Jamie O’Brien, tucked into a Mentawai tube straight out of a dream. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
If you want to get obscenely barreled in paradise, it’s tough to beat the Mentawai Islands. Jamie O’Brien is a connoisseur of getting obscenely barreled in paradise, so it makes sense that he’d go to the Ments.
It’s a place he’s familiar with — which would be a nice notch to have on the belt — and he’s got both the intimate knowledge of where to be when a swell hits and the benefit of local friends to let him know if he’s right or wrong.
When you’ve traveled as far as Jamie did to get there, it pays to wake up early. So, with a 6:00 start in mind, Jamie waxed up and paddled out to a firing lineup that was still nearly empty.
“It’s firing,” he exclaimed in the pre-dawn dark. “This is radical. Offshore at like 5:30 a.m. … the dream is real.”
He wasn’t the only Hawaiian in the lineup, either. Kai Lenny was there, as was Billy Kemper, Legend Chandler, and a few other tube chasers. And it’s safe to say that they all got what they came for.
