Capturing the Moment

Surfer in a barrel at Pipeline  It was a rainy, misty morning but I knew the swell was coming in. Big north swells are becoming rare this far out of the winter swell window. Knowing it might be one of the last, Heidi and I woke up early and drove out to the famous North Shore of Oahu.   The rain was still coming down when we pulled into the parking lot at Ehukai Beach Park. I grabbed my rain jacket and ran for a quick surf check. Pipeline was pumping! Until now Heidi had been skunked every time we came to see barrels at Pipe. She would not be skunked today. We stuck around for a while watching surfers and boogie boarders dropping into some beautiful waves. I didn't have my board since we had plans to surf longboards on the South shore later in the day, but I would have been tempted to paddle out. I paddled out here at Pipe for the first time a few days ago and scored my own perfect barrel. It has been a solid winter.

Searching for the green room   Welcome back to Maui! Honolua style.  Back in Maui for Heidi's spring break we snuck in a quick trip with friends up the west coast to the fabled wave at Honolua Bay. We weren't sure what the waves were going to look like but we took long boards just in case it was small. It wasn't. Brian with the laid back bottom turn    After a few small waves out at the point, we paddled over to the cave where the waves looked a bit bigger. Turns out we could have used boards about half this size but we charged nontheless. We put those boards to the test and came out smiling. Barrels in Maui Ben grabbing the rail   All three of us did our best to keep Heidi busy on the camera. She was perched high above the cave about sixty feet over all the surfers. Some of the longer waves took us right under her giving the shots an almost aerial feel. Steep takeoffs at Honolua   This provided a great opportunity to show ...

Going left at Pipeline   Big waves, but not big enough. That was the word today from Volcom and the other planners of the Volcom Pipe Pro. It was decided to not run the contest but since I was headed that way anyway I took my camera out for a spin. Getting spit out of the barrel   Even though the swell was diminishing there were still some monster sets rolling through. And for the first time I got to see some true barrels here. There was a large contingency of surfers sitting at the peak of pipe, but quite a few off the peak scoring rights and lefts off of different sandbars. High flying at pipe Backdoor Barrel    A few pro photographers were camped out under umbrellas enjoying the show. The rain held to a drizzle long enough for me to work my way down the beach taking photos. It was tough to capture much color because of the stormy conditions but luckily the massive waves would break and aerate themselves with tiny bubbles creating a pale blu...

  On a hunch I booked it down to Dumps yesterday after work just in case there were waves big enough to surf. Dumps is a beautiful wave with turquoise water that forms a steep left of shallow reef. It works on big south swells sent up from storms in the southern hemisphere so it is mainly a summer time wave. During the winter everyone flocks to the north shore to catch big waves sent down from big storms up near Japan and Alaska.   You can imagine my exuberance as I walked around the last corner of the path to Dumps just in time to see a set of three perfectly formed, head high lefts peeling into Dumps....and one guy out! I literally ran the rest of the way over the lava rocks to get to the entry before jumping in the water and furiously paddling out to the lineup. I couldn't believe my luck. The other surfer did say that was the biggest set he had seen yet, but luckily I was in for a lot of luck during this early south swell surf session!  Making friends in the lin...

 This was my welcome to Bali, Indonesia. I flew in to Bali's Denpasar airport around midnight and caught a cab to the nearby party town of Kuta. This is where young Australians and Europeans travel for cheap partying. As you can imagine it wasn't really my scene so after a day to get my bearings I headed south to the surfing mecca of Bali. From Uluwatu to Dreamland you have peeling waves as far as the eye can see. Waves with names like Padang Padang, Impossibles, Race Track, and Bingin can all be world class waves. I decided to stop and stay at a little place right across the street from Padang Padang and this is what I paddled out to. I was blown away. It was the best swell Padang had in a while. A super fast left that throws up a wild barrel was more than I could have asked for. I can't count the number of barrels I pulled into but I can count the number I came out of, 2. Unfortunately the GoPro had some quirks that made me miss alot of the big action but I still ma...