good morning. 6:40am tuesday morning. yeah!! work day. the surf shouldn’t be so crowded. once again, no winds and clean conditions on the north shore. the swell dropped but looks super fun. rocky’s is probably the spot with a lot of guys out already. pipe is barely breaking with two guys out. 12 guys out at rockpiles with waist high morning sickness conditions. bowls looks junk and with only one guy out. umm… north shore is the call. i slept at 9pm last night so i feel super fresh. everytime i dive all day, my body feels so healthy and fresh the next day. you should try it…. anyway, i’m out of here.. have a nice day….
**contest on at haleiwa. running 20 heats of mens. there is also a telephone pole down at waimea bay so only one lane open now. oh my gosh, choke traffic. they might shut down both sides to fix it. hope everybody makes it to their heats.
i went to the mentawai’s three times. twice, we got on the boat and headed straight to lance’s rights or also known as HT’s (hollow trees). this is the best right hander in the mentawai’s and is where the indies trader pulled up with tom curren a long time ago and exposed this spot to the world. i remember watching the video with tom curren surfing his fish on this perfect wave. it was my dream since then and i was fortunate to go there twice. and both times, we scored it the same how tom curren scored it. 6-8′ and perfect barrels. it was just us with no other boats around. the first time i went, there were 7 boats operating in the mentawai’s. now, there are over 80 boats all packed with hungry surfers and photographers. i heard when lance’s rights is good, there are 10 or more boats anchored there. times that by 8 to 10 surfers per boat, you got an instant crowd of about 100 surfers. add in the surf guides, captains, and cooks, then you got a mess. and not to leave out the dozens of surf camps on the islands. i’m glad to surf it empty years ago and i have no intentions on going back there. for $3,500/trip, i’d rather go on three trips to the philippines. less crowds and better waves…..
**i borrowed that photo from surfersjournal.com. cool mag….
check out this photo. i took it at a barbecue on shikoku island a few months ago. this day will go down in the history books. we scored perfect big waves and ended up with a perfect big barbecue. on the left is shikoku local gerry-san. he use to live in hawaii. legend surfer… and to the right is reki. reki is a cool kid. i’ve know him when he was a little boy hanging out at ikumi beach. that was 12 years ago. since then, he’s become an awesome surfer, and an awesome musician. yeah reki….
reki knows hot to cook too. good surfer, good musician, good cook. gosh, this kid must get all the chicks…
this was the lineup….
wait, this is a better lineup shot taken with a better camera…
and i’ll never forget this wave. this huge set was coming in and everybody was whistling from the beach. nobody wanted it, but ueda-san turned around, took off, set up his bottom turn, and freakin pulled in!!! this photo doesn’t justify how nuts this wave was. i wouldn’t have pulled in. no thank you…
