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July 30, 2006
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One hour after he got off the plane from Tahiti on Sunday, July 30, Rob Brown stopped by the Surfline Huntington Beach office to drop off his pics. Still buzzing with adrenaline over what he’d seen and shot, Rob recounted stories of big waves, bad wipeouts and busted boards. Here are some of the highlights:
Sean (Collins) called me on Tuesday to tell me. I was in Dana Point harbor and I got a phone call and I told the guys I was with: "That was Sean Collins." And they said, "No way, I can't believe it! He called you?" They were honestly saying that. (These guys live in Orange.) And I told them, "I think I might have to go to Tahiti to shoot Teahupoo." |
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When did you leave California and when did you come back? I left Thursday at one o'clock and got back at 10:00 this morning (Sunday). Describe the waves and conditions. As close to perfect as it can get. It was a little bit slow on Friday morning, and the weather was kinda cloudy off and on and then all of a sudden it cleared up. The winds varied between doldrums and straight offshore. A couple times weird gusts of wind would come up, but basically it was perfect. For two straight days.... Same thing on the second day. There were some clouds around early, and then at about 10:00 the clouds moved off the mountain area, which I think is the key, and then it was just perfect. And the wave faces, as far as you could tell, were how big? It was 8 to 10 feet Friday morning. By 2:00pm it was 15 to 20 on the faces. By 3:30pm on Friday it had gotten as big as 35 feet on the face -- on one wave. Did you hear any of the guys saying how big they thought it was? Did Shane say how big he thought it was? No, I never heard. (Laughs.) I did hear from Jan who was driving the boat. He said Manoa's wave was the biggest wave he had ever seen ridden out there. He has been there on every swell. So, yeah....he said it was the biggest wave he ever saw. "Raimana had the biggest, deep tube rides, but Shane had more of them. Shane had more tube rides than anyone, I’m sure."
- Rob Brown
List the guys who were surfing and how they were teamed up. Laird and Raimana were together. Mark Healey and Peter Mel. Shane Dorian and Manoa. And there were other guys that were hooking up with different people. Like Eric from Towsurfer was getting a ride from Laird and then Peter Mel. There were guys wanting it, and then guys wanting to take a break. Definitely people were taking their time. It was sketchy. It was perfect conditions, but so damn big it was scary. So you could tell that guys would push it and then take a break to catch their wits. So radical…. Who got the most memorable rides? Manoa, for sure, because he got the biggest. Shane Dorian...absolutely. Raimana had the biggest, deep tube rides, but Shane had more of them. Shane had more tube rides than anyone, I’m sure. Because he was there both days, whereas Raimana I think hurt his foot the first day or something so he was out. So Shane just kept grabbing tube after tube. And Laurie Towner and Dylan Longbottom were amazing -- really, really good. You could tell with their youthful experience they were ready to go. They were having a lot of fun with it. And Mark Healey’s just psycho. So good. He was taking a super-high line on a few waves...just crazy. Tell us about some of the wipeouts. I think number one would probably have been Mark Healey coming out of a giant one yesterday. And they said he just went tumbling. Guys don't fall there, they skip. You know…until they go over the falls. The wipeouts are really violent. At such high speeds, they either get clipped by the lip, or the spit hits them wrong. One time, Peter Mel was standing up high, arching his back, looking up, and the lip clocked him in the head and he ate it bad. It looked like it was all clear and done and he just got clobbered. And then Eric Towsurfer…obviously something went very wrong during the takeoff. It didn’t look like he was going to go over the falls, and then that thing just grabbed him. As you’ll see in the picture, his head was popping out of the lip, twenty-five feet up in the air. Poto, too. The wave he ate it on wasn’t the biggest, but there was the most evidence of blood. You look at the photos and see in the one pic he’s got a clean back, paddling around, looking good, and then he was just demolished. Probably 75 cuts on his back at least. And that was on a small wave. Anyone get seriously hurt? No. I think they all lucked out. I know that Marc Healey cut his foot pretty good. He was going to go get stitches but he didn’t. Nobody got hurt like they should have for that day. They really got lucky. How many boats were in the channel? You know, off and on there were a lot of tiny ones that came out of the harbor -- little aluminum twelve-foot boats and stuff. There were a bunch of those and three Avons and maybe four big boats total. You know, just not that bad. I mean not all of them were cramming up front. Some were behaving and just staying back. Just watching the best in the world get shacked beyond belief. And who was your boat driver? Jannick from Pension Chayan. I think Pension in French means, “Guest House.” He’s a local guy. His place is so beautiful; so pretty and clean. It’s like staying at Disneyland. How does this session compare to the one you shot at Teahupoo last year…the day Dorian got his giant barrel? This was better. This was sunny. Prettier. Just beautiful. Having it be sunny and offshore and getting to see what Tahiti is supposed to look like was so cool. It was magic. MORE RELATED LINKS SURFLINE'S VIDEO FORECAST OF THIS SWELL THE BEST WAVE I EVER CAUGHT, BY SHANE DORIAN THE MONSTER DOWN UNDER THROWS ITS FIRST PUNCH AT TEAHUPOO TAHITI FORECAST (Premium Members only.) MORE SURF NEWS SURFLINE HOME PAGE |
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