Back in 2018, long before the world was turned upside down by a global pandemic, a swell of truly historic proportions swept around Fiji. Now, we’re aware that “historic” is a term thrown around far too often in surfing, but Cloudbreak, 2018? It was historic. “Today will never be forgotten,” Kelly Slater, who headed over there with a busted foot, gushed on Instagram. “It was an honor to be in the presence of an ocean doing this. There is no better wave on this Earth than Cloudbreak.”
Of all the crazy waves ridden that day, Ramon Navarro rode the craziest. Of course, when things get as big and hollow as Cloudbreak got, surfing becomes a team sport. While Navarro is certainly one of the best left-hand tube riders on the planet, even he couldn’t get himself into a wave like the one he got alone. Driving the ski was fellow hellman Kohl Christensen, and he could not have been happier to drag his friend into the wave of a lifetime.
“When you need a ski to actually get a person into a wave,” Christensen said, “It needs to be a group effort between two like-minded people that share the same passion and stoke. It needs to be someone that you have a connection with. I don’t think that wave would have come just for anyone. Maybe I’m wrong, but it just felt right. Everything just felt right… only one person can be on the wave, and I was totally fine with putting Ramon on the wave because we’ve shared a long surfing history together. We’ve been friends forever. Seeing his stoke made me happy. Just as happy.”
The clip above is a small part of Tim Bonython’s Big Wave Project II, which is touring Australian big screens in May and June.
