Our fascination with slabs is multi-dimensional. We love to watch each breaking wave throw unpredictable and often unmakeable sections at surfers. We love to watch surfers navigate them and triumph. Admittedly, we are all in awe of those same waves tossing athletes around like rag dolls. The heaviest of slabs are fascinating for their unpredictability in every aspect, which includes their fickle nature when it comes to turning them on.
A crew in Brazil can attest to every aspect of that summary when setting out on a recent session at a wave called Shock, near Rio de Janeiro. Gabriel Sampaio , Pedro Menezes, and Ziul Andueza scouted Shock during a recent swell, only to be turned away on a day they felt conditions were unrideable. But when they came back early the next morning with videographers Pedro Rolon and Matheus Couto, things were lining up.
“On the day of the session, expectations were high to go there and get a gem,” Rolon tells The Inertia. “Hunting, surfing, and shooting slabs is a fickle business, but I started my career filming that slab and love all this movement to get the right angle and register that wave.”
“Being located in a small bay, surrounded by rocks, Shock concentrates a lot of energy in a short and shallow bench and its degree of difficulty doesn’t stop there,” Sampaio says about the wave. “In addition to being a shallow and heavy wave, it has side washes that make it difficult, consequently making it a slab with unique characteristics.”
Behold the mutant wave they call Shock and one classic session where a small crew found the gems they were looking for.
