Summer on Maui is typically pretty mellow. You’ll mostly just cruise longboard waves and a few small ramps here and there, but in June of 2015 this incredible swell came through, producing some of the best summer waves I’ve ever seen here. The perfect swell direction coupled with an unprecedented low tide, apparently caused by a super moon, turned what is normally a mellow longboard wave into this heaving hallow screamer of a wave. It looked more like Desert Point than Maui to me. A lot of the old timers were claiming it hasn’t been that good since the ’80s…and most of us probably wouldn’t live to see it that good again. It was our first glimpse of El Niño, foreshadowing what was to come the rest of the year.
This swell sparked the idea for Third Eyeland and my interest in documenting the upcoming El Niño season. At the time I was working as a photographer but it started to feel like photos weren’t going to do this swell justice. Luckily my photo camera had a video option so I flipped the switch to video and started learning on the fly. The footage is raw and noticeably worse quality than other segments of the video. I guess in that way Third Eyeland accidentally documented the evolution of me learning how to film.
Episode 3 contains clips of this insane swell and some of the more typical Maui summer ramps along with a pretty intense “Fall” section as well.
Stay tuned for more episodes.
Aloha,
