Christmas Eve is always a night full of anticipation. Kids can’t sleep, adults desperately anticipate when the kids will sleep, and everyone is generally very excited about Christmas Day. But for Jaws surfers, Christmas came early. One day early. It came in the form of perfect paddle conditions at the world’s most perfect big wave.
“The Jaws Christmas Eve session was an epic paddle day filled with carnage and a lot of close calls,” wrote Marcus Rodrigues on YouTube.
Like most sessions at Jaws, it wasn’t exactly relaxing. Aside from a whole bunch of incredible waves being ridden, there was plenty of other kinds of excitement. “A Jet ski was lost but retrieved in time before it hit the shoreline by the Pe’ahi Safety Team,” Rodrigues continued. “One surfer had a mild concussion after being dropped in on during a really good set wave that she was waiting for, then a massive clean-up set caught the whole lineup which pushed one of the surfers into the left, which is the most dangerous part of the shoreline that we call the ‘key hole.'”
After multiple rescue attempts were made, all unsuccessful, the surfer managed to make it to shore and walk away relatively unscathed. But despite all that, the day was a success. Light winds, 12-foot sets, and big wave surfers pushing themselves to the limits tends to do that, you know?
