Tahiti

Holy Shit! thanks for sharing..thats amazing

agree

Awesome vid, "encompasses all the elation, annihilation and drama of a big day at this place,".
Spot on.

Far out, that video is incredible! And for all the reasons you say, just puts you there in the channel, looking over the next swell to see what's coming, who's on it, who's getting drilled.

Good shit...

That was nuts

I watched that last night on the big tele. Wicked.

Chaos out there. That boogie boarder getting smoked made me cringe as did some of the other beat downs. Great stuff.

Unreal

see how chaotic that little channel is.

twice as many boats there on the Code Red swell ....I saw one little tinny with a baby and a tiny dog on board...........mental.

That was epic.

Cheers

How much better is the simple, raw footage than an over-produced clip?!
The guy doing the camera work and who's voice you can hear is my mate Curt. They (Powerlines) make all the Mavericks videos and he is the quietest, most humble guy you could meet. To hear him frothing like that is so out of character - it must have been crazy intense out there!!

One of those boat drivers, I think the guy who is in the red boat which is always front of the pack, was one of the pioneers of surfing Teahupoo.....Timotei is his name I think.
Got his head split open like a watermelon and only surfs when small.

You think those boats are in a channel, they are not. They are in a crack in the reef about 20-30m wide. When those sets come it's fucking so hairy.

I lucked into a stormy Laird & Raimana tow session on a planned trip there. It was incredible to watch but it was nowhere near that league, I was able to watch from my board. No way you’d be on a board in the channel this day how was all the water moving. Code red must have been pretty much the highlight of your surfing career FR, wow. I surfed the morning after the late arvo tow session, solo. Paddled out thinking I’ve come all this way. Probably the ballsiest / dumbest thing I’ve done. It wasn’t till I got home that a friend asked what if I’d dislocated my shoulder. It’s a long one arm paddle in against the rip. As it was I lost my board. That afternoon we trekked into the mountains, in the rain, trying to find the waterfall. It took a lot longer than we’d expected then the night hit quickly. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face it was black. Yeah we made every text book mistake, didn’t tell anyone, only took beers as supplies etc. It was before mobiles so we had no light trying to criss cross the ever swelling river to get out. Eventually we gave up and spent the night in those mountains, talking about explorers making ourselves feel much more comfortable than we were. Craziest 36 hrs of my life

Thanks for posting that Ash. That was 30 minutes very well spent.

That was epic! How much better is it when we see the whole wave (including takeoff) and it's played at full speed.

Totally agree. Apart from the lack of slo-mo and shit music, it's also the lack of over-editing that makes it so good.

The waves that get unridden, the frantic scramble as the boats realise they're being sucked in to the impact zone, the breathless few seconds as they scan the roiling whitewater for the wipeout victim before the next avalanche hits them - it all creates a vivid sense of being there lacking in most surf clips. It also provides the connective tissue necessary to a narrative arc, lending the highlights so much more power when they do come.

I understand the pressures on a 3-minute highlight clip to showcase their surfer and sponsor and then get out of there before the audience tunes out, but to be honest, unless they're exceptional I rarely make it all-the way through such clips. It's like eating a bowl of sugar. This one had me spellbound all the way through. Even Koa's wave looked bigger and gnarlier in this clip than when I saw it as just a highlight.