Plenty has been said about the waves that rolled through Maverick’s between Christmas and New Year’s Day. Jojo Roper caught what might have been the wave of the year. Lucas Fink made big wave history by chasing the swell from Hawaii to California…on a skimboard. And Jeff Clark, a guy who’s probably seen more legendary days there than anybody else, declared that December 28th churned out its best footage ever.
Somewhere in that mix was Luca Padua — no stranger to turning heads at Mavs himself. Remember when he got an itch to start exploring the left at Mav’s a little over a year ago, for example?
“There’s a certain spot in the bowl that I actually need to be in order to have the speed to make it out of the wave,” he said. “If you got panicked and you thought ‘I want to get out of this thing,’ you’d be in a worse spot than you would be if you were behind it coming through with speed. There’s a certain line that I want to take through the bowl. You factor in all these little details and do the very best that you can in the moment, and then you hope the wave wants to work with you as well.”
Bringing it back to late 2023 and Padua wasn’t out on a mission to go left at Mav’s, but he did come back with his own recap of the historic day. And unlike most vlogs that’ll pull a storyline and some walk-and-talk narratives out of a big day, this reel is just a collection of waves and reactions from the lineup. From the calm and quiet of the Jet Ski rides out in the dark to the hoots and claps throughout the session, there’s a sense of just how heavy the day actually was. No outside chatter needed. The winds are howling, the skis are revving, the water safety radios are on. You can also notice that more often than not the cheers don’t start until after a surfer escapes to the shoulder, as if everybody at Mav’s was holding their collective breath during each ride that day.
