Surfing
Surfing
Get up close to the Almost Eddie Swell with this 20 Foot Plus surfing video
With the arrival of the Almost Eddie Swell, the Pacific Ocean’s big wave season launched in style over the past few weeks. Watch the latest edit from Surfline right here.
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It’s only February but 2023 is already delivering one of the best big wave seasons in recent memory, with more than enough potential blobs still brewing on the charts to send it to the record books.
From Waimea and Jaws in Hawaii to Todos Santos in Mexico and Cortes Bank out on the Californian horizon, the first major swell of the year hit Hawaii on January 11 and saw big wave surfers unsheathing their biggest blades to take on a string of enormous swells strafing coastlines around the Pacific.
Red Bull Magnitude competitor Makani Adric goes full send at The Bay
© John Hook/Red Bull Content Pool
In the 20 Foot Plus recap above, Surfline’s Nick Carroll and Kevin Wallis detail all of the action and weather patterns involved, with interviews featuring many of the key players. While hopes were high that the legendary Eddie Aikau Invitational contest might run at Oahu's Waimea Bay at that time, severe winds saw the green light turn red, and the Almost Eddie Swell was born. The wind wasn't enough to stop an all-time Waimea free surf session taking place, with John John and Ivan Florence the headline acts.
A couple of islands away and a few hours later on Maui, with many of the usual suspects still on Oahu after the Eddie's false start, one of the least crowded and least windy Jaws days of the past decade went down, this time featuring a third Florence brother Nathan, among others, enjoying a little more room to move on the dancefloor.
Justine Dupont's career session, 100 miles off the coast of California
© Frank Quirarte/Red Bull Content Pool
After broadsiding the Hawaiian island chain the swell crossed the Pacific, and here we witness Ian Walsh and Greg Long tackle Mexico’s Todos Santos alongside Jamie Mitchell's Heavy Water Surf crew, which includes Red Bull Magnitude competitors Izzi Gomez and Flick Palmateer. Sadly in the end we’re reminded it’s not all sweet success, as we see Coco Nogales go down hard to end a scary session at one of the first North American spots to show up on the big wave surfing radar back in the 1990s.
Lucas Chianca going big and fast
© Frank Quirarte/Red Bull Content Pool
Finally, we venture out to sea to surfing’s most mythical deep water wave, Cortes Bank, with an all-star line-up. More than 100km off the Californian coast, with very few lineup markers and more than the odd shark lurking beneath the playing field, Cortes is the last frontier in the big wave realm, and our crew is prepared like never before.
Izzi Gomez surfs a huge wave at Cortes Bank, California
© Frank Quirarte/Red Bull Content Pool
Izzi, Lucas Chumbo and Andrew Cotton all tame beasts, but it’s Justine Dupont who steals the show with the biggest wave ridden in 2023 so far, a feat that needs to be seen to be believed.
As Nick Carroll says ominously in conclusion: “It’s still winter, and there’s always the question, 'What’s next?'”
Watch this space.
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