The latest video from Nathan Florence begins in the early-morning hours in Fiji. “Four-thirty wakeup, main day of swell, everyone’s packing up their guns,” says a sleepy-eyed Florence. ” We’re gonna go hydrate and grab coffee, then hopefully it’s 20-foot Cloudbreak.”
With that, Florence wrestles into a flotation vest, grabs a gun of his own and packs into a boat, headed for the famed Thundercloud. When they arrive on the lineup, gasps and exclamations come from the rest of the boat, as they watch a surfer immediately lock into a picturesque, azure barrel. It was very much on.
What followed was a session for the books. It seemed that basically every surfer in the water managed to scratch into a barrel that was probably the ride of their life.
Though Florence is no stranger to epic waves, even he seemed somewhat dumbstruck by just how good it was that day. “I’ve never seen a session where almost every single person got one of the waves of the day,” he explained afterwards. Immediately afterwards, as if on cue, a massive bomb rose up out of the water behind him, followed by another, and another. “I don’t even know if there’s any stopping it,” he added.
“One of the best big-wave sessions I’ve ever been a part of,” concluded Florence. “Conditions better than forecasted, swell bigger than forecasted and then a crew of some of the elite big-wave guys and some really talented guys that aren’t used to surfing big waves, but putting their skills into big waves. It just turned into a session of, one after another, guys getting the waves of their life and surfing big waves as comfortably as if they were surfing six-footers. It doesn’t get any better.”
