We all have to take the bait when a video caption asks, “Who Has the Right Of Way?” then shows two people dodging one another. Bonus points if that clip happens to be at Pipe — the one wave where it’s most obvious the tiniest confusion in navigating the lineup can end in an actual disaster.
So I give those a click.
We could all hash out the “first surfer to their feet” arguments from our armchair quarterback positions but I’m in the camp that split-second judgment calls in waves of consequence while surrounded by dozens of other surfers anxious to take anything they can are just…no fun. These things are inevitable. It’s a recipe that begs for mix-ups, asking for two people to commit to a wave under the assumption they each have the right of way, or for people to assume the person just a few feet deeper isn’t actually going to take off. There are actually no absolutes in surf etiquette because that would require us to see and perceive the exact same thing as the person five feet away with every wave that rolls through. Sometimes you’re in the wrong. Sometimes you’re in the right. Sometimes people unnecessarily lose their minds over getting stuffed on a meaningless wave when all that’s needed to avoid the ensuing lineup meltdown is a “Hey, sorry. That was dumb. You ok?” Of course, it’s not really meaningless if it happens over a razor-sharp reef…all the more reason to make sure everybody is still in one piece if you ask me.
And the more I watch this raw footage of Pipe after the opening clip that got me to tune in in the first place, the more I get a tinkle of anxiety imagining myself in the mix. It’s actually impressive there aren’t more tangled leashes and flesh donations to the reef given the traffic of your typical morning on the North Shore. There are a lot of people and wave after wave after wave rolling through at times. One certainly has to have their head on a swivel.
But that’s nothing new and it’s not exactly exclusive to Pipe and Backdoor. Ultimately, we all know the basic rules. We all know we have to keep our heads on a swivel in every lineup. We all know when we selfishly took off on that wave with someone behind us and when we genuinely thought we had a green light. We’ve all been guilty just as much as we’ve all been recipients of a proper robbery on the wave of the day from time to time. Painting every breach of etiquette with a “clueless kooks” label doesn’t really help anybody either. Eleven world titles won’t even keep you from committing surfing’s original sin. In fact, if we wanted to get into statistical probabilities, the more one surfs the more likely they are to land in the center of a fuss over “who had the right of way?” So isn’t getting roasted an inevitability that makes asking “who had the right of way?” kind of pointless after the fact? Because maybe the predictable fallout could be avoided if both heads pop up from a tumble and the first instinct isn’t to defend having the right of way.
“That was dumb. You ok?”
Ok…now everybody debate who had the right of way on that opening clip. Ready. Go.
