Photo: Jamie O’Brien // YouTube
It’s been a week of madness on the North Shore. Eight days ago, an incoming swell triggered The Eddie, arguably the world’s most prestigious big-wave competition. Since then, the clips and highlight reels have been pouring in. However, true to form, the latest video from Jamie O’Brien starts off with him waxing up a foam board.
Though he did make an appearance at The Eddie (immediately following a somewhat controversial appearance at the Vans Pipe Masters), O’Brien decided to take a quick detour to Ke Iki beach to tempt fate in some shorebreak. “It’s gonna be hard,” he explained with a wry grin. “This board’s like a twin-fin. I don’t even really know what’s about to happen, but we’ll wax her up and I’ll attempt to do the impossible.”
That he did, repeatedly dropping in to thumping closeouts in shallow water, and scoring a few barrels in the process. “It was pretty radical. A lot of water moving, [but] the sand bar was a little bit too shallow,” he described afterwards. “We had some massive swells right before this. I thought the sand would be pulled really nice, and it was just not quite there yet. Little early in the season, but took some heavy wipeouts, getting ready for the next swell.”
Of course, with the diversion over, the siren song of Pipe called to him once again and the next session was another brutal excursion to the famed break. Check out the full video below.
