When it gets really big on the North Shore, it is not a place for the average surfer. Luckily, the North Shore is full of better-than-average surfers. Koa Rothman is one of them, and when he sees better-than-average waves, he can get a little over-excited. We’ve all been there to some degree. The waves are a little bigger than you thought. You’re under-gunned and you know it. But still, you go out. Then you’re stuck outside, hoping for a wave that you can ride in, but know that your board is a little too small to actually get that wave.
“Literally, we should have had floatation and 9’0s,” says Koa Rothman after a session at maxing outer reef Log Cabins. “I have a 6’4… I don’t know what our thought process was as surfers — specifically big wave surfers — knowing it’s picking up; knowing how big it actually is out there… and we decide to take out 6’4s out. What were we thinking?”
And then, since the day was young and so are Koa’s arms, he paddled out to what he called (somewhat hyperbolically, of course), “the most beautiful Pipeline ever.”
All in all, a pretty decent day. Just another one in the life of Koa Rothman.
