Ivan Florence surveys Pipe’s first real swell of the season. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
If you’re a Pipeline surfer, you wait all year for Pipe season. Sure, you might take a few trips here and there to some other perfect left-hand tube, but for Pipe surfers, there’s nothing like the real thing. Well, Pipeline officially opened with the first real swell of the year hitting on October 5. Nate Florence, with his new Red Bull sticker, made sure he was at home.
It wasn’t just Nate, of course. Ivan and John paddled out too. They’ve been a family on the move for a while now, so it’s likely that returning home for the first swell at their favorite wave was a nice feeling.
“It’s literally 10-12 foot Pipe,” Nate said. “So we’re just kind of waking up and rushing down… is this going to be one of those winters that are pumping from the start?”
After a while of decision making, the sun showed up and the wonkiness eased so the brothers decided to get their feet in the wax. While it wasn’t all-time, it certainly could be a harbinger of things to come.
“It was the first swell of the season, so there was a lot of wonk and water moving out there,” Nate said. “We should have been on it early… I slept in, but you know what? I went out and got barreled, so that counts for something. My first backdoor barrel of the season.”
