Mark Healey is a man who knows Pipeline. He knows it in all its moods, from small and stormy to pumping and perfect. He knows the reef and all its nooks and crannies. He knows what those nooks do to one wave and why those crannies affect another. When it’s giant — like, second or third reef giant — Healey is out the back, waiting for the right wave. But even a man who has surfed some extraordinarily great waves at one of the greatest surf spots on the planet can catch a rare one sometimes. And that’s exactly what happened with the wave above, which Healey broke down as part of a series called “Best One Ever.”
“Over the years I would see this rare wave break,” he explained. “It’s actually in line with the Off-the-Wall right of way. It connects all the way through with the reef at Pipeline, but it’s like a one-in-million kind of wave.”
The day it happened was a big one. Pumping Pipeline with the usual crowd out. But Mark being Mark, he had his eyes on a different prize. He wanted that rare gem.
“I just had a feeling that day,” he remembered. “I saw a couple almost do it, and then one popped up. I was almost not getting into it, but I just put my head down and paddled as hard as I could. I got up, and I didn’t even know where I was.”
He didn’t know where he was, of course, because he was so far out of the normal position. But that didn’t stop him from seeing what would happen down the line. The boil where most people take off was so far away he couldn’t see it until he was right on top of it.
“I could see the reef and the whole crowd at Pipeline like, way over,” he said. “At a certain point I was like, ‘I don’t even know what it’s going to do when it gets there, but I have to try.’ I just tried to create as much speed as I could and I ended up making this wave all the way through Pipe.”
The crowd, as you’d expect, erupted, both on the sand and in the water. It was not a normal wave at Pipeline, but then again, Mark Healey is not a normal surfer.
“It’s not that it was the craziest, most intense barrel or anything like that,” he finished. “It was just a one-in-a-million wave, and that’s what I appreciate more.”
Healey broke the same wave down a little more for The Inertia a few years back. You can watch that here.
Learn to push yourself, keep calm, and manage fear in heavy surf with Mark Healey’s Guide to Heavy Water.
