One wave, two angles, and a million memories. Photos: YouTube//Screenshot
If you’re a surfer who lives on the North Shore, Pipeline is your favorite wave. Sure, that’s a bit of a blanket statement, but I’d wager that if you were to ask 100 of the best North Shore surfers which wave is their go-to when it’s working, 95 of them would say Pipe. Koa Rothman is one of them, and over the course of the last few days, he got his fill of his all-time favorite dish.
The first day of the swell you see in Rothman’s latest YouTube offering was good, but not the norm. “It’s 10- to 12-foot proper Pipe, but peaky,” Rothman said. “Beachbreak style, almost. It’s really cool. It doesn’t get like this often.”
Day one offered up a few waves that Koa was pretty damn happy with. He’s caught a lot of waves this season, but a couple of them on that particular day were the highlights. “I’m so glad I went out,” he said afterwards. “A couple of those waves were some of my better waves this season so far, I would say.”
With the swell still rising, Koa awoke the next day with a different game plan than the rest of his friends. While they went off in search of a different wave, Koa decided to stay home and see what Pipe did. As it turned out, it was a good decision.
“All my friends — Nate, Eli, John, Kiron — they’re all not here,” he said before scoring a pile of incredible waves without much competition. “They went surfing somewhere else. Luckily for me, I didn’t, because the swell is picking up right now.”
There are still a few months left until the North Shore’s summer doldrums arrive, so it’s a good bet that Koa is planning on making the absolute most of every single Pipe swell that’s on the horizon.
