"It was the underground swell."
That's Liam McNamara, who's been an integral part of Pipeline for decades. "Most of the heaviest and best locals were either in Abu Dhabi or down at the Haleiwa contest on Friday and Saturday, so it opened things up for folks to get waves out there they would have never got if the regular crew was out." (You’ll notice a few little-known names in the vid, which proves Liam’s point.)
To be fair, it also wasn't all-time epic all day both days. Both Friday and Saturday saw a couple few hour windows of proper Pipe, which you see above. What you don't see is Friday afternoon's wash throughs and Saturday's swirly winds. There were moments of brilliance, of course, though. The highlights of this particular run of swell were Jamie O'Brien and Mike Stewart's double tube on Friday and Eala Stewart's highly technical tube on Saturday.
"It was super cool to share wave with a legend like that," said Jamie. "Mike is the greatest bodyboarder of all time and one of the greatest legends who's ever surfed Pipeline. So it's always awesome to share a wave with him."
Stewart agreed wholeheartedly. "Getting a barrel at Pipe is epic of course," he said. "But getting a barrel with someone else that’s competent, someone you have confidence he’s gonna make it too…that's next level. Thanks, Jamie!"
As for Eala's Pipe wave of the day on Saturday, McNamara was beyond impressed. "Not many humans know how much goes into making a wave like that," he said. "The late drop, a bit of air, then three bumps, then the major, super fast rolling up the windows which turned into a forward thrust (never seen that in my life), then a major pump, then he disappeared -- I’m sure more pumping but it was invisible -- then he comes out and double claps with class. I've never seen a wave with so much going on!" (Stay tuned for Eala's take on the wave.)
We tapped Hawaii forecaster Jonathan Warren for more insight on this particular run. "It’s right about this time in the season — late fall into early winter, often around the Thanksgiving holiday — that we typically start to see a shift to stronger and more westerly angled pulses to spawn from the North Pacific," he said. "And it’s not uncommon for a true NW banger to stamp “the season is here” across the Aloha State. Last year’s Black Friday of 2023 had an even more massive XXL size NW pulse, which ended up being the biggest swell of the season. This recent swell wasn’t quite to that magnitude, but it certainly was a large one (even by peak season standards) that also fell on Black Friday, along with being underestimated by the models."
Filmed by: Parker Davis, Satoshi Nakamura, Artem Savitckii, Tejiana Sky Stewart and Christian Oehmke
Edited by: Michael Weybret and Matt Hogan
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