Claiming gets a bad rap. Mostly it’s because claiming sort of became a way to convince judges that what a surfer just did was better than it actually was. “Holy shit, you guys!” Richie Porta probably says. “Did you see that claim? We must have missed something worth at least a full point!”
In real life, though, claiming is usually reserved for those moments when you just can’t contain your shit. Excitement bubbles up inside you like water boiling over in a pot, and when someone like Albee Layer–a man who, by every measure, should be used to this kind of thing–claims this hard, you know it was a special wave. Along with Billy Kemper and Fransisco Porcello, Layer paddled out into this backless, shallow monster on Maui.
“The one I went on wasn’t the biggest by any means. I probably claimed it a little too hard,” he told Stab. “But a lot of them were pinching; it was hard to find one that would stay open. And as soon as you caught a wave you were caught inside. Afterward, we all agreed it was one of the scariest sessions any of us had ever had.”
