Non-Hawaiians with Hawaiian friends know Ben Gravy’s feelings all too well here. How many of us have spent an hour in the ocean wondering if we were in way over our heads, only to have a Hawaiian friend or two casually brush the whole scene off as just another easy paddle.
“Situation is, finally I go to Hawaii and all the locals are saying ‘holy sh**,’” Gravy says. “Usually I’m coming here like ‘Whoa, Jamie (O’Brien) it’s so—,’ and he’s like ‘Nah, it’s small.'”
“It’s gnarly,” J.O.B. confirmed after a wild afternoon at Ke’iki.
So, what went down? Surfing’s two most popular vloggers wrapped up a session that could hardly be described as surfing, riding backwash waves into the shorebreak, then navigating the ensuing destruction. Stray foam boards galore and no broken bones to show for it all. And when it was all said and done, some participants didn’t even ride a single wave toward the shore. So it’s fair to say Ben Gravy and Jamie O’Brien have taken the whole novelty wave phenomenon to a new level when sessions no longer include attempting to surf breaking waves back to shore.
And like we said, it was even crazy enough for a few Hawaiians to claim it as the heaviest shorebreak session ever.
Heaviest ever. One of the heaviest ever. Whatever you want to call it, J.O.B. and Gravy did just survive the most backwards (literally) shorebreak session ever.
