The Horizon Is On Fire....Totally.

Working below sea level...!

And I mean that.

Pipe is not only showing her teeth as one of the previous posts said, but her gums and very gnarly and deep throat also...........and I DO have the proof !

I have seen some hardass shit go down here over my trips, but this one (and particularly Saturday and today Monday) are hands down "off the hook" so to speak. The place has lit up like a freeking christmas tree over those two days and I feel 100% honoured to have witnessed it.

Where do I start........... I suppose by admitting that I am a few days behind in blogging here.

You have to understand, that when it gets as good as this, it's hard not to become too feral....cooking, eating, washing, laundry, blogging, emails etc...etc all come second to downloading and backing up if there is time. It's hard to get everything done at night to be prepped up for the next day, the time is just not there to do it all, so the blog suffers when the swell is up, and just quietly..............I bloody well love that. Suffer a whole lot more I say.

This entry you are reading now by rights should be totally dedicated to Saturday if I can control myself ( but.....I'm typing it on Monday night, 8.30pm after witnessing and documenting Garrett MacNamara get the ride of his life mid morning here from second reef Pipe into just before the beach where he got nailed by the beast that is Pipe) as Saturday was such a mental day in its own right. The Volcom Pipe Pro started off in the morning in good solid surf. They pulled the pin on it mid morning as the general consensus was that it was getting too dangerous ?????? don't know about that.

Admittedly, it was getting pretty screwed up and evil around then, but about lunch time the magic started to materialise and when it did, by god, was it primo or what.

Before I left Australia as you know, I sent a lot of people in my address book a link to this blog. One of them was Doug from San Diego, whom Wendy, Samara and I met while we where in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico in '07 .

Well it turns out Doug has now moved to Oahu HI, and when he got my email, replied back that we should hook up while I was here. We organised it as good as we could via email and text to meet at "Pipe" on the Saturday as the Volcom comp was on and he was also coming across to the North Shore to have a surf anyway .

I had been back at the house for lunch and downloading and dumping CF cards and video hard drives after the mornings shooting getting ready for hopefully a good afternoon.

I figured Doug would turn up at the beach park so started wandering down the Ke Nui bike path towards there at the designated time. I came to the walkway between the two Volcom houses and thought I would go and have a look as the action would be well viewed from there.

I'm standing there looking at Pipe with my back towards the walkway for about 3 minutes thinking I had a bit of time up my sleeve when I get a tap on the shoulder....I turn around and it's Doug and Kristen. Doug had spotted me walking into the walkway, while parking up the road a bit.

After the initial greetings we just hung there looking at the screwed up surf for about half an hour, then realised it was starting to build and look really clean, groomed and offshore. We were still standing between the Volcom houses but decided to head down to the beach and just chilled taking it all in and it kept getting better. I couldn't help myself, and up and bolted back to the house to get the cameras, came back and set up beside Doug and Kristen and just sat there for the rest of the afternoon getting blown away by perfect Pipeline and documenting it all...it truly was something to see. It was so close to dark when we walked up off the beach it didn't matter, it was a full day. Every man, tourist and his dog was down there checking out the action.

I think I've behaved myself quite well here not talking about today, so I will sign out for now and try and stay awake long enough to post a couple of pics with this entry and hopefully post again tomorrow night on that very interesting subject.

A lot of people on the beach lost a lot of valuable stuff today.....phones, cameras wallets, handbags etc, and I was so, so close to being one of them, but more of that tomorrow (if tomorrow's not good at the beach, which it bloody well will be goddam it. I can't take much more.

Cheers.......

It's 11pm and the roosters are crowing... what's that all about, I'm just thinking about going to bed !!!!!

Video link from Volcom Pro Tuesday 31st Jan ....HI time. http://youtu.be/si32wAvEqis

Solid and Glassy Today By The Look Of It ......

Maybe tomorrow.............. !!!

They didn't call the movie Blue Hawaii for nothing...How clear, blue and glassy does it get . It looks like you could just stick your

hand into the face of this wave and grab the ocean floor.....is that

what he's thinking right here, or is he looking at a very pointy fibreglass missile coming at him !!!

Military touch and go's at Hickam Air Force Base.

Attack on the lip.

Doggy happiness is the beach............am I right ?

Shooting the shooter shooting the rider. The water photogs are a real part of it all and are right out in the middle of the action.

Solid.......yes it was, but not huge. Just nice and SOLID.

The view towards Sunset Beach with all that goes with it.

A quick look at the beach has got me running out the door this morning............happy birthday to me indeed. Talk later if it's as good as it looks. O and O.

Wax On.....Australia Day at Home, D Day Here....!

Decca.....before you go telling me off for not editing and adding music before I post, I don't have editing software on my laptop over here or the time and inclination to be editing. I just thought i'd get a bit of footage up just for you seeing you rattled me up to shoot vid. I'll edit and enhance when I get home.....soooooo I apologise for the heads etc wandering through but you'll get the general idea of how it's been (if it even works) and I've got plenty more of these top sort out. Check it out .

http://www.youtube.com/watch

Thick and meaty.....and hungry !

Speed on glass...doesn't get much better.

The spongers were having a ball out there this day...no holding back at all.

Sorry Wen..... I had to put one in here for the boys !

Is that a decent sort of camera rig or what.

Casualty.

I've called this post "WAX ON" as you can see, and for no more reason than I thought this shot just turned out interesting. It was just a random click of the shutter at zero notice when I swung my head around and looked up west in between sets towards Waimea Bay and saw this guy stick his board nose in the sand and do whatever he's doing. He also got heaps of good rides through the day by the way.

I have been down then beach a bit this morning shooting at Off The Wall for a bit of a change. A lot smaller than yesterday (5 to 7 foot) but perfect side/offshore winds grooming the wave faces. I've decided to give it a break this arvo and get some computer work done instead at long last instead of just throwing a few pics up at night after a monster beach day.

The big stuff is on the way again so there won't be much home time coming up. From what I can work out things should pretty well be lighting up again over the weekend....not huge but nice, and they may call the Volcom Pro...... then on about the 30th a fair beast is reportedly going to push in, we'll wait and see again on that one though.

I mentioned in the first post of this trip about SURFLINE forecasting rarely being wrong. I still stick with that theory and think that the 29 foot forecast I was mentioning was a rare stuff up on their behalf . A good solid swell did turn up, albeit a day late, it was still big and good, it just wasn't 29 feet. (thinking back though, it was actually 18 to 29 feet they forecast and there were some freeking big sets came through that day) anyway, as I said, we'll wait and see.

The images that you see above on this post are all from the one day and are a fairly hurried sort of a pick. As I get more time I will ad more images from the respective days.

The boys where all over it again yesterday in these waves, well and truly big enough but not killer size. There were quite a few standout moments with plenty of good rides being snaffled and the very occasional one sneeking through unridden.....pretty well unheard of for here. It would be like getting a wave at Snapper on the Goldy on your own without anyone dropping in on you....it's just not going to happen. The difference with Pipe and Snapper though is that here you just hang on and go for broke. It's quite simply balls out, make the drop, turn at the bottom as quick as you can, tuck up in the barrell and enjoy the warp speed 6 second ride and hopefully get blasted out over the shoulder in a big ejected pressure spray at the end a very happy individual. A Snapper ride can go on for about a minute some days with about 20 other dudes dropping in on you and sharing it. This ain't the place to be dropping in I can tell you that (and for more than just the obvious reasons) It does happen, but probably not as often as you would think given the size of the pack out there all floating around in a pretty rewstricted take off zone. There is actually a lot of respect here and plenty of aloha also if you do the right thing. Then everyone's happy.

On the subject of dropping in, I don't really know what goes on with the spongers, but as in one of the pics above, they do seem to appear in quite a few shots in very close proximity to board riders, and as in the above mentioned shot quite often get the same sort of treatment as this guy is copping. Anyway, it's pretty entertaining watching some of them and the shit they get up to.

Pipe Finally Bares Her Teeth.

And the boys are all over it.

I had this blog entry all written up at about midnight last night , then pressed a wrong key and apparently lost everything, so now I'm having another go after a nights sleep.

I was down the beach quite literally in the dark yesterday morning sitting on the rock wall with my coffee waiting for first light as I had heard the swell building overnight. As the dark slowly started to fade into day there it was......a good solid reasonably clean 8 to 10 foot Hawaiian swell had finally pushed in and the crew were already scratching around out there in the dark waiting to attack it. By the time I got back to the house and then back to the beach and set up it was game on.

It's not quite the 19 to 29 foot I was waiting for but it's still Pipeline/Backdoor in all her powerful glory, and quite capable of doing damage....fast and hungry for flesh, and she got her fair share over the course of the day .

As soon as I had set up down there this morning some poor casualty went staggering past towards the lifeguard tower clutching his head with blood running everywhere and two halves of a broken board under his arm, 10 minutes later he was getting helped off the beach with a heavily bandaged head presumably heading off to Waialua hospital to get sewn back together.

There was some truly monster sets creep in through the day catching a lot of the pack off guard and giving them a good old flogging and sending boards everywhere. That's just par for the course out here. There was also some really weird/odd shit going down out there that I can't explain .

One such incident that I caught through the lens a couple of times and thought I was seeing things was of Jamie O'Brien actually charging along the face of a bomb literally carrying another shortboard in his hands/ under his arm. I thought at first it must have just been one of those freekish things where a loose board had come at him as he was dropping down the face and somehow he had grabbed it to stop himself getting scalped, but no.........that didn't turn out to be the case.

It was a planned event and I saw it happen a few times through the day, there were water photogs shooting it all from out in the lineup. He was taking off while laying on the shorty on the longboard, making the drop down the face and setting up for the run through Backdoor........then, he would quite casually get up and hold the shortboard out with two hands towards the face of the wave, bail from the blue longboard and go charging into the pit on the shorty. Five minutes later I'd see him on the beach in front of me picking up the obviously unbreakable blue plastic longboard. This did happen a few times through the day and really was a piece of work to witness. Please don't ask me the reasoning behind it as I have no idea. If I get to catch up with him before I leave I'll let you know.

Anyway, the rest of the day consisted of whales breaching and playing out behind the break, a big yacht disappearing up and down into the swell troughs just behind the break also, choppers buzzing around over head and the usual array of strange sights on the beach....the beautiful right through to the downright wrong (shouldn't be out in public with so little clothing type wrong I mean) and just the plain odd sights. Bodysurfers in dickstickers out in the break taking on 10 foot pipe. Three of those guys plopped themselves right next to me later in the day and I ended up chatting to them. They were from San Diego, Calif and had been out here for an annual bodysurfing comp that had just run over the other side of the island....they thought they'd give Pipe a crack while they were here.

OK, I'll post a couple of pics and sign out for now and go and have a sniff around. The swell is down considerably today I do know that, but theres more on the way and they are setting up all the staging/scaffold, cabling, etc for the "Volcom Pipeline Pro" which will probably run in the next pulse of decent swell to hit........charge batteries, format CF cards and get ready to go again.

See ya and talk again soon.

Cheers,

Mal

Welcome To Hawaii......(and get ready to be hammered) by the sound of it.

Below is pasted the Surfline forecast for the day after I arrive, the 19th Jan.

If it's correct which it always has been so far, it looks like I'm in for a hell of a welcome to the islands........all I have to do now is get on the plane, have a sleep and then get off and drive accross the island and hope that the winds will be right the next day and I will probably have my best days shooting of the trip done and dusted before I start. (Luck of the draw with mother nature as it goes.....the last two trips have seen the best waves around two or three days before I pack up and bail) We'll wait and see and I will post thursday night (Hawaiian time....4 hours ahead, but yesterday) if it happens.

Aloha indeed Steve and Danno !________________________________________________

The following break has met, or is expected to meet, your Surf Alert® requirements:LOCATION: Pipeline

Conditions:Date: Thursday Jan 19: 02:00 AMSurf: 20 - 28ft

Trigger:Surf Height: Greater Than 8 ft.Lookahead: 120 hrs
________________________________________________


And, who was it that said it was going to be flat when I arrived....Dav....oh, I forget, but it'll come to me.

Flat my ass .....I rest my case !

Click on the picture thumbnail "About Me" if you want to explore previous trips. !



PS. The banner shot here at present by the way is Reef McIntosh from 2006. That will change once I arrive and get a new one from this season for this blog.