Two legends, one barrel. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
There are a handful of surfers who can be considered Pipeline legends. Jamie O’Brien and Mike Stewart are at the top of that pile. They’ve both seen the inside of countless barrels at the North Shore’s most famous wave, and recently, they shared one.
It happened on a pretty crazy day at Pipe. “It’s pumping,” O’Brien said from his garage. “It’s big… If we’re going to be honest with you, it’s 12-foot Hawaiian, which is like 20-foot California right now. It’s pumping.”
Riding inside the tube is the end-all-be-all of surfing. Jamie and Mike know how technical it is, but they’ve got so much experience it’s almost second-nature. There are so many things happening at once under the hood, and when you add a second person in there, it’s that much more difficult to navigate. But Jamie and Mike? They enjoy both the added challenge and the joy of sharing a very unique experience.
“Mike Stewart is the ultimate legend out there,” Jamie said afterward. “On a bodyboard or a surfboard. It doesn’t matter. Mike Stewart is the legend. I took off out the back on this huge third reef set and I was coming down, almost too deep.”
As he got farther along the wave, he spotted a bodyboarder. “I was like, ‘HEY!'” Jamie explained. “I look and it’s Mike. He goes, ‘Jamie!’ and I was like, ‘No way, let’s do this!'”
This isn’t the first time they’ve been barreled together on the same wave, either. But this one might have taken the cake.
