on the left (where you have to in order to make it out without getting completely drilled), paddled wide around the pack, and prayed that no one would yell out and roust me… I slipped past and over towards backdoor/off-the-wall undetected and sat out the back by myself hoping a stray one might come before sunset.
Within 10 minutes, I see this deep deep west one stack out on the horizon where one hadn’t come all day, headed right at me… Sure enough, it stood up right in front of me and let me in perfectly. I popped up and as I was making the drop, I saw this thing standing up beautifully and bending down the reef, looking so surreal. I bottom turned, grabbed my rail, and let the wave slot me and grind down the reef right past the entire pack. I came out into the channel with chills and couldn’t believe what had just happened. I had actually gotten a wave out at Pipe, a set wave, and to myself, on my first ever day out there…
I went in immediately, had a beer and didn’t surf the rest of the trip. People were saying that when it comes to surfing Pipe, it’s a total love/hate relationship. I definitely saw both sides of that, extremely frustrated after the first session, but completely mesmerized after the second. That place is amazing. I now see why guys devote their entire lives to surfing it.
Nic Vaughan – Pipeline 12-21-2013 Video: Larry Haynes from Nic Vaughan on Vimeo.
See it here as well on Rusty Surfboards.