A remote control drone, a high-performance mini-video camera, a photographer and North Shore’s Pipeline beach collaborate on a very sweet surfing video. Taken December 2013.
[ Phantom ] [ hero 3+ ] [ eric sterman ] [ Pipeline ]
A day after returning from an early January North Beach trip with friends, the video you just watched, was sent by a friend who talked me into taking a surfing lesson. Up to that point we were finding ourselves on the beach at 9am a few times, coffee in hand, watching the surfing at Pipeline. Pretty heady stuff. You could see boards flying in the air. One surfer’s board was broken in half and spectators ran to have a photo taken with him and his broken board. Before going to bed we would all watch Youtube tutes on surfing. Plans to surf the big waves prior to our trip were dashed when we saw the waves, the reefs, face-to-face.
click > enlarge
These signs are never taken down during the month of January. No one is swimming. But if you have a surfboard or a boogie board and swim fins, the signs are ignored. Here’s what I learned in a few short days about surfing…
the duck dive
waves break over a razor sharp reef where the water is only six feet deep | look at the video again!
6-8 foot waves measured from back of wave
A California surf photographer now living in Hawaii said waves in Hawaii are measured from the back and in California from the front. No official statement available.
15-18 feet-high in six-feet of water
the fine points of the ‘pop-up’ | in a cove just north of pipeline
The North Shore was considered un-surfable prior to the evolution of plastic boards with fins, c. late 1940s. Surfing is the equivalent of skiing down an avalanche. A surfing lesson on North Shore in January is like taking a lesson on a double black run that’s both rocky and narrow. Our cove where our lessons transpired required paddling 200 yards to the protective reef where, on the day we surfed, the waves on the first reef were 3-4 feet-high and the water 18 inches! deep. Akin to running and sliding on a sheet of glass shards. I took a pass. Going to watch the video again thinking, ‘Eddie would go!’
[ surfboard history ]
